When the Who released Quadrophenia in 1973, it was an enormously ambitious album by the standards of the day. The double album was the band's second rock opera, incorporating complex horns (Entwistle played the horn arrangements on the record himself as Pete Townshend would remind us when he introduced the Who's live horn players last night), keyboards, and an operatic storyline about Jimmy the Mod growing up in the '60s, struggling with an identity crisis amid the clashes between mods and rockers. The record was a triumph, though initially it got a lukewarm reaction—today it rates higher than Tommy for many fans and critics. It's certainly a more mature piece of art. Pete Townshend calls it his favorite Who album. But the Who's early tours for Quadrophenia were inconsistent. Keith Moon struggled to play with the stage tapes the Who found it needed to complete the sound of the record. The band wanted to show films during the UK tour for Quadrophenia—which was, naturally, toured in quadrophonic sound—but that didn't happen.

Last night at Allstate Arena, the Who—Roger Daltrey and Pete Townshend plus a band of expert journeyman including longtime Who touring members Zak Starkey on the drums and Pino Palladino on the bass as well as Townshend's brother Simon on rhythm guitar and taking lead vocals on "Dirty Jobs"—brought Quadrophenia to life, in every sense, then played a few more songs. As a storytelling vehicle, the stage presentation turned the now very specific tale of Jimmy the Mod into a style-conscious visual story of the Who and the post-war English generation. Musically, the band played the enormously complex and difficult record at a prodigious level of detail, celebrating the music of the rock opera in a way that sometimes challenged the crowd (namely the long instrumental passages in "the Rock" and "Quadrophenia") and definitely challenged the band (Townshend told us the "music is a tough ride for us as musicians" after folding up the green binder of notes he used during the Quadrophenia set), but paid off in an artful arena rock experience.

After a brief West Coast tour, iconic and soulful Spaniard Enrique Bunbury touched down at the Congress Theater for a six-encore performance. The Chicago Sun-Times notes that the set list centered around Bunbury’s 2011 release Licenciado cantinas, while also featuring songs from earlier Bunbury solo efforts. The track “No me llames carino” from 2004‘s El viaje a ninguna parte, found Bunbury rolling magic talismans around the Congress stage. 

A fixture in the international rock scene ever since his mid-90s success with the band Héroes del Silencio, the 45-year-old Bunbury has performed as a solo act since Héroes’s break-up in 1996. He was accompanied at the Congress Theater by the four-piece Los Santos Inocentes.

New Jersey’s wordiest sons, Titus Andronicus, swung by the Metro on Sunday night on the final leg of their National Business tour. The “fellas,” as frontman Patrick Stickles kept referring to the band, were in fine form, churning out songs from all three albums over the course of the night. The band’s lineup has expanded and contracted over the years, but last night’s quintet version featured the actual members who recorded Local Business, the crew’s scaled-back new album. With a no-frills three-guitar attack on stage, it almost looked like Stickles and company had shaved off all of the wonderful excess—extended songs, a Civil War meta-narrative, bagpipes—that characterized their 2010 masterpiece The Monitor. 

Delta Spirit hit the House of Blues, along with Fidlar and JEFF The Brotherhood on Monday, November 19. Check out our photos from the show.