When you think of the blues, you probably think of guitars (acoustic and electric), piano, harmonica, maybe even the bass and drums in a full band. Saxophone, on the other hand, is much more closely associated with jazz and R&B. Sax players do exist in the blues, of course, but you usually see them only […]
Category: Music
Posted inMusic
Talking music and manifestation with JaefKae
I met Jalen Kobayashi in 2017 through Young Chicago Authors’ Louder Than a Bomb poetry festival, where for years we were on separate teams, expressing ourselves through spoken word and sometimes even competing against each other. We’ve since become close friends, connecting through our gifts with the pen and our shared passion for Black liberation. […]
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Stella Kola assembles top-shelf New England psych-folk artists on their debut album
When I heard about this new New England psych project, I wondered if the name “Stella Kola” referred to a solo artist, a duo, or a band—or possibly alluded to a soft drink. It turns out that it’s a little from column A and a little from column B. Stella Kola is the collaboration of […]
Posted inGossip Wolf
One of Chicago’s best singer-songwriters drops a new EP
Isabel “Izzy” Olive of Half Gringa is one of Chicago’s finest singer-songwriters and most dynamic performers, so it’s always a red-letter day when she drops new jams into the universe. Gossip Wolf is especially fond of the gently searing rocker “Miranda” and the outstanding ballad “Sevenwater,” the two singles Half Gringa released in 2021 and […]
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Veteran local percussionist Avreeayl Ra celebrates the release of a new documentary
Avreeayl Ra is quite literally a driving force in Chicago jazz. He’s an enduring member of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) who’s spent decades drumming for countless local and visiting eminences, including Ernest Dawkins, Ari Brown, Fred Anderson, and Nicole Mitchell. While he can be counted upon to bring emphatic, surging […]
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Percussionist Daniel Villarreal plays songs from the intersection of his many musical lives
Panama-born, Chicago-based drummer Daniel Villarreal is involved with myriad musical projects. He coleads the groups Dos Santos, Valebol, the Los Sundowns, and Ida y Vuelta; he’s collaborated extensively with grab-bag marching band Mucca Pazza, sibling duo Wild Belle, and soulful psych-pop singer Rudy De Anda; and he’s a familiar face on Pilsen’s DJ circuit. At […]
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Chicago’s Oozing Wound change pace with their first grunge record
Lots of bands emerged from the lockdown era writing material with a darker tone than their pre-pandemic work. Local thrashers Oozing Wound take that to a new level with their brand-new LP, We Cater to Cowards (Thrill Jockey). Granted, they’ve never been purveyors of positivity—their catalog includes song titled “Everyone I Hate Should Be Killed,” […]
Posted inChicagoans of Note
Dan O’Conor, the Great Lake Jumper
Dan O’Conor is best known as the Great Lake Jumper, but he’s also a Chicago-based artist and owns T-shirt company Dtox Designs. Raised in the north suburbs, O’Conor began going to concerts in the city in the early 80s, and his passion for live music led him to a career in the music and media […]
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Chicago rapper Mugen! the Human flirts with pop melody on For Her Consideration
Chicago rapper Mugen! the Human grew up in Prince George’s County, Maryland, but on the new “Wanted” he raps with the speed and rhythmic fluency of someone who spent his youth in Chatham watching footwork dancers face off at Battlegrounds. The track kicks off his new self-released EP, For Her Consideration, with a live-wire flow […]
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Jen B. Larson exalts our punk mothers in the new book Hit Girls
I first heard about Jen B. Larson when she played in Swimsuit Addition, whose scrappy, pulse-quickening punk combined doo-wop vocals and surf-rock scuzz. They released music through local DIY labels—Midwest Action, Tall Pat, Impossible Colors—or just put it out themselves. In short, Swimsuit Addition were exactly the kind of band the Reader‘s music writers like […]
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The Brokedowns make scruffy, silly punk that satisfies
Chicago punk four-piece the Brokedowns emerged from the same Elgin underground scene that gave us Ian’s Party, a homegrown humdinger of a music festival. That wintertime event hasn’t returned since the start of the pandemic, but at least we get a new LP from the Brokedowns, Maximum Khaki (Red Scare). When it comes to scruffy, […]
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Chicago artists converge to sound the alarm in the fight for reproductive rights
On June 24, the Supreme Court overturned the 1973 landmark decision Roe v. Wade, unceremoniously stripping away half of the population’s right to bodily autonomy and therefore full citizenship. While the ensuing backlash helped shape the outcome of the 2022 midterm elections, downgrading the “red wave” that political pundits and mainstream media had told us […]
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Kankakee band Doghead play posthardcore with plenty of bite
Kankakee band Doghead make clean, controlled emocore whose energy draws on a wide spectrum of heavy music, not just old hardcore—they owe more to recent artists (D.C. flower-power group Give, much of the roster of Chicago label New Morality Zine) than to the genre’s 1980s beginnings. The professional polish of their debut EP, last year’s […]
Posted inGossip Wolf
Drag City more than doubles the posthumous catalog of outsider punk J.T. IV
Hard as it might be to believe, it’s been 15 years since Gossip Wolf (and the rest of the world) finally got hip to local outsider punk J.T. IV, aka John Henry Timmis IV. In the 1980s, Timmis released a handful of impossible-to-find singles and a compilation LP in near-total obscurity, and he died at […]
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Alash bring traditional Tuvan throat singing to the Old Town School
Alash are a Tuvan trio of singers and multi-instrumentalists Bady-Dorzhu Ondar, Ayan-ool Sam, and Ayan Shirizhik. Founded in 2005, the group perform khoomei, also known as Tuvan throat singing, a traditional vocal style practiced in Tuva, Mongolia, and Siberia, in which singers manipulate their mouths and throats to layer overtones over a fundamental pitch, often […]