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Tropical futurists Combo Chimbita share trippy, cathartic jams on Ahomale
The members of this Colombia-rooted, New York City-based quartet—vocalist and percussionist Carolina Oliveros, drummer Dilemastronauta, guitarist Niño Lento, and bassist-keyboardist Prince of...
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‘Diamond’ Diana Ross marks a half century of ruling the stage
This year’s New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival seemed beset by bad juju: the Rolling Stones begged off due to Mick Jagger’s heart surgery, and Bob Seger bowed out, blaming a scheduling conflict....
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Carly Rae Jepsen is back! With a sword! And also a new album!
At the start of 2018, Tumblr user swordlesbianopinions posted, “Petition to give Carly Rae Jepsen a sword. I like her and think she should have one.” From this, the Canadian pop star’s fans launched a...
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The Momo World—almost an International House of Dumplings
A University Village storefront shows the global versatility of the Nepali street food. Madhu Budhathoki knows about the viral urban legend known as the Momo challenge. A customer at his University...
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Lydia Lunch pairs weapons-grade spoken word with manic no wave in Verbal...
Two years ago, legendary avant-garde artist Lydia Lunch brought her all-star no-wave revival band Retrovirus to Chop Shop. The group laid down a charismatic, devastatingly tight set that wove together...
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Imelda Marcos embody what makes Chicago’s experimental rock scene exceptional
Chicago is home to lots of technically savvy rock weirdos obsessed with unconventional song structures, odd time signatures, and controlled chaos. I’ve wondered often why London four-piece Black Midi...
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Canadian synth jesters TWRP make great modern funk (when they feel like it)
Toronto synth-pop group TWRP (“Tupper Ware Remix Party,” allegedly) have a cutesy but somewhat vague 80s sci-fi backstory: front man Doctor Sung, for instance, is supposed to have traveled through...
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Covet make laid-back sounds out of technical math-rock
The music of math-rock bands such as the Ruins, Tricot, Lightning Bolt, and Don Caballero is often loud, swaggering, and aggressive, and at the very least angular and spiky. But California three-piece...
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Michael Morley of Gate and the Dead C makes the furniture sing
Michael Morley has been making music that teeters on the edge of collapse since 1980, when he and fellow teenager Richard Ram formed the bedroom-pop duo Wreck Small Speakers on Expensive Stereos. The...
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Chile’s Álex Anwandter creates political pop for survival in a world gone mad
Santiago-born singer-songwriter, composer, and film director Álex Anwandter has been dubbed the prince of Chilean pop, no small honor given that the country’s vibrant post-dictatorship scene attracted...
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Guit-steel slinger Junior Brown steers into country ballads on Deep in the...
Country artist Junior Brown has a droll baritone reminiscent of Johnny Cash that works well in funny songs, including “Highway Patrol” and “My Wife Thinks You're Dead.” But as great as his voice is,...
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Minneapolis-obsessed Beach Slang are back with the EP MPLS
When Philadelphia’s Beach Slang first appeared in 2014 with a couple of EPs, I was fully obsessed. Fronted by former pop punker James Alex Snyder, who spent the 90s cofronting Weston, the band...
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Nouveau guitar god Chris Forsyth pulls together a crew of locals for an...
East-coast native Chris Forsyth has been making waves the past few years as a nouveau guitar god. His approach to his craft positions him somewhere between classicists (Jerry Garcia, Richard Thompson)...
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Eighties R&B band Ready for the World take a dive into 21st-century jams
Ready for the World’s single “Tonight” was all over the radio in 1984, but due to its lyrical content it unfortunately was not allowed at my summer camp: “Did he say ‘wet’?” a counselor shouted as she...
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Redtwist’s King Lear creates a tempest-torn world in an intimate setting
Steve Scott's bare-bones production is storefront Shakespeare at its best. William Shakespeare's 1606 tragedy is often regarded as the Mount Everest of English drama, a towering peak of theatrical...
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Get up and Go-Go to Kokandy’s Head Over Heels
A binary-busting love story weds a 16th-century romance and the music of the Go-Go’s. When the Go-Go's debuted the irresistibly catchy titular song in 1984, MTV was firmly in the era of the Video...
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The Music Man offers a musical conundrum at the Goodman
Mary Zimmerman’s production sings, though the gender politics creak. You can say this for director Mary Zimmerman's staging of Meredith Willson's multiple Tony winner, The Music Man: like the titular...
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London composer Cosmo Sheldrake channels beloved oddball songwriters on The...
If you think the album title The Much Much How How and I is whimsical and amusing, you’ll probably love the fey, fabulous, and hokey music of its creator, London composer and multi-instrumentalist...
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If you only see one act at ComplexCon Chicago, make it peerless local rapper...
Come November, the music press will start churning out “decade in review” pieces. Though I can’t predict their contents (and frankly don’t want to), I anticipate there’ll be several listicles ranking...
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Miguel Atwood-Ferguson translates the works of of hip-hop prodigy J Dilla...
Shortly after the 2006 death of James Dewitt Yancey, best known as J Dilla, Los Angeles multi-instrumentalist, arranger, composer, and producer Miguel Atwood-Ferguson began creating orchestral homages...
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