The hottest date I ever brought to Guthrie’s Tavern was my dad. It was the day before Christmas Eve and we decided to hit the bar prior to White Christmas at the Music Box. My dad insisted on playing Battleship and I snuck a look at his board every time he went to buy us drinks. I apologized when I won and he assured me he was already winning by spending time with me....
On their brand-new fourth full-length, High Anxiety (Thrill Jockey), Chicago’s Oozing Wound have finally reached peak ooze. Formed in October 2011 by three Chicago noise rockers with a taste for heavy metal, Oozing Wound have come to be loved for their salty lyrics as much as for their off-kilter take on breakneck thrash. Kicking off with a cheery little number titled “Surrounded by Fucking Idiots,” High Anxiety takes everything great about Oozing Wound and multiplies it by ten....
Even compared to twee icons such as Belle & Sebastian or Camera Obscura, Indian singer-songwriter Prateek Kuhad is very twee. His vocals are light, high, and breathy. His music is smooth, melodic folk-pop—think Donovan without the weirdness or the rock influences, or John Denver without the country twang. And his lyrics are steeped in sweet nostalgic indecision. On “Cold/Mess,” the title track of his 2018 EP on Artist Originals (AO), he warbles, “I wish I could leave you, my love / But my heart is a mess / The days they begin with your name and the nights end with your breath....
“Melodrama” has become something of a pejorative term for many of my colleagues, but I still see it as a neutral descriptor. The genre is associated with heightened emotions and blatant narrative contrivances; some viewers (and critics) scoff at these qualities, but I think they’re no more inherently silly than any of the tropes we associate with modern horror or action films. Moreover, I think they remain, when applied thoughtfully, useful tools for understanding the human condition....
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.
Several bands call themselves High Priest, but we’re here to talk about the homegrown Chicago four-piece, who debuted in 2016 with the five-song EP Consecration. Last spring, they put out a new four-track EP, Sanctum (Magnetic Eye), which draws from the heavy trends of the past three decades—though it feels timeless in its no-nonsense approach to heavy-riffing stoner rock, which they top with bursts of harmony vocals laden with a generous dose of grunge’s yearning heart....
There’s a joke among municipal government nerds that goes something like this: A guy’s running for treasurer and he goes to lunch with a bunch of business people who ask him all sorts of questions about how he’ll invest pension funds and manage the city’s cash flow. He says, “Wait a minute, I’m running for treasurer, not deputy treasurer!” Still, Belsky says there’s a benefit to the city when the treasurer takes a more public role, even if it’s mostly symbolic....
Leor Galil: Saturday was all about joy. The sight of RP Boo smiling as he busted out a fierce mix of footwork tracks while attendees on the ground danced hard enough to kick up dirt in the air; the reunited Digable Planets slipping into their classic 90s cuts like they’d just perfected them yesterday; a quasi-symphonic version of Circuit Des Yeux slowly building a melody that seemed to reach for the heavens....
In a Tribune article about the closing of Profiles Theatre in the wake of a Reader investigation, reporters Chris Jones and Nina Metz address the theater’s use of pseudonyms in previous theatrical productions. Jones and Metz write that Cox “openly acknowledges his use of pseudonyms”: Additional reporting by Jeff Nichols.
Two years ago, when Rick Bayless devoted the entire eighth season of his PBS series Mexico: One Plate at a Time to the syncretic food of Mexico’s Baja Peninsula, someone should’ve guessed that his long-gestating, closely guarded plan for Randolph Street—something he promised would be completely new to Chicago—would be somehow related. Fruits and vegetables sometimes feature prominently among this section of the menu. Avocado, coconut, hearts of palm, and pineapple all take center plate, the latter grilled and mounted atop dollops of goat cheese from Indiana’s Prairie Fruits Farm & Creamery, with a hazelnut-based salsa macha to approximate something like a 70s-era hors d’oeuvre as done south of the border....
Louder Than a Bomb changes lives. Just ask anyone who has participated in the annual five-week youth poetry festival, now in its 19th year. Breaking down walls and creating a community of poets continues to be a major goal of LTAB, according to Britteney Black Rose Kapri, who runs the LTAB slam poetry competitions: “We hope students, particularly students of marginalized communities, build community with students that they otherwise wouldn’t have access to, because they know their stories matter....
