Chan Marshall, who’s performed as Cat Power since the mid-90s (she adopted it from the name of her first band), refreshes even the most weathered motifs with her smokestack voice. […]
Author Archives: Shannon Nico Shreibak
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Hana Vu carves new pop landscapes with Public Storage
Storage units, with their heavy padlocked doors and stockpiles of intimate possessions, are ripe for metaphors about emotional compartmentalization. On her debut album, Public Storage, Los Angeles guitarist and songwriter […]
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Desert Liminal make art for artifice with Glass Fate
The lead single from Desert Liminal’s latest album bursts with a gut punch of a line: “I don’t need no southbound highway sign to tell me hell is real.” Glass […]
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Edgar Miller’s handmade homes have become wellsprings of inspiration for local artists
Like a scarlet pane of firelight shining from a brick-and-mortar facade, a red door on the 1700 block of North Wells announces the presence of a little piece of magic […]
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Mia Joy dives diary-deep on her debut album, Spirit Tamer
Update: This concert has been postponed to a yet-to-be-determined date. If ever an artist were predestined to create deep-seated dream-folk songs, it might be Mia Rocha, who performs as Mia […]
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Lala Lala questions identity and isolation with I Want the Door to Open
Lala Lala’s ebullient new fourth album, I Want the Door to Open, feels like a musical antithesis of the isolation and insularity of the past 18 months. The project of […]
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The Body and Big|Brave draw on the Band and Appalachia for Leaving None but Small Birds
The Body and Big|Brave are both known for their takes on pulverizing, minimalist postmetal, but their new collaborative album, Leaving None but Small Birds (Thrill Jockey), gazes at the infinite […]
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Shannon & the Clams contend with love, loss, and peeping toms on Year of the Spider
Shannon & the Clams’ new sixth album, Year of the Spider, is a welcome anomaly in this wretched second pandemic summer. The band completed the record in early 2020, just […]
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King Woman retell personal and Biblical horrors with Celestial Blues
When you can’t outrun your past, one option is to face it with your own poetics. That’s the approach King Woman front woman Kris Esfandiari takes when confronting the Biblical […]
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Chicago’s Devin Shaffer channels idiosyncrasies into soundscapes on In My Dreams I’m There
Devin Shaffer spent her formative years searching for a sense of belonging as a performer—whether on a stage or in Chicago’s musical zeitgeist. In 2012 she found that elusive sense […]
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Lucy Dacus reflects on her coming-of-age with the new Home Video
The moment you start reflecting on a time that’s past, it’s no longer something you’re living—it becomes something you’ve lived. Lucy Dacus documents and interrogates her own coming-of-age on her […]
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On Interior Terror, Chicago industrial duo Hide find everyday horrors in the corporeal and immaterial
The term “minimalism” often conjures up white walls and bright lights—a defiant barrenness in a world steeped in chaos—but Chicago-based industrial duo Hide take their stark sounds to a far […]
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After a 16-year wait, Bonnie “Prince” Billy and Matt Sweeney resurface as Superwolves
When wolves form a pack, they form bonds that last a lifetime. A similar feeling of familiarity and connection suffuses the duo project of Will Oldham (aka Bonnie “Prince” Billy) […]
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Nick Cave and Warren Ellis’s new Carnage soundtracks a “communal catastrophe”
In 2018 Nick Cave opened a new portal into his world with a question-and-answer newsletter titled the Red Hand Files. As queries from fans flooded in, Cave dutifully replied with […]
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Mogwai celebrate 25 years of postrock exploration with As the Love Continues
Mogwai have never presented themselves as a sentimental band, but the (mostly) instrumental Scottish postrock group are leaning into nostalgia to commemorate their 25th year: they’re releasing their tenth studio […]