In the early days of the COVID pandemic, retail clerks, day-care staff, public-transportation employees, and many other workers learned what coal miners have known for a very long time: that the authorities who deem their labor essential don’t necessarily feel the same way about their lives. Freakwater and the Mekons have each sung folk ballads […]
Tag: Vol. 51 No. 11
Issue of March 3, 2022
Best of Chicago 2021
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Ensemble dal Niente collates five-year-old highlights on Object/Animal
Ensemble dal Niente’s Object/Animal follows closely on the heels of the local contemporary classical group’s November release, Confined. Speak., a retrospective of pieces performed sans live audiences in 2020 and 2021. Object/Animal is likewise chronologically narrow: dal Niente premiered all the works on the album in 2017. Aesthetically, however, the three featured compositions are as […]
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Sludge-metal all-stars Absent in Body live up to their lineup on their debut LP
Like it or not, supergroups are an inevitable part of the music landscape. There’s always a new one in the works, in no small part because they reliably attract media attention even before they’ve done anything. More often than not, though, supergroups turn out to be letdowns compared to the amount of hype they generate. […]
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New west-coast punk supergroup Plosivs includes members of Rocket From the Crypt, Pinback, and more
The pandemic has shattered so many bands that any project that’s come together since March 2020 represents a small victory. And when the project in question is as much fun as Plosivs—a new four-piece consisting of vocalist and guitarist Rob Crow, vocalist and guitarist John Reis, bassist Jordan Clark, and drummer Atom Willard—the victory isn’t […]
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Otherpeace kicks off a Hideout residency to support a restorative, rootsy debut album
In the early months of the pandemic, Wandering Boys banjo player Rob Jensen reached out to Matt Clark (of slowcore trio Pinebender and drone duo White/Light) with an invitation to jam. The music they made together planted the seeds for Clark’s new solo endeavor, Otherpeace, a loose group where he’s backed by Jensen (drums), Pinebender […]
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Duma show that the future of metal is in eastern Africa
Africa’s metal scene has been quiet compared to its counterparts on other continents. Duma rectify that, and loudly. Vocalist Martin Khanja (aka Lord Spike Heart) and guitarist and producer Sam Karugu hail from Kenya, and they relocated to Uganda to release their self-titled 2020 debut album on Kampala’s Nyege Nyege Tapes. That label is known […]
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Chicago rapper CantBuyDeem makes loosies with more energy than most radio hits
If an MC has put in enough work that they can wrap a verse around a beat so tightly you can’t separate the two, then the odds are good they’ve accumulated a trunk full of unreleased material in the process. Englewood’s CantBuyDeem is just such a rapper, and he’s strung together a handful of those […]
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On Comedian, Without Waves make mood-shifting prog metal that’s no laughing matter
I can hardly believe it’s been five years since I previewed Without Waves’ previous album, the 2017 release Lunar. When the Chicago progressive-metal quartet leapt back into the saddle for their third full-length (their second for Prosthetic), that time seemed to just melt away: the new Comedian is one of the best records I’ve heard […]
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Sir Richard Bishop continues to chart his own guitar language in the studio and onstage
Sir Richard Bishop has spent about as much time recording under his own name as he did with the Sun City Girls, a deftly bohemian, genre-bending avant-rock act that dissolved after the 2007 cancer death of founding drummer Charlie Gocher. For almost 30 years, the band (which also included Bishop’s brother Alan) teased at the […]
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Best LGBTQ+ bar 75 steps from the Mag Mile
Look for the unassuming, narrow doorway wedged in between an Armenian restaurant and the former staff entrance to the now-shuttered Gap behemoth on Michigan Avenue, climb the nearly vertical and carpeted stairway to the second floor, and you’ve entered the best LGBTQ+ watering hole this side (or any side) of the Mag Mile. Known for […]
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Best local conservationist rocking it out on YouTube
Julian Baumgartner may be the sole owner of Chicago’s oldest conservation studio, but that doesn’t keep him from being simultaneously the master of old masters and social media. He’s a man with a fan base in the millions—many of whom claim they know or care nothing about art but are faithful viewers of his videos. […]
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Young Guv’s Guv III threatens to give you the warm fuzzies
In all my years contributing to the Reader, the artist I’ve written about the most is probably Toronto’s Ben Cook—partly because he’s been so incredibly prolific for the past two decades, but also because his widely varying output is so consistently solid and great. He cut his teeth in the hardcore world while fronting No […]
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Best new inquiry-minded design studio
“Material artifacts are the most concrete things that surround us in our homes,” writes Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi in his book The Meaning of Things. Most of us, particularly since the pandemic started, spend the majority of our time in our homes—giving the objects and environments therein an oversized role in shaping our moods, our days, and […]
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Best new artist-run project space
In August 2021, the new art gallery Ruschwoman announced its arrival with the group exhibition “Speculative Magenta Hauntology.” The lead image in the exhibition was by the late artist Chiara Fumai. In the photo, titled Annie Jones Reads Valerie Solanas, Fumai was dressed as the famed bearded woman Annie Jones; behind her, large, bold letters […]
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Chicago’s Nequient want to rile you up with Darker Than Death or Night
Chicago’s Nequient hit the ground running in 2015 with the EP Infinite Regress. By the time of their 2018 full-length debut, Wolves at the Door, they’d solidified into a brutal, versatile metallic-hardcore unit. They’d also established their studio methods and favorite producers (Pete Grossman at Bricktop Recording), and they accumulated some DIY touring experience. The […]