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If you’re reading this on Thursday it’s too late. Matt Courtade, coleader of monster garage outfit Heavy Times, leaves Chicago for sunny Los Angeles today—when this wolf spoke to him last week, he was considering taking up a friend’s offer of a temporary stay in one of Carrie Fisher’s guesthouses. But if it’s still Wednesday night or earlier, drop your plans and head to East Room to see Heavy Times play a release show for their brand-new HoZac seven-inch, Black Sunglasses....

The lineup for the 2016 Pitchfork Music Festival dropped this morning, and as always the organizers have proven their ability to put together an endearingly eclectic lineup. The bill for the three-day festival includes plenty of curveballs: Brian Wilson performing all of Pet Sounds, the legendary Sun Ra Arkestra, Canadian pop wonder Carly Rae Jepsen, and the Hotelier, the first emo band I’ve seen listed on a Pitchfork lineup in its 11 years....

Psychedelic Chicago indie rockers Cafe Racer emerged from a young north-side scene obsessed with garage; in fact, guitarist-vocalist Michael Santana previously played rugged, bratty garage pop in the three-piece Grosse Pointe. When he burned out on that band’s sound in 2015, he started working with guitarist-vocalist Adam Schubert—a prolific musician with a lo-fi solo project called Ruins—on sketches of what would become sprawling, enchanting songs. By the time they made their live debut as Cafe Racer in 2016, they’d expanded into a five-piece, and since then they’ve tinkered with hypnotic combinations of nimble Krautrock rhythms, melodic shoegaze riffs, and effervescent psychedelic melodies....

Jazz and Heritage Pavilion Jay Pritzker Pavilion Young Jazz Lions Stage Von Freeman Pavilion 11:30 AM | Alexis Lombre Quintet 12: 50 PM | Joel Ross’s Good Vibes 2:10 PM | Hanging Hearts 3:30 PM | Foster Meets Brooks Big Band Focus by Kendall Moore Ensemble Noon | Kendall Moore Octet Trombonist Kendall Moore was a key member of many local groups before packing his bags for Boston, including the Chicago Jazz Orchestra and the Chicago Jazz Ensemble....

Chicago rapper Ausar Bradley struck me as a whip-smart lyricist with impressive mike skills when he was still studying at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign—he was two years shy of his undergraduate degree when he dropped the excellent 2017 mixtape The 6 Page Letter. This year Ausar, who records and performs under his first name, has released a handful of sharp singles and his first postgraduate EP, the new Flight of the Honeybee....

Ever since Donald Trump’s victory—a phrase I still find hard to write—I’ve been trying to soothe freaked-out millennials by telling them: (1) I can remember a time that may have been worse, and (2) don’t worry, our local leaders, like Mayor Rahm Emanuel, won’t abandon us in this fight. For those who might be thinking, Oh, but Nixon wasn’t as bad as Trump is, I urge you to read Tim Weiner’s book One Man Against the World, which is based largely on transcripts of conversations Nixon secretly recorded in the White House....

It’s safe to say that there are more stories being told by queer filmmakers than ever before, and which are even more diverse in recent years not just in terms of representation, but also in narrative and form. But queer people have existed forever—even in film!—and it’s imperative to immerse ourselves in our own history. Pioneers of Queer Cinema, available through Kino Lorber’s virtual cinema Kino Marquee, highlights classic queer films that paved the way for our current landscape, many of which have been less than accessible to modern audiences—and which explore themes of gender and sexuality that ring just as true now as they did when they were made....

Signature Move is a hybrid indie romantic comedy and coming-of-age story about a Pakistani-Muslim lesbian who falls in love with a Mexican woman (and competitive wrestling) during the course of a Chicago summer. The film is directed by a woman, Jennifer Reeder; written by women, Lisa Donato and lead actor Fawzia Mirza; and focuses on women of color—a relative anomaly in a domestic cinematic landscape largely filtered through the lenses of straight white men....

Julia Strehlow is the director of education, prevention, and policy for Chicago Children’s Advocacy Center, one of the frontline responders to reports of child sexual abuse in the city. The Center also responds to physical abuse, witness to violence, and other serious maltreatment. ChicagoCAC is the city’s only not-for-profit organization that coordinates the efforts of child protection staff, law enforcement professionals, family advocates, medical experts, and mental health clinicians under one roof....

In March 2017, local pop wunderkind Victor Cervantes, aka Victor!, sold out the first run of his self-released debut CD-only EP, Glitter98. Now 18, he’s doubled down on his music career, transforming it from an extracurricular activity to his main focus—in fact, he left high school early in order to pursue his art (per the Chicago Tribune, he’s been working toward receiving his GED). The labor Cervantes has poured into his creative output has paid off, and his distinctive approach along with the harmonious way he blends genres in his most recent tracks makes it feel like he’s hit upon the shape of music to come....

