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When Heather McEntire’s longtime collaborator in Mount Moriah, Jenks Miller, became busy with the demands of parenthood, she found herself piled up with songs without an outlet to release them. Spurred on by her friend Kathleen Hanna of Bikini Kill, the songwriter decided to step out on her own. The music on her debut solo album, Lionheart (Merge), pushes toward a more traditional vision of folk rock than Mount Moriah. It luxuriates in the confessional mode of a singer-songwriter, with gorgeous arrangements including passages of aching pedal-steel caresses from Allyn Love; honeyed harmony singing from Angel Olsen (with whom she’s been touring as a keyboardist), Tift Merritt, and Amy Ray; and lilting melodies shaped by guitarist William Tyler....

Gossip Wolf first caught Hogg in a smoke machine-filled DIY space in 2015, and to this day the proto-industrial duo have maintained a prodigious talent for instantly turning any venue into a murky catacomb, ripe for their dark rituals. Talk about bringing serious atmosphere! On Friday, May 11, Hogg drop their new album, Self-Extinguishing Emission, via Alex Barnett’s label Scrapes Recordings. It’s a banger—”Confidence,” the first song available to stream, blends stark spoken and sung melodies and rudimentary, thudding percussion into a tense, crawling manifesto....

UPDATE Thursday, March 12: this event has been canceled. Refunds available at point of purchase. Gómez, who says he has read the book around 18 or 20 times, wanted to embody the world that Sánchez created and include all of the central themes that make the protagonist’s journey so challenging. This is especially important because although not everyone’s upbringing was the same as Julia’s, a lot of the struggles she faces ring true for many....

The Era footwork crew are no stranger to art galleries: they’ve worked with High Concept Labs in Pilsen as part of a 2014 residency and in 2016 curated a photography show at Columbia College’s Hokin Gallery. But last Saturday’s “Prime Time: F00TW3RK” event at the Museum of Contemporary Art was different. It was their first full-scale museum takeover. Rather than highlighting the exhibit itself, the event proved thematically relevant in a more indirect manner: the presence of technology in relation to footwork was made evident all night by the ubiquity of phones....

MPAACT’s latest world premiere, The Master Comic, dives headfirst into controversial waters by following the downfall of a fictional world-famous comedian. Mr. Wolfe, a thinly veiled portrayal of Bill Cosby (played by a boisterous and ribald cigar-munching, sweater-vest-wearing Donn Carl Harper) had everything: an enviable career, an adoring wife, dear friends, and a talented protege. When a viral video surfaces casting a harsh light onto his sexual exploits—consensual and otherwise—the audience is privy to watching his downfall from the inside....

Sue Ogrocki/AP OU students rally outside the Sigma Alpha Epsilon house I’ll be contradicted here. I probably should be contradicted here. The odd thing is that despite the song sung on the bus, the OU chapter of SAE had already been integrated. But then, any institution built on a steady procession of 19-year-olds isn’t going to have much in the way of institutional memory. It’ll be a lot giddier than wise....

Earlier this week, for the first time in a long time, I found myself downtown with time to kill. I’d inched down the expressway in my air-conditioningless hooptie, believing easy pandemic parking was still a thing. So by the time I squeezed into a space six blocks from my destination, I was hot and bothered and in desperate need of an eye-opener. So I did another thing I hadn’t done in a long time....

Seijun Suzuki knew how to work fast and cheap. As a contract director for Japan’s Nikkatsu studio in the 1950s and ’60s, Suzuki cranked out yakuza thrillers, juvenile-delinquent melodramas, pop musicals, and other lowbrow entertainments at the rate of four, five, even six movies a year. Like fellow low-budget auteurs Mario Bava and Edgar G. Ulmer, he fought an endless creative battle against the formulaic scripts he was handed, and over the years a growing surrealistic bent began to alienate him from his bosses at Nikkatsu....

Gery Chico Selling point: It’s his second time running for mayor and it’s still unclear. Even more bonkers: Wants to combine CPS with City Colleges of Chicago. And a second come-again: That big campaign contribution from Trump bud Kanye West. Jerry Joyce Selling points: Biggest donor is his wife, a Filipina-American physician at UChicago Medicine whom he met when they were at Yale. Come again? So where exactly does she stand on, e....

