The Dishes

Chicago's Dishes have a reputation for being unusually concise even in the realm of punk rock--"to hell with a third verse, gimme gimme gimme another chorus and we're done," wrote one admirer of their early work. Like its predecessors the Dishes' new album, 3, is a truly compact disc, clocking in at just over half an hour. But by the end of the opener, "Got Something to Tell You," you'll have no doubt that 3 is the beginning of a new phase for the Dishes. It's their tightest and most nuanced work yet, but also their loosest and most raw-sounding. Many of the songs were finessed during the band's first full U.S. tour last year, on bills with the Nerves, the White Stripes, Federation X, the Bangs, the Pattern, and the Cherry Valence, among other kindred spirits.

Garage-punk legend Tim Kerr, a longtime friend to the band, produced 3, helping them capture something more akin to a live sound (in part by taking away their headphones). Bill Skibbe, electronics whiz and Shellac soundman, engineered and mixed at his studio, Key Club, in Benton Harbor, Michigan, a couple hours east of Chicago. (The album was recorded on a Flickinger console custom-built in the '70s for Sly Stone.)

Dishes frontwoman Sarah Staskauskas and guitarist Kiki Yablon have been playing together since the mid-'90s. The band recorded The Dishes for their own label, No. 89, in early 2000; in 2001 they were named one of "100 New Bands to Watch" by Alternative Press. The Dishes opted to release their sophomore album 1-2 on No. 89 as well; it charted in CMJ's Top 200 and garnered raves from the likes of AP, Magnet, Wired, Bust, Punk Planet, the Onion, the Village Voice, and the Chicago Tribune. The band has also contributed tracks to compilations on Kill Rock Stars and Thick Records, and is the subject of a documentary-in-progress by New York filmmaker Katy Chevigny and former This American Life producer Blue Chevigny.

About the band members:

Sarah Staskauskas (guitar, vocals) is good at making something out of nothing - sexy, delicate party dresses out of sheer hoisery, hats out of little boys' undies, soup out of stones, etc.

Kiki Yablon hasn't been the music editor of the Chicago Reader since last September. She runs No. 89, named in honor of her dad's money-wasting hobby, race car driving.

Drummer Mike Tsoulos quit the University of Chicago after three years of dissecting rats.

Longtime bassist Sharon Maloy is leaving the band this fall to undertake a little side project called motherhood. Her replacement, Kris Kasperowski, is an underemployed archaeologist and a former member of the Cynics.