I had something of a revelation last night while watching the terrific Troubled Hubble show at High Noon Saloon (also featuring the pretty good El Oso and the unremarkable Echo-static). As a broad-minded music lover, I sometimes find myself disappointed with genre tributaries that don't go where I want them to go, or just don't provide anything that I can connect with in anything more than a passing way. But listening to the high-minded crunch-pop of The Next Great Chicago Rock Band, I started to see the slot that I had been looking for.

It's an axis that runs through the Dismemberment Plan, Piebald and Motion City Soundtrack, all the way over to more radio-friendly folks like OK Go. These are bands whose success was made possible by the alt./indie explosion of the early 1990's, but who owe more musically to Hüsker Dü, the Who and Pavement than they do to Nirvana and Pearl Jam (ironically, in those three bands' catalogs, there's only a sliver of material that I particularly like).

Troubled Hubble's fourth full-length album (and first for big-time indie label Lookout!), Making Beds in a Burning House, is out on May 17, but a probably unfinished version leaked to the Internets about five months ago. Many of the people at the show (myself included) knew the new material, which comprised most of the band's set. It was my first real exposure to them, and it drew me quickly into their back-catalog. I can only hope that Lookout! does for them what it did for Ted Leo, who's now in every important Rolodex under "Indie Rock Ambassador."