The past few years have been bittersweet for local postpunk four-piece Deeper, who released their excellent second album, Auto-Pain, last March. When it came out, they were still recovering from the loss of guitarist Michael Clawson, who took his own life in fall 2019, just after the album was completed. Then COVID-19 forced the band to cancel what surely would’ve been successful tours of Europe and North America. Fans eager to see Auto-Pain‘s taut, danceable songs performed will finally get a chance on Saturday, March 27, at 7 PM, when Deeper stream a set from the Chicago Cultural Center via online venue Noonchorus....

Reader staffers share stories that fascinate, amuse, or inspire us. Scott Stewart/Sun-Times It’s the most wonderful time of the year. • About anti-Semitism in France? —Aimee Levitt • About appropriate beer and wine pairings for Girl Scout cookies? —Aimee Levitt

Last time Gossip Wolf heard from jazz guitarist Dave Miller, in 2011, he was splitting town for New York City. In an interview with the Reader‘s Peter Margasak, Miller mentioned that he planned to continue working with local groups, and his new CD, Old Door Phantoms, due Friday, April 1, on Ears&Eyes Records, features a few familiar Chicago faces, among them keyboardist Ben Boye (also a sideman to Angel Olsen and Bonnie “Prince” Billy) and drummer Quin Kirchner (also of Wild Belle)....

On May 5, Harvey rapper Ty Money released the fifth and final entry in his career-defining mixtape series, Cinco de Money, which he launched in 2015. Each volume has showcased what makes Money stand out: his vivid narratives of street life, freighted with pathos, delivered in a rush of syllables that cuts through the instrumentals like a souped-up car racing through a mountain tunnel. Cinco de Money 5 (self-released via SBMG LLC) highlights Money’s grasp of pop music: he dabs his clean, straightforward hooks with Auto-Tune, and on “Whoa Whoa” he delineates the honeyed sung chorus from the burly rapped verses with a precision that confirms the enduring magic of the old-school industry approach to pop songwriting....

Over the past few years, Chicago multi-instrumentalist Alex Cowling has released several solo albums that combine weather-beaten indie rock, spacious jazz, and easygoing folk, and he’s done it to little or no fanfare. When I ask him about the new Antarctica, he tells me that one of the few people who’s listened to it is his aunt. I was hooked by the album’s lush ensemble recordings while trawling Bandcamp late one night, and I haven’t been able to shake them since....

March is certainly coming in like a lion with a king’s share of events (see what I did there? Somehow I feel the need to apologize to Nathan Lane and Nathan Lane only. Anyhow). While some of our venues are slowly opening up, there are still some online shows that deserve your attention. Be safe out there whatever you choose to do and please don’t pop a capillary if you need to be reminded to wear a mask....

ARTIST: Ryan Duggan SHOW: Foul Tip, Paper Mice, Lil Tits, and Wishgift at Empty Bottle on Mon 3/28 MORE INFO: ryanduggan.com

This year Michigan-born, New York-raised record label Ghostly International celebrates two decades of releasing cutting-edge electronic sounds. As part of the festivities it’s throwing a party called Ghostly 20 in its own honor at Metro this week. The label was founded in Ann Arbor in 1999 by Sam Valenti IV, who was inspired by the sound and culture of the Detroit techno movement. Ghostly’s first release was Matthew Dear’s debut single, “Hands Up for Detroit,” and before long the label had expanded beyond dance music into a wide variety of electronic genres; over the years it’s put out releases by chillwave artist Com Truise, trip-hoppy dream pop duo Phantogram, and minimal gloom band HTRK....

It doesn’t take much to get Chicagoans motivated to hit the road in the summer. Our car, a 1977 Mercedes 450SL, was provided by Michelle deLeon, a woodworker and leathersmith whose fond memories of a cool, childhood neighbor—who drove the identical car—prompted her to buy her own when she grew up. DeLeon’s dog came along for the ride, and his sweet beagle-boxer nature landed him a spot in the shoot as well....

Chicago Design Week—a partnership between AIGA Chicago, the Chicago Design Museum, and the Society of Typographic Arts—is a chance for designers to converse, collaborate, and learn about new developments in the industry. This year’s theme is Intersections, with a week of programming offering “a deep examination of the various intersections impacting the design world and our broader communities.” The full schedule of events spanning October 20-27 can be found at chicagodesignweek....

