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Subversive guitar god James Blood Ulmer plays a rare Chicago show
Guitar gods don’t come much more sagelike, subversive, and utterly distinctive than James Blood Ulmer. Born Willie James Ulmer in North Carolina, this towering figure of free blues guitar, now 79...
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Andrew Bird resumes his cozy Gezelligheid church shows with bittersweet...
Winter can be a stressful time, especially around the holidays, but Andrew Bird’s annual string of hometown shows at Fourth Presbyterian Church, which he’s christened “Gezelligheid” after the Dutch...
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Mount Eerie’s new Lost Wisdom Pt. 2 shows glimmers of joy and hope
Since 2003, Microphones front man Phil Elverum has used his project Mount Eerie to pull intense, heartbreaking moods out of stark minimalism. He’s recorded in remote cabins and made entire albums with...
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We three queens
Sondra Radvanovsky sings the last acts of Donizetti's three Tudor queen operas. Berwyn born, internationally acclaimed soprano Sondra Radvanovsky is performing an operatic marathon this week at Lyric...
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Joffrey's The Nutcracker puts the emphasis on mother love
Christopher Wheeldon's World's Fair magic makes its last appearance at the Auditorium. Parents are under a lot of stress during the holiday season, responsible for creating the magical experience...
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The Golden Girls: The Lost Episodes—Holiday Edition, Vol. 2 adds some sweet...
Hell in a Handbag's franchise decks the halls with campy good feelings. Trivia time: what Golden Girls character still believes in Santa? You don't need multiple-choice answers to know it's gotta be...
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Grace and the Hanukkah Miracle combines one family's history with a scavenger...
The inaugural show from Chicago Immersive is empathetic and wise. Immersive holiday shows in Chicago usually mean Halloween fare—haunted houses lend themselves naturally to the form, after all. But...
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Crossin’ Borders shines light on undocumented queer artists
Brian Herrera’s magazine features the work of nine artists creating in a world that won’t let them represent themselves. These days there's no shortage of people making art in response to Trump's...
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After 20 years in the game, the Lawrence Arms are a full-on Chicago punk...
The Lawrence Arms were born out of the same suburban punk network that gave us Slapstick, Alkaline Trio, and Rise Against, and for the past two decades they’ve been working to become the...
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Collaborating on great Black music from the ancient to the future
Moor Mother and Roscoe Mitchell met in 2017 when they played back-to-back at Skaņu Mežs, an experimental music festival in Riga, Latvia. Mitchell, who plays a vast assortment of woodwind and...
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Thurston Moore returns to his avant-garde roots on Spirit Counsel
One of the very few celebrity breakups to ever have an emotional effect on me was the 2011 split of Kim Gordon and Thurston Moore, which also resulted in the end of Sonic Youth. There was much...
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The 1975 infuse their ambitious, anxiety-riddled songs with hope
Listening to UK pop-rockers the 1975 can feel a lot like gorging on the Internet. Formed in 2002, the band samples from pop’s broad spectrum, incorporating Afrobeat, shoegaze, ambient, and...
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Legendary Detroit folk rocker Sixto Rodriguez brings his political and...
When obscure downer-folk singer Sixto Rodriguez announced his 2009 show at Schubas, I was beyond thrilled—and nearly in shock. Outside record-collector circles, hardly anyone seemed to be aware of the...
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Twenty One Pilots get conceptual on Trench
Beyoncé has her Beyhive and Taylor Swift fans call themselves Swifties, but no current pop fandom rocks ski masks or face paint quite like the Skeleton Clique—the devotees of Twenty One Pilots, the...
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Wicca Phase Springs Eternal creates an eclectic cluster of mope
When it comes to depressing music, Adam McIlwee is a jack of all trades. From 2005 to 2013 he was a founding member of influential emo-rock band Tigers Jaw, before moving on to explore equally...
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Philadelphia alt-country band Friendship feel right at home on Chicago...
Nearly a decade ago, Chicago singer-songwriter Owen Ashworth launched Orindal Records, partly as an outlet for the intimate, cozy indie-pop recordings he makes under the name Advance Base. He’s since...
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Catherine Lamb and Rebecca Lane explore liminal musical experiences with...
A secondary rainbow is a faint visual echo that appears outside a rainbow when light bends twice while passing through raindrops. Composer, violist, and occasional vocalist Catherine Lamb uses careful...
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Chicagoland foursome Mt. Pocono know what makes punk a life force
Elgin punk band Mt. Pocono aren’t reinventing the wheel—they just want to make sure that when theirs rolls, it does it with a brilliant burst of new energy. The four-piece seem to subsist on a steady...
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Tetsuya Ishida’s first U.S. retrospective isn’t for the faint of heart
The dismal depiction of Japan’s “missing million” features more than 70 paintings and drawings. As I walk to Wrightwood 659 in the early afternoon, I hear the sound of recess coming from the school to...
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Q Brothers Christmas Carol makes even Navy Pier bearable this season
An 80-minute 'ad-rap-tation' tells Scrooge's story without missing beats. The "ad-rap-tation" of Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol, created by the Q Brothers Collective of GQ, JQ, Jax, and Pos (if...
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