Welcome to the Reader‘s morning briefing for Wednesday, November 8, 2017. Emanuel slams Trump for “pointing fingers” at Chicago again Mayor Rahm Emanuel slammed President Donald Trump for “pointing fingers” at Chicago’s gun violence issues again instead of focusing on gun control measures after a devastating massacre at a church in Sutherland Springs, Texas, left 26 people dead. Trump used Chicago’s gun laws as an example of why he refuses to support stronger gun control legislation....

British filmmaker David Lean is the current Director of the Week on the streaming-video channel FilmStruck, which offers almost all of his films for viewing. Tucked between his celebrated Charles Dickens adaptations from the 1940s and his later, grandiose epics are four more unassuming films from the 1950s, leading up to the classic Bridge on the River Kwai. Summertime Katharine Hepburn, a lonely spinster on a European vacation, is seduced by the charms of Venice in this expert 1955 melodrama by David Lean....

AP Photo/Elise Amendola Was Tom Brady appropriately punished, or is it all a lot of hot air? Rick Morrissey makes a strong case in Monday’s Sun-Times that justice in the NFL is skewed, the league coming down harder on the New England Patriots and quarterback Tom Brady for leaking air out of footballs than it has on “hulking players who have abused women.” It probably suits the NFL’s purposes for its players to be seen as violent men playing a violent game....

Courtesy the artist At least the folks in Izah aren’t trying to get anywhere on their looks. It’s always a pleasure when a band appears out of nowhere with a fully formed, mature-sounding record. Now of course Tilburg, Holland, isn’t nowhere—that’s the city that doom six-piece Izah calls home—but Sistere, which comes out next week on Swedish label Nordvis, is the group’s debut full-length.

It’s difficult to describe Elizabeth McKenzie‘s new novel, The Portable Veblen, because it is so many different things all at once. It’s the story of the courtship of Veblen Amundsen-Hovda and Paul Vreeland. It’s an exploration of complicated family dynamics. It’s a philosophical contemplation of life in northern California through the lens of the writings of the other Veblen, first name Thorstein, who coined the term “conspicuous consumption” and after whom Veblen Amundsen-Hovda is named....

AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth An unmanned U.S. Predator drone Chivalry is a spent force in warfare, drones are the latest culprit, and the dramatic arts have taken up the case. In a new movie, Good Kill, Ethan Hawke is a former pilot who operates drones from a trailer outside Las Vegas but longs to be back in the cockpit. According to the New York Times reviewer, it’s a “blunt, outspoken critique of remote-control warfare, which is transforming the ugly reality of battlefield carnage into a video game whose casualties are pixels on a screen....

At the end of 2014, Calumet rapper-singer Tink positioned herself as Chicago’s next big thing after dropping her high-water-mark Winters Diary 2 mixtape and inking a deal with Timbaland’s Epic imprint, Mosley Music Group, Hell, and XXL magazine cemented that reputation when it listed her among its 2015 “freshman class” of rising stars, which also included Fetty Wap, Goldlink, and Vince Staples. But Tink’s career stalled under Timbaland’s watch; according to the Fader, Tink’s relationship with Tim started to sour after he delayed her debut album, Think Tink, which was originally scheduled to drop in July 2015, but I wonder if some of the downfall was because he wanted her to be someone else....

Originally published by City Bureau on October 7, 2020 / Updated January 29, 2021 Federal eviction moratorium To qualify, every adult renter in the unit must sign and submit to their landlord this Tenant Declaration Form (Spanish version and Arabic/Chinese/Hindi/Tagalog/Polish version) stating that they meet these four conditions: A landlord must give their tenant a copy of the declaration form before they can issue a five-day eviction notice to begin the eviction process....

Derrick Sanders and Reginald Nelson arrived in Chicago in 1999 with a singular goal: to start a theater company that could fuse the ensemble aesthetic of a Steppenwolf with a focus on work that expressed and arose from the African Diaspora experience. The pair had met at Howard University in Washington, D.C., where they received bachelor’s degrees in theater; Nelson then attended the University of Illinois in Urbana for his master’s degree, while Sanders headed to the University of Pittsburgh....

Since 2004 Plastic Crimewave (aka Steve Krakow) has used the Secret History of Chicago Music to shine a light on worthy artists with Chicago ties who’ve been forgotten, underrated, or never noticed in the first place. Older strips are archived here.