“Chicago always feels a little bit magic to me,” says Dana Schechter. “The associations I have with it are filtered through the memory of a child. It’s nice.”
Oranssi Pazuzu, Insect Ark, Varaha Thu 10/10, 7 PM, Reggies’ Rock Club, 2105 S. State, $20, 17+
Schechter says Touch and Go bands are still on her regular playlists, and you can hear their influence here and there in her work. Marrow Hymns tracks “In the Nest” and “Skin Walker,” with their grunged-out fuzz of detuned feedback, could almost be Jesus Lizard outtakes with the vocals stripped out and all the upper-register frequencies dialed back. “The Collector,” from 2015’s Portal/Well, is built around a grinding industrial riff that sounds like they might’ve borrowed one of Big Black’s jackhammers. The fingernails-on-a-blackboard distortion from “Lift Off,” on 2013’s Long Arms, is distant but recognizable kin to the hideous noises Scratch Acid used to make, albeit transposed from a quasi-rock context into a more abstract setting. In general, Schechter’s sideways relationship to metal—obviously a fan, but not quite in the genre—feels of a piece with the willingness of the Touch and Go stable to mix large helpings of heavy into whatever else they had lying about.