“Condos are killing my country / my city gets nothing / burning like a rash from my undies / my city gets nothing,” Erin Delaney warbles before unleashing her full-throttle yowl on “Condos,” the anti-gentrification single Chicago’s Daymaker’s released in June. The band comes staggering in, sloshing loose feedback wails around the song’s can’t-get-it-out-of-your-head indie-pop hook. Daymaker’s a bit of a mess and a bit of a known quantity—snotty punk rawk bands are scattered across the midwest as liberally as abandoned industrial plants—but Delaney’s pissed-off charisma oozes from the recording, and the band embraces its underdog status with winningly mean-spirited resolve....

AP Photo/Brad Horn More like “Burning Money” Reader staffers share stories that fascinate, alarm, amuse, or inspire us. • That a TV presenter claims she was “ushered out of a mosque,” even though CCTV footage contradicts her claim? —Qudsiya Siddiqui • That Hillary Clinton has a big lead over other 2016 presidential hopefuls in sales of T-shirts and mugs? —Mick Dumke

Guitarists Bill MacKay and Ryley Walker have been playing together for years, and their lovely second collaborative album, SpiderBeetleBee (Drag City), beautifully bridges the gap between their backgrounds. MacKay, a Pittsburgh native, has musical roots in jazz, while Walker pursues a cosmic folk-rock sound indebted to experimental troubadours such as Tim Buckley, John Martyn, and Tim Hardin (even though he discovered left-field sounds through skateboard videos while growing up in Rockford)....

We wanted to illustrate Evan F. Moore’s story about racism in hockey—and efforts to change the game and diversify the sport—in a more impactful way. But when we tried to freeze those letters inside a larger block of ice in a baking pan, the coloring bled. Why do this in a basement? So we could take advantage of a drain—and the really cold temperatures in Vince’s basement kept the ice solid for a couple hours to shoot the photos—much longer than we thought....

Dear Governor Rauner: Surely this has nothing to do with your ties to a federal nursing home trial from 2014, right? While you were still candidate Rauner, the private equity firm GTCR you retired from in 2012 was linked to shady nursing home chain Trans Healthcare, Inc. A federal bankruptcy judge accused your old company of orchestrating a “bust out” scheme to let the business die and evade liability for at least $1 billion in alleged wrongful death and abuse suits on behalf of the estates of elderly victims....

This story is part of the Marshall Project’s “We Are Witnesses: Chicago” series. In 15 direct-to-camera testimonies, this collection of videos gives voice to Chicagoans affected by the justice system. Watch the videos at themarshallproject.org/chicago. I grew up on the northwest side of Chicago, Jefferson Park. During my childhood [it] was pretty much crime free except for a few very significant crimes, and one of them was a well-known case, the murder of three young boys—Tony and John Schuessler and another boy named [Robert] Peterson....

Welcome to the Reader‘s morning briefing for Wednesday, July 6, 2016. American Airlines tests automated security lanes to speed things up at O’Hare In light of the Transportation Security Administration’s long screening lines, which caused delays at O’Hare earlier this year, American Airlines plans to install automated screening technology this fall. Chicago will be among the first cities testing the technology, alongside Dallas, Los Angeles, and Miami. The new lanes will be available only at Terminal Three, out of which American flies....

Paul Gulyas is one of those tireless contributors to Chicago music whose work largely goes unnoticed by the public. If you’ve gone to a show at Beat Kitchen or Subterranean in the past few years, you might’ve seen him behind the soundboard. He’s also a musician and producer, and he’s earned a modicum of fame in Chicago hip-hop under his stage name, Cutta—New Deal Crew dynamo Chris Crack regularly shouts him out in his songs....

Since Chicago footwork producer and Teklife member DJ Earl dropped his breakthrough 2016 debut, Open Your Eyes, he’s traveled far outside the city and branched out into different sounds. In 2017, Earl dropped a genre-splicing dance full-length called 50 Backwoods with in-demand Brooklyn producer Nick Hook, and this year his collaborations have included the hip-hop EPs Paintings on the Porch (with Detroit MC Sheefy McFly) and Black Dobson (with Chicago rapper and childhood friend Akem Eshu)....

The Guided by Voices camp is never a quiet one. About a month ago, GBV mastermind Robert Pollard announced the release of a brand-new solo LP, and shortly thereafter said he’d be pulling the band out of retirement (he’d put it on ice in 2014) for a new record and some live dates, including an appearance at Calgary’s Sled Island Festival. The one problem is that this isn’t going to be the Guided by Voices we all know and love: the new record will be performed entirely by Pollard, and the touring lineup includes no members from any of the band’s classic incarnations....