Tortoise

Not so very long ago, Tortoise was the hottest ticket in post-rock. The Chicago quintet didn't invent the genre -- Slint got there first, then broke up before the hype hit -- but Tortoise was left holding the bag and posing for scores of magazine covers. The band's popularity peaked between the mothballed licks and kraut-rock kicks of 1996's Millions Now Living Will Never Die and 1998's TNT, which found the band as sleek and cold as a 2068 Chrysler hovercraft blasting Sergio Leone soundtracks, yet gorgeous. Tortoise toyed with spastic funk on 2001's less striking Standards and lost the plot completely on this year's boring It's All Around You -- which doesn't mean you shouldn't see them in the flesh. Live, with the beer flowing, fewer instrumental elements (band members play as many as seven instruments apiece in the studio), and faced with actual people, Tortoise's music becomes more human and less infallibly Julliardian.