Posts

Mark E. Smith, the cantankerous, lacerating wit who was the only constant member of influential British rock band the Fall throughout its more than four decades of activity, died at his home this morning at age 60 following prolonged health problems. In August, the group canceled what would have been its first U.S. tour in a decade. No details about the cause of Smith’s death have been made public, but the group’s manager, Pamela Vander, has confirmed his passing....

· Weather: Rain and snow—snow?!?—possible It will be a dreary Thursday, with a high of 52 and a low of 31. There will be rain in the morning, and as the day goes on it will get colder, with a very small amount of snow possible. [AccuWeather] · Alternate history: If Carmelo Anthony had chosen the Bulls New York Knicks star Carmelo Anthony came very close to signing with the Bulls as a free agent in 2014....

There are several trade programs available for adults, but JARC goes beyond basic skills training. Their programs provide not only free job training, but also free financial coaching to assist clients in their financial success. With a career in manufacturing, one can plan financial goals for the future. “We like to say that those who enter our doors here at JARC, either their life fell apart and they lost their job, or they lost their job and their life fell apart,” says Katie Gonzalez, Director of Development, Data & Communications....

In August, a couple days before Brooklyn indie-rock trio Peaer released their second album, A Healthy Earth (Tiny Engines), the Fader ran an interview with the band where drummer Jeremy Kinney sketched out their ambitions. “One of my goals in writing all of these songs was to achieve a level of scale,” he said. “To not just talk about interpersonal relationships, but also about the world at large at various levels: the government, the environment, or culture....

Before Ta-Nehisi Coates laid out “The Case for Reparations” in the Atlantic in 2014, Lorraine Hansberry’s 1959 classic A Raisin in the Sun clearly showed the effects of racism on Black Americans seeking better living conditions—a problem we’ve yet to fully address. The Younger family—so cramped for space in their roach-infested apartment that son Travis has to sleep on the living room couch—hopes to buy a better piece of the American pie, thanks to a life insurance payout from their late husband and father....

Watching director Jonathan Berry’s compelling, carefully shaded production of Simon Stephens’s Birdland, which charts the predictable dissolution of coddled, self-absorbed rock superstar Paul, is like driving to Milwaukee on surface streets. It takes twice as long as necessary to get somewhere you’ve known you’ll end up the entire way, yet the unfamiliar sights along the route make you wish highways had never been invented. Like fellow British writer Mike Leigh, Stephens privileges meticulously articulated anecdotes over eventful plotting....

T here are some people who find traveling for the purpose of visiting cemeteries ghoulish. These individuals, however, should realize that a century or so ago, perfectly normal people like them used to hang out in cemeteries. This was because there was a paucity of public parks, places where city folks could take a picnic and enjoy being someplace cool and green and quiet. They were untroubled by the fact that they were surrounded by dead people, so much so that they left their trash on the ground and tore up the lawns....

This Saturday, August 29, is Independent Bookstore Day and there’s not a better time for us to embrace small business, especially those that try to bring us entertainment, educate us, and make us better citizens. Lofty goals, ya know (but let me tell you that you can totally just go to places like my beloved Quimby’s and purchase Marcie and Peppermint Patty mini-comics if that’s your thing, and you’ll still be supporting small business)....

This week’s fantasy gig poster arises from the disappointments that many concertgoers are facing. Illustrator and designer Heather Anderson made this image in response to a show that was canceled out from under her. Not everybody can make a fantasy gig poster, of course, but anybody with a few bucks to spare can support the out-of-work staffers at Chicago’s music venues—here’s our list of fundraisers. And don’t forget record stores! The Reader has also published a list of local stores that will let you shop remotely....

A Reader staffer shares three musical obsessions, then asks someone (who asks someone else) to take a turn. Jeremy Enigk at Beat Kitchen on July 29 The Sunny Day Real Estate front man tours only sporadically, but I’ve managed to see him twice in two years. His unearthly voice has acquired darker hues as he’s aged, and he wears its new raspiness well. Enigk played three tracks from SDRE’s proggy 1998 album, How It Feels to Be Something On, which Sub Pop just reissued—it makes me wonder if SDRE is prepping for more reunion shows....

