When do you cross the line from casual collector to full-on vintage reseller? For Michael W. Phillips Jr., a south side-based film programmer and copy editor, the moment happened in 2019 when he started posting books for sale on Instagram under the name It Came From Beyond Pulp. A more robust eBay store followed, and […]
Tag: Vol. 51 No. 9
Issue of February 3, 2022
An interview with Saba: ‘For me, home is the people’
On his third studio album, Few Good Things, the Chicago-born rapper reimagines failure and abundance as he draws on ancestral lessons to build new worlds.
By Janaya Greene
By Janaya Greene
In this issue …
Cannabis Conversations insert: Download it as a PDF. (The insert is also included in this week’s full Reader issue PDF.)
Download the Cannabis Conversations insert PDF
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Posted inMusic
Sarah Shook & the Disarmers find dusty splendor on Nightroamer
Sarah Shook & the Disarmers are known for their roots-driven sound, but on their new third full-length, Nightroamer, Shook’s country aesthetics battle for space alongside some pretty healthy indie inclinations. The production is a bit denser on this recording compared to its predecessor, 2018’s Years—keyboards occasionally factor into the arrangements—and Shook herself gives off less […]
Posted inMusic
Stander masters moods and dynamics on their second full-length, Vulnerable
This year promises to be a big one for the Garrote, a new record imprint and publishing house founded in the Quad Cities by Aseethe guitarist-singer Brian Barr and photographer-videographer Josh Ford, who’s worked with bands such as Sunn O))), High on Fire, and Facs. The Garrote has a stacked release schedule for 2022, starting […]
Posted inCity Life
And then there’s mauve
With all the snow we’ve been having, it’s hard not to look around and be inspired by beautiful shades of neutral colors. That was the case with Christian Zamarriego, 31, who was photographed at the Garfield Park Conservatory during a particularly snowy day. “I felt inspired to wear neutral colors that matched the weather. We […]
Posted inMusic
Jill Hopkins, new media and civic events producer for the Metro venues
Jill Hopkins is a Chicago broadcaster, DJ, writer, musician, and storyteller. After an eight-year stint at Vocalo Radio, Hopkins kicked off 2022 by joining the Metro family of venues (which also includes Smart Bar and GMan) as their new media and civic events producer. As told to Jamie Ludwig I was always a big radio […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Black joy ‘Is where it’s at!’
When artist Adeshola Makinde thinks about the work in his current exhibition, it’s a giant, larger-than-life canvas image of the legendary Louis Armstrong—Makinde’s largest-scale piece he’s done to date—that rises to the top of his favorites list. “To me, [Armstrong] represented unrelenting optimism, amidst what I could imagine was pretty, pretty unbearable things that he […]
Posted inMusic
Myquale makes hip-hop for your midwestern heart
Milwaukee native Myquale moved to Chicago in 2014 to attend DePaul, and the music he’s made as a rapper and producer owes a debt to both cities. On his self-released 2019 single “Isolation,” for example, he pairs lyrics about the long-term effects of institutional segregation on Milwaukee’s north side with a confident, sumptuously soulful sound […]
Posted inMusic
Sending love letters from Saba’s future
“Saba’s releases are such special moments for Chicago and the west side,” Reader contributor Tara C. Mahadevan posted to Twitter this week. His previous album, 2018’s Care for Me, claimed the top spot when we polled 57 local critics about their ten favorite Chicago records of the 2010s—and Saba has three releases among the 338 […]
Posted inTheater Review
Secret, but saggy
Note to would-be play adapters: Agatha Christie’s second published detective novel, The Secret Adversary (1922), is in public domain. That means you can pretty much do whatever you want with this text, and still call it an “adaptation.” This is pretty much what First Folio executive artistic director David Rice does here. Extremely loosely based […]
Posted inMusic
An interview with Saba: ‘For me, home is the people’
In late 2014, I was incredibly homesick: I’d just left Chicago for college out of state, and I was struggling to adjust to a new campus and an immediate world that looked vastly different from what I was used to. Treated like an outsider, I yearned for pieces of home. Luckily Soundcloud recommended Comfort Zone, […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Heights of illusion
The sight is already a bit of a tell: steps away from boutiques, antiques, bars, and restaurants, a cramped and dingy laundromat with no hot waft of Breeze or Bounty stands unattended, garments whirling entropically, no clean to be achieved. A pink phone with no dial tone, a bell with no service, and yet an […]
Posted inTheater Review
Gem of the Ocean opens the world of August Wilson
August Wilson’s Century Cycle (also known as the Pittsburgh Cycle, though Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom is set in Chicago) remains one of the monumental achievements in American drama. Chuck Smith’s current Goodman revival of Gem of the Ocean, chronologically the first in Wilson’s decade-by-decade exploration of Black American history in the 20th century, takes us […]
Posted inTheater Review
The movement at home
Donja R. Love’s Fireflies (the second in his trilogy, The Love* Plays, each focusing on a different era of Black American history) is at once brutal and hopeful, the hate and violence-soaked former threatening throughout to extinguish the hard-won gleam of the latter but never quite succeeding. It’s 1963 when we meet Olivia (Chanell Bell) […]
Posted inOn Culture
Offense intended
A couple of couches and a video player have been set up in the little balcony lobby outside the fourth floor exhibition hall at the Chicago Cultural Center. If you plop down there for a few minutes before entering the galleries to see “Art and Race Matters: The Career of Robert Colescott,” a retrospective spanning […]