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Australian composer and musician Anthony Pateras scrambles your sense of...
On two recent multidisc sets, Australian composer, improviser, and electroacoustic musician Anthony Pateras chronicles his compulsive drive to try new things and move on. In the booklet that...
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Rock and baseball greats team up for the annual Hot Stove Cool Music benefit
You never know who might show up at Hot Stove Cool Music Chicago, an annual benefit concert that brings the city’s baseball and music communities together to support nonprofits helping urban youth and...
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Lionel Richie can’t slow down
In a story line from 80s comic strip Bloom County, fictional heavy metal band Deathtöngue (whose lead guitarist, the strip’s resident “Ack”-er Bill the Cat, wears a Twisted Sister wig) try to get a...
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A decade into their career, Nails are only getting heavier and harder
In the current state of all things heavy, brutal, and loud, it’s hard to top California powerviolence band Nails. For their third full-length, 2016’s You Will Never Be One of Us (Nuclear Blast), the...
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UK rapper Little Simz breaks out with the sonically diverse, expertly crafted...
UK rapper Little Simz (born Simbiatu Ajikawo) is just 25 years old, but throughout the 2010s she’s amassed a prolific discography of LPs, EPs, and mixtapes. She’s generated a healthy buzz along the...
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Ari Lennox opens a window into young black womanhood with Shea Butter Baby
With the May release of her unflinching debut, Shea Butter Baby (Dreamville), D.C. native Ari Lennox establishes herself as a vital voice in contemporary R&B. On album opener “Chicago Boy,” she...
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Austin indie-pop eight-piece TC Superstar make music for the dance dance...
Synth-driven Austin indie-pop group TC Superstar count eight people in their ranks, four of them dancers—and the dancers’ steps are just as important as the musicians’ notes. “The dancers are not...
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Indie-rock supergroup Acquaintances bring the heat for their second show ever
Five-piece Chicago/Philadelphia indie-rock supergroup Acquaintances maintain a satisfying simmer on their self-titled 2013 debut, but they really come to a boil on their follow-up, the new 8½ Lives...
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Style & Grace pays tribute to Lena Horne and Nancy Wilson
Black Ensemble Theater’s latest bio-musical tells the stories of two great jazz divas. Lena Horne and Nancy Wilson were two iconic voices, separated by a generation, divergent upbringings, and...
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In Six, Henry VIII's wives come back as pop divas
Divorced, beheaded, died; divorced, beheaded, survived—and slaying. History hasn't been this much fun since Hamilton. With its high-energy score, stadium lighting, and angular, bedazzled Tudor...
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In Life on Paper, Jackalope once again turns straw into gold.
Gus Menary's ensemble transforms Kenneth Lin's mechanical script into a warm, nuanced production. Playwright Kenneth Lin's got nothing on Frank Capra. In this gauzy, diagrammatic new play, given its...
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After AIDS, love endures—and so does Falsettos
The glorious Broadway revival makes a quick stop in Chicago. Halfway through the first act of Falsettos, Trina, a woman whose husband has left her for a younger man and who is on the verge of...
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Ms. Blakk for President celebrates a great queer pioneer
When Joan Jett Blakk told us to lick Bush in '92 Neon shades of violet—not rainbows—radiate from Tarell Alvin McCraney and Tina Landau's world-premiere docu-party celebrating the true story of queer...
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Four Places hovers brilliantly between public pleasantries and private...
Adult children confront the past and future lives of their aging parents over lunch. It's their weekly lunch date. They're sitting in the restaurant where she and her daughter always go, where she has...
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Versatile guitarist Wendy Eisenberg makes her Chicago solo debut at...
Massachusetts guitarist Wendy Eisenberg has only been releasing music under her own name for two years, but she’s already amassed a discography so diverse that no genre can claim her. On her debut,...
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Dead Meadow continue their retro heavy-psych shuffle
This heavy-psych band from Washington, D.C., caused a stir when they released their self-titled debut album in 2000: they seemed to have tapped a vein of blues-based trippy rock from the early 70s...
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Sizzy Rocket brings punk influence to modern pop on Grrrl
Sizzy Rocket—the self-proclaimed “royalty of the punks and the letdowns”—is a perpetual motion machine. The LA pop star is a near constant presence on social media, tours frequently, and has released...
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Pioneering Palestinian producer Muqata’a champions his culture while pushing...
Palestinian producer and rapper Muqata’a is the godfather of Ramallah’s underground hip-hop scene. In 2007, while recording under the name Boikutt, he cofounded hip-hop collective Ramallah...
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Japanese experimental rockers Mono conjure spirits on Nowhere Now Here
Mono have been making dramatic, orchestral, largely instrumental experimental rock for 20 years, and in that time they’ve played in nearly 60 countries and released ten full-length albums. Their...
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Chicago pop duo Iris Temple apply to be your new local favorite with The Ones...
Producer Quinn Cochran and singer Quinn Barlow, who make evanescent indie-pop songs as Iris Temple, met at Lincoln College Preparatory Academy in Kansas City, Missouri. They became friends in band...
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