Chicago singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist Emily Jane Powers has been crafting intimate, literate pop since the early 2000s—Gossip Wolf was especially taken with her 2014 book and download, Part of Me, which felt as much like a collection of poignant short-story-style character studies as it did a series of songs. For the past three years, she’s been writing, arranging, and rearranging its follow-up, Restless (recorded with Erik Hall of In Tall Bulldings behind the boards), and it expands Powers’s musical palette considerably. The sparse, ringing folk of “Mourning Light” and the swelling woodwinds of “It’s Not Hard to Decide” should give fans of Feist and Iron & Wine much to ruminate upon. Last week, Powers self-released a lovely 180-gram vinyl version of Restless, and she’ll have copies at her record-release show at Beat Kitchen on Friday, March 30. Openers include Jessica Risker and Half Gringa.
Gossip Wolf has kept close tabs on post-Disappears trio Facs since they made their live debut in January 2017. On Friday, March 30, Trouble in Mind releases the band’s first full-length, Negative Houses, and that night they headline the Empty Bottle. Dim and Ethers open. v