Neon shades of violet—not rainbows—radiate from Tarell Alvin McCraney and Tina Landau’s world-premiere docu-party celebrating the true story of queer activist Terence Alan Smith, aka drag queen Joan Jett Blakk. That choice of color in David Zinn and Heather Gilbert’s euphoric and chaotic scenic and lighting design feels like more than just a chic and clubby aesthetic choice: staged at a time when mainstream American culture is advancing the rights of some queer communities while regressing them for others, Landau’s production recalls, via loudspeakers and bold-type signage, real-life historical rallying cries for the margins of the margins....
It’s a dubious honorific, but the press release for Nick Hart’s metatheatrical, deadpan, quirktastic retelling of the Battle of the Alamo contains, without a doubt, the most eyebrow-raising disclaimer I think I’ve ever come across reviewing theater in Chicago: “We recommend you do not sit in the front row or on an aisle if you want to remain in the theater to observe the entire production.” Sure enough, between Moth-style personal essays about identity, inscrutable bits of Western-themed absurdism, and metaphors about barbecued milk, ensemble members playing key Texas Revolution figures hand randomly-selected audience members a can of Pabst Blue Ribbon and an egg (?...
Next month south-side rapper Lil Durk will release his debut studio album, Remember My Name. It’s been several years in the making: Durk signed to Def Jam in 2012 when drill burst out of Chicago’s underground, went on to ink a deal with French Montana’s Coke Boys in 2013, and dropped a few mixtapes while slowly working towards the eventual release of Remember My Name. As his appearance on last year’s XXL Freshman cover suggests, he’s a rapper on the rise, one whose nonmusical notoriety has also climbed....
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.
Minoru Tsuyuki The Silence In August 2014, Ghost front man Masaki Batoh declared the band defunct after a 30-year run. He also announced his next group, the Silence, which debuted live in Tokyo in late November—and which releases its first album, also called The Silence, next week on Drag City. On today’s 12 O’Clock Track, “Lemon Iro No Cannabis,” the ceremonial aspects of Ghost aren’t in evidence; unsurprisingly, neither are the outer-space streakings contributed by Kurihara....
Like many Americans, I was awestruck by images of the historic Belarusian protests against President Alexander Lukashenko (“Europe’s last dictator”) that exploded after the country’s August elections. But reports of police brutality from Belarus—and the growing chorus of international academics and reporters warning that Americans could soon find themselves in a similar spot—added sinister, unsettling overtones to those inspiring photos of mass rallies standing against corruption. In late August, Minsk postpunk trio Molchat Doma joined 23 other artists from various countries on the compilation For Belarus, a Bandcamp-only benefit for the Belarus Solidarity Foundation, and on their new third album, Monument, they maintain their indefatigable spirit, threading together influences from Russian rock and Western groups such as Joy Division and Depeche Mode....
The Noir City: Chicago film festival—which starts tonight, Friday, August 19, and continues through Thursday, August 25, at the Music Box—will feature new 35-millimeter prints of several rare and little-seen noir titles, including the Frank Sinatra musical Meet Danny Wilson (1952), the Tony Curtis boxing drama Flesh and Fury (1952), and Humphrey Bogart’s final film, The Harder They Fall (1956). As a writer and film historian, Rode has authored two books: Charles McGraw: Biography of a Film Noir Tough Guy, published in 2008, and Sit on the Camera and Fight Like a Tiger: The Life and Times of Michael Curtiz, which is set for publication in 2017....
Within a block of Homan Square Park, Google Maps becomes unnecessary: all you need to do to find Project sWish is follow the small herds of sweaty-shirted teenagers in gym shorts and stuffing their faces with Beggars pizza, forming a spotty trail to the gymnasium inside the field house. Barely a block southeast of the park, on the corner of Homan and Fillmore, sits the infamous CPD evidence and interrogation facility that made headlines around the world after the Guardian reported it was being used by the department to unlawfully detain, torture, and disappear more than 7,000 people....
