It’s hard to believe it’s been 11 years since Jessee Rose Crane and Philip Lesicko left Chicago for the teeny downstate town of New Douglass (population: 350 as of the 2020 census), partly because you can still feel their influence in our underground rock scene. With their old duo, the Funs, they’ve played noisy but comforting rock in Chicago venues; they’ve released music by Chicago artists on their Manic Static label; and they’ve recorded plenty of locals at Rose Raft, the rehabbed funeral home they’ve transformed into an arts hub and studio. And if you’ve heard the Funs (if you haven’t, you definitely should), you’ll be able to hear their bracing minimalism reflected in the work of Dehd and Lala Lala—the latter recorded their outstanding 2018 album, The Lamb, at Rose Raft. I find it appropriate and even touching that local indie label Born Yesterday, one of the scene’s mightiest emerging forces, is releasing Crane and Lesicko’s new self-titled album as Glow in the Dark Flowers. The duo’s best work together has long had an alluring sparseness, and Glow in the Dark Flowers doubles down on that approach. Sonorous guitars envelop the funereal “When the Leaves Have Fallen” with simple, spacious lines, while Crane’s murmured vocals drift across skeletal drums; at eight minutes, it’s the longest track on the album, but I wish it were as long as a Peter Jackson movie.
Glow in the Dark Flowers Midwife and Desert Liminal open. Sat 4/29, 8:30 PM, Constellation, 3111 N. Western, $15, 18+
