Posts

Ohio-bred singer-songwriter Jessica Lea Mayfield has made it hard to know just who she is musically. Over the course of four albums she’s reinvented her sound, stumbling between country, soul, hard rock, and boilerplate indie rock. Her diminutive voice—a small, fragile warble—has been the consistent element, but it exhibits a chameleonic effect that seems defined by the musical arrangements. Mayfield’s album Sorry Is Gone (ATO) doesn’t demonstrably alter that pattern, but it reveals a strong, compelling perspective....

The low rumble of the double bass slides up and down with the rise and fall of a tumult of waves to begin the piece. The dancers’ movements manifest a calm sea, storms, and the ebb and flow of the tide. Water’s qualities take on a form that parallels the evolution and modulation of human relationships—waves that are external as well as within oneself. King created and maintains an all-female-identifying dance company in part to address the privileges that male-presenting dancers are accorded in the dance world, due to their rarity relative to women....

T wo years ago a taqueria in Santa Ana, California, filed a trademark infringement lawsuit against KFC seeking damages from the death-peddling corporate protein merchant for using “Para chuparse los dedos” (“to suck the fingers”) as the Spanish-language analog to “finger-licking good.” Chef Montes de Oca, who’s mostly a one-woman operation, fries pica pollo to order every day she’s open, and marinates a batch for the next. But not everything on the menu hanging above the register is always available....

A Reader staffer shares three musical obsessions, then asks someone (who asks someone else) to take a turn. Hot Snakes, “Suicide Invoice” The Greatest Living Posthardcore Band played this cold knife of an earworm at Music Frozen Dancing. The next day, I learned that Jeff VanderMeer (of Annihilation fame) had used its lyrics as an epigram for his new novel, Dead Astronauts: “And when I dream / I keep my promises to you / I really do....

Three versions of lovers Daniel and Greg—in their 20s, 30s, and “50s and older”—occupy the stage in this original musical by Dennis Manning (songs) and Ronnie Larsen (book). The pair meet in college, maybe around 2000, a fact gleaned from tossed-in pop culture references: John Denver’s dead, Beyoncé is famous. Thus the oldest iteration of the couple, who’ve weathered 40-plus years, is living in the 2040s at the earliest, which here looks identical to the present day....

When chef Rick Bayless has a barbecue, he goes whole hog. Or rather, whole goat.

Frequent visitors to Rodrick Markus’s lair expect to encounter powerful aromas such as truffle, strawberry, or barrel-aged tea. No one expects it to smell like weed. But that was the unmistakable perfume I inhaled one recent afternoon as we sat at the table in his twilit warehouse-tasting-room/laboratory at Rare Tea Cellar in Ravenswood. Between us he’d lined up a half dozen glass bowls, each filled with a different premium tea blend—except for the one containing a pile of fat, green Oregon- and Vegas-grown Honolulu Haze nugs....

An essay posted the other day on the New Republic‘s website placed Antonin Scalia in not one pantheon but two. There’s the pantheon of Supreme Court justices such as Holmes and Cardozo, who “craft their words with brio, force, and wit.” Scalia’s “sneering tone” makes his dissents “hugely entertaining even where they are not rhetorically persuasive.” And there’s the literary pantheon. For Scalia possesses the “reactionary imagination” of a Yeats, Proust, Eliot, or Waugh....

Earlier this month, when the Chicago Public Schools inspector general issued a report that CPS CEO Forrest Claypool engaged in a “full-blown cover-up” of ethics violations and “repeatedly lied” to investigators, Mayor Rahm Emanuel tiptoed into the controversy. Rather than condemn his handpicked CEO, a longtime loyal factotum and friend, Emanuel said simply, “Forrest made a mistake,” and asked that no one make any snap judgments. Board of Education president Frank Clark immediately commended Claypool for “exemplary leadership” and said the board would review the report....

Longtime readers know Gossip Wolf rides hard for self-described “Marxist body horror act” Forced Into Femininity—aka the experimental solo project of former Coughs saxophonist Jill Flanagan. She says that on her new EP, I’m Making Progress, due October 7 via New York label Decoherence Records, she’s shifted away from “allegory and extended metaphor, instead addressing political concerns from the opposite perspective of punk—especially our own real positions as gatekeepers maintaining racism, classism, and sexism....

