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Hop Along adds more color to their heart-wrenching indie rock on Bark Your...
Hop Along have been a foundational force in Philadelphia’s overlapping indie emo and punk scenes, but it’s a little difficult to measure their growth from album to album upon first blush. That’s...
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At 25, Lillie Mae is already a seasoned country lifer
Lillie Mae Rische has spent the bulk of her 25 years playing music. She began singing with her father and siblings in the Forrest Carter Family Band at age three, and added fiddle four years later.…
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Chicago prog-rock icons Cheer-Accident achieves a new creative apex nearly...
Cheer-Accident has been Chicago’s most ambitious and versatile prog-rock band for decades, but within the sprawl of its intricate arrangements and bizarre humor the beauty and tunefulness of much of...
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Monsieur d’Éon Is a Woman tells the story of a remarkable gender-bending life
There's spycraft, treason, exile, and insolence—and it's raucous, cheerful fun. Charles-Geneviève-Louis-Auguste-André-Timothée d'Éon de Beaumont lived a revolutionary life in revolutionary times. He...
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Czech master animator created magical worlds amid stifling communist censorship
Gene Siskel Film Center presents a dazzling monthlong retrospective on Jiří Trnka. In 1967, a TV crew from the state-run network of communist Czechoslovakia dropped in on veteran illustrator and...
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Chicago’s Wax Trax! Records portrayed as a romance etched in vinyl in new...
Industrial Accident: The Story of Wax Trax! Records chronicles the love relationship that sustained Chicago's legendary record store and label. Some of my most treasured personal objects are punk and...
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Chicago Underground Film Festival: Gold and copper miners tough it out in...
Ben Russell's epic portrait of the global labor force screens in this year's Chicago Underground Film Festival. One of the highlights of the 25th Chicago Underground Film Festival, which runs this...
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Ashley Monroe rejects typical mainstream country to explore life in all of...
Singer and songwriter Ashley Monroe has built a career with one foot deep inside Nashville orthodoxy as a member of Pistol Annies (with Miranda Lambert and Angaleena Presley) and a Warner Bros. solo...
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Brazilian grindcore duo Test set to ravage Chicago following Maryland Deathfest
Bless Maryland Deathfest for providing planet earth with one of its preeminent annual showcases for dark and abrasive music. By reputation alone, its organizers are able to attract obscure but revered...
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On Hell-On the feminist voice of Neko Case shines through loud and clear
Neko Case has rarely voiced her ideas directly in gorgeously, meticulously plotted music, preferring allusion, metaphor, and the pure sound of language, but there’s no missing a sense of mission and...
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Saxophone and trumpet improviser Joe McPhee steps into a sonic abyss with...
John Snyder lays downs gnarly, surging, needling analog synthesizer tones alongside multihorn player Joe McPhee on The Willisau Concert, a 1975 concert recording originally released by Hat Hut and...
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Boston rapper-producer Pink Navel aims for cuteness on Born on the Stairs
“I think I’m the cutest rapper,” Dev Bee told UMass Amherst radio show Hip-Hop Made Me Do It last year. Bee, a Boston musician who uses “them” and “they” pronouns, came up playing in punk and emo...
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As King Coya, Argentine producer Gaby Kerpel pushes a thrilling mix of...
Gaby Kerpel has spent nearly two decades pushing traditional music forms from South American toward electronic music, recontextualizing styles like Colombian cumbia and Andean huayno with inventive...
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Jazz quartet Broken Shadows take on the music of saxophonists Ornette...
Numerous intersecting lines connect the members of Broken Shadows, a new quartet devoted to the music of three saxophonists who emerged from Fort Worth, Texas: Ornette Coleman, Julius Hemphill, and...
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Chicago trio Retirement Party blend emo and pop-punk to score their early...
If there was a soundtrack to fit the lives of Chicago’s latest generation of pop-punk fans, it would probably feature the Retirement Party. Fronted by Michigan native and Logan resident Avery...
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Indigenous avoids cliche with fresh-sounding blues-inflused rock
Indigenous was formed by guitarist Mato Nanji, along with his brother, sister, and cousin, in the 90s. As Native Americans growing up on the Yankton Sioux Reservation in South Dakota, they originally...
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Pianist Matt Piet reinforces his vitality and versatility on City in a Garden
Pianist Matt Piet is a Palos Park native who jumped into the local improvised music scene in 2014 when he returned home after finishing his studies at Boston’s Berklee School of Music. Since then,...
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Chicago rapper Roy Kinsey proves his storytelling is as strong as his voice...
Chicago rapper Roy Kinsey has long known how to make it feel like his voice is the most important in the room. When he appeared on “Loverboy,” a track on Big Dipper’s 2013 Thick Life mixtape that’s...
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Frunchroom is the Jewish-Italian deli you didn’t know you needed in your life
In tight quarters in Portage Park, chef Matt Saccaro and crew deliver quantities of quality. A few weeks ago I called upon a well-known and outspoken chef for some expertise I needed for a story. But...
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A pregnant teen tries to decide what to do with This Boat Called My Body
For Youth Inquiry's allegory is didactic, but also engaging and entertaining. The central image of this allegorical performance, written collectively by Quenna Lené Barrett, Christabel Donkor,...
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