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Jayda G is dedicated to creating a dance party for the freaks
Jayda G wears several hats in her music and professional career, balancing her pursuit of an environmental toxicology master’s degree with her growing DJ career. She also manages the differences...
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Introspective singer-songwriter Julie Byrne uses her new album to explore...
Singer Julie Byrne uses her lovely recent album Not Even Happiness (Ba Da Bing) as a kind of introspective travelogue, a search across this big country of ours for love, meaning, and purpose. Her...
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Houston’s Football, Etc. nudge emo’s familiar tropes in new directions
At times I wonder if musicians who have gone fishing for gold in 90s-era emo are aware of the cliche frequently misattributed to Albert Einstein: the definition of insanity is repeating something over...
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Chicago electronic-pop project Born Days explores the brighter side of cold...
Melissa Harris, who records and performs under the name Born Days, describes her project in dark tones. Though her new self-released debut EP Be True is built on barren synth landscapes that feel...
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Planning for Burial make bleak drones for aging towns
Thom Wasluck was born in and is currently a citizen of Wilkes-Barre in northeastern Pennsylvania. That’s where I grew up as well.…
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The Melvins are still throwing us all for a loop, some 35 years since their...
After 35 years of profound confounding, it’s a wonder the Melvins have any “firsts” and “never done befores” left. But they claim that the brand-new A Walk With Love & Death (Ipecac) is their only...
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Postpunk chanteuse Lydia Lunch sounds more vital than ever fronting the...
While the very name of this project helmed by veteran singer and antisocial icon Lydia Lunch addresses a rearview-looking mind-set, its unexpectedly long lifespan speaks to the way the combo has...
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Veteran Nashville outsider Steve Earle discourages following his path on So...
Steve Earle opens his latest album, So You Wannabe an Outlaw (Warner Brothers), with a cautionary tale that asks listeners considering his outsider path to think twice. If anyone can offer such...
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At 87, pianist Barry Harris remains an invaluable living link to the bop era
Our living links to the golden age of hard bop have seriously dwindled over the last couple of decades, making the continued vitality and drive of Detroit-bred pianist Barry Harris, 87, all the more...
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Blind Malian couple Amadou & Mariam push their spin on traditional Mande...
Few artists have done more to popularize the sound of West Africa than Amadou & Mariam. The blind Malian couple have built a career tweaking and modernizing traditional Mande forms, first by...
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Medieval nuns own their pleasure in The Little Hours
In the a farcical comedy based on Boccaccio’s Decameron, Aubrey Plaza, Alison Brie, and Kate Micucci star as sisters with a new mister. At this point, satirizing the sexual hypocrisy of the Catholic...
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Early 90s noise-rock band Tar kicks the dust off their aluminum guitars
With Shellac, the Jesus Lizard, and Touch & Go—as well as Amphetamine Reptile Records just a clip away in Minneapolis—the Chicago posthardcore and noise-rock community of the early 90s was lush....
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A new exhibit is Amy Krouse Rosenthal’s moving, elaborate farewell
The late Chicago author and filmmaker’s life is on display in “A Beauty Salon.” Amy Krouse Rosenthal: A Beauty Salon" is an interactive exhibit that celebrates the life, work, and spirit of the...
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Free will is a bitch in Claude Sautet’s Les Choses de la Vie
Michel Piccoli stars as an emotionally conflicted man rescued from choosing by an awful car crash. Earlier this month Gene Siskel Film Center presented My Journey Through French Cinema, a 200-minute...
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Daisies pushes pasta in a midwestern direction
Chef Joe Frillman’s veg-heavy Logan Square pastatorium has range that extends far from Italy. For a short time at least, no one is going to talk about Daisies without talking about Analogue. Analogue,...
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The Chicago Architecture Foundation creates a graphic novel for the city’s...
No Small Plans looks to the past to examine the present and imagine a future metropolis. While the machinations of the Illinois government can make even the most hardened political observers tear their...
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On his first solo record, Liam Gallagher proves he’s still got it (or at...
Nobody embodied 90s cool quite like Oasis front man Liam Gallagher. Even his brother turned nemesis, former bandmate Noel, spent a good chunk of last year’s documentary Oasis: Supersonic musing about...
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Almost 30 years later, progressive-metal legends Neurosis redeliver The Word...
More than 30 years in, progressive-metal legends Neurosis know exactly how to deliver—their 11th studio album, last fall’s Fires Within Fires (Neurot), is a ruthlessly efficient travelogue of varied...
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Meditative musical explorer Mark McGuire returns to acoustic guitar on the...
Mark McGuire has built a modest career out of revisiting and reshaping conventions of instrumental music from the 70s and 80s, much of which could be called new age—though his early work in Cleveland...
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In rap right now, there’s Kendrick Lamar and there’s everyone else
The reason you’ll want to see Kendrick Lamar in concert is that he’s indisputably the best rapper alive right now. Lamar had the daunting task of releasing a follow-up to 2015’s To Pimp a Butterfly,...
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