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The artists behind both High Plains and Anjou have been crucial in defining...
This impressive double bill features gorgeously patient ambient sounds created by a group of musicians long faithful to influential Chicago indie label Kranky Records, where minimalism, new age, and...
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Justin Townes Earle settles into sobriety, marriage, and roots-rock orthodoxy...
Justin Townes Earle wrote his new album, Kids in the Street (New West), in the wake of a sustained period of stability and happiness thanks to a new marriage and several years of sobriety. Luckily the...
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Chicago rapper-producer Valee has a strange, seductive way of showing his...
Chicago rapper-producer Valee Taylor, who records and performs under his first name, talks a big game. If you believe the claims in his breakthrough single, “Shell,” he’s the kind of guy who walks...
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On his charmingly low-key Drag City debut, veteran Chicago guitarist Bill...
For years Bill MacKay has soldiered on as one of the most skilled and tasteful guitarists in Chicago, a player who fluidly moves between jazz and rock while making several stops in between. He’s...
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Shambling San Francisco garage rockers experiment with different modes on...
Since forming in 2011, San Francisco quartet Cool Ghouls have made a virtue of no-frills consistency, doing little to disguise their devotion to 60s garage pop. Loose, chiming guitars ring out over...
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Bluesman Billy Flynn makes his Delmark debut with Lonesome Highway
Billy Flynn has quietly been playing an essential role in Chicago blues for some time. A Green Bay resident, he’s frequently made the five-hour drive from Wisconsin to Illinois to play behind the...
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With You Are Not One of Us, Buildings advance Minneapolis’s great legacy of...
There’s just something about a noise-rock record from Minneapolis, like a bowl of gumbo from Baton Rouge. Forged among the pillars of the almighty Amphetamine Reptile imprint—and no doubt guided by a...
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Spires That in the Sunset Rise and Michael Zerang blend primitive folk and...
Since forming 16 years ago, Spires That in the Sunset Rise have been blazing their own trippy path, with the group’s two core members, Kathleen Baird and Taralie Peterson, increasingly embracing a...
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Retirement be damned, minimalist composer Phill Niblock is going strong at...
The hoped-for paradox of minimalism is that reduced means will result in maximum effect. No artist has accomplished this more completely than composer and filmmaker Phill Niblock, whose music...
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Jambinai builds postrock’s future with instruments from Korea’s past
Last year Ilwoo Lee, guitarist and principal songwriter for Seoul postrock group Jambinai, told Noisey that “many Korean people don’t listen to traditional Korean music and they don’t respect Korean...
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Norah Jones rediscovers the piano and finds contentment on her latest album,...
In 2014 singer and pianist Norah Jones shared the Kennedy Center stage with legendary saxophonist Wayne Shorter and drummer Brian Blade—both of whom played on her first couple of albums—for an event...
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A fact-based drama at the Goodman explores the psychic and moral costs of...
In Objects in the Mirror, a refugee’s troubles aren’t over when he reaches safety. In 1980, a couple years before Shedrick Yarkpai was born, a master sergeant named Samuel Doe led a coup against...
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New York bassist Brandon Lopez brings a bruising physicality to his...
Young bassist Brandon Lopez has become a force on New York’s improvised-music scene these past few years, in large part due to his formidable power. The recent self-released solo album Smoked Sunshine...
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Miami rapper Smokepurpp drags hip-hop into the sunlight
Smokepurpp is part of a class of young Florida rappers who’ve dragged hip-hop into the blistering sun to bake without sunscreen. Born in Chicago and raised in the Miami area, Smokepurpp has absorbed...
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On Love & Hate singer Michael Kiwanuka evokes a 60s noir closer to Portishead...
On his stirring second album, Love & Hate (Interscope), British singer Michael Kiwanuka writes in broad strokes, allowing listeners to adapt themes to their own lives in ways that sting. Given a...
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Though she’s trying to crash the big time by merging blues and pop R&B, ZZ...
ZZ Ward has dedicated her career to merging blues with contemporary pop R&B, achieving fair aesthetic results and mixed commercial success. Her single “The Deep,” off her sophomore album The Storm...
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Fitness sweat out sing-along hooks while spewing punk defiance on their new...
Part of the undercovered and frankly underappreciated Ian’s Party scene of snot-nosed melodic-punk bands that can sweat out sing-along hooks just as well as they can shotgun tallboys of Old Style...
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TALsounds’ latest, Love Sick, combines drone and pop to create cascades of...
Over the last few years Chicagoan Natalie Chami’s output has been prolific, both as a member of improvisational noise trio Goodwill Smith and as her solo project TALsounds. It was just in October that...
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On their strong new album Song of the Rose, Arbouretum explore rebirth in...
Dave Heumann, front man for Baltimore’s long-running Arbouretum, isn’t shy about reaching toward the profound while addressing transformation on the recent Song of the Rose (Thrill Jockey). The...
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Introducing the return of the real Dr. Octagon
When CMH Records released The Return of Dr. Octagon in 2006, hip-hop DJ and producer Dan the Automator said, “That wasn’t a Dr. Octagon record. Dr. Octagon is me, Kool Keith, and Q-Bert.…
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