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Experimental pop auteur Jitwam just wants you to dance
Born in India, raised in New Zealand and Australia, and based I’m not sure where, pop provocateur Jitwam might seem fickle—his outre style leapfrogs from sun-bleached, broken psychedelia (“Drowning in...
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The Chicago Psych Fest returns to the Hideout with a reunion by one of...
For 12 years, the Chicago Psych Fest has provided a great way to check out some of the city’s best psychedelic and experimental rock bands. The 2022 edition features a one-off reunion of the Great...
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Eiko Otake invites herself (and others) to the dance
In performance, Eiko Otake frequently manifests as a ghost: wailing and yelping, biting at the leaves of plants and knocking fences to the ground, staggering and distressed by the contours of what...
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Antifolk band Boo Baby drop their long-in-the-works second album
Chicago antifolk unit Boo Baby have been hanging out on the edge of this wolf’s awareness for years, having opened for the likes of local indie darlings Whitney, K Records singer-songwriter Karl Blau,...
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All-star indie quintet the Royal Arctic Institute make twangy space jazz on...
The Royal Arctic Institute is a group of New York- and New Jersey-based musicians who made indelible marks on the east coast’s underground rock heyday of the 80s and 90s as members of Das Damen, Two...
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Offense intended
A couple of couches and a video player have been set up in the little balcony lobby outside the fourth floor exhibition hall at the Chicago Cultural Center. If you plop down there for a few minutes...
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Bandcamp Fridays reach their third calendar year
In case your attention’s been elsewhere, Spotify has been at the center of another uproar lately: last week Neil Young pulled his music from the streaming service to protest the COVID misinformation...
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The movement at home
Donja R. Love’s Fireflies (the second in his trilogy, The Love* Plays, each focusing on a different era of Black American history) is at once brutal and hopeful, the hate and violence-soaked former...
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Gem of the Ocean opens the world of August Wilson
August Wilson’s Century Cycle (also known as the Pittsburgh Cycle, though Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom is set in Chicago) remains one of the monumental achievements in American drama. Chuck Smith’s...
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Heights of illusion
The sight is already a bit of a tell: steps away from boutiques, antiques, bars, and restaurants, a cramped and dingy laundromat with no hot waft of Breeze or Bounty stands unattended, garments...
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An interview with Saba: ‘For me, home is the people’
In late 2014, I was incredibly homesick: I’d just left Chicago for college out of state, and I was struggling to adjust to a new campus and an immediate world that looked vastly different from what I...
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Secret, but saggy
Note to would-be play adapters: Agatha Christie’s second published detective novel, The Secret Adversary (1922), is in public domain. That means you can pretty much do whatever you want with this...
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Where to find this week’s issue in print
Due to the weather, delivery of this issue may be delayed. Delivery will begin this morning, Wednesday, and will continue through Friday, so it may be a day late to some locations. The latest issue of...
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Sending love letters from Saba’s future
Cover featuring Saba, Chicago Reader print issue of February 3, 2022. On the cover: Photo by Qurissy Lopez “Saba’s releases are such special moments for Chicago and the west side,” Reader contributor...
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Classifieds
JOBS Administrative Assistant NeededPrison-based writer seeks best secretary in Chicago. Top office skills needed including editing, computer and bookkeeping required. Media and publishing background...
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It’s revenge of Funeral Potatoes at Monday Night Foodball
Now that the polls for Best of Chicago have closed I can say this without fear of tipping the scales of this venerable experiment in democracy: Funeral Potatoes are the great heroes of Monday Night...
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Sundance at home, again
All That Breathes A soaring visual masterpiece, All That Breathes follows brothers Saud and Nadeem who rescue birds (kites) falling out of the smoggy New Delhi skies. With outstanding cinematography...
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Black joy ‘Is where it’s at!’
When artist Adeshola Makinde thinks about the work in his current exhibition, it’s a giant, larger-than-life canvas image of the legendary Louis Armstrong—Makinde’s largest-scale piece he’s done to...
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Growing for Good with Green Thumb: PLSE
Featuring Andrea Lindsay, lead investigator and mitigation specialist at PLSE Q: What is the difference between someone getting their record expunged and being pardoned? In Illinois I know of...
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