Gossip Wolf: A White Mystery album announcement? Spring must be coming.

Plus: Verbal Kent drops a new LP, Tony Trimm helps open a menswear shop, and more.

By J.R. Nelson @JR1Nelson and Leor Galil @imLeor
Alex and Francis White, aka White Mystery

Gossip Wolf can always tell when spring is coming—the announcement of a new LP from White Mystery is a sure sign! For the fourth year in a row, the hyper­active flame-haired garage-rock duo of siblings Alex and Francis White plans to release an album on 4/20. The double album Dubble Dragon will include new tracks and a live set recorded at Double Door last November. Presales begin Fri 2/14, the same day the band drops in at the Wicker Park Reckless Records for a quick 6 PM set. That night White Mystery plays the Animal Kingdom Valentine’s Day Dance at Multikulti with the Lemons, Ne-Hi, and Jimmy Whispers, and on Sat 2/15 they headline a Chop Shop event called Eat Your Heart Out with Blasted Diplomats and Soft Speaker. The band will donate proceeds from the latter two gigs to the music-education foundation established in memory of Alex White’s former bandmate Christopher Saathoff, who was killed by a hit-and-run driver outside the Empty Bottle on Valentine’s Day 2004.

On Tue 2/18 Chicago MC Verbal Kent (aka Dan Weiss) drops Sound of the Weapon, his first solo album since 2011’s Save Yourself, via indie hip-hop label Mello Music Group—which also released the self-titled debut from Weiss’s group Ugly Heroes (with Apollo Brown and Red Pill). North Carolina beat maker Khrysis produced Sound of the Weapon, and it’s got some fine tracks—including “Now or Never (Pt. 2),” about a 2004 attack when Weiss’s throat was slashed by a supposed friend.

Gossip Wolf is a big fan of local producer Tony Trimm, who collaborates with Chicago-­reared comedian Hannibal Buress and works with rapper Serengeti as his beat maker and DJ (and as his bandmate in experimental kinda-rap group Yoome). Anyway, this wolf got word that Trimm is part of the team opening a men’s clothing store called Meyvn in Logan Square. Trimm says he’s hoping the shop will be in business by mid-March.

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