Electropop and EDM have a good run recently, but what’s summer without a roaring Stratocaster in your ear? Here, three concerts that deliver a six-string fix.
Ezra Koenig of Vampire Weekend (Photo by Jason Squires/WireImage/Getty Images)
With the Rolling Stones’ No Filter tour stop postponed, the British Invasion fan’s spotlight swings to the Who’s Move On! tour, which hits Tinley Park on May 21. The band has been reinvigorated since its 2012-2013 Quadrophenia and More tour and even has a new album due out this year, its first new material since 2006’s Endless Wire. For its Chicagoland stop, expect dramatic strings, as the band brings in a local orchestra on each date. Original members Roger Daltrey and Pete Townshend are ably assisted by Ringo Starr’s son Zak Starkey on drums and guitar from Townshend’s brother Simon. But if it’s Townshend’s windmill moves and Daltrey’s mic swinging you’re after, you won’t leave unsatisfied.
Vampire Weekend was once summer’s boat shoe-wearing indie festival upstart, but on the band’s first major label album, Father of the Bride, released in May, Ezra Koenig draws on some varied sounds to keep the lake breezes behind their experienced sails. Jazzy electronics on “Sunflower” and Madchester acid-house dance beats on “Harmony Hall” are clues that Vampire Weekend’s Huntington Bank Pavilion set on June 16 won’t be a landlocked rehash.
Deadheads take to Wrigley Field for a two-night stand (June 14 and 15) from Dead & Company (Grateful Dead members Mickey Hart, Bill Kreutzmann and Bob Weir with guitar deity John Mayer and various ringers). If the band looks comfortable in shorts, safari shirts and cut-off tees, it’s because they’re in it for the long haul—the total for the band’s cosmic sound explorations of Dead favorites (featuring Mayer’s improvised, bluesy guitarscapes) can easily clock in at over three hours.
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