Local H at Beat Kitchen

Four years after releasing "Whatever Happened to P.J. Soles," Zion natives Local H return to the scene with "12 Angry Months," a bloody, yearlong homage to nasty breakups that tracks a soup-to-nuts farewell from dividing property and glimpsing the ex's new beau to epic fights and ultimate closure. Per Scott Lucas and Brian St. Clair's stunt-friendly style, the duo delivers the disc with consecutive dates at Chicago's Beat Kitchen, leading up to the album's official debut on Tuesday.

"I just wanted to take breakup songs or love songs back from the sort of gutless, mall emo thing it's become," Lucas says. "A lot of breakup records are sad, sad music, but that's not what we were trying to do."

Continuing tonight, Local H spans its 13-year discography all weekend with the help of such Chicago staples and breakout artists as Fun Club, The Tossers, Pegboy and the Smoking Popes' Josh Caterer. Lucas talked with us recently about the intimidation factor of revisiting (and in some cases, relearning) five albums and dozens of B-sides' worth of material for a behemoth undertaking of shows.

Q. How long has this show series been in the works?

A. I suppose we came up with the idea a couple months ago. It seemed like a pain, but it also seemed like a really good idea. … The idea is that it's a record release show, just a weeklong one.

Q. It's becoming an interestingly common idea. Did you have the idea before Wilco?

A. We did not have the idea before Wilco. We got the idea from Cheap Trick, who did it like 10 years ago, so that's where I'd heard of it, and I wasn't even aware that Wilco did it.

Q. How did you decide to structure the shows?

A. It made the most sense chronologically. To shuffle it around just seemed stupid. … I can't imagine that people would want to hear the new record without actually hearing the CD. I don't know if I would go to see someone play their new record unless I'd actually heard the new record, but thankfully I'm wrong.

Q. How long have you rehearsed?

A. We rehearsed for about a week a couple of weeks ago. Brian gets back into town in a couple of days, and we'll start rehearsing for another week. Hopefully, we'll be ready. There are a lot of songs. We're talking about 80 or 100 songs when you bring in all the B-sides. It certainly wasn't our idea to do it; it was our booking agent's idea, and that's the kind of idea that somebody comes up with when they know that they don't have to actually do it.

Q. And when you first heard the idea, what was your reaction?

A. Yeah, it was like, 'I don't want to do this.' But you know what, I'm sure it's going to be fine. It'll be fun.

Q. Were there any songs that you thought, "Wow, we should put these back in the set," or any others you're glad they've come and gone?

A. There were a few songs that we hadn't played in awhile and thought, "Yeah, we should be playing this." It's really weird playing the songs off the first record. I mean, they're 13 years old. You listen to a song and you're like, "Wow, this song really doesn't go anywhere, does it?"

Q. Any surprises fans can expect during the shows?

A. We're rounding up people to do a few things. We have some things up our sleeves and really good opening bands.

Q. The coolest thing about the opening bands is that they're all from Chicago. Did you have a say in who was picked?

A. Yeah, those were totally all people that I personally asked or were friends of ours. The whole idea was I wanted all the bands to be from Chicago. I also wanted some of the bands to be older, but … I didn't want all of the bands to be older. I wanted some of the bands like Mannequin Men and Fun Club to just sort of like stand together.

Q. I can think of a lot of bands who say they're from Chicago and never play here. As far as Beat Kitchen, picking this location as opposed to Metro, what was the thought process behind that?

A. We're going to come back and play Metro at the end of the tour. It's just a record release show. We're always coming up with something. Like the last record release show was at Fritz's Corner in Zion. Stuff like that. We're always trying to come up with harebrained ideas.

Q. With a lot of bands it seems like they play the new stuff and that's it, they forget about the rest of the catalog.

A. That's not the case with us. We don't get to a point where we feel like the best days are behind us. We want to play the new music. We know what it's like to go see a band, so we always want to shake it up and dust off songs we hadn't played in a while. This actually really helps. … It'll help us shake things up on the next tour.

Q. Well, I think of a band like The Tossers, who you toured with; they always pull out songs from their past albums.

A. That was the thing with those guys. I learned 30 or 40 songs to go on tour with them, and then they'd constantly pull out songs that I didn't know what they were. They're like, "Let's play this," and I'm like, "Dude, I don't know it." So I'd just watch everyone and follow along, but that was fun.

Q. Let's talk about the new album, "12 Angry Months." Is this a concept album for all breakups and bad relationships or one specific breakup?

A. It's pretty specific, but I think it was also more of an idea to just sort of add another record to the canon of breakup records.

Q. The way you structured it by month almost feels like 12 steps, but not necessarily 12 steps to get over a breakup.

A. That was the thing. I (thought of) everything you go through after a breakup -- the friends and running into the ex with the new boyfriend or girlfriend and that kind of thing -- and try to hit it all. And it's also very much about breaking up in the city, even which bars you can go to now and things like that.

Q. What made you break it up into 12 months?

A. One of the ideas initially was to do it as a 12-step program. Then I started reading what the actual 12 steps were online, and they're really stupid. They don't really fit, and they're all about some kind of (demon) you're supposed to give yourself up to, and I couldn't figure out how to make that work. And then there's the five stages of grief, and that wasn't quite working, and the 12-month thing came up, and it was perfect.

Q. Why put the "24 Hour Breakup" song in the middle of the album?

A. When you go through things like breakups, there's a lot of (back and forth). And that's one of the reasons why the five stages of grief wasn't going to work. It's like that "Seinfeld" line where they're pushing out the refrigerator; with relationships, you have to rock it a little bit before you push it over. It goes back and forth. Even though you're getting over someone, you still have relationships with other people and sometimes you want to break those off and that might not be so easy.

Q. Is there a climax of the record, of the breakup story?

A. I don't know. Around October or November. There's a lot of bitterness in December.

Q. Do you hope that your audience would find resolution with you at the end of the record?

A. That's the point. It is called "12 Angry Months."

>Local H at Beat Kitchen

2100 W. Belmont, Chicago; (773) 281-4444.

Tickets: $15 (sold out); scalpable

Today: 7:45 p.m. with Fun Club

Saturday: 7:45 p.m. with The Tossers

Sunday: 6:45 p.m. with Smoking Popes' Josh Caterer

Monday: 6:45 p.m. with Pegboy

Tuesday: 6:45 p.m. with Mannequin Men