Music

For some bands, it takes a lifetime to build this success, but few performers deliver an unrestrained blast of soul-clapping, get-down-on-the-floor, moneymaker shakers like Fitz and the Tantrums. Fitz and the Tantrums have resurrected a sound that’s been dormant for decades: the blues of a 1970’s love affair. It all started with a neglected vintage organ, and since then they’ve been keepin’ it real like it’s 1969. The organ became a driving force for the front man, Fitz, and helped him to find his voice. When his ex-girlfriend called him about the old organ, he knew exactly what to write about. It inspired him to compose the breakup song, “Pickin’ Up the Pieces,” which is also the title of the album.

With 240,000 people, 130 bands, on 110 acres of the beautiful Grant Park, Lollapalooza saw its 19th year as a festival as an overwhelming success for the Austin based promoters C3. Perry Ferrell’s traveling festival is a distant afterthought. Instead we’ve become accustomed to the three-day event and are finally getting used to it as a mainstay Chicago event every August.

If Funeral was the personal homage to life, love, and loss and Neon Bible was a straight shot at the gut of political immoral corruption, than Arcade Fire’s The Suburbs is merely a simple acknowledgment of the two concepts along with the reluctant but powerful realization that “we can’t run from our upbringing” especially when two story brick houses and shopping malls stand in our way. And as Win Butler and company convey on their third album, each new generation is engulfed in a more brutal “suburban war.” With so much indie cred on the line, Arcade Fire delivers once again with their longest most expansive album yet.