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Helmed by charismatic vocalist and guitarist Ryanne van Dorst, Dool combine pop hooks with heady lyrics and complex songwriting that draws from the underbelly of metal, psych, doom, occult rock, and more. Formed in Rotterdam in 2015 by members of Dutch rock outfits Elle Bandita, the Devil’s Blood, and Gold, the band (whose name translates to “Wandering”) have yet to tour the States, but they made waves in the heavy-music world with their 2017 debut, Here Now, There Then....

On their self-titled debut full-length in 2018, Austin’s Exhalants sounded oddly like a Chicago band. Austin noise-rock has a very specific feel: whether we’re talking about the unhinged no wave of the Butthole Surfers, the loose-limbed pummeling of Cherubs, or the deadpan country-fried twang of Spray Paint, it always feels more slippery and acid-laced than similar music from other noise capitals. But Exhalants, with their aluminum-necked guitars and sturdy rhythms, came out of the gate with the wiry, relentless attack of Tar, the locked-in simplicity of Shellac, and moments of sad introspection a la Slint (surely an honorary Chicago band)....

Hogsalt Hospitality Dreamy pizza Brendan Sodikoff wasn’t happy about the Roxie’s by the Slice post published last week. He wasn’t peeved about the what I’d written. It was the photo I took. Here’s what he emailed me at 4:41 am the next day: People eat with their eyes. I would really appreciate it if the photos reflected the time and effort people put into their work. Good review/ bad review/ neutral review doesn’t matter....

I consider Happy Death Day to be a lesser Blumhouse production, but the teens and preadolescents at the screening I attended last weekend seemed to love it. I can understand why—for an audience that doesn’t remember Groundhog Day, the premise, which finds a college student reliving the same day over and over (and getting killed at the end of it), might seem inventive. Moreover, the film offers a vision of early adulthood that could seem appealing to kids, presenting college as a time for socializing, dating, and self-discovery....

If it’s true that wisdom comes from suffering, then Chicago theatergoers must have some of the wisest butts on earth. I’m not talking about devotees of the big commercial theaters in the Loop, where the seats boast such hedonistic excesses as back support and stuffing. I’m talking about those whose idea of an evening out involves finding some tiny, grimy neighborhood storefront (or church basement or bar back room) and wedging themselves into a cramped row to watch a couple hours of tense acting at close range....

There’s been a lot of freakishness forced down our throats by the idiocracy in recent times, but amid it all you may still remember this whopper: Albany Park, for example, and its neighboring north-side enclaves remain (for now) a safe place where the professional taquero can thrive in America. A case study: on a side street off one of the busier thoroughfares in this part of the city, there’s a family who each weekend set up a tent along the sidewalk, sheltering a table and chairs, coolers, cold drinks, a salsa bar, and a gas-powered comal on which the patriarch of the clan griddles piles of hissing carne asada, al pastor, cesina, and chorizo con papas....

When local folk-pop artist Jessica Risker interviewed Chicago singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Emily Jane Powers on her Music Therapy podcast in April 2020, Powers was halfway through recording an album. “I wanted to make a guitar-forward record,” Powers told Risker. “I wanted to let the guitar speak for me.” On the album in question, Isometry (which she self-released this past June), her guitars alternately howl and coo, sometimes snapping like gators fighting over a tantalizing fish....

On the eve of the first day of fall, prolific Chicago soul man Nate Barksdale self-released Summer Was Over Before It Started. The pandemic eliminated so much of what Chicagoans cherish about the city’s warmest months, but Barksdale’s supple blend of neosoul melody and hip-hop percussion, wrapped up in R&B smoothness, captures the wistfulness that I always feel at the end of summer—and that I feel with an extra twinge at the end of a summer I barely got to enjoy....

Few figures in jazz operate with as much refined comportment, melodic grace, and measured spontaneity as Denver cornetist Ron Miles. He’s quietly but forcefully risen in the global jazz scene due to his thoughtfulness, lyric grace, and communal spirit, which have attracted an ever-widening coterie of top-notch collaborators. Late last year he joined guitarist Mary Halvorson and Deerhoof drummer Greg Saunier for New American Songbooks Volume 1 (Sound American), where he applied his broad technique in surveying a mix of classic and new standard rep by the likes of Fiona Apple, Gary Peacock, and Duke Ellington....

In a year filled with debates about racism in law enforcement, attacks on women’s reproductive rights, and even fights over equal access to clean water, I’ve grown increasingly weary of election post-mortems that attribute Donald Trump’s victory to so-called “identity politics.” For example, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, unemployment remains twice as high for black people as it does for their white counterparts. The disproportionate rate of black unemployment has held true for decades, recession or not....

