Street View is a fashion series in which Isa Giallorenzo spotlights some of the coolest styles seen in Chicago. Devin proves that black can look breezy and summery. I love her bowl cut and modern accessories—see her multiple toe rings right after the jump. See more street style in the Chicago Looks blog.
Thanks to icons such as Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan, and Joni Mitchell, the pop-culture stereotype is that most folk musicians are white. But that image has always been a deceptive one, and today numerous artists like Rhiannon Giddens, Valerie June, and Haley Heynderickx are following in the footsteps of POC folk greats like Odetta and Josh White, reminding audiences that the genre has always been a place for any number of voices and perspectives....
Q: I just attended the nauseating wedding of my 30-year-old niece to her boyfriend of several years. Both of them seem as gay as possible but they are diehard religious fanatics. I can list 50 signs these two are gay and once you point it out to someone who isn’t a Bible thumper they go, “Yeah, that makes so much sense.” The bride’s father, who was also the minister, praised them for not moving in together before the wedding—another sign....
Al from Nebraska (Ben Cumings) goes searching for love through the heavy steam of a Boystown bathhouse in this endearing Pride Month offering at the Annoyance, now in its third staging since 2012. The show, which is sponsored in part by the actual Steamworks, has plenty of cute songs and memorable prop action to its credit. Witness the instructional ballad on poor Jacuzzi hygiene in act one, featuring a gang of tiny turd puppets with mouths, flanked by singing gobs of sperm....
Multi-instrumentalist Liam Kazar has been so crucial to my evolving understanding of Chicago’s bustling, magnanimous music scene that I felt a little heartbroken when he moved to Kansas City in 2019. He’d risen to national fame in the early 2010s as part of the youthful fusion ensemble Kids These Days, whose idealistic collision of jazz, rock, and hip-hop worked thanks to the personalities involved, among them Macie Stewart of Ohmme and rapper Vic Mensa....
It’s never been lost on the gay community that the entire blueprint for modern child rearing and tin-through-golden-years marriage is based upon the written and unwritten laws of straight people. But only in the past decade have LGBTQ folks gotten the opportunity to put, on a wide scale, different philosophies and theories about partnerships and raising a family into practice within mainstream culture. “Isn’t being normal the most radical thing of all?...
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.
One hundred years after the 1917 Soviet revolution in Russia, two baffling museum exhibitions attempt to recast one of the bloodiest regimes in human history in a positive light. “Revolution Every Day” at the Smart Museum and “Revolutsiia! Demonstratsiia! Soviet Art Put to the Test” at the Art Institute take different approaches to their subject, but neither pays much more than lip service to the millions of victims of the historical period these shows celebrate....
Few spoken-word artists working the posthip-hop landscape can match the intensity, precision, and metaphoric power of Philadelphia’s Moor Mother (aka Camae Ayewa); I’ve seen her twice this year, and both times she had total control of the audience by the end of the set. She’s involved with several collaborative projects, and one of the most exciting, Irreversible Entanglements, recently dropped its self-titled debut album, a joint release of Chicago’s International Anthem and New Jersey’s Don Giovanni....
Julia Thiel Barrel-aged vodka, still in the barrel at Chicago Distilling Company Barrel-aged gin is having a moment. Barrel-aged cocktails are everywhere. Barrel-aged vodka, however—not so much. And that alone was enough reason for Two mixologist Graham Crowe and Chicago Distilling Company owner Jay DiPrizio to want to make one. “I had never had a barrel-aged vodka before,” Crowe says. “That intrigued us. Like, why haven’t we had this?”...
Imagine rappers trying to sound like Queen, and you’re pretty close to Chicago hip-hop group Bonelang. The band’s driving forces, rapper Samy.Language and producer-vocalist Matt Bones, have always had a fondness for experimentation and grand gestures, borrowing from indie rock, jazz, and outre electronic music to create densely layered songs with disparate sounds. Bonelang have supersized that approach on their new self-released album, Sunny, Sonny. They perform their proggy, ever-changing compositions with robotic exactness, shifting between breakneck raps and honeyed singing with whiplash-inducing swiftness—and their mini opuses sometimes feel like products of a marathon writing session for a musical theater production....
