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Mirabella is the Gene & Georgetti of the neighborhoods
A G&G veteran’s old-school Italian steak house in Irving Park scratches the itch with classics cooked with precision. There is no more mercurial restaurant than Gene & Georgetti, the storied...
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Gwendolyn Brooks gets the centennial birthday party she deserves
Our Miss Brooks 100 is a yearlong celebration of the great poet of Bronzeville. Gwendolyn Brooks, the great poet of Bronzeville, would have turned 100 years old on June 7. Although she won many honors...
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Lookinglass's Beyond Caring shows us how the sausage gets made
Temp workers toil in this immersive play set in a factory. Gnarled hands swipe chemicals across the floor. Clots of blood and bone, macramed between the blades and coils of antique slaughterhouse...
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Trump can’t stop the National Museum of Mexican Art
With “Memoria Presente: An Artistic Journey,” the institution proudly and vibrantly celebrates its 30th anniversary. Local artist Alberto Aguilar often uses cognates—or as he describes them, "words...
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Lois Weber laid down a marker for women in film
But her progressive ideas left something to be desired. I like to direct," filmmaker Lois Weber told Photoplay in 1915, "because I believe a woman, more or less intuitively, brings out many of the...
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Cabaret Crusades re-creates the 11th-century war against Islam—with puppets!
Wael Shawky directed this experimental trilogy about the European campaign to save Christianity. An ambitious and frequently overwhelming history lesson, Wael Shawky's three-part experimental work...
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Chicago label Star Creature Universal Vibrations launches boogie into the future
Chicago DJ Tim Zawada, cofounder of nightlife collective Boogie Munsters, goes to great lengths in his search for amazing tracks: as he told the site SF Station in 2012, he’s discovered new wave...
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The New Pornographers commit to a fizzy pop sound, paired with their bleakest...
In press materials for his band’s new album, Whiteout Conditions (Collected Works), primary New Pornographers songwriter A.C. Newman refers to the cohesive sound of the record—for the first time since...
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Mark Eitzel and Howe Gelb look to the future as they approach three decades...
This bill brings together two veteran eccentrics who’ve been indie-rock staples since the late 80s: Mark Eitzel, who made his name with American Music Club, and Howe Gelb, who usually records with a...
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Stephin Merritt brings his customary playful detachment to his own musical...
For just a second, set aside the task of deciding whether Stephin Merritt is being sincere or ironic. His preoccupation on most Magnetic Fields songs is anxiety: negotiating the desire to live in...
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Indiana punks the Cowboys boil rock ’n’ roll down to its essence
Rock ’n’ roll is often most effective when stripped down to its essentials, and that’s what makes the Cowboys so brilliant. On last year’s self-titled debut LP, this four-piece from Bloomington,...
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On Ulterior Motives, local noise-rock band Lowhangers’ primary objective is...
No fucking around, that’s the ticket. So even while the debut album from fledgling noise-rock powerhouse Lowhangers, September’s eight-track Ulterior Motives (To Live a Lie), is choked by a thick smog...
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Trumpet virtuoso Peter Evans debuts a new band and a new book of music
Trumpeter Peter Evans packs a ton of music into just about everything he does, and the quintet that recorded last year’s mind-boggling Genesis (More Is More) lets him sound the full diapason of his...
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Singer-songwriter Becca Stevens refines her sophisticated hybrid on her...
New York singer-songwriter Becca Stevens has built her career combining styles—she expertly teases out complementary elements from folk music, jazz, R&B, and pop to support her sophisticated...
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Pianist and composer David Moore brings human warmth to minimalism in Bing &...
Pianist and composer David Moore is hardly alone in his love of American minimalism (particularly the hypnotically repetitive constructions of Steve Reich), but with his project Bing & Ruth he...
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Diamanda Galás’s once-in-a-generation voice keeps growing darker and wilder
Virtually everything that’s ever been written about postapocalyptic Greek-American mourning diva Diamanda Galás focuses first and foremost on her voice—and rightly so, given that it’s a...
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Rapper and prison abolitionist Ric Wilson streamlines his dance sound on the...
Chicago rapper and prison abolitionist Ric Wilson has ambition to spare. On his self-released 2016 EP, Soul Bounce, he traverses instrumentals inspired by bachata, British house, or arena EDM, and his...
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German reedist Silke Eberhard summons two disparate groups of locals for a...
German reedist Silke Eberhard is hardly cagey about her influences. In recent years, in fact, she’s recorded several personal interpretations of their work—she took a stroll through the Ornette...
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Larry’s is a cocktail oasis in Uptown
The recently renovated Lawrence House has given the neighborhood a new watering hole. Five years ago, you wouldn't have seen a cocktail bar in Uptown's Lawrence House.…
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Tracy Letts and Louis C.K.: Peas in a pod?
The bad-boy playwright is true to himself in Steppenwolf’s Linda Vista. My theory? The people who've known Tracy Letts longest know him the least.…
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