Gossip Wolf doesn’t like to speculate about which band breakups will stick (it’s no fun to be wrong), but when local indie-pop goofballs Baby Teeth announced their final show in 2012, it seemed unlikely that Chicago had heard the last from them. In the years that followed, singer-songwriter Abraham Levitan, front man of the trio, […]
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Angela James’s big voice fills her new album with wide-screen melancholy
Gossip Wolf doesn’t parent any wee pups that need nighttime lullabies, but the gentle hush of the children’s music on Angela James’s 2019 album, Quiet Nights, is enrapturing no matter your age. On Friday, April 22, the local singer-songwriter releases her fourth LP, Now That I Have You, where she returns to making outstanding music […]
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Experimental Sound Studio unveils an archive devoted to beloved saxophonist Fred Anderson
On March 22, 2022—what would’ve been Fred Anderson’s 93rd birthday—Experimental Sound Studio and its Creative Audio Archive announced the acquisition of a collection devoted to the beloved Chicago saxophonist, venue owner, scene anchor, and mentor. The CAA describes itself as “formed for the historical preservation of recordings, print, and visual ephemera related to avant-garde and […]
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Half-Ukrainian musical jack-of-all-trades Pasha Pear drops a hallucinatory new dance single
Born to a Ukrainian mother and a Russian-Armenian father, Chicago-based musician Pasha Petrosyan grew up living in Moscow during the school year and Kyiv every summer, till his family moved to the suburbs of Chicago when he was 11. Since moving into the city in 2013, Petrosyan has become a jack-of-all-trades in its independent rock […]
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Venerable jazz guitarist George Freeman celebrates 95 years with a new compilation
Legendary Chicago jazz guitarist George Freeman has been honing his dynamic, explosive style since the 1940s, working with dozens of the genre’s hall of famers, including Charlie Parker, Richard “Groove” Holmes, Gene Ammons, Jimmy McGriff, Buddy Rich, Shirley Scott, and his brothers Von and Bruz Freeman. On Sunday, April 10, Freeman turns 95, and to mark […]
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Young indie rockers Friko celebrate a sophisticated new EP with a springtime show
Friko front man Niko Kapetan is a key player in Chicago’s young indie-rock underground. His band belongs to a tight-knit community that also includes like-minded acts Lifeguard, Post Office Winter, Dwaal Troupe, and Horsegirl—the connections among them are too numerous to list here, but to pick one example, Kapetan helped engineer and produce Horsegirl’s 2020 […]
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Psych-folk project the Singleman Affair debuts album number four at Constellation
Even before local singer-songwriter Dan Schneider released his first album as the Singleman Affair in 2006, his psych-folk solo project had become a fruitful nexus for collaboration. Schneider has not only brought together amazing musicians—including folks from Mucca Pazza, the Cairo Gang, Califone, and Fruit Bats—to perform and record with him, but he’s also regularly […]
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Chicago jangle-pop group CalicoLoco drop their sharpest single yet
Since 2019, local jangle-pop six-piece CalicoLoco have been dropping singles whose smart, rigorous songwriting sensibility reminds Gossip Wolf of 80s UK indie-pop masters such as Prefab Sprout and Aztec Camera. Last month, the band released their sharpest single yet, the emo-tinged, radio-ready “The Bad Hair Day”—and it has to be the catchiest jam about fringe […]
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Farewell to Mark ‘Marko’ Rahman of 90s Chicago hip-hop group East of the Rock
Mark “Marko” Rahman, aka Chicago rapper the Mad Thinker, died February 18 at age 54. Rahman came to prominence in the early 90s as part of East of the Rock; his childhood friend and EOTR bandmate the Flux says Rahman came up with the name—the group’s members lived east of Stony Island. Kool Keith was […]
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The Poison Arrows return from pandemic shutdown with their first album in five years
In March 2020, local rock trio the Poison Arrows had just finalized plans for a big year: they were set to release War Regards, their fourth full-length (and first since 2017), then head out for a lengthy tour. But as happened to so many musicians with the arrival of COVID-19, their entire album cycle got […]
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Garifuna singer Ifeanyi Elswith drops a powerful, poignant Valentine’s Day single
In summer 2020, local Garifuna musician Ifeanyi Elswith released the album Everything Festyle, which Gossip Wolf hailed as a “star-making turn” that feels like “an intimate conversation with the coolest girl on the block.” Needless to say, this wolf has been on the lookout for new tunes from this velvet-voiced singer ever since! Last month, […]
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Synth-pop songwriter Warm Human shines even on odds and ends
Gossip Wolf first took a shine to the synth-pop jams of Meredith Johnston, aka Warm Human, when she dropped her standout debut full-length, Ghastly, in 2019. Over the past few years, Johnston has proved impressively prolific, releasing a string of radio-worthy singles and album-length projects whose tone ping-pongs all over the place—she mixes up misty […]
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Antifolk band Boo Baby drop their long-in-the-works second album
Chicago antifolk unit Boo Baby have been hanging out on the edge of this wolf’s awareness for years, having opened for the likes of local indie darlings Whitney, K Records singer-songwriter Karl Blau, and Chicago-raised outsider artist David Liebe Hart. Boo Baby’s loose-knit indie folk provides a fitting backdrop for the earnest delivery and irreverent […]
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New-music feast the Frequency Festival returns after taking a COVID year
Former Reader staff writer Peter Margasak has been programming the Frequency Series at Constellation since 2013, bringing in artists from across the wide spectrum of experimental and new music for weekly showcases. Since 2016 Margasak has also booked the annual Frequency Festival, which skipped 2021 for obvious reasons; the festival will return for its sixth […]
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New-music combo Honestly Same debut their improvised meditations
Update Thu 1/20: The Honestly Same concert tonight has been canceled because one of the group’s members has been exposed to COVID. Gossip Wolf has yet to hear a note from Honestly Same, but the temptation is strong to refer to the five-piece improvising collective as a supergroup—kind of like Temple of the Dog for […]