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‘Restrain’ appears static, but the works (and the viewers) dance
Brendan Fernandes’s bronze sculptures congeal pain and pleasure. Artist Brendan Fernandes has been having conversations about ballet and mastery within his work for years. The call and response...
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Girls in a dance troupe glimpse the pain of the adult world in Dance Nation
Clare Barron's drama delivers flagrantly graceless dancing, but heartstopping truths. The curtain never rises on Clare Barron's ferocious, Pulitzer-finalist play Dance Nation. The lights come on and...
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Veteran Chicago bassist Junius Paul celebrates the release of his first album
The band is already midflight as the sound fades up at the beginning of “You Are Free to Choose,” the opening track of the Junius Paul double LP Ism (International Anthem). Perhaps unintentionally,...
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After releasing one of 2019’s best albums, American Football celebrate the...
In fall 2018, user-generated Internet in-joke database Know Your Meme added a page about second-wave emo legends American Football. Funny riffs on the band’s 1999 self-titled debut album and its...
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Detroit’s Slum Village releases two orchestral tributes to its early hip-hop...
Slum Village has been through numerous lineups over its 23 years, but unlike other legacy groups that keep rehashing the hits long after key members have left, the influential hip-hop group honors its...
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Ken Vandermark, Kent Kessler, and Hamid Drake are back to help improvised...
In January the DKV Trio released The Fire Each Time (Not Two), a six-CD box set documenting a string of gigs that percussionist Hamid Drake, bassist Kent Kessler, and reedist Ken Vandermark played...
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They came, they saw, they smoked: Sleep celebrate their decade-long reunion...
Most band reunions don’t live up to the hype, but most bands aren’t Sleep. In the early 90s, the Northern California trio—bassist and vocalist Al Cisneros, guitarist Matt Pike, and drummer Chris...
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Down a cofounder, fearless fusion quartet BadBadNotGood close 2019 in Chicago...
Over the past decade, Toronto instrumental quartet BadBadNotGood have evolved into convincing musical chameleons. Shifting through postbop, funk, rock, jazz fusion, and soulful hip-hop, the four-piece...
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Local indie rockers Doleful Lions have long been overlooked, but they’ve...
Chicagoan Jonathan Scott founded his indie-rock band Doleful Lions in 1996, and though they’ve been active ever since (albeit with a revolving-door lineup), they’ve mostly gone overlooked. That could...
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Avery Sunshine brings in the new year with her bright neosoul
Some neosoul artists focus on torch songs and heartbreak, but as her name suggests, pianist and singer Avery Sunshine (aka Denise Nicole White) sticks to the brighter side of the genre. Working with...
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Kinobe juxtaposes East and West Africa in delicate, polished grooves
For the better part of two decades, virtuosic multi-instrumentalist Herbert Kinobe has composed exquisite Pan-African music from a Ugandan perspective. Born in 1983 in a small village outside Kampala...
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Chicago’s Blake Saint David knows how to navigate our genreless future
Brockhampton, Billie Eilish, Khalid, and scores of other musicians who’ve emerged in the past few years have taken a wrecking ball to genre divides and gotten hugely popular in the process. The...
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Ian’s Party starts the year off right with three days of local bands
Since debuting in 2008, Ian’s Party has evolved from its humble suburban punk origins into an annual Wicker Park-based mini fest showcasing underground Chicago artists (though there are always a few...
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Chicago soul dynamo Renaldo Domino breaks out his sugary sweet pipes on...
In a just and perfect world, Renaldo Domino would be as widely revered as legendary Chicago soul greats Curtis Mayfield, Jerry Butler, and Gene Chandler. In my opinion, the only reason the south-side...
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Chicago’s Chandeliers have spent more than 15 years exploring dance music’s...
Electro rockers Chandeliers have been keen on experimentation ever since they emerged from South Loop arts hub Shape Shoppe in 2004. Their debut album, 2008’s The Thrush, uses sharply defined...
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Divino Niño concoct melty musical caramelos
When Divino Niño emerged in 2013, the band united listeners across Chicago’s DIY and Latinx music circles with their trippy crooning and quirky retro flair. Guitarist and vocalist Camilo Medina has...
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Chicago’s Bad Ambassadors use hip-hop as the glue for their genre-jumping debut
You might mistake Chicago duo Bad Ambassadors for a new group, since they’re just now dropping their debut—a self-titled EP of easygoing hip-hop filtered through sophisticated boogie, energetic yacht...
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David Bowie tribute project Sons of the Silent Age play two of the artist’s...
This dedicated, lushly meticulous David Bowie tribute band debuted at Metro in 2013 as a benefit for a cancer charity. They’ve carried that tradition forward (albeit with different charities) into...
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The transnational Rempis/Lopez/Packard trio converges in Chicago
The seven tracks on the Rempis/Lopez/Packard trio’s superb debut CD, The Early Bird Gets (Aerophonic), are named after prehistoric avian animals. Anytime a jazz band invokes birds, the ur-Bird—Charlie...
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Country-soul singer Yola makes Stax and Nashville her own
Like many a British singer before her, Yola (born Yolanda Quartey) is obsessed with American roots music. She’s a worthy heir to predecessors such as Dusty Springfield and Rod Stewart, mixing country...
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