Out of the Wreck I Rise: A Literary Companion to Recovery by Neil Steinberg and Sara Bader September 8 The Virginity of Famous Men by Christine Sneed September 15 Tribune reporter Wisniewski has produced Algren: A Life, a new biography of the writer who once famously compared our city to a woman with a broken nose. She’ll be discussing the book and the man, followed by a trip to the Rainbo Club for a celebratory toast....
Genre-straddling chanteuse, composer, and guitarist Chelsea Wolfe confounds some fans and rewards others on her newly released sixth full-length, Hiss Spun. Her witchy brew of drone-folk with gothic and industrial influences is dramatic and cinematic (it’s been licensed by Fear the Walking Dead, The Magicians, and Game of Thrones). It’s also crept heavier and heavier with each release; most of Hiss Spun roars out as full-fledged sludge metal. Wolfe’s previous collaborations with Russian Circles and the Converge/Neurosis-related project Bloodmoon serve her well on the new album, where she steers a course within the rocky shoals adeptly built by bassist/synth player Ben Chisolm, drummer Jess Gowrie, and guest guitarists including Aaron Turner of Isis and Troy van Leeuwen of Queens of the Stone Age (who all come together on “Vex”)....
In August, Guided by Voices, who re-formed again last year after a sudden breakup in 2014, released their 24th long-player, How Do You Spell Heaven. Even more impressively, the album is the 101st full-length ultraprolific front man and sole constant member Robert Pollard has put his stamp on. The version of GBV that’s been operating over the past couple years is a far cry from the band that released fractured bedroom-pop masterpieces throughout the 80s and 90s....
There are plenty of shows, films, and concerts happening this week. Here’s some of what we recommend: Wed 6/6: The stylistic range of Tuareg guitarist Mdou Moctar runs as deep as the communal roots of his music. 8:30 PM, Maurer Hall, Old Town School of Folk Music, 4544 N. Lincoln, free, all-ages
Traffic safety and sustainable transportation boosters like myself like to believe we’re on the right side of history. I’m confident that in the future more people will get behind our efforts to reduce driving and crashes, and create better conditions for walking, biking, transit, and public space. In fairness, I’ve made my share of mistakes in covering sustainable transportation issues over the years. The most important rule I’ve learned is to always ask myself what the potential impacts of projects and policies may be on people from various marginalized groups....
About six months before rapper-producer Kevin Abstract launched wildly popular hip-hop boy band Brockhampton in early 2015, he dropped his debut mixtape, MTV1987. Abstract had tapped a few guests to contribute vocals, including an aspiring pop artist from Chicago’s west suburbs named Jack Larsen—that’s him singing the sublime hook for “27.” Larsen has since joined the roster of Chicago hip-hop label Closed Sessions, and in October it released his ambitious debut album....
ARTIST: Jay Ryan SHOWS: Mountain Goats at the Old Town School of Folk Music on 5/27 through 5/29 MORE INFO: thebirdmachine.com
This story was originally published by City Bureau on June 5, 2020. Lee was the third of seven detainees who have died after contracting the virus at Cook County Jail. Since then, almost 1,000 Cook County Jail employees and detainees have tested positive for COVID-19; two corrections officers and one court deputy have also died, according to WTTW. Like 98 percent of inmates at Cook County Jail, Lee was awaiting trial....
When the COVID-19 crisis subsides long enough for the concert circuit to start up again, you’ll want to see Chicago electro-R&B duo Drama live. But in the meantime, their new debut LP, Dance Without Me, might just be the record you need to get through your social isolation. An album for sad-but-sexy people everywhere, Dance Without Me continues the lush musical explorations of love and loss that the group began on the sultry, synth-driven 2016 EP Gallows, building urgency with the narratives in their lyrics as well as the tempos of their tracks....
