Riot Now! [CD]

Riot Now!, Eleventh Dream Day's 10th album, is a call back to the urgency of 1988's Prairie School Freakout, with a string of mostly first takes tracked in one session with few overdubs. Rick Rizzo, Janet Beveridge Bean, Douglas McCombs and Mark Greenberg revel in their own mixture of melodic mayhem. The band, while always moderately active in Chicago have not released a record since 2006. Their 2011 album cover depicts a check out line in a grocery store. A customer stands glibly in line wearing a shirt that says "Riot Now!" Overhead a security camera films, and customers move about with blank expressions. The cover and many of the songs are comments on the contradictions inherit in a desire for large scale social change while retaining all the creature comforts of prosperity. While this election has shown us that Americans have less patience, we are largely complacent and unable to take action beyond complaint.