As its name suggests, Lakewood's
Chloroform will rock out on (knock you out with?) a dizzying display of high-powered originals tonight, when it plays a free holiday show on Cleveland's West Side. Since the alt-rockers' start in 2005, guitarist Allen Singleton has teamed with bassist John Pasternak, keyboardist Mark Thomas, drummer Alex Szarka, and fellow guitarist Dave Taha to "sound like the Beatles and Pink Floyd meet Sigur Rós and Björk." And their eight-minute tunes help back up the claim. "We have a tendency to drag it out a bit," laughs Singleton. The songs include "Nightmare That Never Ends," an "artistic parable" about Lincoln assassinator John Wilkes Booth. "It's definitely a poetic link to the story behind his last days before he killed the president," says Singleton. And the lyrics to "Splice Here" create a scene from a cinematic thriller such as The French Connection. "It's simply a song about two people in a dramatic car chase, and they're escaping the law," says Singleton. "It's like a James Bond sequence that's over-the-top and unbelievable." Chloroform goes onstage at 9 tonight at Now That's Class, 11213 Detroit Avenue. Admission is free. Call 216-221-8576 or visit
www.myspace.com/nowthatsclass.
Sat., Dec. 22, 9 p.m., 2007
