For nearly two decades Pittsburgh band Black Moth Super Rainbow have twisted psych, lo-fi electronics, trip-hop, noise, and cybernetic pop into shapes so wondrous that the most imaginative balloon-animal-making clowns might envy. The group’s seventh album, last year’s Panic Blooms (Rad Cult), brims with Technicolor synth notes that ooze like cough syrup. BMSR have long revelled in the zone where pastel dreams flit into Day-Glo nightmares and back again, and this album holds listeners in a particularly foreboding space: through processed murmurs, front man Tobacco unravels a brief passage about someone having their mouth split open by a razor blade hidden in a tangerine—a narrative that also aptly describes the veiled, enticing horror in BMSR’s music....

Seeking out others to lean on is an indispensable part of tending to our mental wellness. The Center on Halsted (COH) offers an array of virtual therapy groups facilitated by psychologists and counselors that support LGBTQ+ individuals and their allies facing similar challenges during the pandemic and beyond. Although not pandemic-specific, two other groups provide coping strategies that apply to those suffering from COVID-related stress. Grief and Loss provides alternate ways to connect and grieve when attending a funeral isn’t an option, and Queer Body Image & Body Positivity addresses struggles related to self-perception and those using food to self-soothe, particularly during the pandemic when many people are less physically active....

Courtesy Smart Bar Floating Points This Saturday is one of those instances when there are too many good shows happening on the same night: Wadada Leo Smith, Kindred the Family Soul, Ty Segall (sold out), Big Daddy Kane, hell, even “Weird Al” Yankovic (which is sold out). But all of these shows take place at around the same time, whereas UK electronic artist Floating Points (aka Sam Shepherd) doesn’t play until late at night....

Welcome to the Reader‘s morning briefing for Monday, November 20, 2017. Analysis of Emanuel 2018 budget raises red flags Chicago’s financial crisis is far from over, and there’s still plenty of “heavy lifting” to do, according to a Civic Federation analysis of Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s 2018 budget. The $8.6 billion budget includes new and higher taxes to generate revenue, but the city is still being crushed by debt and pension liabilities....

The gig poster we’re featuring this week was created for the third incarnation of the interdisciplinary festival Freedom From and Freedom To, curated by artist and teacher Cristal Sabbagh and hosted by Elastic Arts. The first and second events, held in September and December of 2019, were both single-night affairs, but the third will stretch out into two jam-packed evenings of improvisational music and dance. Previously Sabbagh had asked audience members to pick artists’ names from a bag before each performance, in order to determine who would improvise together on the spot, but this year there won’t be an in-person audience: Freedom From and Freedom To will be livestreamed via the Elastic Arts website and Twitch channel, in deference to COVID-19 concerns....

Gordon’s cell phone has a cheerful ring, light and lilting, not the ringtone of a man you take seriously. Still, it cuts through the air with the disarming insistence of an ice cream truck, or maybe only an ice cream pushcart, and Jean, the woman next to him in the cafe, at last picks up. Jean is a polite woman. Gordon is dead. Sarah Ruhl’s Dead Man’s Cell Phone explores what happens to love and loss when the previously discrete variables of presence and absence are muddled by our common technology....

Q: I’m a straight white woman in my early 30s. In theory, I’ve always been into men of all races—but in practice, most of my exes are Latino and white. In September, I met this really handsome Chinese-American guy, and I feel like he rewired me. I’ve been exclusively attracted to Asian guys since. I’m not writing to ask if this is racist, because I’m not asking these guys to, like, speak Korean to me in bed or do any role-playing stuff....

Before the 1970’s, queer characters and themes were all but invisible in Hollywood films. Sometimes coded references clued people in; sometimes gay viewers would interpret a film differently than was intended to find points of identification (“reading across the grain,” as theorists would say). Facets Cinémathèque‘s screening of Basil Dearden’s 1961 British film Victim (with an accompanying lecture by Northwestern film professor Nick Davis) provides an opportunity to highlight five pre-Stonewall Hollywood films (one per decade, 1920s-’60s) that have become iconic (if not always queer-positive) works in gay cinema history....

Gossip Wolf loved grungy stoner-metal band Alma Negra, but alas, they played what turned out to be their last show in 2015. Singer-guitarist Erin Page—who also runs print-art operation Kill Hatsumomo—says her new band, Reivers, arose “after several lineup changes and my desire, along with my copilot, guitarist Greg Hamilton, to take Alma Negra in a slightly different direction.” Joining Page and Hamilton in Reivers are drummer Madison Maloof and bassist Tim Preciado; the name, says Page, refers to the Scottish border clans of her ancestry, “known as gypsies, robbers, and thieves and damned by the church....

