Also this issue: Rebirth of Butterfly Ishmael Butler and Cherrywine have a whole new digable plan. -Ainé Ardron-Doley Where House? DJ X-Dream rants on raves. -Sean O’Neal Hurricane Mozart The Orchestra unleashes a season-ending windstorm. -Peter Burwasser One night the rain began to fall and it would not stop. -Patrick Rapa The Downbeat 5 -M.J. Fine Jonathan Richman -Sam Adams Glass Candy -M.J. Fine Gold Chains -A.D. Amorosi

June 26-July 2, 2003

musicpicks

Wilco/Sonic Youth

"Everybody says I ruin records," Jim O'Rourke argues in one of the extra scenes included on the DVD of I Am Trying to Break Your Heart, which documents the difficult birth of Wilco's Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. From anyone else, the line would sound like desperate fishing. That's not the issue with O'Rourke; coming from him, it's just the reflex of a man defined by backhanded compliments. Far from being ruined, YHF was the one album almost everyone could agree on last year, and it's not because of the songs. (Not measured against Wilco's own standards, anyway; song for song, YHF doesn't come close to Summerteeth.) It's the way O'Rourke's tweaked mixes take off the Band-Aid, with all that implies: honesty, regeneration, new hurt. As Sonic Youth's junior member, he hasn't radically tampered with the formula. On last year's Murray Street, his leap from associate to full partner, he doesn't lead them into anything they wouldn't have found without him. Maybe all they needed was a shot in the arm, because O'Rourke's presence gives his bandmates a new playfulness. Something's ruined -- after all, change doesn't happen without some sort of destruction -- but it isn't the records.

Sat., June 28, 7:30 p.m., $29.50, Festival Pier at Penn’s Landing, Delaware Ave. and Spring Garden St., 215-336-2000.

—M.J. Fine