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 first album. Like its predecessors, The Dishes and 1-2, the Dishes' new 3 (due out October 14, 2003, from File 13 Records) is a truly compact disc, clocking in at just over half an hour. But by the end of "Got Something to Tell You," the scorching opening cut, you'll have no doubt that 3 is a new animal. It's the band's tightest work yet and also its loosest and most confident. Many of the songs were finessed during the band's first full US tour last year (on bills with the Nerves, the White Stripes, the Cherry Valence, Federation X, the Bangs, the Pattern, and the Total Sound Group Direct Action Committee, among other kindred spirits).

Garage-punk legend Tim Kerr, a longtime friend to the band, produced 3, helping the band capture something more akin to a live sound in part by taking away their headphones. Bill Skibbe, perhaps best known as Shellac's soundman, engineered and mixed at his studio, Key Club, in Benton Harbor, Michigan, a couple hours east of Chicago. (Bonus trivia for gearheads: 3 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--when Sarah had been playing guitar for a year and Kiki for just six months. Progress was slow but steady, and with the addition of bassist Sharon Maloy and the band's first drummer, Rick Gasparini, they recorded The Dishes for release on their own label, No. 89, in early 2000.