Their students include gun enthusiast Diana (an endearing Isa Arciniegas), who is attracted to her best friend, Mojdeh (Ariana Mahallati), who in turn harbors a crush on an older guy in her biology class. Painfully shy Nikki (Andrea San Miguel) and the well-meaning-but-out-of-their-depth male duo of Andy (Ryan McBride) and Eggo (Jayson Lee) round out the class. What Padilla’s play—directed with pinpoint precision and plenty of startling wit by Marti Lyons—asks us to consider is how defending our lives can so often clash with living our lives....

Reader staffers share stories that fascinate, alarm, amuse, or inspire us. • That the problem with quality journalism is that it has no audience? —Ryan Smith

Keith Hale/Sun-Times In need of a $10 million face-lift Reader staffers share stories that fascinate, alarm, amuse, or inspire us. • That the $10 million grant meant to help with the Uptown Theatre’s renovation may be at risk? —Kevin Warwick • About the sociology of farting? —Aimee Levitt

FKA Twigs is a singular force in ethereal, otherworldly trip-hop and avant-pop. Born Tahliah Debrett Barnett in Gloucestershire, England, the British singer, songwriter, dancer, producer, and director seems nearly unparalleled in her creative drive—and that’s illustrated by her current tour. Named after the new Magdalene (Young Turks), her second LP and first in five years, the multidisciplinary experience finds inspiration in Gesamtkunstwerk, a German concept that means “total work of art” or “synthesis of the arts....

Experimental musician Matthew Sage teaches a couple English classes as an adjunct at Wilbur Wright College, but because that apparently isn’t enough to keep him occupied he also runs Patient Sounds, one of Chicago’s best microlabels. Since he launched it in 2009 (when he still lived in Fort Collins, Colorado), he’s put out more than 80 full-lengths, EPs, and splits, mostly on cassette; under the name M. Sage, he appears on eight of them, including the ambient album Needleworks, which came out in July....

Pop quiz: Who uttered the following line—a Cook County official commenting on the legalities of a tax on small music venues booking rock, rap, and DJ shows, or Reverend Shaw from Footloose preaching about a ban on loud music and dancing? At least that’s what I gathered after reading the news the Reader broke about how the county is trying to strong-arm small music venues into ponying up hundreds of thousands of dollars in back taxes....

DryHop brewer Brant Dubovick and a glass of the Moritat collaboration High Plus Tight Since reviewing DryHop during its opening week in June 2013, I’ve drank many a memorable beer there—among them My Mirrors Are Black, a Cuban-style coffee stout with guava; Elektra, on Oktoberfest; Half Stepper, a rye IPA; the South Loop Brewing collaboration Milkstachio, a milk stout with pistachio and cacao nibs; Moustache & a Supernova, a biere de Noel; the Devil Jumped Up!...

It’s like an Onion headline come to life: With Nothing More to Accomplish, Billionaire Tech Mogul Who Just Shot a Car Into Space Starts Satirical Newspaper. Musk initially wanted to buy the Onion back in 2014 according to a report published on Tuesday by the Daily Beast, but the deal fell through—potentially because Musk wasn’t interested in the A.V. Club, the Onion’s pop-culture-obsessed sister site (disclosure: I was a regular freelancer for the A....

Q: I’ve been married for 30 years to the same man. I have dealt with his tantrums, his screaming, and his fits. He’s always had anger management issues. He strangled me once a few months after our son was born and never did it again. I would have left otherwise. He’s had relationships with other women but always swore it was just online. Then, a few years back, I got into a relationship with someone online....

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 to help humans develop more harmonious relationships with one another and the rest of the planet. He’s an apt subject for filmmaker Sam Green, who has specialized in examining better-future initiatives in his documentaries The Weather Underground, Utopia in Four Movements, and The Universal Language (a movie about Esperanto)....

The idea to return to oyatsu first came in September, when the weather was still gentle, fall just beginning to work itself into a fantasia of crimson, gold, and auburn. Because I’ve lived in Chicago for nearly 15 years now, I knew that winter, with its flat white sky and toothy chill, was not far off. Every year I suffered through it alongside everyone else, slipping on iced-over sidewalks and complaining bitterly that spring never arrived in a timely fashion....