Denver band Blood Incantation set the metal world on fire with their second full-length, 2019’s Hidden History of the Human Race, a technical death-metal masterpiece that smashes together mind-bending, virtuoso-level musicianship with Middle Eastern-inspired melodies, epic prog-rock twists and turns, and sci-fi moods and flourishes. The album’s brutal, alien take on death metal earned it […]
Tag: Vol. 51 No. 10
Issue of February 17, 2022
Searching for The Pigeon Lady
It’s less about one individual and more about the calling to feed all the birds in the Loop.
by Katie Prout
On the cover: Photo by Lloyd DeGrane. For more of DeGrane’s work, visit lloyddegrane.com.
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Posted inArts & Culture
A theft hidden in plain sight for decades
The greater Englewood area has been subject to land theft for over 80 years. It’s apparent when you see boarded-up windows and overgrown weeds that cover the community. Empty houses abound, a legacy of the impact that racism has had on the area for years, vacant lots indicating opportunities withheld from aspiring Black homeowners. It’s […]
Posted inMusic Review
Dreamer Isioma yokes their wildly maximalist aesthetic to their pop-star ambition on Goodnight Dreamer
In March 2020, Chicago singer-songwriter Dreamer Isioma released their breakthrough EP, Sensitive, whose slyly funky title track became a slow-burning hit—in a little under two years, it’s racked up nearly 70 million Spotify streams. Isioma is clearly a pop star in the making, and treats the history of recorded music like a grand buffet: they […]
Posted inMusic
Matt Pike of High on Fire makes his solo debut with a psych-rock blowout
Matt Pike has had a long and storied career as a member of pioneering stoner-metal trios Sleep and High on Fire. But the pandemic has been hard on team players, and so this year the guitarist and vocalist is releasing his first solo album, Pike vs the Automaton—a heartbreaking work of cabin fever. He recorded […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Occupying the moment
Dr. Maura Reilly is a curator who understands feminist art. It is one of the reasons she was chosen to curate a historic exhibition at Bridgeport Art Center as a part of the 50th anniversary celebration of the Women’s Caucus for Art (WCA). The organization put out a call for self-identified women artists based in […]
Posted inMusic Review
Matchess draws music from the resources of memory on Sonescent
For roughly a decade, Chicago multi-instrumentalist Whitney Johnson maintained a fairly steady developmental arc with her solo project, Matchess. Her songs, which comprised layers of viola, organ, tape loops, drum machine, and voice, progressively materialized out of a murky, analog fog; the hooky, propulsive tracks on the 2018 release Sacracorpa glided like a lucid dream […]
Posted inCity Life
Home Sweet Alone
When I moved into my first studio apartment in 2017, I got obsessed with the 1995 Jewel single “You Were Meant For Me.” In the song, Jewel has recently split with her lover and moved into her own apartment. She’s heartbroken, but she also digs having her own spot. She fries eggs and reads the […]
Posted inFilm
Interview with the film queen
Chicagoan Ramona Slick has curated a monthly meeting place for Chicago’s film nerds and queer community. In December, the erotic performer and queer burlesque dancer debuted a new event series, Rated Q, at the Music Box Theatre. Each event features a brief drag show and screening of a queer film classic. Audience members wear their […]
Posted inMusic
By deconstructing the flute, Laura Cocks’s Field Anatomies builds new worlds
When you’re ensconced in a circle of 29 piccolos, no one can hear you scream. New York-based flutist and TAK Ensemble cofounder Laura Cocks re-creates this otherworldly sonic scenario in David Bird’s “Atolls,” the first piece off their new debut solo album, Field Anatomies (Carrier). Bird says his piece derived the auxiliary performers’ pitches by […]
Posted inMusic
Post Office Winter share the world of fun in Chicago’s teen DIY scene
Chicago DIY rock duo Post Office Winter take an audible joy in playing scruffy, comfortable indie rock whose charming shabbiness feels like an accident they wouldn’t have any other way. The band’s founders, Johnston and Huffman (Jones College Prep juniors who prefer to go by their last names), belong to a local teenage DIY rock […]
Posted inColumns & Opinion
A note on this week’s cover story
Are pigeons beautiful? Katie Prout thinks they might be, but she rarely stops to look.
Posted inTheater Review
True blues
A fine cast backed by a first-rate jazz combo make Porchlight Music Theatre’s revival of Sheldon Epps’s concept revue Blues in the Night a delicious musical feast. A 1982 Broadway vehicle for Leslie Uggams, this durable jukebox musical—smartly staged for Porchlight by Chicago theater veteran Kenny Ingram—anthologizes a rich trove of 1920s, ‘30s, and ‘40s […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Searching for The Pigeon Lady
What I did care about—what I do care about—is people, especially the ones lit up inside by a singular passion. Weird people, people possessed, people other people might term freaks. The pigeon lady could be a freak, I thought, and feeding pigeons could be the mission of her life.
Posted inMusic
How Chicago helped put the Queen of Grunge back on her throne
On January 4, 2020, Jen Lemasters started She Bop, an Instagram account dedicated to recordings by women in rock. Lemasters has a huge record collection, not least because she and her husband, Nick Mayor, own Bric-a-Brac Records & Collectibles. Lemasters’s knowledge of punk and new wave, and her particular love of underdocumented bands that exist […]