It’s been nearly four years since the Locust put out their last full-length, Plague Soundscapes–I’m not counting the ten-minute 2005 “album” Safety Second, Body Last–but for me the bloom still hasn’t come off that giant buzzing corpse flower of a record. (Granted, that may be because I can only listen to it when I’m already […]
Tag: Vol. 36 No. 28
Issue of Apr. 5 – 11, 2007
Posted inArts & Culture
NOXAGT
In slow mode, this Norwegian instrumental trio plays like a Japanese movie monster walks: lurching and stomping in destructive bursts of low-end noise, its gait only implying any kind of real forward progress. But Noxagt’s violent music–which is even more intense when it’s fast–is about much more than mere brutality, and now that baritone guitarist […]
Posted inFood & Drink
Sweet Spots: Dolci, Sicilian Style
Pasticceria Natalina 5406 N. Clark 773-989-0662 It wasn’t a good day for marzipan. The previous night Natalie Zarzour had slept only two-and-a-half hours in the shop where she now stood building a cassatine–a miniature cassata, the elaborate glazed and fruit-bedecked Sicilian Easter cake. Under normal circumstances it takes her just an hour or so to […]
Posted inArts & Culture
PAGE FRANCE
Around the time the last Page France record, Hello Dear Wind, came out, bandleader Michael Nau kept complaining to interviewers about getting pegged as a Christian artist just because of some religious imagery in his lyrics that he wasn’t even aware of. It’s weird how a little imagery can give people the wrong idea about […]
Posted inNews & Politics
The Straight Dope
Last year the Nobel Prize committee in Stockholm once again overlooked you in the categories of medicine, physics, and literature. Clearly their judgment is faulty, and it makes me wonder about other mistakes they may have made. Aside from the subjective peace and literature (and economics?) prizes, has anyone been awarded a Nobel for work […]
Posted inArts & Culture
PLAID
Lots of electronic groups incorporate elaborate visuals into their live shows, but the UK duo of Andy Turner and Ed Handley, aka Plaid, took things one step further with their most recent release, last year’s CD-DVD set Greedy Baby (Warp)–their video designer and director, Bob Jaroc, gets equal billing on the cover. (He’s also coming […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Yoga
YogaNow 5852 N. Broadway 773-561-9642 742 N. LaSalle 312-280-9642 YogaNow offers free classes on Sunday night for students of all experience levels, even kids. Led by a rotating team of instructors, the programs change week to week: one session might focus on basic yoga, another on Pilates, and yet another might combine the two. Classes […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Rock & Roll: Impatience
Rock & Roll: Impatience is the little Lucky Pierre piece that almost couldn’t. After three years, personnel changes, and long stretches when construction left the group without a rehearsal space, the quartet was still struggling to meld disparate elements–Microsoft clip art, Boeing’s arts-giving priorities, the fundamentals of PowerPoint, a highly fictionalized biography of AC/DC front […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Mamet Meets His Match
Theatre Seven pairs Sexual Perversity in Chicago with Marisa Wegrzyn’s Diversey Harbor, a fresh take on the north-side singles scene.
Posted inArts & Culture
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
This extremely disappointing mounting of Edward Albee’s 1962 play–a touring edition of the 2005 Broadway revival–is undone by emotionally shallow lead performances and some ill-advised revisions by the author. Bill Irwin and Kathleen Turner star as emasculated, world-weary college professor George and raunchy, overbearing Martha, middle-aged marrieds who invite a young couple over for a […]
Posted inArts & Culture
The Twilight Sad
With all the tepid bands coming out of Scotland over the past few years (the cursed Franz Ferdinand, the totally whatever Snow Patrol), it’s nice to finally hear a Scottish outfit with some, uh, balls. Though their name and album artwork–mostly illustrations done in the style of an old elementary-school primer–suggest something terminally effete, the […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Affordable to Whom?/Intruder in the Garden
The mayor’s plan to set aside housing might work better in Wilmette.