As Spectacular Diagnostics, Chicago producer Robert Krums specializes in hip-hop tracks that seem to circle the planet in low orbit, collecting cosmic dust that mixes with flecks of grit from our world. On his new album, Natural Mechanics (Group Bracil), he blends samples like he’s devising floral arrangements for a royal wedding—the glassy keyboard melody that strolls through “Molasses” picks up new colors as he throws on sparse, dubby percussion and a brief clip of springy sitar....
Chicago has no shortage of bands making metal or psychedelic rock (thank God), but relatively few operate in that sweet spot where the two genres overlap. If you’re into that kind of thing, you’re going to want to keep your eye on local four-piece Rezn. Over the past few years, they’ve released a couple of more-than-solid records that marry familiar stoner riffing with heady, thoughtful exploration; on last year’s sea-monster-themed Calm Black Water, they blanket their intrinsic heaviness and darkly mystical lyrics in calming cosmic atmospheres....
Cesar Almeida, aka DJ Antonio Cesar, says it’s impossible to create new music. “Something new is something old that has been reinvented,” says the 25-year-old house DJ and producer. And with his blends of traditional rhythms and contemporary production, he shows us exactly what he’s talking about. “When I’m in Chicago, I’m like, ‘Let me produce the Chicago stuff,’ ’cause I’m in that vibe. But when I’m in Ghana, it’s like, ‘Yo, I gotta produce some Afrobeats, Afro-house-type stuff, ’cause I’m in Ghana!...
Jacobson used the sauce, together with lime juice and olive oil, to dress a simple salad of celery and chrysanthemum. For extra brightness and spice, he also added some lemon kosho (like yuzu kosho but with different fruit), which he made by fermenting lemon rind and jalapeño with salt for about two weeks. Finally, he microplaned a little bit of dried scallop over the top of the salad. “Kind of like scallop two ways, but not enough to really say anything stupid like that,” he says....
As a genre designation, “folk music” can mean a wide variety of things, including early rural Americana, politicized revival strumming, and weird psychedelia. Alexandra Drewchin, who makes music as Eartheater, doesn’t really fit in any of those categories. Instead she approaches folk as chthonic, atavistic druid witchery, making gentle music for sacrificing goats—complete with buzzing electronic flourishes that crawl across the steaming flesh. To those familiar with Eartheater’s rituals, the new album Phoenix: Flames Are Dew Upon My Skin (PAN) won’t appear to break new sonic ground, though Drewchin shifts her focus a bit from electronic to acoustic sounds—for instance, she commissioned Spain’s Ensemble de Cámara to provide chamber music backing....
Last year Chicago quartet Third Coast Percussion won their first Grammy: Best Chamber Music/Small Ensemble Performance, for a 2016 album of music by minimalist icon Steve Reich. Reich’s distinctively pulsing music has been part of Third Coast’s repertoire since the ensemble’s founding in 2005, and recently they’ve been invited to perform his work by prestigious institutions such as Columbia University and the Cleveland Museum of Art. For their next season, beginning this fall, TCP will take several programs on the road, including a selection of music by another minimalist icon, Philip Glass—he’s even writing a piece for the group, his first ever for a percussion ensemble....
Brendan doesn’t know about the swords yet. They’re still in his future, buried under mothballed Sansabelts, wigs, and a stack of vinyl thick with Motown 45s. But even so, a giddiness flares within him as he sweeps the kickstand of his bike and pedals into the heatless midday sun: today is overripe with possibilities, a pinata of a Saturday ready to break open and yield its treasures. The boys cut into an alley, one of many they’ve trawled scavenging for things to fix, bust, or play with....
I’m an unapologetic rail fanboy for the Metra Electric District line and the wonderfully diverse communities it serves throughout the south side and its outlying suburban communities. With the $10 weekend pass in hand, you can travel through the south side and suburbs and northwest Indiana: to a bird sanctuary, an early burger palace, a town that a railroad car manufacturer built, and a brewery that pays homage to the late Chicago artist Ed Paschke....
In December Gossip Wolf caught up with local guitarist and soul singer Isaiah Sharkey, who mentioned he was working on Love Is the Key (The Cancerian Theme), which “reflects funk, jazz, classic R&B, hip-hop, and other genres that’ve influenced me throughout my journey.” The album dropped Friday, June 21, and Sharkey wasn’t exaggerating about its kaleidoscopic sound! This wolf especially digs the string-laden “Love Is the Key,” which recalls early-70s Curtis Mayfield, and the wah-wah pyrotechnics of “Amen....
