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The hard-hitting Norwegian freebop quartet evokes the full range of jazz...
The fiery Norwegian quartet Cortex pull no punches with their new album, barreling through eight new tunes without a wasted gesture—although its title, Avant-Garde Party Music (Clean Feed), suggests...
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New York rapper Cardi B has found musical success through transparency
Bronx-bred hip-hop artist Belcalis Almanzar, best known as Cardi B, built a career off her big personality, first as a stripper of local lore, then as an Instagram celebrity with a giant following...
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Singer Sam Amidon deftly weds the universal truths of folk music with an...
On every recording it seems like singer Sam Amidon eagerly shares new insights, knowledge, and experiences he’s gained since his last work. Throughout his career he’s consistently stretched the...
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Armed with a new singer, tech-metal titans Gigan return with an evocative new...
Giant monster name, giant monster band. It’s been four years since Chicago transplants Gigan released their mind-melting Multi-Dimensional Fractal Sorcery and Super Science—a title that accurately...
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On its first album in six years Fleet Foxes reclaim the grandeur of their...
In the six years between this summer, when Fleet Foxes dropped its third studio album, Crack-Up (Nonesuch), and its 2011 predecessor, Helplessness Blues (Sub Pop), the band seems to have been blamed...
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Free-improv trio Ballister is a fire-breathing behemoth, but beneath the...
Few if any working improvised music ensembles hit the listener with as much blunt force and manic energy as Ballister, the trio of saxophonist Dave Rempis, cellist Fred Lonberg-Holm, and drummer Paal...
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New York reedist and sound artist Lea Bertucci explores the acoustic...
I first encountered Lea Bertucci’s music when she was playing bass clarinet on the 2014 album L’Onde Souterraine (Telegraph Harp), a series of visceral yet meditative duet improvisations with cellist...
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Carrie Mae Weems reshapes history in her image at the Block Museum
The artist’s Ritual and Revolution places her in politically charged moments in time. Over the course of her decades-long career, Carrie Mae Weems has repeatedly demonstrated how adept she is at...
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What would Arthur Miller say about immigration?
The Young Vic brings an unforgettable production of A View From the Bridge to the Goodman. A View From the Bridge premiered in its final, two-act form in 1956, the same year its author, Arthur Miller,...
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Heritage Restaurant & Caviar Bar is more than big-ticket fish eggs
A varied menu of imaginative, well-executed food—from Eastern European to Korean—should endear this spot to Humboldt Park. Heritage Restaurant & Caviar Bar opened in early August, the week of the...
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Michael Rakowitz forges bonds over Baghdad at the MCA
A major survey of the Iraqi-American, Chicago-based artist finally arrives. Throughout his career, conceptual artist and Northwestern professor Michael Rakowitz has used simple provocations to reveal...
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Malian quartet Songhoy Blues tightens the connections between Saharan guitar...
Over the last decade the crossover appeal of guitar music from Saharan Africa to Western rock fans has been caressed and milked. The best-known proponent of the music, the great Tuareg band Tinariwen,...
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D.C. rapper Goldlink fuses the sounds of his hometown for hip-hop fans around...
It seems like every year Wale, arguably the first D.C. rapper to maintain a long career as a national star, promises that he’s working on an album built around go-go. But though he’s flirted with the...
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Georgia indie rocker Torres sinks into romance and nostalgia on her best...
Mackenzie Scott is the kind of artist who can turn a song about peach cobbler into a sweeping tale of thwarted lust and bitter memory. The lyric “I know you never dreamed I’d become a damn Yankee / I...
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Detroit postpunk force Protomartyr go far beyond subtleties on their latest...
One of the most spectacular characteristics of Detroit’s Protomartyr is just how spectacularly understated they remain as a postpunk force, even with the recent release of their fourth full-length and...
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Alison Krauss convincingly tackles classic countrypolitan sounds on her new...
Earlier this year Alison Krauss released Windy City (Capitol), her first solo recording without her longtime combo Union Station since 1999. Her 2007 collaboration with Robert Plant, Raising Sand,...
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Dark electronic musician Perturbator imagines a posthuman world reigned by...
Paris based, second-generation electronic musician James Kent has a background in black metal (check out his other project, L’Enfant de la Forêt, for a more primeval dark-fantasy ambience), but his...
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Animal Collective cofounder Avey Tare’s strong new solo album recalls the...
There’s a sly bit of metaphor employed on “Melody Unfair,” a tune from Eucalyptus (Domino), the wonderful second album by Animal Collective charter member Dave Portner, aka Avey Tare. As he sings,...
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Jon Langford embraces the musical legacy of Muscle Shoals, Alabama, with his...
Welshman Jon Langford’s love and fascination for American musical culture has long pulsed at the center of his work, whether he was sending his pioneering punk band the Mekons toward honky-tonk or...
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Modern bluegrass mainstay Chris Hillman revisits his roots as a country-rock...
Chris Hillman has built a sturdy career as a bluegrass musician, bringing a melodic sweetness to a chill strain of virtuosic mountain music since forming the Desert Rose Band in 1985, and carrying on...
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