Kolkata blackened death-metal band Heathen Beast are atheist, antifascist, and pointedly anonymous, and their self-released album The Revolution Will Not Be Televised but It Will Be Heard is 35 minutes of vitriol aimed at the anti-Muslim bigotry of India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, and the Indian government’s turn toward authoritarianism and hate. The song titles are direct, pithy, and profane: “Fuck Modi-Shah,” “Fuck Your Police Brutality,” “Fuck the Economy (Modi Already Has),” and “Fuck the B....

Chastity Bites Even though the Reader‘s Drew Hunt just put Re-Animator (1985) at the top of his list of Stuart Gordon movies, in my view he sells it—and Gordon—a little short. “In some circles, [Gordon’s] downright reviled,” notes Hunt, and reminds us that Dave Kehr wrote in these pages that Re-Animator was the “kind of flat-footed stuff that gives garbage a bad name.” No one recognizes the terrible danger but a plucky young reporter on the school paper....

Los Angeles garage-rock tape label Burger Records—which has showed some serious kindness to our fair city over the years, releasing music from the likes of White Mystery, the Cairo Gang, and the Yolks—is celebrating itself with the Burger Revolution, presenting 50 shows around the world on Sat 3/7. There will be plenty of rockin’ at clubs in Poland, New Zealand, Ireland, and even Carbondale, but Chicago won’t be left out—that night, Logan Square burger joint Parts and Labor hosts sets from White Mystery, the Yolks, the Lemons, and trashy power-pop group the Rubs....

This story was originally published in The Appeal. Typically, the city’s river bridges are only raised to allow high-masted boats to pass in and out of Lake Michigan. But that night, for apparently the first time since 1855, the bridges became weapons in Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s aggressive crowd-control arsenal, which also included strategic public transportation shutdowns and highway exit closures to prevent access to downtown. With scarcely a few minutes’ notice—in the form of cell phone emergency alerts—the city announced a 9 PM curfew while simultaneously making it nearly impossible for people who’d gathered in the Loop to leave....

In Little Shop of Horrors, most of New York’s skid row residents are just trying to survive. They dream of moving to the ‘burbs, owning a home, and finding love—elements of life that are less prioritized among members of a generation who are living with debilitating debt and wearing themselves out on side-hustles. The current Mercury Theater production, under the direction of L. Walter Stearns, hits the classic notes of rock, horror, and comedy—but in the age of movements like #MeToo, some of the plot elements feel a little off....

Mayor Rahm Emanuel and his allies on the City Council have effectively quashed a Chicago Housing Authority accountability ordinance meant to preserve the total number of public housing units in the city, grant the council some oversight of the agency, and affect future and ongoing public housing developments, including the redevelopment of the Lathrop Homes. After it was introduced, the bill languished until July 2015, when it was reintroduced by First Ward alderman Proco Joe Moreno....

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.

Mike Sula Mole de olla

Despite constant threats of cancellation throughout its run and airing on a network that no longer has a substantial comedy lineup, Parks and Recreation is able to do something that is unheard of for beloved comedies these days: end on its own terms. Some of the best moments have happened outside of the show’s little Hamlet, traveling in a recent episode to Beverly Hills for a “treat yo self” of epic proportions that involved fingernail lasik and elbow bedazzling....

Alexandra Victoria Bryant | Arthur Mitchell | ballet | Chicago Multi-Cultural Dance Center | CMDC | dance | Dance Theatre of Harlem | Dearborn Station | hip-hop | hiplet | Hiplet Ballerinas | Homer Hans Bryant | Jacob’s Pillow | Maria Tallchief | rap

Chicago four-piece Melkbelly are best known for playing what you might call noise pop. Though they employ guitarists with a knack for wiry, minor-key interplay, a drummer who pays homage to Brian Chippendale, and a singer who can flip the switch in an instant from sweet Kim Deal croons to blood-curdling screams, they also inject their songs with as much undeniable melody as harsh dissonance. On the brand-new Pith (Wax Nine), Melkbelly continue their growth in both directions....

Something about the cold, steel environs of Streeterville’s Loews Chicago Hotel makes the experience of entering its restaurant, Rural Society, a surprise to the senses. You particularly notice the aromas: campfire, leather, tobacco. And, of course, meat—this is the new Argentinian steak house from Jose Garces, the Chicago-raised chef who left to build an empire in Philadelphia and beyond. Counting a Philly taco truck, Rural Society is the 19th restaurant in his stable, and his second on the home front since Mercat a la Planxa, which opened in 2008....

You don’t go looking for a Mold-A-Rama. That’s not how it works. It’s true that a Google search will reveal all the locations of these 1960s-era souvenir machines, including at least 20 around Chicago. But ideally you stumble across one, glowing quietly in a vestibule or stairwell, with its translucent bubble dome waiting for you. Every Mold-A-Rama experience is slightly haunted by the ghosts of disappointments past and future: there’s always the chance that one’s exclusive product will emerge from the molds misshapen or headless, or that the injectors will malfunction and extrude molten sludge....

At around 4 PM yesterday, Reader staff writer Leor Galil informed the rest of the office that Pitchfork Music Festival was going to announce the first third of the lineup at 10:30 this morning. I had expected a whole production, because it’s Pitchfork after all. If it’s not the music authority, it’s at least the authority figure’s younger brother, Dustin, who went to Oberlin and has mutual friends with Rex Orange County....

South Korean producer Park Hye Jin makes evocative house music for late nights. On her new EP, How Can I (Ninja Tune), her vocal delivery and production are poised and searing, building on the template of her 2018 debut, If U Want It. On the EP’s first track, “Like This,” she accompanies a swell of synth pads and percussion with a repeated line about how she’s opening her eyes, as if she’s been in a hypnotic trance....

Spring! The season of buds and rebirth and free-floating optimism. It’s the perfect time for this piece of back-from-the-dead news: PerformInk is being resurrected. And it’ll all be free. Epperson’s new management and production company, Lotus Theatricals, worked out a licensing agreement with PerformInk‘s former owner, Carrie Kaufman. Now a public radio talk show host at KNPR in Las Vegas, Kaufman’s moved on. But she says she’s delighted that Epperson is bringing PerformInk back, and has “a lot of faith” in him....

On his fourth album, December’s War & Leisure (ByStorm/RCA), California pop auteur Miguel wants you to know that politics and the state of the world are front and center in his mind (hey, look, the word “war” is even in the title!). But Miguel’s best political statements are similar to any of the other messages in his sultry R&B songs, which can make rooms steam like a sauna—his astute, activist affirmations come forth easily and feel as unique to him as his right index finger....

Asking anyone for a thoughtful review of Kanye West’s Ye, which came out this morning, is like asking Kanye for the key that will fix all the damage the U.S. is doing to itself and the rest of the world. If you’ve somehow made it till this year still imagining Kanye as some sort of savior, he should’ve disabused you of that since April: despite the American right’s overt hostility to people of color, he’s put on a MAGA hat, cozied up to bigot in chief Trump, and come out as a fan of right-wing commentator Candace Owens....