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Of all the lessons Radiator Hospital founder and co-front man Sam Cook-Parrott took to heart from early 2000s pop-punk or the unclassifiable Jonathan Richman, it’s “do what comes naturally.” As the Michigan native told Better Yet podcast host Tim Crisp on a recent episode, “Anybody can make music, regardless of how their voice is, regardless of their skill level—so I’ve realized pretty early that my voice is probably an acquired taste or something, it’s kind of annoying....

On Saturday, June 16, at the Museum of Contemporary Art’s 21Minus event, 20-year-old North side poet and rapper Tati debuts her first performance-art piece, Luvpotion—the result of a year’s worth of emotional trauma, self-care, and spiritual growth. She’s been writing raps (and rapping for her friends) since elementary school, but her first public performance as a rapper was only about a year and a half ago—part a rapid transformation during which she’s brought several of her private artistic pursuits onto public stages....

If you’d seen any Pivot Gang rappers performing in the last nine months without knowing they belonged to the local hip-hop collective, you’d have soon caught on based on two phrases they pepper throughout their time onstage: “Pivot Gang” (obviously) and “Long live John Walt.” Walt, the Pivot cofounder and rapper-singer born Walter Long Jr. (he changed his stage name to Dinner With John in 2016) was stabbed to death on February 8....

As Manhattan is Woody Allen’s love letter to New York City, Easy appears to be writer-director Joe Swanberg’s own fawning missive to Chicago. A small part of the city, anyway. It’s telling that one of the most recurring motifs in Easy, aside from Swanberg’s trademark scenes of awkward sex, is the logo for Dark Matter Coffee. The brand’s emblem appears on paper cups that characters nonchalantly drink from and on stickers that hover conspicuously in the background of certain scenes....

The video for LaSalle Grandeur’s optimistic pop-rap single “Euphoria” shows the Chicago rapper gleefully traipsing through a huge empty field as a light breeze billows his unbuttoned shirt. “Euphoria” appears on Euphoric (Happily Depressed), an endearing EP that’s especially winning whenever Grandeur uses his exceptional grasp of melody to summon the blissful joy of that video; as if to underscore its celebratory nature, Grandeur dropped Euphoric on his 25th birthday. His cheerful hooks have a hard-to-pin-down, bittersweet subtext, as if tacitly acknowledging the emotional difficulties he had to overcome to find happiness....

This story was originally published by ProPublica Illinois. ProPublica Illinois is an independent, nonprofit newsroom that produces investigative journalism with moral force. Sign up for The ProPublica Illinois newsletter for weekly updates. Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot proposed Tuesday an end to the city’s punitive practice of suspending driver’s licenses over unpaid parking tickets and said she would support legislation to change state law, moves that are likely to bring relief to tens of thousands of mostly black, low-income motorists and lead to a reduction in bankruptcy filings here....

As we entered the upstairs theater at the Greenhouse Theater Center, a young man with a trim beard and large glasses that accentuated his deep-set eyes, greeted us. When my companion asked him if he was Mark, he said yes. “You know my name already, right?” she joked. “No,” he answered, “I haven’t turned it on yet.” Our greeter, of course, was Mark Toland and the “it” he was talking about was mentalism—the illusion of reading minds....

People always say to me: “Mike,” they say. They say “Mike, how do you maintain your waifish figure?” My answer is always the same: housing fistfuls of sugar-free gummy bears. Cherries jubilee at Mirabella. Only three restaurants I wrote about this year went out of business, which feels pretty good relative to previous bloodbaths: Pink Salt (when Fulton Galley went bust), Umacamon (which closed just two weeks after I wrote about it—that explains why they were so reluctant to work with a photographer), and WokNChop, which, on the bright side, begat Sheeba Mandi House....

Purists of Portuguese fado might think António Zambujo is something of a philistine for his penchant for teasing out commonalities between the lyric, sorrow-laden genre and sounds from around the globe—especially breezier forms from Brazil. Not only has he collaborated with Brazilian songwriters such as Rodrigo Maranhão, on his 2015 album Rua da Emenda (World Village) he covered a lovely tune by Uruguayan singer Jorge Drexler and gave Serge Gainsbourg’s “La Chanson de Prévert” a spry fado treatment....