This story was originally published by City Bureau on November 20, 2020. It was a deflating defeat to the organizers who have been pushing for decades to shift the tax system in the state away from the existing flat tax, which they criticized for being regressive and putting too much burden on low-income earners. Though the amendment lacked support statewide, it received the support of 71 percent of voters in Chicago....

Chicago postpunks Ganser are working on a three-song cassette called Audrey—last month Gossip Wolf reported on the band’s Kickstarter campaign for the tape and its supporting tour, which closes on Valentine’s Day (and doubles as a preorder sale). Today Ganser released the title track of Audrey, where funereal synths waft over frigid, spindly guitars that stab out a forlorn melody. The yearning vocals sometimes descend almost into a mumble, and the more difficult they are to understand, the more mysterious and alluring they seem....

Kevin Warwick, Reader associate editor Sly Stone, High on You Beginning with the vibrant patchwork jeans that the shirtless, levitating Sly wears on the cover, this jam of a solo album—missing any call-out to the Family Stone—is yet another lesson in tweaked-out funk from one of its pioneers. Sly’s silky vocals (and the funky gospel choir backing him) groove along in a strut that oozes absolute cool, but it’s all about the bass, man: the walking slap bass of the title track, the distorted bass twang of “Who Do You Love?...

Flipping through television channels. Flicking through radio stations. They’re quotidian actions—until they’re not. When you’ve lived through a year like 2020, every frequency delivers the same nightmare from a different angle. On Now (International Anthem), Chicago sound collagist Damon Locks and his Black Monument Ensemble confidently grasp the tuning dial of history. Like 2019’s Where Future Unfolds, the new album blends Locks’s archival samples with the talents of a generous and bountiful collective of musicians and singers—and it somehow packs an even greater wallop than its predecessor....

Elsa Garrison/Getty Images “Hi, I’m Jay Z. You may remember from such albums as . . .” Reader staffers share stories that fascinate, alarm, amuse, or inspire us. • About a land dispute in southwest Oregon that’s drawing comparisons to l’affaire de Cliven Bundy? (“Despite their best intentions, the allure of an armed conflict with federal agents has still proved irresistible to self-styled militia members who flocked to the area from across the country to stir up trouble....

What, in the age of #MeToo, would make it worthwhile to sit through three and a half hours of two scheming men’s attempts to get two young women to succumb to their slapstick advances? Especially when those men are their own boyfriends, masquerading as strangers to test their fidelity—and to win a bet? This production, originally directed by John Cox, moves the setting up from the 18th century to a seaside resort at the start of World War I, introducing a heavy, real-world backdrop to an otherwise broadly comic fantasy-farce....

By now the Chicago Bulls’ lineup changes for the forthcoming season are old news, but there’s no wrong time to pay tribute to the outgoing players. Tonight future New York Knicks center Joakim Noah is the subject of a free good-bye party at Slippery Slope that features an original art auction, a Joakim Noah photo booth, and DJ sets from a few local musicians—among them new age dude Joshua Patterson (aka the Druid Beat), garage-pop wizard Paul Cherry, and electronic producer David Beltran, aka Starfoxxx, who makes mural homages to local sports figures as Bae Cutler....

ARTIST: Jay Ryan SHOW: Guided by Voices at Bottom Lounge on Mon 12/31 MORE INFO: thebirdmachine.com

Globalization, defined by Merriam-Webster as “the integration of national economies through trade, investment, capital, flow, labor migration, and technology,” is a seismic force reshaping countries and their populations. Many regard this as a contemporary phenomenon stemming from advances in transportation and communications, but if you want to delve into the beginnings of globalization, look to the trans-Atlantic slave trade that from the early 1500s to the late 1800s linked Europe with Africa and the New World....

There were at least 1.3 billion reasons to oppose the Lincoln Yards TIF deal—until, under intense pressure from local residents, Sterling Bay scrapped plans to build a soccer stadium. I’ll get to that $1.3 billion, but first, to review . . . And now, I’ll reveal how much Rahm’s latest TIFs will cost you and how the mayor’s proposing to spend your property tax dollars. Don’t blame me—I’m only the messenger....

ARTIST: Dnl Hrs SHOW: Between Friends benefit with Slow Mass, C.H.E.W., and TALsounds at the Logan Boulevard Skate Park on Fri 8/2 MORE INFO: dnlhrsart.tumblr.com