UPDATE Monday, July 8, 12:45 PM: Both concerts by Ready for the World have been canceled. Refunds available at point of purchase. Ready for the World’s single “Tonight” was all over the radio in 1984, but due to its lyrical content it unfortunately was not allowed at my summer camp: “Did he say ‘wet’?” a counselor shouted as she confiscated the taped-from-WBMX mixes I was blasting on my boom box in the cabin....

Chicagoans is a first-person account from off the beaten track, as told to Anne Ford. Some poet friends might stop in and do their work while I’m doing mine. And then around dinnertime, anytime between 6 and 8, I’ll start slowly shutting the lights off, and then I’ll head out for the evening. Heirloom Books 6239 N. Clark, 239-595-7426, facebook.com/ heirloombookschicago

Amor is a normal dude living his life in Stockholm—a big brother, a cousin, a friend, a man in love, a university graduate. Amor is a chemistry nerd who memorizes the periodic table by assigning each element to a person he knows (he’s ununtrium himself, “a temporary name for an unconfirmed synthetic element”). Amor is either a romantic or a stalker, probably both, creepily obsessed for 19 or 20 years with his childhood neighbor Valeria....

Jimmy Johnson‘s keening tenor voice and supple, emotionally intense guitar lines are considered something of a miracle among blues lovers these days, emanating as they do from a man born more than 90 years ago in Holly Springs, Mississippi. Johnson’s 60-plus-year career has taken him from hardscrabble urban jukes to nightclubs, concert halls, and festivals around the world, and his influences include gospel, doo-wop, and deep soul as well as country music, jazz, and of course the venerable Delta-Memphis-Chicago blues lineage....

Eirik Aspaas Dødheimsgard Dødheimsgard began as a relatively orthodox black-metal band—Fenriz from Darkthrone plays bass on their first full-length, 1995’s Kronet til Konge—but by the end of the 90s this Oslo collective had plunged into the avant-garde like truants into a flooded quarry, undergoing the kind of transformation more commonly associated with mystics returned from wandering in the desert or anchorites immured for years in cells so small they couldn’t lie down....

Rob Karlic The Arts of Life Band Kenny Rasmussen’s matinee library punk shows have been bringing consistently great free music to the south side this year, and this weekend he hosts his third installment of the series, this time up in Rogers Park. Started in January as a way for people to catch ambitious local music without being out at a bar all night, the series has already hosted some of Chicago’s most interesting bands, such as Radar Eyes, Running, and Ono....

Born and raised in Chicago during the 1980s, Honey Dijon (aka Honey Redmond) became entrenched in house music during its original boom before moving to New York City, where she became a familiar presence in the club scene during the halcyon, pre-Giuliani days of dance music. She’s a mainstay of both the high-fashion and the dance-music cognoscenti, working with Louis Vuitton just as easily as she’ll jump on Beats in Space, but she’s spent her whole DJ career building on populist tradition....

The Brehon Pub sits inconspicuously at the northeast corner of Wells and Superior. From the outside, its bold green signage, four-leaf clover decorations, and Gaelic logo make it hard to pin down as anything other than a traditional Irish pub. But from the inside its completely nontraditional roots are impossible to disguise. The Brehon has a history deeply tied to the corruption of Chicago: the establishment was formerly known as the Mirage Tavern....

The Minimal Beat began life as a music blog in 2011, and like many music blogs that came before it, it has branched out into other ventures, including a weekly radio show on Loyola’s WLUW. In 2014 it launched a label, TMB Limited, which boasts a small but varied catalog of releases, including slick contemporary yacht rock (Adam Ashbach’s “Street Lights” single), jangly garage-pop (Lucille Furs, who previously released a TMB Limited single as Shah Jahan), juiced-up electro-pop (Kaneholler), and far-out experimental recordings (Willis Earl Beal’s recent work under his own name and the pseudonym Nobody)....

On his 2016 EP Friends First, Chicago rapper-singer L.A. VanGogh drapes his silky voice over even his hardest bars, so that his rapping feels almost like sultry R&B. As part of the Private Stock collective, VanGogh benefits not just from its ace studios but also from its management team—when he dropped the Everything Is Subjective: Episode 1 EP in October, one of its singles topped Spotify’s “Fresh Finds” playlist. Playlists created by major streaming services have exploded in importance this year, sometimes rivaling Top 40 radio in influence: Spotify playlist Rap Caviar, for instance, has more than 7 million followers and a reputation for keeping up with what’s viral or about to blow up nationally....