Also, public health officials warn passengers about a possible measles exposure at O’Hare.
Tag: Vol. 47 No. 15
Issue of Jan. 18 – 24, 2018
Posted inBlogs
Chicago Ex Fest canceled amid allegations of sexual misconduct against its organizer
Matthew Payne cancels the comedy festival that he intended to be an alternative to SketchFest.
Posted inBlogs
St. Vincent at the Chicago Theatre, and more of the best things to do in Chicago this weekend
The Rhinoceros Theater Festival and more goings-on January 12-14
Posted inBlogs
Illinois has plenty of other dysfunctional nursing homes Governor Rauner should visit
Now that the governor’s weeklong stay at the Illinois Veterans Home in Quincy is over, here’s where he should go next.
Posted inBlogs
Guitarist Randy Randall on how No Age have adapted to family time—and what their odd new album title means
To support the new Snares Like a Haircut, noise-punks No Age play Schubas during the Tomorrow Never Knows festival.
Posted inMusic
LA singer-songwriter Bedouine crafts weightless songs of grace, optimism, and wonder
Bedouine is the moniker of singer-songwriter Azniv Korkejian, a woman of Armenian descent born in Syria and raised in Saudi Arabia before her family won a green-card lottery and moved to the U.S. The music on the eponymous debut she released last summer feels lighter than air. She’s now based in LA, and the breezy […]
Posted inMusic
On Thx, indie-rock act Lomelda builds entire worlds with just a few musical pieces
Hannah Read—the twentysomething Texan who records and performs wistful, intimate indie rock under the name Lomelda—isn’t the first and won’t be the last person to write a song about the long stretches of asphalt that criss-cross the country, but her “Interstate Vision” deserves to be counted among the best American road songs of all time. […]
Posted inMusic
LA underground punks No Age return from a five-year absence with a punishing new album for Drag City
Five years can be a lifetime in the career of a postpunk band, but that’s how long it’s been since the LA duo No Age dropped a new record. Singer and guitarist Randy Randall and drummer Dean Spunt have finally broken their silence with the exuberant Snares Like a Haircut (Drag City), a maelstrom of […]
Posted inMusic
Chicago rapper Phil G studied rap’s past to build a better future on PEACE
Chicago rapper Phil G clearly loves hip-hop’s golden age; his proclivity for skeletal percussion that bisects the air every time a drum beat kicks in and the stylistic elements that have flavored his oeuvre show a predilection for the types of bygone soul and jazz that served as the base for hip-hop’s teenage years. Recently, […]
Posted inMusic
Cam’ron continues his reign as the weirdo rap king
Harlem’s Cam’ron is the undisputed king of out-there, freaky rappers, having paved the way for weirdo individualism in hip-hop with his wardrobe of ankle-length mink coats and head-to-toe, bright-pink get-ups, his idiosyncratic slurred flow, his numerous public feuds with all sorts of rap stars, and his incredibly tense on-air confrontation with Bill O’Reilly in 2003. […]
Posted inMusic
New York School composer Christian Wolff shares his open-ended conceptions of communal music making with Chicago’s Aperiodic
Christian Wolff is the only living member of the New York School, the coterie of composers that revolved around John Cage during the 1950s and included Morton Feldman, Earle Brown, and David Tudor. Their experimental music mirrored developments in the art world at the time, including Fluxus and abstract expressionism. The group’s hallmarks—including chance procedures […]
Posted inMusic
Black Veil Brides are back in black, but they never left
Fun game: make an 80s hard-rock/hair-metal/stadium-goth/early-thrash-metal playlist, sneak a track by LA’s contemporary Black Veil Brides onto it, and see if anyone notices. Bonus points if you pass it by anyone old enough to remember some of the junk-and-fire-everywhere hard-rock videos that looked like they were filmed in an unused corner of a Mad Max […]
Posted inMusic
Nashville protopunk Ron Gallo is ready to give you an earful about the world’s problems
Ron Gallo channels his contempt for the world into the songs that fill last year’s Heavy Meta (New West), a snarling assault on selfishness and phoniness set to sharp, ringing 70s protopunk. The former Philadelphian moved to Nashville in 2014, leaving behind the destructive relationship that haunts the album’s reflections on emotional abuse (“Young Lady, […]
Posted inMusic
Destroyer’s Ken simplifies symbolism with similes and simpering
Dan Bejar, aka Destroyer, is well-known for being a “literary” act. The description is fitting: front man Dan Bejar’s lyrics feel like symbolist poetry, with lines of varying lengths crammed with allusions to history, film, and—especially—pop music stacked on top of each other like records in a wobbling tower. Furthermore, Destroyer albums tend to commit […]
Posted inMusic
Saxophonist Dave Rempis and drummer Frank Rosaly play their first local duo show in more than two years
Before he moved to Amsterdam in 2016, percussionist Frank Rosaly was an integral part of Chicago’s improvised music scene, and his departure left many of his musical partnerships hanging. Rosaly’s bond with saxophonist Dave Rempis in particular runs deep, with collaborations dating back to the turn of the current century. Their 2009 release, Cyrillic (482 […]