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Golem Girl unpacks queerness, intimacy, and disability
In 1958, the mortality rate of children born with spina bifida was 90 percent. Riva Lehrer tells her story of beating those odds. My nightstand is a graveyard of books left open and abandoned. It...
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You don’t mess with Teta at Evette’s
Grandma would approve of this Lincoln Park Lebanese-Mexican mashup. Rafael Esparza was a “weird kid” who hated spaghetti. Specifically he did not like his grandmother’s cheesy, chile-spiked pasta...
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The South Never Plays Itself reckons with the south onscreen
Ben Beard’s new book attempts to answer the question of which versions of the south are represented on screen and why. No matter where you’re from, you have a perception of the American south. You may...
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Chicago grind-pop trio the Cell Phones deliver a much-needed jolt of life
Chicago has no shortage of inventive underground bands that borrow from punk, indie rock, metal, and any other pulse-quickening style to create a deranged, idiosyncratic sound. But no one in town does...
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Back in the burbs
Author Jason Diamond reflects on his Chicagoland suburban-spiration. When writer Jason Diamond grew up in Chicago's north suburbs, he couldn't wait to escape. But after a couple decades in Chicago and...
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Chicago duo Cleared atomize their stark rock sound on The Key
Recording studios have reputations, and Chicago’s Electrical Audio is well-known as the place to go if you want to capture how your band really sounds. But when Michael Vallera and Steven Hess of...
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Emma Ruth Rundle and Thou join forces on the style-crossing May Our Chambers...
Sacred Bones has been the label home for some of the most hallowed collaborations in heavy music, such as the Body and Uniform’s enduring alliance and the soul-stirring Marissa Nadler and Stephen...
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Finnish metal explorers Dark Buddha Rising conjure serenity within the storm...
Of all the albums I’ve covered since the Reader adapted to the pandemic by trading concert previews for record reviews, the new release from Finnish metal explorers Dark Buddha Rising is probably the...
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Chicago pop wiz Luke Titus steps out from behind his drum kit
Luke Sangerman, who performs and records as Luke Titus, is 24 years old but has the skill set and intuition of a seasoned veteran. He’s had a long music career for someone his age: He joined the Blue...
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COVID can’t stop the film freaks at CUFF
The world’s longest-running underground film festival plays on. Nowadays, what, exactly, is underground? “I feel like it’s harder than ever to define,” says Chicago Underground Film Festival (CUFF)...
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The Spin and What the Constitution Means to Me provide post-election catharsis
The good, the bad, and the ugly of our politics are on display in two streaming shows. The long national nightmare of the past four years may not be over, but as the happy pandemonium that erupted...
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Chicago extreme music pioneers Macabre release their first album in nearly a...
Carnival of Killers, the first album by south-side heavy-music pioneers Macabre in nearly a decade, is pretty much exactly what I hoped it would be. The trio, who haven’t had a lineup change since...
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Chicago drill star in the making King Von dropped his third album a week...
In the early hours of Friday, November 6, 26-year-old Chicago rapper Dayvon Bennett, better known as King Von, was shot and killed outside an Atlanta nightclub. Von emerged a couple years ago as part...
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Your Arms Are My Cocoon pulls off a strange combination of bedroom pop and...
Before Tyler Odom moved to Chicago this year, he had the wild idea to take bedroom pop’s fragile instrumentation and whispered vocals and mash them together with screamo’s bleating hollers and...
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Yves Jarvis creates gently disintegrating folk music
Songs don’t so much rise out of Yves Jarvis’s Sundry Rock Song Stock (Anti-) as they swim around, fray, and dissolve. In that sense, the most characteristic track on the Canadian producer and...
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Chicago-born feminist punk duo the Ovens overcome separation and isolation...
Chicago feminist punk two-piece the Ovens debuted a decade ago with a charming, rowdy self-titled album that put heteronormativity in its crosshairs. In 2012 they released a second full-length...
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Veteran pedal steel guitarist Susan Alcorn releases her first album as a...
No one else plays the pedal steel guitar like Susan Alcorn. She combines a command of the instrument’s orchestral range with an improvisational fluency that lets her take the instrument far beyond its...
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Minsk postpunks Molchat Doma transform gloom into resilience on Monument
Like many Americans, I was awestruck by images of the historic Belarusian protests against President Alexander Lukashenko (“Europe’s last dictator”) that exploded after the country’s August elections....
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Jordan Reyes blends ritual, electronics, and western vibes on Sand Like...
From the first wordless vocal incantation on “The Pre-Dawn Light,” which opens Jordan Reyes’s new Sand Like Stardust, it’s clear you’re about to embark on an auditory vision quest; as the Chicago...
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Em Kettner creates elaborate casings for her sacred sculptures
These small performative objects exemplify disability and protection. Garfield Park-based gallery Goldfinch opened “Play the Fool,” a solo show with works by Em Kettner in late October. I traveled to...
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