It’s a struggle to define the purpose of most music—the answer is perpetually changing, based on time, place, and innumerable other factors. But Los Angeles-based synthesist Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith seems to have homed in on something specific on her new album, The Mosaic of Transformation (Ghostly). The joyous, drifting melody of “Remembering,” the album’s second track, can be heard as an elemental distillation of contemporary synthesis. “Be kind to one another,” Smith sings, a reminder for the aberrant lives we’re all leading now; her sparkling composition evokes colors and mimics flutes, creating a sense of calm that’s too often hard to come by....

If you’re reading Book Swap—and you are—my bet is on your New Year’s resolution being to read more books. So in the first edition of Book Swap in 2019, I thought I’d share a glimpse of Nick Drnaso’s TBR pile and some of my own selections. Every Christmas my brother and I try to recommend presents to each other so we’re not passing the same gift cards back and forth. This year I asked him to buy me The Dinosaur Man by Susan Baur....

‘;’l;,’l,; Sun 10/15: Barrel of Monkeys, a group known for transforming children’s stories into sketch comedy, begins a run Sunday afternoons of their tentpole show That’s Weird, Grandma at the Neo-Futurarium (5153 N. Ashland). 2 PM, $15; $10 students, seniors, and veterans; $5 children 12 and under

For longer than I care to remember Little Caesars (whose headquarters are located in Detroit) was the default cheap pizza of choice among certain unseasoned members of my household. Whenever their chums arrived with little to no notice, this inexpensive affront to Sicilian pizza was a reliable source of feed that could keep the monsters appeased. Then, a little less than two years ago, an outpost of Jet’s Pizza—the other Detroit-based pizza chain—opened in the neighborhood and accord was reached....

Rachel Kimura conducted more than a few experiments during the first growing season on her 1/8-acre Hinata Farms. One was an Asian version of the Native American companion planting method known as the Three Sisters. Kimura, one of eight small commercial farmers operating on a largely empty lot on the site of the former Robert Taylor Homes, planted popcorn on the edge of her plot. The stalks served as trellises for purple and green long beans to climb as they fixed nitrogen in the soil, while kabocha squash sprawled on the grounds to shade out weeds....

Rapper, poet, and actor Mykele Deville will become the Hideout’s next program director in August! Deville says his fiancee (and Growing Concerns Poetry Collective bandmate) McKenzie Chinn recommended he apply for the job after the Hideout put out a call at the end of May, and he’ll replace experimental pop musician and Sooper Records co-owner Sen Morimoto in the position. “I love being able to be that person to help people get heard and get seen,” Deville says....

It also means lost business for notaries—charged with confirming your signature on official documents or ID cards, in order to prevent fraud— stuck in the labyrinth. Surprised to hear this, Grode followed up with a supervisor at the notary association, who thought the rejection was unfounded but advised her to submit a second renewal application in any case. Now Grode has to wait four to six weeks to see whether her application will be accepted by the state....

Drummer Gerald Cleaver has explored the edges of jazz in a career that’s already stretched over more than four decades. On last year’s What Is to Be Done (Clean Feed) he joined saxophonist Larry Ochs and Wilco guitarist Nels Cline for a set that swayed and jerked about in the space between free playing, ambience, and balladry. But his latest album, Signs (577 Records), is probably his most adventurous to date, as he abandons drums altogether and turns instead to electronic composition....

By now, the distinctive methods with which jazz drummer Makaya McCraven composes albums are well-known. Many of us learned about his prowess as a producer from 2015’s In the Moment, an expansive double LP on which McCraven spliced together parts from more than two dozen of his live sets to form a cohesive, free-flowing groove that lands somewhere between improvisation and composition—the tracks sound even more effortless and multicomponent than when they were performed live....

Black Diamond recorded their brand-new album, Chant (Shifting Paradigm), during a five-week residency at beloved Logan Square venue the Whistler. But rather than host a traditional release show, the two-tenor-saxophone quartet, co-led by Artie Black and Hunter Diamond, are taking part in a multidisciplinary event called Zoetic: A Celebration of Visual, Aural, and Botanic Art. Just as Chicago’s jazz circles constantly break down barriers between genres, Zoetic hopes to break down barriers between artistic communities; its organizers realize how easy it can be to stay within one art circle....