One of the best Chicago rock albums of the past year was made by a band that no longer lives here: the Funs. The duo of Jessee Rose Crane and Philip Jerome Lesicko, who both sing and trade off guitar and drums, recorded September’s double LP My Survival at Logan Square’s Public House Sound Recordings, but they wrote it in New Douglas, Illinois, a former coal-mining town nearly five hours south of Chicago where they’d moved in 2012 to refurbish a house near Lesicko’s parents’ place.
Despite their name, the Funs don’t make buoyant pop. “We’re both vulnerable—we’re not hiding anything, and we definitely put everything out there and let people take what they will from it,” says Lesicko. “It’s interesting not being an accessible band, for the most part, and it really gives you perspective on why you’re creating something.” My Survival swerves between brooding and incandescent; massive, sluggish guitars swarm with firecrackers of fuzz, and the drums shift with the music’s mood, sometimes pounding away and sometimes pulling back to provide a light swing. Crane and Lesicko treat their vocals with just enough reverb to make their moans and mumbles bleed into one another. On first listen it’s tough to make out most of the words, but the feelings they convey are clear enough—and no matter how dark the songs get, you get the feeling that light is always around the corner.
Fri 2/12, 10:30 PM Subterranean 2011 W. North $8, $13 two-day pass 17+twopiecefest.com
Two Piece Fest Midwest: Peter & Craig, Jitters, Minimum Wage Assassins, Means of Escape, Tinkerbelles Sat 2/13, 6 PM Subterranean $8, $13 two-day pass 17+
