Multi-instrumentalist Wendy Eisenberg plays in lots of different settings, but no matter what they’re doing, their music always carries a tinge of no-wave. It’s perhaps easier to hear in their rock-centered projects, Birthing Hips and Editrix, but a dash of off-kilter flair seeps into even the low-key ensemble affair of Eisenberg’s 2019 record Auto. With […]
Tag: Vol. 50 No. 27
Issue of September 30, 2021
Medicaid has been good to my body, but it has abandoned my brain
I want choice, not a fistful of deeply unhelpful options wrestled, after months, from the banal, cruel system we make poor people navigate to access health care.
by Katie Prout
Find a print copy of the Reader.
←Previous issue | Next issue→
Posted inMusic
Bummer’s noise-rock rippers provide a glimpse into their midwestern nightmare
Since 2013, Kansas City trio Bummer have been belting out full-tilt, bludgeoning sludge that’s heightened by their dark-humored taste for grim obsessions and disaffected existence. Over a handful of EPs and one previous full-length, guitarist-vocalist Matt Perrin, bassist Mike Gustafson, and drummer Sam Hutchinson have railed against the ennui of their dead-end daily routines with […]
Posted inMusic
Ministry continue to rage on their 15th album, Moral Hygiene
In their 40-year career, Ministry have certainly been down more than once, but they’ve never been completely out. They’ve been sacked by record labels, they’ve had so many players come and go that “revolving-door lineup” hardly describes it, and they’ve carried on through drug addiction and the deaths of longtime members. In the ashes of […]
Posted inMusic
Adam Geoffrey Cole merges ancient traditions in the timeless folk of Fallowing
I’ve never understood exactly why I respond to sea shanties, jigs, and British Isles folk of yore. Maybe something in my eastern European genetic makeup makes me long for ancient traditions, whether I have any connection to them or not; maybe it stems from my childhood love of mythological sea monsters. Whatever the reason, my […]
Posted inArts & Culture
The crossroads that made Chicago
Conceptually, the words “Chicago, Wisconsin” are sure to baffle almost anyone reading them today. The idea that Illinois’s metropolis (and the nation’s third-largest city) could somehow be a part of the Dairy State seems laughable. Too bound to the long and sordid annals of Illinois politics, despite at times feeling a million miles away from […]
Posted inMusic
Ben Grigg energizes his shoegaze style as Whelpwisher
Chicago indie-rockers Geronimo! played their final show in March 2015, and keyboardist Ben Grigg must’ve turned his attention to making solo recordings as soon as he got off the stage. He self-released his first EP as Whelpwisher in October of that year, and his output hasn’t slowed since: he’s been refining his sweet alt-rock tunes […]
Posted inMusic
Julia Dratel, music curator and visual artist
Julia Dratel, 30, is an events producer, curator, radio DJ, activist, and visual artist. She’s taken photos for album artwork by Circuit des Yeux and Devouring the Guilt and created music videos for Health & Beauty, Mind Over Mirrors, and Spirits Having Fun. She’s also curated night two of the Elastro A/V Fall Festival at […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Exploring the Terrain
The fall art season has been underway since the beginning of September, but some Chicago art lovers have been waiting for a recent tradition to kick off to mark the start of their autumnal art appreciation. This year marks the fifth iteration of the Terrain Biennial, a (mostly) outdoor and multisite exhibition of artist projects […]
Sponsored
Growing for Good with Green Thumb: Cannabis Equity Illinois Coalition
Ensuring equal opportunity in Illinois’s cannabis legalization
Posted inArts & Culture
Why does he keep apologizing?
Is satire allowed anymore? We’re living through a period which largely demands literality from art. We want to know where the author stands. Unambiguously, with no shade or contradiction. Satire, on the other hand, lives in the gray and attempts to get at larger truths. Christian TeBordo’s new novel is set unreservedly outside the bipolarity […]
Sponsored
Introducing BRAVEMONK
BRAVEMONK is my alias or soul/spirit name. It is my call sign, like that of the bat signal to Batman.
Posted inMusic
Lala Lala questions identity and isolation with I Want the Door to Open
Lala Lala’s ebullient new fourth album, I Want the Door to Open, feels like a musical antithesis of the isolation and insularity of the past 18 months. The project of Chicago songwriter Lillie West, Lala Lala rose to prominence with 2018’s The Lamb (Hardly Art), which was recorded live with a three-piece band. IWTDTO, by […]
Posted inMusic
Wild Pink seek the divine in the sky on A Billion Little Lights
Indie-rock trio Wild Pink hail from the boroughs of New York City but sound like they’ve only ever known the quietest stretches of the heartland. Their recent third album, A Billion Little Lights (Royal Mountain), evokes the wonder of gazing up at a night sky unclouded by light pollution and getting lost in the constellations. […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Medicaid has been good to my body, but it has abandoned my brain
I want choice, not a fistful of deeply unhelpful options wrestled, after months, from the banal, cruel system we make poor people navigate to access health care.