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Tag: Vol. 50 No. 20
Issue of Jun. 24 – Jul. 7, 2021
Posted inMusic
Chicago art-rockers Woongi ground their ambition with whimsy on Fruits of the Midi
A couple years ago, Chicago art-rock group Woongi dropped an album intended as an unofficial soundtrack for a 1993 kids’ film featuring a magical flying skateboard voiced by Dom DeLuise. You can try to find spots where the synth-focused songs on Rip’s Cuts might fit into the movie, titled The Skateboard Kid, but their cheeky […]
Posted inMusic
L’Rain creates glittering, warped pop collages on Fatigue
Brooklyn composer and multi-instrumentalist Taja Cheek, aka L’Rain, has titled her sophomore album Fatigue (Mexican Summer), but she doesn’t sound tired. Her aesthetic is languidly manic, with an eclectic mix of genres and moods bobbing in and out of her layered, psychedelic orchestral pop. Opener “Fly, Die,” kicks off with washes of voices and instrumental […]
Posted inMusic
James Holvay helped create Chicago’s famous horn-rock sound in the 1960s
James Holvay is best known for writing the Buckinghams’ “Kind of a Drag” and cofounding the Mob, but he’s still making music more than 50 years later.
Posted inMusic
Four bits for the ferryman on the gig poster of the week
This week’s featured gig poster was created by Chicago artist Jason Castillo for a concert headlined by Wild Earp & the Free for Alls.
Posted inMusic
Lucy Dacus reflects on her coming-of-age with the new Home Video
The moment you start reflecting on a time that’s past, it’s no longer something you’re living—it becomes something you’ve lived. Lucy Dacus documents and interrogates her own coming-of-age on her new third album, Home Video. After being blindsided by the success of her 2016 debut, No Burden, Dacus was forced to reckon with her hometown […]
Posted inFood & Drink
Major food scoop in this week’s Reader
Find it in the third edition of the Chicago FoodCultura Clarion.
Posted inMusic
Chicago rapbrarian Roy Kinsey makes music for summer celebrations with Juke Skywalker Vol. 1
Chicago rapper and librarian Roy Kinsey has drawn national attention for his remarkable concept albums and their sensitive, piercingly thoughtful lyrics. In 2018 he dropped Blackie: A Story by Roy Kinsey, a deeply personal and thoroughly researched record about race in America that’s informed by Kinsey’s family history and the Great Migration; last year he […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Pride with a price tag
A double-digit entrance fee at a Rogers Park pride festival violated city rules—and left many in the queer community feeling exploited and excluded.
Posted inColumns & Opinion
DuSable Drive opponents said the issue wasn’t about race. The numbers speak for themselves.
Survey data and the vote breakdown on DuSable Drive showed a sharp racial divide in support.
Posted inMusic
French polymath Jean-Luc Guionnet finally commits his solo saxophone music to wax
Jean-Luc Guionnet’s relationship to music is complicated, and it shows. As a youth, he drew while his father played saxophone, and he didn’t much like what he heard. When he changed his mind during his teens and started making his own music, his first instruments were keyboards, spliced tape, and drums; he only came around […]
Posted inMusic
Flowers for an unsung casualty of the post-Nirvana feeding frenzy
Steel Pole Bath Tub made lurid, thrilling, messy noise rock that didn’t sound quite like anybody else.
Posted inMusic
Chicago rap star Polo G takes a long victory lap on Hall of Fame
In a self-aggrandizing public announcement last month about the return of Lollapalooza, Mayor Lori Lightfoot tweeted a cringey promotional video where she played music for Department of Public Health commissioner Allison Arwady onstage at the Petrillo Music Shell in Grant Park. Early in the clip, Lightfoot changes the soundtrack from a Foo Fighters tune to […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Drawing beyond the margins
Black cartoonists from Chicago are featured in a new book and included in a new exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago.