Gold

The two guitarists in Chicago band Gold seem determined to deliver strong, bare-bones rock hooks and spontaneously meander about their fretboards in controlled-chaos interplay. The odd starts and stops in Gold's tunes mean there's actually some complexity here, but a raw and sprawling feel dominates the music. Judging from some new tracks, the band's sound tightened up a bit as it wrote and recorded nine songs for a forthcoming, untitled full-length album last year. It still has an excitingly loose and open quality to it, taking a lot of cues from bands like U.S. Maple, but also channels the noisy possibilities into more thoroughly fleshed-out songs, a balance that raises hopes for a fun live set. - The Onion, Decider Madison