After Mayor Lori Lightfoot expanded the citywide curfew in response to a shooting, teenagers spoke about Chicago’s gun violence crisis and their relationship to the city.
Tag: Austin
Posted inMusic
Samantha Jordan, aka Austin-based rapper and activist FURY
Chicago native and Austin resident Samantha Jordan, 33, has been rapping as FURY since 2015, with a sound that emphasizes live-band instrumentation and politically conscious lyrics. Her community activism focuses on housing justice, and until recently she worked in rental assistance for Oak Park Regional Housing. In January 2022, her proposal for renovations to Columbus […]
Posted inBest of Chicago
Best new west-side arts space
To activist Glen Kehrein, it was appalling that Austin lacked a center for fine and performing arts to showcase the neighborhood’s homegrown talent. His dream was to convert the unused auditorium in the former Siena High School expansion—one of the city’s finest remaining examples of midcentury modern architecture—into a professionally equipped community arts center. Kehrein’s […]
Posted inMusic
Time to dissolve your brain with ridiculous noise rock
The new album from Austin “supergroup” USA/Mexico is the musical antidote to consciousness.
Posted inMusic
That first step’s a doozy on the gig poster of the week
This week’s featured gig poster was designed by singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Mobley for his upcoming online tour.
Posted inMusic
Exhalants transplant the sounds of New York and Chicago into their muscular Austin noise-rock
On their self-titled debut full-length in 2018, Austin’s Exhalants sounded oddly like a Chicago band. Austin noise-rock has a very specific feel: whether we’re talking about the unhinged no wave of the Butthole Surfers, the loose-limbed pummeling of Cherubs, or the deadpan country-fried twang of Spray Paint, it always feels more slippery and acid-laced than […]
Posted inColumns & Opinion
A challenging and memorable bike ride around Chicago’s exact city limits
Cycling, sightseeing, and snacking from Rogers Park to Edison Park, Mount Greenwood to Hegewisch
Posted inColumns & Opinion
The inequity buster
If Mayor Lightfoot and Sam Skinner want to help the west and south sides, they should look to the TIFs.
Posted inMusic
Khruangbin make sophisticated sounds from far-flung places on their dynamic third album
If you’ve ever wondered what Motown would sound like if it had been born not in Detroit but on the streets of Karachi or Kingston or in the surf dens of late-60s southern California, you might like Houston collective Khruangbin. On their new third album, Mordechai, bassist Laura Lee Ochoa, guitarist Mark Speer, and drummer […]
Posted inMusic
Black Pumas create the music of true soul mates
Update: To help slow the spread of COVID-19, these shows have been postponed until August 27 and 28. Tickets already purchased will be honored at that time. Contact point of purchase for refund or exchange information. Black Pumas are an electrifying six-piece neosoul band led by Adrian Quesada and Eric Burton—a musical partnership made in […]
Posted inMusic
Cross Record makes private music that feels bigger than a symphony
Emily Cross started Cross Record in Chicago as a solo experimental-pop project and morphed it into a full band shortly before moving to Austin. But soon after Cross Record put out their debut full-length, 2016’s Wabi Sabi (Ba Da Bing), front woman Cross decided to give the group a rest. She became a death doula, […]
Posted inMusic
Cherubs still haven’t missed a beat with their second postreunion album, Immaculada High
In their brief existence, from 1991 till 1994, Cherubs gifted the world with two perfect documents of streamlined, intense, pummeling noise-rock: 1992’s Icing and 1994’s Heroin Man (both on King Coffey’s Trance Syndicate label). The sounds the Austin trio hammered out weren’t too far from what their east-coast contemporaries in Unsane were doing, and Icing […]
Posted inMusic
Genre-crossing musician Gary Clark Jr. shows his versatility on This Land
Good luck slapping a label on Gary Clark Jr. The Austin native won a Grammy for Best Traditional R&B Performance in 2013, but his music cuts across genres, including blues, rock, and hip-hop. In the 2015 Rolling Stone mini documentary Gary and Eve, Clark says he once imagined following in the footsteps of a soulful […]
Posted inMusic
Austin’s Temple of Angels match postrock aesthetics with metallic power
Austin quintet Temple of Angels have been flying low under the radar since they dropped their self-titled debut EP in 2017, but they’ve cut their way out of the undergrowth of a dark postpunk forest to build a following through touring and judicious festival bookings, including SXSW and Austin Terror Fest. Last year’s full-length Foiled […]
Posted inMusic
Austin indie-pop eight-piece TC Superstar make music for the dance dance revolution
Synth-driven Austin indie-pop group TC Superstar count eight people in their ranks, four of them dancers—and the dancers’ steps are just as important as the musicians’ notes. “The dancers are not ‘backup dancers,’” synth player and vocalist Aaron Chavez told The Daily Texan in April. “Dancing and the music are one thing.” TC Superstar’s lively […]