On their debut album, All of Them, local pop ensemble Glad Rags explore how interpersonal transgressions can ripple through creative communities, and even as they grapple with anger and grief, they never lose the sense of joyful discovery that underground scenes can provide. Led by vocalist-keyboardist and Sex No Babies member Mable Gladly, Glad Rags […]
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Bitchin Bajas travel the spaceways on their new album
They haven’t released a full-length of new material since 2017, but local drone specialists Bitchin Bajas seem to be having a renaissance. In July, the trio of Cooper Crain, Daniel Quinlivan, and Rob Frye played a blockbuster show at Constellation full of lustrous, slowly unfurling long-form songs that will appear on an album due next […]
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Yellow Eyes make a rare live appearance with their borderline accessible black metal
Black metal can be a funny genre, in that the better you get at making it, the more likely you are to be put on blast for being inauthentic. Over the genre’s three-decade history, the standard for what is “trve” or “kvlt” has become very strict—if you’re not anonymously releasing completely blown-out, inaccessible cassettes with […]
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Queer country pioneers Lavender Country return to the Hideout
I’m wary about jumping on the “nature is healing” train, but I have to admit that when I heard the news that groundbreaking gay country band Lavender Country were returning to the Hideout stage for the Cosmic Country Showcase, it felt like a pretty big ray of hope—every time they’ve graced this festive event with […]
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The most disturbing punk song that ever came from Waukegan
I can’t tell you precisely how I came across URBN DK, but I’ve thought of them often since I first felt the creeping dread of “World Gone Crazy,” off the Chicagoland punk band’s 1982 self-titled seven-inch. URBN DK were hardly the only local punks to saturate their music with depravity—Deerfield’s the Mentally Ill, for instance, […]
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Hyperpop phenoms Glaive and ericdoa unite on then i’ll be happy
Few artists in the overlapping and extremely online worlds of hyperpop and digicore have achieved the crossover visibility of teenage phenoms Glaive and ericdoa—the New Yorker published an essay about Glaive before he’d even played his first show, which was this past August at the Lyrical Lemonade Summer Smash. Both artists are still teenagers, and […]
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Bloodshot Records is bought by Exceleration Music
Update 6:22 PM Fri 10/22: This story has been changed to add a comment from Bloodshot Records cofounder Nan Warshaw. Bloodshot Records, the Chicago record label that launched the alternative-country genre in the mid-1990s, was purchased this week by a newly formed global investment group that plans to manage and monetize its back catalog. Exceleration […]
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The Opals deserve a place among Chicago’s greatest girl groups
As I’ve complained here before, women often get left out of music history—a problem that seems especially bad in soul music. I’ll never understand why Loleatta Holloway, Holle Thee Maxwell, and the Fascinations aren’t as widely known as the Dells, Major Lance, and Curtis Mayfield. All-woman Chicago group the Opals had ties to all those […]
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Elastic Arts hosts the fourth annual Afrofuturist Weekend
The fourth annual Afrofuturist Weekend comes to Elastic Arts from Friday, October 22, through Sunday, October 24, with evening programs on Friday and Saturday and daytime programs on Saturday and Sunday. The festival’s organizers describe it as a “celebration of Black artists making forward-looking work that envisions radically positive futures for Black people,” and in […]
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Orquesta Akokán combine a brassy big-band feel with the dynamics of Cuban music
Orquesta Akokán, a big band with members split between New York and Cuba, are a musical catchall for culture, history, and genre. These players have worked with Chucho Valdés, Irakere, Los Van Van, and other historically hefty groups, and in Akokán they traffic in vivid music that draws on a brassy combination of mambo, jazz, […]
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Finding solace in Jenny Moore’s Mystic Business
I’ve been hyperaware of my body lately, which I realize sounds insane. How could I possibly not be aware of it? I’m living in it! And I would answer: Have you ever found a tick on the back of your neck? How long has he been there? How much of your blood has he removed? […]
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Chicago trio Gosh Diggity sharpen their lo-fi pop sound on Runaway Rocketboy
Chicago trio Gosh Diggity have drawn a bead on the chemistry that gave a hard-to-pin-down magnetism to the solo lo-fi electronics projects—among them Say Hi and Casiotone for the Painfully Alone—that occupied a special place in 2000s indie pop. Gosh Diggity’s early EPs, 2019’s banana brains and 2020’s Bedtime for Bonzos, radiate skinned-knee shambolic glee […]
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R&B newcomer Jaas finds strength in solitude on her debut EP
In the first scene from Jaas’s new video, “Why,” the Chicago-based R&B singer kneels in the dark, one arm held over her head by a rope tied around her wrist. As the camera zooms in on her, the shot cuts to Jaas paddling a canoe on bright, quiet waters. The video switches between these two […]
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Oakland’s Kowloon Walled City return after six years with a noise-rock masterpiece
Oakland’s Kowloon Walled City formed in 2007 as an intense postmetal outfit who tipped their hat to fellow Oaklanders Neurosis, who’d helped pioneer the fusion of hardcore and sludge. During the 14 years since, the band have slowly pulled back on the aggression and fury, settling into creeping, deliberately paced noise rock. Kowloon Walled City’s […]
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Austin doom outfit Monte Luna takes their dazed and heavy doom on the road
In 2016, Austin doom unit Monte Luna dropped their debut demo—a self-titled release with just one self-titled track more than 20 minutes long—and just a few months later followed it with their powerful first EP, The Hound. These served as appetizers for their self-titled 2017 full-length debut, which exuded confidence and showcased a trippy heaviness […]