Few people have had as profound an impact on experimental techno as German producer Wolfgang Voigt. Since debuting as Mike Ink in 1991, he’s released hundreds of records under more than 30 names—Studio 1, Popacid, M:I:5, Sog, Wasserman—and in 1998 he cofounded the influential Kompakt label, whose operations also include a music shop and record distributor. The most important of Voigt’s many projects is undoubtedly Gas, whose lovely, unsettling ambient electronica he says was inspired by dropping LSD as a kid and walking through the dense woods in Königsforst park near his hometown of Cologne....

Guitarist Ripley Johnson (also of Wooden Shjips) and keyboardist Sanae Yamada have been churning out fuzzy psychedelic reverb and shimmer on Sacred Bones Records for close to a decade as Moon Duo. The San Francisco group’s 2011 debut, Mazes, is heavy, head-nodding stoner rock with more sheen than you’d expect from the genre. But on their new album, September’s Stars Are the Light, they take a delightful left turn toward the dance floor, finding the common ground between spacey psych and spacey disco....

Courtesy the artist Everyone in Norway looks like this on the weekends. Norwegian black-metal veterans Khold released their sixth full-length, Til Endes, on Peaceville Records in September. The album didn’t get a lot of love around here at the time, but its moment has finally arrived. I mean, if you’re looking for a belated excuse to write about a band called Khold, you can’t do better than this weather....

Courtesy of Vic Mensa’s Facebook Vic Mensa Coachella announced its lineup earlier today, and rapper Vic Mensa is among the local acts slated to play the California festival in April. It seems like a pretty good cause for celebrating, and the Save Money leader already has a venue to do it—Emporium in Wicker Park. Tomorrow night Mensa and local producer Smoko Ono will DJ at the arcade bar under the name “Groupie Love,” and the dance-floor magnificence of Mensa’s breakout 2014 single “Down on My Luck” (one of my favorite songs of 2014) is enough to convince me these guys can spin a set that’s worth trudging through negative temperatures to check out....

When I first saw the lineup for Porchlight Music Theatre‘s 2016 season, I thought: Wow! This might be our chance. For all these reasons, I was ecstatic to see Miranda’s story—our story—of gentrification, racism, and hope, told from our perspective on a Chicago musical theater stage. “American musicals, Chicago style,” as Porchlight’s motto goes, seemed like the opportunity so many of us had been waiting for. Speaking to American Theatre Magazine on the issue, Hudes made a similar argument: “Casting the roles appropriately is of fundamental importance,” she wrote....

Barrie Cole presents a series of overheard phone calls on the CTA that add up to a beautiful, polyphonous portrait of city life. Nine performers, sitting among the audience like fellow riders on a train, occasionally changing seats—prompted by familiar-sounding station arrival announcements—talk into their phones and inadvertently reveal more than they intend to a roomful of strangers. It’s a deceptively simple setup and, on the face of it, doesn’t offer much more than the vicarious thrill of hearing something one isn’t supposed to be privy to....

Mark Schafer Lena Dunham is Hannah Horvath—and the other way around. With its portrayals of obsessive-compulsive behaviors, blundering social skills, and cringe-worthy sexual encounters, Girls remains one of the most subversive shows to come out of the mainstream. Dunham, however, isn’t without an accomplished sense of irony. Earlier in the fourth season, Hannah’s fellow graduate students discuss her writing during a workshop, and point out how she routinely writes about a character that’s undistinguishable from herself....

The cover of Caterina Barbieri’s 2019 album Ecstatic Computation (Editions Mego) is composed of two eyes digitally layered over a photo of grayish fog. Its retrofuturistic aura is an apt representation of the Italian composer’s music and what she strives to accomplish through it. Drawing largely upon the works of German musicians such as Klaus Schulze and Tangerine Dream, Barbieri uses modular synthesizers to explore perception and memory. Her contemporary take on progressive electronic music sometimes resembles that of local ambient musician Steve Hauschildt....

Back in ye olde early aughts, “freak folk” ruled the land. Championed and perhaps encouraged by photogenic weirdo Devendra Banhart, artists influenced by elegiac or subliminally psychedelic folk acts from the 60s and 70s—Tyrannosaurus Rex, the Incredible String Band, Michael Hurley—started coming out of the woodwork. For a hot strange minute, indie record bins were dominated by worshipers of UK folk (Espers, Nick Castro & the Young Elders), delicate and idiosyncratic singers (Joanna Newsom, Scout Niblett), and sublimely earthy fingerpicking guitarists (Jack Rose, James Blackshaw)....