CONCERT PREVIEWS THURSDAY20

Debby Friday Godly the Ruler and Beloved (DJ set) open. 9 PM, Empty Bottle, 1035 N. Western, $15. 21+

Debby Friday kicks off the title track that opens her debut album, Good Luck (Sub Pop), with a fiery declaration: “Get it while it’s hot!” The Nigerian-born, Toronto-based artist sounds commanding atop the song’s lurching electro-industrial beats, but even as she confidently seizes our attention, there’s a sense that she’s tormented too. When she exclaims “Don’t you fuck it up,” it’s as if she’s singing it to herself, and the following track, “So Hard to Tell,” suggests the same: Friday’s knowing vocals cascade through the swirling atmospherics of its dreamy R&B as she reflects on a younger, more naive self who’s going through the wringer. Then all at once, we’re thrown into the highs and lows of her tumultuous journey of self-discovery: on the acerbic, imposing house track “I Got It” she announces her “red blood libido,” while “Hot Love” tosses us in a noisy cyclone suffused with desire and disappointment.

On Friday’s previous EPs, 2018’s Bitchpunk and 2019’s Death Drive, she reveled in messy synth-punk exuberance. That energy is amped up on Good Luck. “Wake Up” is a frenetic, scatterbrained instrumental where soaring vocals and electric pulses create an ecstatic gothic reverie. She’s more chameleonic than ever too: on “Pluto Baby” she employs twisted beats that recall Peruvian producer Arca, while on “What a Man” she channels the glam-rock theatrics of Yves Tumor, searing guitar solo and all. Friday compounds her stylistic turns with varied vocal deliveries. She’s flirtatious on “Heartbreakerrr,” a bouncy synth-pop track that bobs around like someone happily dancing a er too many drinks. But she’s brooding and moody on “Safe,” where she confesses to breaking down over an old lover whose memory she can’t shake. Packed into a succinct, live-wire 33 minutes, Good Luck is testament to how effectively Friday can capture life in all its dense, unpredictable emotions.

—JOSHUA MINSOO KIM

IT’S AN UNWRITTEN LAW that anyone who talks about a new musical project involving a member of the Kinsella family has to mention one of four Kinsella-related bands. First there’s the ur-group, Cap’n Jazz, which vocalist Tim Kinsella cofounded as a teenager in 1989 with his younger brother, Mike, on drums; the most recent reunion tour by these mythical miscreants of midwestern emo brought cousin Nate Kinsella aboard on guitar. Then there’s Mike’s college band, American Football, whose autumnal self-titled album grew a cult after its posthumous 1999 release, eventually leading to a reunion—which also brought in Nate as a full-time member. Mike and Nate cycled in and out of Tim’s uncategorizable project Joan of Arc, whose flinty experimentations have perplexed practically everyone who’s heard at least two of their wildly divergent albums. Formed in 1995, JoA broke up just a couple years ago and will reunite next month to perform their original score for Carl Dreyer’s 1928 silent film, The Passion of Joan of Arc, at the Music Box. Lastly there’s Owen, the name Mike has used for his evocative and often confessional solo indie-rock recordings, which can be sparse or lushly arranged.

Mike and Nate’s new collaboration, Lies, is definitely a Kinsella-related band, but its most crucial reference point isn’t any of those groups— rather it’s the o -kilter, winsome indie pop that Nate makes as Birthmark. The project’s debut album, Lies (Polyvinyl), buries galloping, elegant guitar patterns à la American Football beneath synth drones and charmingly out-of-place electronic blurps and chirps. The album has a whi of late-2000s indie quirkiness about it, but the Kinsellas are generally purposeful when it comes to such eccentricities—the clattering on “Broken” is the only thing that gets to be a bit much. Nate’s colorfully symphonic electronic production emphasizes joy and euphoria, so that even his cousin’s yearnsome singing and doleful lyrics manage to communicate wary optimism. Mike’s magnetic performances range from self-deprecating to self-flagellating, but musically Lies covers a lot more ground: ambient, glitch, electro-pop, even chamber music. The four-on-the-floor pulse powering “Summer Somewhere” makes it a rare Kinsella song I can imagine hearing in a dance club. —LEOR

GALIL

Hell Meth. and Lijde open. 8 PM, Cobra Lounge, 235 N. Ashland, $18.03. 17+ emotional range of his music, so that every time he announces a new release, I look forward to getting lost in its twists and turns. M.S.W. still writes and records everything on his own, but in a live setting (the best way to experience such music) he brings a band: the current lineup includes guitarist Sheene Coffins, new bassist Andrew Black, and drummer Liam Neighbors (aka Mizmor founder A.L.N.). Hell’s shows aren’t for the faint of heart, in the best possible sense of the term. On this tour, the band will perform Hell’s 2017 self-titled album in full—if you’re in need of something bleak, brutal, and beautiful in your life, don’t miss it. —JAMIE

LUDWIG

Seth Parker Woods’s Difficult Grace

6 PM, Harris Theater, Millennium Park, 205 E. Randolph, $15. b

Cellist Seth Parker Woods didn’t compose the music on Difficult Grace, but you’d be forgiven for second-guessing that. By his admission, this expansive multimedia project, recently adapted into an album for Chicago’s Cedille Records, is semiautobiographical; its repertoire list nods to Woods’s spiritual forebears (Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson and Alvin Singleton contribute the closest things to “canonical” works on the album) as well as to his Rolodex of collaborators. Pierre Alexandre Tremblay (asinglewordisnotenough) and Monty Adkins (Winter Tendrils) composed their featured pieces for Woods early in his career; choreographer and dancer Roderick George, who appears with Woods at this Harris Theater event, is a childhood friend.

Since Woods began performing Difficult Grace as a unified concept in 2020, he’s made the music therein utterly his own. He sings or intones text on three of the album’s seven compositions, including The Race: 1915 by former Eighth Blackbird flutist Nathalie Joachim (which churns and whistles under Woods’s recitation of Chicago Defender columns from that year) and Ted Hearne’s suite Freefucked,