Have you ever played Oscars Bingo? You know, where you and your friends write bingo boards filled with awards-season cliches and hyperspecific references to the year’s nominees in order to actually pay attention to a ceremony that’s so notoriously long the host typically makes fun of its torpid endlessness? I’ve found it’s a fun way […]
Author Archives: Leor Galil
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Former Oshwa bandleader Alicia Walter makes a grand entrance as a solo artist
In the 2010s, Alicia Walter led criminally underappreciated Chicago band Oshwa, who played dizzying, dramatic math-rock with the finesse of a tween Mensa member simultaneously solving three Rubik’s Cubes. Walter moved to New York in 2016, the same year Oshwa released their final album, I We You Me, but her Chicago connections remain strong: this […]
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Local folk act DPCD releases a ruminative, intimate new album
In October 2019, Gossip Wolf praised local folk project DPCD for crafting immaculate, autumnal songs “as potently specific as the crunch of fallen leaves underfoot.” It thus seems seasonally appropriate that DPCD will self-release its new album, It’s Hard for a Rich Man to Enter the Kingdom of God, on Friday, October 1, and that […]
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Sound artist and onetime Chicagoan Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe adds new layers to the Candyman story
Folklore can be the ultimate game of telephone. As a historical form of collective communication, it brings communities together while expressing what makes them unique, and the content of its stories changes as newer generations tell them from their own perspectives. Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe’s score for Nia DaCosta’s new film, Candyman, exemplifies how distortion—whether […]
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Chicago musical wonder Macie Stewart takes command of her path on Mouth Full of Glass
Macie Stewart has her hands in so many different musical projects it’s a wonder she finds the time to sleep. She coleads enchanting art-rock band Ohmme, of course, which she cofounded with Sima Cunningham in 2014, but aside from her best-known gig, Stewart plays violin in a duo with cellist Lia Kohl, makes up one-third […]
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Lykanthea’s Dawn Birds welcome the autumnal equinox with song
Update: Due to a stormy forecast for Tuesday morning, the performance of Lykanthea’s Dawn Birds has been rescheduled for Wednesday, September 22, at 6:30 AM. Lakshmi Ramgopal, who makes music as Lykanthea, moved to the east coast in 2016 (she’s an assistant professor of history at Columbia University in New York), but she still considers Chicago […]
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Half Gringa drops a new single and plays a pandemic-delayed album-release show
Gossip Wolf has been following the work of local singer-songwriter Isabel “Izzy” Olive, aka Half Gringa, since she was still calling her project Tin Silos in the mid-2010s. Since adopting the Half Gringa name, Olive has been on an incredible hot streak: her 2017 debut, Gruñona, earned a spot in the Reader’s sprawling list of […]
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On their debut album, Central Heat Exchange envision a new indie-rock utopia
Throughout the pandemic I’ve noticed an uptick in long-distance musical collaborations, and the new self-titled debut from dyed-in-the-wool indie rockers Central Heat Exchange (Sunroom/Citrus City/Birthday Cake) is among the best. Chicago provides an anchor for the four-piece group, since more of the members live here than anywhere else: brothers Jake and Paul Stolz of local […]
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A song for our second pandemic Rosh Hashanah
Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, begins this evening, and for the second year in a row I have to figure out plans that stay within my pandemic comfort zone. That means forgoing anything resembling a large celebratory dinner full of friends, their relatives, and strangers whose vaccination status is unknown to me. As I […]
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Pioneering footwork producer RP Boo bares his soul on Established!
Footwork music’s whimsical, tempestuous take on house wouldn’t exist without Chicago producer Kavain Space, better known as RP Boo. In the mid-90s, he drew from his experience DJing for House-O-Matics dancers to devise skittish, hyperactive tracks that proved too puzzling for Dance Mania, a staple label of the scene that provided a home for the […]
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Bandcamp Friday can help you say goodbye to summer
Bandcamp’s daylong inducement to music-shopping sprees, rebooted yet again last month, returns for its latest iteration on September 3. On the first Friday of the month for the rest of the year, the online music store will pass along its usual cut of sales to independent musicians and labels—a practice it began almost a year […]
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Blue Lick debut with an oblique and deadpan combo of modular synth and spoken word
Multi-instrumentalists Havadine Stone and Ben Baker Billington have played a handful of compelling local shows as the duo Blue Lick since 2017, but they haven’t released any recordings yet—probably because they both keep themselves busy. Stone has dropped solo cassettes on Reserve Matinee and American Dreams Records over the past few years, and Billington (who […]
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On their debut album, Chicago’s Tobacco City get to the roots of their wistful country
Chicago country five-piece Tobacco City formed to cover Neil Young songs for a Halloween show, but thankfully they’ve since developed their own sound. Like Young, they have a way with plaintive melodies, but their music is rooted in bluesy honky-tonk and earthy, wistful country, with supple, pop-driven harmony vocals. Tobacco City’s surefire rhythm section—drummer Josh […]
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The Chicago Children’s Choir drops a concept album inspired by the Odyssey
Since its founding in 1956, the Chicago Children’s Choir has grown into a cultural juggernaut and an essential ambassador of the city’s musical spirit. Nearly 5,000 kids ages eight to 18 participate in the nonprofit’s in-school and after-school educational programs, which prioritize racial diversity and reach students from low- to moderate-income homes via sliding-scale tuition […]
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Chicago’s Stuck find the optimism in punk’s vigor for Content That Makes You Feel Good
Chicago postpunk upstarts Stuck can make tension boil over slowly, and you can feel it all over their 2020 debut, Change Is Bad. In April 2021, they convened at Jamdek Studios to knock out a quick-and-dirty recording, intending its release to renew interest in the band as clubs, promoters, and artists prepared to re-emerge thanks […]