Robinson Devor’s Pow Wow, which opens tonight at Facets for a weeklong run, is a compact and provocative documentary about Americans’ relationship to history. Running just 75 minutes, the film covers plenty of thematic ground, considering the legend of Chemehuevi-Paiute Indian “Willie Boy,” the transformation of California’s Coachella Valley into a suburban environment, the present-day experience of Khaweya Indians (who live on a reservation in the Valley), and the habits of well-to-do whites in the suburban community....

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. So OK, the paper was a fake, a gag gift for Howe, who was leaving Chicago for Detroit and who was considered essential to the whole operation. Obviously, the Reader somehow managed to go on. But it feels like that headline could have run at any time most of the current staff has worked here....

With films from more than a dozen countries screening at venues from Evanston to Pilsen, you wouldn’t be wrong to count “Ism, Ism, Ism: Experimental Cinema in Latin America” (“Ismo, Ismo, Ismo: Cine Experimental en América Latina”) among the most wide-ranging festivals of its kind to appear in Chicago in recent years. “In the end, we never really came up with a hard definition of what’s Latin American cinema,” said Jesse Lerner, who with Argentine filmmaker and critic Luciano Piazza curated the essays and images in the coffee-table-worthy print catalog for “Ism” ($45, University of California Press)....

Beginning with Rushmore (1998), the films of Wes Anderson have seemed to sit outside of time, combining elements of past and present culture to create environments that belong entirely to themselves. This started to change somewhat with Moonrise Kingdom (2012), which situated the action in the middle 1960s, but its vision of the past was too fanciful for the film to be regarded as a straight period piece. History played a more prominent role in The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014), as the movie commented obliquely on eastern European politics throughout the 20th century as well as the life and work of famed author Stefan Zweig....

Company’s coming, and the house is a mess. Thirtysomethings Mike and Deb have no matching patio furniture, and their collective greatest accomplishments are the deck Mike built in the yard and a single published short story, the meager fruit of Mike’s creative writing degree. Unable to cook and despairing of the central role a beanbag chair plays in their interior design concept, the hapless couple decides charring meat outdoors is the least humiliating way to entertain their friends....

Considering that director John Huston was related to three noted actors (his father, Walter Huston; his daughter, Angelica Huston; and his son Danny Huston) and acted in more than 50 films himself (including Chinatown and The Misfits), it’s no surprise that his films offer consistently strong performances. The streaming channel FilmStruck is currently featuring a selection from Huston’s nearly 50-year career, and we’ve picked five with some particularly fine acting....

In 2010, three years after the Reader had been sold by its original owners, two years after the next owner had declared bankruptcy, and one year since the paper had fallen into the hands of a hedge fund, our excellent editor, Alison True, was fired. Dorsch told a persuasive story, True says, but what grabbed them was “not that there’s necessarily human remains at that northwest side corner, but that the police didn’t want anyone to think there were—that they knew about the possibility, and were actively suppressing this information....

Marc Walker I’m not too sure what’s supposed to be happening in this Dengue Fever photo. It doesn’t look the guys even told front woman Chhom Nimol about their little tableau. Los Angeles-based six-piece Dengue Fever devote themselves to Cambodian pop of the 60s and 70s, which combines traditional singing with a playful riot of Western flavors, most prominently bluesy garage rock, organ-soaked psychedelia, and reverb-crazed surf music. It was nearly driven to extinction by the genocides of the Khmer Rouge, but it’s hardly been forgotten by Cambodians, for many of whom it represents a sunnier, more innocent time in the country’s history....

This review contains spoilers. As the film begins, Rey is disappointed to find that Master Luke Skywalker, the purported “last Jedi” in the galaxy, has no intention of leaving the island where he’s been hiding out for years. He refuses to join the fight against the First Order, the sinister regime that rose from the ashes of the original Empire, or to train her, insisting that the ways of the Jedi should die with him....

At the intersection of Ashland and Foster in Andersonville sits a striking art deco building spanning an entire city block. There’s no signage out front, save for “You are beautiful”—a recent public-art installation—spelled out on the marquee outside the main entrance. This building, once home to Trumbull Elementary School, was sold last September to Svigos Asset Management, a private developer, for $5.25 million, according to Chicago Public Schools. Trumbull was one of nearly 50 schools the district closed in 2013, and its sale price is the highest price the district has fetched for any of the shuttered buildings....