Photos: Wire Fest [Empty Bottle; Chicago, IL; 09/22/06]

Eclecticism reigned once again at Chicago's Empty Bottle Friday night, as The Wire brought together four acts from three different continents to play the third night of the Adventures in Modern Music festival (for a recap of night one, click here). The grab bag bill included Brazil's Tetine, France's Colleen, Portland's Yellow Swans, and Chicago's own Spires That in the Sunset Rise.

Spires opened in three-piece formation, drawing a decent-sized hometown crowd and conjuring a few moments of eerie wonder with a variety of stringed instruments, including banjo, autoharp, cello, and spike fiddle. The interplay between the last two in particular proved hypnotic. Too often, however, the act lapsed into self-parody with corny vocal affectations or meandering interludes, suggesting the players weren't taking their try at freak folk very seriously.

Yellow Swans played next, two dudes whose conviviality stood somewhat at odds with their music, a near-constant barrage of visceral noise. To be fair, this set seemed considerably less harsh than the last time I witnessed the Swans (opening for Xiu Xiu last fall), at times approaching a very raw and captivating beauty. Wisely, the gentlemen kept things fairly brief, giving throbbing eardrums ample time to recover before the delicate stylings of the next performer, Colleen.

Cécile Schott must spend endless idle hours cooped up in a tiny, Bohemian apartment, exploring the wonders of repeated sound. As Colleen, she gave guitar, cello, clarinet, wind chimes, and music box the loop pedal treatment (with bare feet and painted toenails, no less!) to acoustically embellish all your favorite emotions: "wistful," "melancholy," and "nostaglic" chief among them. Light and wispy at surface level, Colleen's subtle compositions were charged with astounding sentimental weight, providing the evening's highlight for this moonstruck showgoer. Check out the video below for a dose of Schott's magic. Her latest EP Colleen et les Boîtes à Musique arrives October 2 via the Leaf Label.

If Colleen's looped flirtations and Yellow Swans' noisy pall seemed worlds apart, Tetine came at us at from another dimension altogether. Quick to point out that they make "funk carioca" and not "baile funk," the charmingly sleazy boy/girl duo bumped, grinded, gyrated, and spat quick-tongued Portuguese over a sick array of beats and samples, encouraging folks to lick their favelas-- sounds naughty, until you realize that favela basically translates to "ghetto." Tetine's relentless energy got the all-too-sparse crowd dancing-- however awkwardly-- but given the recent popularity of similar paisanos like CSS and Bonde do Role, it's a wonder these two didn't lure a significantly larger body of revelers to this quite-fantastic performance. Somebody call Diplo already.