Sybris

Photo by Sandy Carson

Sybris

There's nothing quite like a nice, healthy scream to wake you up on a Sunday morning. Sybris guitarist/singer Angela Mullenhour's got one fine rock & roll bellow, the kind to blow the bangs off your forehead in a smaller club. The Chicago quartet's certainly got a hometown pedigree – snaking, chiming guitars; big, thick drums; odd time signatures – but it's also reminiscent of Carolina indie label Merge's roster in the early 1990s – Polvo, Superchunk, etc., plus the requisite bit of Sonic Youth and Swervedriver. They've tinkered with their sound since 2005's self-titled debut, and this year's Into the Trees, produced by indie guru John Congleton, is meatier, moodier. Live, they scuffed up the gauziness of those songs by simply turning up the volume, nervous guitars jumping all over the stage to escape getting trampled by Mullenhour's otherworldly pipes. Yep, 1992 was a good year.