Welsh producer Kelly Lee Owens begins her sophomore album, Inner Song (Smalltown Supersound), with an instrumental cover of Radiohead’s “Arpeggi.” Her version is all about effervescent electronics, and it can evoke the feeling of being underwater—isolated from the rest of the world with only your thoughts. When Owens’s vocals arrive on the following track, “On,” it sounds like she’s surfaced to announce a hard truth she’s discovered: “Can only love as deeply as you see yourself, and you don’t see me....

Who do we blame? And what do we do now? That’s what’s so demoralizing about last week’s election—America spoke. And now we have the worst of all worlds: a frightening message of discontent, and a frightening new president to react to it. As far as I’m concerned, this generation can’t take over the world soon enough. I stood a watch over a “special weapons” hold with a loaded .45. Whatever horrors filled that hold, the president’s arsenal dwarfs them....

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.

All Creatures Here Below A desperate young couple at the end of their financial rope flee across country after the wife abducts an infant. Collin Schiffi directed. 91 min. Showing as part of the Midwest Independent Film Festival’s monthly event. Preceded by a reception and a panel at 6 PM. Tue 9/3, 7:30 PM. Landmark’s Century Centre NThe Case of Hana & Alice Celebrated Japanese director Shunji Iwai (Love Letter, New York, I Love You) turns to animation in this lilting, piquant 2015 prequel to his 2004 live-action high school rom-com Hana and Alice, opting for rotoscoping rather than the ubiquitous anime style of wide-eyed waifs that derives from manga....

The Reader’s archive is vast and varied, going back to 1971. Every day in Archive Dive, we’ll dig through and bring up some finds. Pick’s story was remarkably measured considering the subject matter. Then again, he didn’t need to resort to any high-flown rhetoric to convince his readers that what Jones believed was evil. Jones did that quite well enough himself. Most of their interviews took place over coffee and pie at a diner near Jones’s home on the southwest side, and he did not mince words about his hatred of blacks, Jews, gays, and Asians....

Most of the world was introduced to ASAP Ferg by his verse on “Kissin’ Pink,” off ASAP Rocky’s breakthrough 2011 mixtape, Live. Love. ASAP. It was clear that Ferg had something special right from the jump: in the hypnotic, psychedelic haze of the record, his stylish, smooth, soulful rap-singing stood out. Each member of the ASAP Mob collective has a larger-than-life persona, and though Rocky has since moved on to actual superstardom, Ferg’s five official releases have proved him to be the crew’s biggest talent....

“The worst day of my life happened this year,” says independent film programmer Kathleen Sachs. The program, titled “La Politique des Autres,” aims to give Chicagoans a taste of the wide breadth of artistic work Varda created throughout her life rather than focus on one specific theme. “You think of Agnès Varda as this woman going places that not a lot of filmmakers, much less female filmmakers, were going at that time,” Sachs says....

Here’s why this matters: More than 650,000 people are released from prisons every year, and more than half of them are re-convicted within three years, according to the study. But when the Northwestern team examined the actual performance of the hired ex-offenders, it found that they were no more likely than anyone else to engage in workplace misconduct. (The study doesn’t provide definitions for misconduct since the data, culled from employers, is coded by general descriptions of HR-tracked events in an employee’s history, such as misconduct, without specifics about what happened in each individual case....

“There’s no reason a mother should be burying her kid,” the mother of Marc Anthony Nevarez, who was killed by the police last October, shouted into the microphone. “Enough is enough! We need justice!” Her hands shook, her eyes glistened with tears. The anger and pain in her voice was palpable. She was still grieving. Surrounding the Logan Square monument, speakers including Únete La Villita organizer Karina Solano, police torture survivor Mark Clements, and the families of police shooting victims, blasted racist and violent tactics by the city’s cops and a lack of meaningful action by powerful local politicians, including Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle, who made an early appearance at the protest....

If you’ve ever wondered what Motown would sound like if it had been born not in Detroit but on the streets of Karachi or Kingston or in the surf dens of late-60s southern California, you might like Houston collective Khruangbin. On their new third album, Mordechai, bassist Laura Lee Ochoa, guitarist Mark Speer, and drummer DJ Johnson (their band name is the Thai word for airplane, which directly translates to “engine fly”) bank the soul-infused psychedelia and transnational rhythms of Khruangbin’s previous efforts in favor of an unrushed but risk-taking approach, which uses more of Ochoa’s powerfully reflective lyrics....

Bennet Perez Deradoorian I missed the solo performance Deradoorian (aka former Dirty Projectors member Angel Deradoorian) gave last summer at Constellation, but I’ve been waiting to hear more solo material from her ever since she dropped the superb Mind Raft EP (Lovepump United) six long years ago. She’s finally releasing The Expanding Flower Planet (Anticon), her first full-length, in August, and based on the couple spins I’ve given it, it sure seems worth the wait....

