Chromatics
The Mid; Chicago, IL

I. Fucking. Love. Chromatics. Their recordings should be classified as a barbiturate. It’s always 1 in the morning on a Saturday night when their music slinks into my veins. Johnny Jewel’s synths translate into images of tungsten light on city streets, pretty girls alone in apartments, and a place where the sun doesn’t exist. Aside from maybe The Weeknd, no one else can create night out of sound like Chromatics. In a live setting, Ruth and Johnny spike their aural opiates full of club stimulants. Four-on-the-floor kick and snare, rib-rattle bass, a few extra BPMs sprinkled like coke on a molly line; all the accoutrements necessary for a writhing mass of club kids. The last time I saw Chromatics was an outdoor stage in Austin, and while it was still everything I wanted in a show, Chromatics clearly belong in dark confines wrapped in fog and neon. I won’t lie; I’ve never been much for The Mid since it opened, but this also was the first time seeing an artist there who plays actual instruments instead of dicking around with Ableton. It won me over that night.

Chromatics put in about an hour, covering ground from In the City all the way up to their last single “Cherry.” The brooding and isolation marking tracks like “These Streets Will Never Look the Same” (by the way, definitely heard that on a Nascar commercial while I was watching Sportscenter last week) washed away in the singing from the crowd and fist pumps from some group of dudes in tank tops standing by the front. The festival detritus washing out from Union Park was apparent. You could tell Johnny Jewel was stretching his legs for Glass Candy’s set at Pitchfork; I don’t remember them taking longer than 10 or 15 seconds between songs. When they closed on “Running Up that Hill,” the only thing I wanted, like anytime I listen to that song, was for it not to end. The only thing to do now is wonder when Chromatics feel like coming back to my city, but it’s fine. I’m patient. I can subsist on album sleeves and record grooves. I can live inside minor keys and black outfits for as long as it takes. The day always feels like it’s never going to leave, but when I hear that music, it’s like someone shut off the sun.

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