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Smoke is in the air at the Slab BBQ and the Full Slab
Two new barbecue joints shore up south-side barbecue supremacy. The last five years have been terrible for Chicago barbecue. For reasons I still don't fathom, a relentless plague of half-assed new...
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New Zealand psych-pop icons the Chills hit Chicago on a rare U.S. tour
To my mind, the last forward-thinking movements in psychedelic-pop music occurred in the 80s through the early 90s. In the UK, bands in the wall-of-sound, shoegaze/dream pop scene layered loads of...
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Miya Folick is a pop star in the making on Premonitions
LA singer-songwriter Miya Folick sings with such earnestness and power that if for some reason she instructed listeners to commit atrocities in her lyrics, I'd be tempted to oblige. The sound of her...
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North Carolina duo It Looks Sad explores indie-rock's gray areas on Sky Lake
Shortly after Carolinas indie label Tiny Engines launched in 2008, it became a crucial outlet for the burgeoning fourth-wave emo scene, releasing material by bands such as Tigers Jaw, Restorations,...
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An experimental meeting of the minds with Kevin Drumm and Rage Thormbones
Since the 90s, Chicago-based musician Kevin Drumm has released countless experimental soundscapes that include oddball prepared guitar, minimal ambience, and earth-shaking drones; the first time I saw...
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Filmmaker Sam Green joins forces with Yo La Tengo to explore the legacy of R....
Engineer and philosopher R. Buckminster Fuller is remembered for his prescient understanding that mankind could run through the world’s resources, and for the many unconventional notions he proposed...
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Indie-folk outfit Beirut haven't lost their touch on Gallipoli
Zach Condon debuted his indie-folk project Beirut in 2005, and though he expanded it from a solo project to a full-fledged band in 2006, he’s continued to work with the same building blocks that made...
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Mnek finds the queer heart of R&B on Language
One of an emerging generation of queer R&B artists, Mnek (pronounced em-en-EE-kay) takes an approach to his music that’s closer to mainstream radio pop than that of idiosyncratic performers such...
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Dessa mixes hip-hop balladry and sharp-tongued bangers on Chime
Singer, rapper, poet, author, and songwriter Margret Wander—better known by her stage name, Dessa—has been one of the most prolific and multifaceted members of Minneapolis hip-hop collective Doomtree...
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Nevermind the bullshit analysis, Cherry Glazerr rocks on Stuffed & Ready
Cherry Glazerr are a rock band. Now, you can go and split that hair a thousand different ways—comparing them to a predictable string of female-fronted groups that were popular in the 90s or...
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Goth luminary Peter Murphy reunites with Bauhaus cohort David J to celebrate...
Back in the day, in his capacity as a music writer for NME, Gang of Four guitarist Andy Gill described Bauhaus’s 1980 debut full-length In the Flat Field as “hip Black Sabbath.” That’s pretty...
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Power-electronics duo Sibling explore the duality of alienation and belonging...
New York power-electronics duo Sibling was started by Jacob Winans and Lux Philips shortly after they met at a May 2017 show at Brooklyn DIY arts space/music Heck, where Philips was tattooing...
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Bob Mould hammers out more reasons to love him on Sunshine Rock
There are a couple of things you need to remember when listening to a new Bob Mould record. First off, Mould will never be able to meet the fervor and frenzy of his Husker Du days or the heartfelt...
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Boston Fish Market is a midwestern leviathan
From a small wholesale market to a sprawling suburban seafood emporium Five years ago, if you were shopping for, say, a pound of shrimp or some smoked chubs at Boston Fish Market in Des Plaines, you...
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Less club-ready than Body Talk, Honey shows why Robyn remains a global...
There’s never much debate about whether or not a new Robyn album is a party—it’s rather about what kind of party it is. With her 2010 trio of Body Talk releases, the Swedish dance-pop phenomenon...
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After 46 years of blood spitting and pyrotechnics, Kiss call it a day (so...
The makeup, the pyrotechnics, the guitars that shoot fireworks, the blood -spitting, the levitating band members, the fire breathing, the glitz, the glamour, the rock ’n’ rolling every night and the...
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Punk veterans Planes Mistaken for Stars keep pushing forward on Prey
Listening to the 1999 self-titled debut EP by Planes Mistaken for Stars feels like taking an bullet train back to the year it was released. The record’s twinkly guitars, vocals stylings that mix...
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With his Ethnic Heritage Ensemble, Kahil El’Zabar ’s explores the legacy of...
Amid Chicago’s vast pool of talent is a handful of jazz-related percussionists who are subject to some combination of local renown and international attention. In addition to Hamid Drake and Avreeayl...
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Technical death-metal band Rivers of Nihil present a full-album set of their...
On their current tour, Pennsylvania’s fast-rising technical death-metal stars Rivers of Nihil are trying their hand at the full-album set format, focusing on last spring’s mesmerizing Where Owls Know...
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Absolutely Not get creepier than ever on Problematic
Local punks Absolutely Not have never been the type of band to release accessible music. The first releases they started putting out in 2013 showcased fairly standard garage punk, but they topped...
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