Gossip Wolf is pretty keen on local DIY label Grandpa Bay, which just reached a milestone on Friday with its 39th and 40th releases: Lemonade, by Evasive Backflip multi-­instrumentalist and vocalist Jamarcus, and Lately, You, by Chicago indie outfit This Is Lorelei. Both releases are available on cassette, and the cover art for each poses a different young man in the same coat and sunglasses, lying on his back with his eyes closed and surrounded by music gear and a giant clock....

Lucinda Williams writes raw, visceral songs filled with beaten-down people liberating themselves from bullies. “I changed the name of this town / So you can’t follow me down,” she sings on “Changed the Locks,” from her 1988 self-titled album. Her new record, Good Souls Better Angels, takes on similar demons, though its antagonists don’t just pick on individuals but seek out victims on a global scale. Williams snarls truth to power on “Man Without a Soul,” a protest song that recalls Phil Ochs: “All the money in the world will never fill that hole,” she sings to an unidentified man (she recently told NPR that she thinks of her target as Donald Trump, but he could just as easily be Mitch McConnell or anyone else who uses their power to abuse others)....

Welcome to the Reader‘s morning briefing for Monday, November 21, 2016. Rahm’s brother Ari Emanuel meets with Trump and Pence Ari Emanuel, co-CEO of talent agency WME-IMG and brother of Mayor Rahm Emanuel, met with President-elect Trump and Vice President-elect Pence at the Trump National Golf Course in Bedminster, New Jersey, Sunday. Emanuel, who inspired the infamous Ari Gold character in HBO’s Entourage, is reportedly not looking for a job in the Trump administration, but wants to offer Trump his opinions on the transition....

Ashlee Rezin/for Sun-Times Media Mayor Rahm Emanuel needs to play hardball with lenders. At the risk of alienating my many banker friends, I’d like to join Mayor Rahm’s fledgling crusade against the capitalist swine whose exorbitant interest rates are like a millstone around our fair city’s neck. Only one other city of more than 500,000 has achieved such a dubious distinction—and that would be Detroit. Moody’s issued its report a few days after the Illinois Supreme Court ruled against a state law intended to cut pensions....

Tomorrow night at 8 PM, Chicago Filmmakers will screen the 2010 documentary Mountains That Take Wing as part of their ongoing “Dyke Delicious” series. The film is subtitled “Angela Davis & Yuri Kochiyama: A Conversation on Life, Struggles, and Liberation,” which more or less sums up its content. Directors C.A. Griffith (who will take part in a Skype conversation with the audience before the film) and H.L.T. Quan assembled the movie from two encounters between Davis and Kochiyama—one shot in 1996, the other in 2008—in which the legendary activists reflected on their experiences and political beliefs....

Vibraphonist Mulatu Astatke has a seamless way of fusing the music of his native Ethiopia with jazz and Latin music (and you can hear a little bit of R&B in that mix too). On paper this esoteric brew might seem like an acquired taste, but in reality it’s just one worldly step away from Lonnie Liston Smith, Atlantic-era Les McCann, or any other 70s musician who tweaked jazz to follow popular tastes without watering down their sounds....

Rebecca Frass Infiniteus Rocks and Juice Inside the unassuming storefront housing Infiniteus Rocks and Juice (1644 W. North, 773-661-1418), a five-foot-tall slab of amethyst named Helena guards the entrance. The business, which opened last summer, embraces a philosophy that views organic juicing and minerals as powerful tools in helping humans become mindful of a collective consciousness also known as “infiniteus.”

Last year pianist Brad Mehldau dropped Blues and Ballads (Nonesuch), the first new album in four years from his long-running trio featuring bassist Larry Grenadier and drummer Jeff Ballard. In recent years his admirable artistic reach has resulted in electronically driven jazz-funk with drummer Mark Giuliani and thoughtful duets with expansive bluegrass mandolinist Chris Thile, on which he even sang a little (something I don’t need to hear again). For me, this trio remains his best vehicle, where his introspection and melodic grandeur achieve their most sublime platform....

Since they got their start in Philadelphia’s underground scene in the early 2000s, Los Angeles-based band Man Man have been an undeniably unique voice in off-the-wall rock ’n’ roll. Led by singer, songwriter, and pianist Ryan Kattner (aka Honus Honus), known for his idiosyncratic sing-scream vocal style, Man Man spent their first decade morphing from a group specializing in oddball Tom Waits-ian tunes with a vaudeville vibe into a decidedly polished pop ensemble with a broad approach....