Clik here to view.
Defacing Michael Jackson uses a pop star and his fans as a metaphor for...
Five young people try their best to find a measure of grace in a society temperamentally unsuited to it. Flying Elephant Productions presents the Chicago premiere of Aurin Squire's award-winning 2014...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Aba, the new West Loop “Mediterranean” restaurant, serves food from the land...
Aba is a Mediterranean restaurant with "a California accent." Just so we're clear, despite its name, which means "father" in Hebrew, Aba is not an Israeli restaurant. Israel is too polarizing: too...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Two of Chicago’s best rock bands come together to celebrate a pair of classic...
Throughout its thirty-five years as a band, Eleventh Dream Day has regularly sprinkled its incendiary sets with carefully chosen covers of obscure and well-known rock songs. Since I started listening...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Local shapeshifting post-everything collective Anatomy of Habit debuts a new...
Chicago experimental rock collective Anatomy of Habit has been conjuring up crushing gloom and doom throughout their ten years of existence, and they’ve recently moved into their next phase. Fronted...
View ArticleClik here to view.
ELO’s pop perfection spaceship finally lands in Chicagoland after 30 years
I realize that to some, Electric Light Orchestra epitomize the overblown excess of the 70s; in their heyday they delved into disco, synthesizers, huge anthems, giant prop spaceships, and yes,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Jonah Parzen-Johnson takes lessons from Chicago’s rich musical heritage to...
In the 1960s, a new creative discipline emerged when English and European jazz fans realized that no matter how much they liked the distinctively American form of music, they lacked the cultural...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Spirit Adrift morphs from one-man-band to full metal force on Curse of...
Multi-instrumentalist Nate Garrett has been upfront in interviews about his struggles with alcoholism that underlay the painful, personal cry from the void that is the 2016 debut of Spirit Adrift,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Chicagoland native Josie Dunne makes music for Everywhere, U.S.A.
La Grange native Josie Dunne muscled her way onto the stages of local bars and venues at age 13. Four years later she signed a deal with Atlantic, and spent her final high school years traveling back...
View ArticleClik here to view.
John Zorn explores heavy, precise rock music in Simulacrum, and will play...
Back in the late 80s, John Zorn famously crammed many of his disparate musical interests into the work of a single ensemble. His quintet Naked City embodied his rapid-cut aesthetic; every couple of...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Dance alchemist Luke Vibert makes magic with the same tricks he’s used for...
If you’re looking for a musical figure to represent the vast and boundless aesthetics of electronic music, you can’t go wrong with Luke Vibert, a producer who’s released music under more stage names...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Rapper Rico Nasty sets a straight line for stardom on Nasty
Rapper Maria Kelly, better known as Rico Nasty, is transparent to a fault. When XXL recently asked her why she signed to Atlantic, she said, “Because I have a 2-year-old.…
View ArticleClik here to view.
Fatimah Asghar’s first collection of poetry, If They Come for Us, is a...
The Brown Girls cocreator examines the effects of her own family’s trauma. The Partition of India and Pakistan in 1947 is rarely spoken about in American history classes, much less in poetry books....
View ArticleClik here to view.
In The Harvest, Samuel D. Hunter suggests that even fundamentalists are human
The play defeats expectations and shakes its audience up. If, as the Dalai Lama says, "compassion is the radicalism of our time," then Samuel D. Hunter's 2016 one-act, The Harvest, is the most...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Chicago rockers Sonny Falls find hope amid tales of despair
On the 2016 self-released EP There’s No Magic Left in This World, local singer-guitarist Ryan Ensley, (formerly of antifolk outfit Shiloh) showed his knack for melding spunky, unvarnished acoustic...
View ArticleClik here to view.
A trio of country outsiders keep tabs on each other on the LSD Tour
Under the moniker “the LSD Tour” (with the cheeky tagline: “It’s worth the trip”), raspy-voiced Americana singer Lucinda Williams, hardcore troubadour Steve Earle (with his band the Dukes), and...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Chicago prog-rock misfits McLuhan perform a rare reunion show
In the 60s and 70s, Chicago producer, A&R man, songwriter, and record honcho Carl Davis helped shape the sound of Chicago soul, working directly with Jackie Wilson, Tyrone Davis, the Chi-Lites,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Mysterious Polish band Batushka evoke religious concepts in their black metal
The sound of sensational Polish band Batushka melds black metal with the grand, eerie chants of the Eastern Orthodox litany. They more or less play it straight, though they’re not a religious band.…
View ArticleClik here to view.
The man behind Godspeed You! Black Emperor’s curtain steps out alone
Efrim Manuel Menuck is a founding member of the anti-capitalist symphonic rock ensemble Godspeed You! Black Emperor and the equally outraged Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra.…
View ArticleClik here to view.
Chicago jazz mainstay bassist Joshua Abrams switches gears with a rigorously...
Bassist Joshua Abrams’s importance to Chicago’s jazz and improvised music scene over the last few decades is indisputable. He’s laid down the harmonic anchor in loads of disparate ensembles, providing...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Lyrical Lemonade’s hip-hop empire expands with its debut outdoor music...
Illinois native Cole Bennett launched the hip-hop blog Lyrical Lemonade in fall 2013, and it’s since become a blossoming entertainment empire that hosts shows (including July’s Hurt Everybody reunion)...
View Article