What happens when your laptop dies and your Instagram followers have questions
Tag: Vol. 51 No. 17
Issue of May 26, 2022
Horsegirl and the dream of a teen rock scene by
Leor Galil
The trio’s new Matador album has made them the most visible members of a thriving musical and artistic community that’s still too young for most clubs.
Cover photo credits: Horsegirl by Cheryl Dunn, Friko by Nando Espinosa Herrera, Post Office Winter courtesy the artist, and Lifeguard by Carlos Lowenstein
Cover photo illustration: Kirk Williamson
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Posted inCity Life
Art, records, and the great outdoors
Looking for stuff to do this weekend and beyond? Read on! FRI 6/3 Do-Division Street Fest (Division between Damen and Leavitt) benefits from handing over its music programming to outside local venues, and this year’s lineup (booked by Empty Bottle and Subterranean) doesn’t disappoint. Tonight you can catch several acts that we’ve written about including […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Down the stairs and into “Dreams & Delusions”
“Not touching but joined in astonishment as two cuts lie parallel in the same flesh,” writes Anne Carson in the 1998 novel, Autobiography of Red. Breathing new life, ripping parts apart—it’s the painful, heart-wrenching reality of being alive, of being absolutely anything at all. This is the work of Finnish artist Kristoffer Ala-Ketola, whose first […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Skateboarding as social practice
An average spectator might observe a skateboarder as nothing but a person on wheels; they see an athlete—or a delinquent, maybe—pushing and coasting and jumping (“How does the board stick to the bottom of their feet?”), there one minute and gone the next. But from the rider’s perspective, the world is transforming around them. Minute […]
Posted inCity Life
Your heart is an empty storage unit
There’s a mannequin staring down from the second-floor window of the Lock Up Self Storage on Lincoln. She has a blonde wig and a stoic demeanor—the sort of world-weariness that comes from being frozen in one spot against your will. When I moved the bulk of my earthly possessions into an eight-by-ten-foot storage unit in […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Reshaping the landscape on the southeast side
A ribbon-cutting ceremony was held on May 21 at 89th and Commercial on the southeast side. It celebrated the opening of Commercial Ave Alfresco, a joint initiative organized by the group South Chicago Parents & Friends along with the city’s Special Service Area 5 commission. Both entities worked together with local artists and businesses, and […]
Posted inMusic
Chicago indie sensations Dehd go big-time with Blue Skies
Chicago trio Dehd sound like they’re trying to levitate by fusing the ineffable but often incompatible powers of frigid postpunk and wispy indie rock. Dehd are dedicated minimalists: their lonesome, echoing guitars and sturdy, straightforward rhythms tend to show the seams in their songs, but they don’t reveal too much of the magic that makes […]
Posted inMusic
Paranoid London reference dance music of the past to fuel our dystopian future
English electronic duo Paranoid London can only be described as the rock ’n’ roll specters of acid house. When they exploded in the underground in 2007, the British dance scene was deep in hauntology, a cultural moment when retro aesthetics in music and fashion were being recycled to imagine alternate time lines. One iteration of […]
Posted inMusic
Rapper-producer Namir Blade rockets into an Afrofuturist haze
Nashville rapper, multi-instrumentalist, and part-time extraterrestrial Namir Blade follows in the space wake of his beloved Sun Ra less through style than through vibes. His new self-produced album, Metropolis (Mello Music), gestures toward Afrofuturism in its woozy synths and hyper-modernistic cover art, but Blade is way too laid-back and into his own loopiness to construct […]
Posted inMusic
Jonn Wallen of Oui Ennui made a torrent of genre-hopping albums while battling long COVID
In the past year or so, whenever a friend has asked me to recommend music, I’ve pointed them at Chicago multi-instrumentalist Jonn Wallen, who creates omnidirectional experimental electronic albums under the name Oui Ennui. A self-described hermit, he’d already spent decades making music largely in private and for his own satisfaction when COVID-19 hit. After […]
Posted inMusic
Horsegirl and the dream of a teen rock scene
In July 2019, Chicago indie-rock trio Horsegirl played the eighth annual Square Roots Festival. At the time, live shows were the only way to hear the group’s taut but disarming dream pop, with its windswept-lakefront sound—and they’d only performed a few of them. They hadn’t released any music, not even to stream, and unsurprisingly they’d […]
Posted inMusic
Paul Natkin, concert photographer
Chicago native Paul Natkin is a prolific concert and portrait photographer who’s shot more than 4,300 musicians and celebrities since he started his career in 1975. He’s also worked as road manager for the likes of Brian Wilson and Alice Peacock and tour photographer for the Rolling Stones. His images have appeared in so many […]
Posted inMusic
Wilco’s folk-driven double album Cruel Country gives long time fans something fresh to love
In 1997, Wilco’s double album Being There became a fundamental pivot for the Chicago band in a decade filled with triumphs. Twenty-five years later, those songs live on in the band’s live shows, even though in the studio Wilco have traveled to a very different place. The evidence lies on Cruel Country, the band’s second […]
Posted inCity Life
Hats off to the hats
At the end of April, The Curio and the Chicago Fashion Coalition joined forces to promote a networking event for the local fashion crowd at Chop Shop in Wicker Park. The turnout was truly impressive; so many recognizable names in the fashion scene were there: accessory designer and SAIC faculty member Gillion Carrara; luxury boutique […]