Baltimore improviser Bonnie Jones hasn’t released any recordings of her work for more than half a decade, but before that self-imposed hiatus she made a series of highly abstract efforts using low-budget electronics. Her finest work features distinctive European improvisers including Andrea Neumann and Christine Abdelnour, and implants microscopic gestures and refined interaction within abrasive noisescapes larded with sine tones and garbled feedback. For improvisers, recordings are imperfect documents of a practice that’s meant to be experienced in person, but Jones’s operates with a heightened sense of community ethos....
The Beat Kitchen in Roscoe Village hosts a respectable variety of entertainment in its downstairs performance space, including singer-songwriters, pop-punk bands, a weekly bluegrass brunch, and the recently popular Heavy Metal Yoga sessions. But devoted fans of Chicago’s creative-music scene come to the club for something that happens in its much smaller upstairs room: the long-running Monday-night residency of Extraordinary Popular Delusions. Extraordinary Popular Delusions Almost every Monday, 9 PM, upstairs at Beat Kitchen, 2100 W....
Freelance photographer Paul Boucher has been on hand to capture the exuberant energy of Cubs fans—and vendors looking to cash in on that energy—outside Wrigley Field as the Cubs competed in the World Series for the first time in more than 71 years.
Early this fall I zeroed in on a flash of orange out of the corner of my eye, perched on the gray bark of a large oak tree just off the intersection of Hamlin and Irving Park. I couldn’t believe my luck. It was a Laetiporus sulphureus, aka a chicken of the woods mushroom, fruiting directly across the street from Independence Park. I snapped a photo and confirmed the ID with a fungi-foraging friend, and by lunch I had it sliced up in a saute pan, sizzling in butter....
Clooney (right) in Tomorrowland This post contains spoilers. I suppose such practical questions don’t really matter when you’re dealing with a giant metaphor. In any case, Clooney’s star power helps to keep one from thinking about them too hard, as does the movie’s inherent goodwill. The final twist of Tomorrowland is that Clooney and a new legion of geniuses use their time in the utopian city (which exists in another dimension than ours) to create solutions to problems in our world....
Update on Wednesday, September 18: This column has been edited to correctly reflect which Lollygagger release is on the Midwest Action label. Solo Sam isn’t yet streaming the new Plated, but “Hubris” is his latest single. Underground hip-hop label Why? Records, run by a collective of Chicago rappers, only just launched this year, but it’s already a crucial part of the local scene. On Friday, September 20, Davis Blackwell (also half of Why?...
“Raaaah! Aaaaaaaaaah! Raaaaaaaaaayaaaaaaah!” French producer Gautier Serre, aka Igorrr, starts off his 2017 album with three hysterical quivering shrieks that segue into a headbanging death-metal crunch, courtesy of Teloch from Mayhem and drummer Sylvain Bouvier. Over it all, vocalist Laurent Lunoir emits a phlegm-flecked ranting burble—like chipmunks being devoured by piranhas, or vice versa. Serre, who’s also part of the death-metal band Whourkr, has been releasing Igorrr material for 13 years, and Savage Sinusoid (Metal Blade) continues what is by now an expected tradition of unexpected what-the-fuckery....
Cinder Well is the brainchild of Ireland-based, California-bred singer and multi-instrumentalist Amelia Baker. As part of the Santa Cruz anarchist folk-punk scene, she’s previously played with dusky folk trio the Gembrokers and metal- and Klezmer-influenced collective Blackbird Raum, among others; in 2015 she launched Cinder Well as a solo outlet where she could collaborate with a shifting cast of musicians. By the time she released Cinder Well’s 2018 debut full-length, The Unconscious Echo, she’d developed a sound that draws from haunting traditional English, Irish, and American folk, using to explore themes of generational and historic trauma tied to white supremacy and fascism....
John W. Ferguson/Getty Images Guy Fieri, rockin’ friend to gay people everywhere Reader staffers share stories that fascinate, alarm, amuse, or inspire us. • About Guy Fieri officiating a mass same-sex wedding in FL? —Cassidy Ryan
Reader staffers share stories that fascinate, alarm, amuse, or inspire us. • That you can design your very own batshit-insane 18th century wig? —Aimee Levitt
