Around this time of the year you’ll begin to hear the phrase “the giving season.” It’s the moment when donation-dependent organizations ramp up their campaigns in the hopes of being included in the gifting air that comes in on a wind of mailers, calls, and fundraisers. For the Nonprofit Issue, we thought it would be […]

The post <i>Chicago Reader’s</i> Nonprofit Guide for 2023 appeared first on Chicago Reader.

For seven years, Chicago musician Jochy Saldivar has been releasing suave R&B-inflected pop as Partywatcher, and this Friday he drops the EP El Tipo, his first release sung entirely in Spanish. The new EP also breaks stylistically from Partywatcher’s 2022 EP, Moreno, which leans heavily on 80s synth pop dosed with reggaeton; by contrast, El […]

The post Partywatcher honors his Dominican roots with his first all-Spanish release appeared first on Chicago Reader.

1 Chicago stepping lessons from award-winning south sider Shaun Ballentine of Effortless Stepping. —Salem Collo-Julin Open group lessons Wednesdays at 7 PM, Effortless Stepping Studio, 1850 E. 79th. $20 per person, 21+ only. For private lesson rates or information about having Ballentine do a stepping class at your event, message through Instagram or Facebook.  2 […]

The post The <i>Reader</i>’s 2023 Holiday Gift Guide appeared first on Chicago Reader.

When Gossip Wolf checked in a few years back with Reader contributor, Chic-a-Go-Go cofounder, and Promontory talent buyer Jake Austen, he’d just rebooted his wide-ranging, infectiously enthusiastic, and absurdly thorough music and culture zine, Roctober, originally launched more than 30 years ago. Issue 52 arrived in fall 2020 after a seven-year hiatus, but the wait […]

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Chicago rapper Doso caught my attention four years ago by tinkering confidently and smoothly with a variety of instrumental styles, and he plays up that skill on October’s Safe Travels (A Rugged Interest, Inc.). He raps over minimal nu-funk (“Holding on Loosely”), sleek and frictionless pop punk (“Upside Down”), and a sentimental ballad built atop […]

The post OutPastMidnight and Doso show Chicago hip-hop’s newest dimensions at Gman appeared first on Chicago Reader.

Chicago rapper Jay Wood has gained a foothold in the local scene with his work on the mike, but his production prowess is what distinguishes his new self-released EP, Nowhere, Fast. His svelte, sturdy instrumentals contain his voice as snugly as an opulent picture frame, ornamented to amplify the character of his performances. On “Homesick,” […]

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Chicago has no shortage of great bands who could’ve found more commercial success and built entirely different legacies were it not for poor timing, a particularly unlucky tour, or any of the other variables that make pursuing art under capitalism so exhausting and difficult. I don’t begrudge the members of Cafe Racer for calling it […]

The post Chicago indie rockers Cafe Racer say farewell with help from local punks Edging appeared first on Chicago Reader.

Gossip Wolf’s first exposure to newly local cellist and sound artist Dorothy Carlos was via her 2022 cassette Circuit Sphere (American Dreams), which features five stunning tracks of her cello alternating with synthesizer lines performed on instruments designed and built by Brian Oakes, aka United Sound Systems. The Reader’s Leor Galil hailed her work on […]

The post Cellist and sound artist Dorothy Carlos brings <i>My Ideal Is Windy</i> to the Lincoln Park Conservatory appeared first on Chicago Reader.

Chicago arts organization Theatre Y launched in 2006 in Lincoln Square, then moved in February 2023 to 3611 W. Cermak in North Lawndale. “It became really clear,” says artistic director Melissa Lorraine, “as we were starting to open our doors and really trying to communicate that we were here for the community, that music was […]

The post Elastic Arts stretches out appeared first on Chicago Reader.

Chicago indie rockers Elena “Lanie” Buenrostro and Travis Newgren, better known as Soft and Dumb, have spent much of the past year writing and recording their forthcoming sophomore album. A few weeks ago, frustrated by the length of that process, the duo paused work on the LP to record a handful of fast-and-loose songs on […]

The post Indie rockers Soft and Dumb pause work on their next album to drop an acoustic EP appeared first on Chicago Reader.

Last month at the ChiTown Movies drive-in, Chicago art-pop musician Sen Morimoto hosted a listening party for his new third album, Diagnosis (City Slang/Sooper), that included a screening of Brian De Palma’s 1974 florid horror-comedy rock opera, Phantom of the Paradise. De Palma’s sui generis skewering of the music industry—of how its financial imperatives corrode […]

The post Sen Morimoto’s <i>Diagnosis</i> points to an antidote for our rotten times appeared first on Chicago Reader.

The songs of Chicago rapper Noname feel like opening a door into a roomful of friends who are already hours into an all-consuming conversation. Throughout her self-released new third full-length, Sundial, she cracks jokes, asks questions about race and Blackness that you’ll need to sit with, thinks out loud about how her skills create demand […]

The post Noname brings the intimate conversations of <i>Sundial</i> to the Vic appeared first on Chicago Reader.

Chicago hip-hop producer Lapgan, real name Gaurav Nagpal, samples and blends music from the South Asian diaspora—which has helped him learn more about the breadth and depth of music from the Indian subcontinent. On his most recent trip to India to visit family, Lapgan met a vital collaborator, voracious music collector Nishant Mittal, who runs […]

The post Lapgan borrows from South Asian music for idiosyncratic hip-hop instrumentals appeared first on Chicago Reader.

Femi Adigun, aka Chicago rapper Femdot (styled as femdot.) delivers his quicksilver raps with a smooth confidence that draws me in like a giant horseshoe magnet in an old cartoon. Lately I’ve mostly thought about one particular track from his September release Free Samples Vol. 2 (Delacreme Music Group): “Missy Elliott,” which reminds me less […]

The post Femdot’s <i>Free Samples</i> has all the suave and speedy raps you need appeared first on Chicago Reader.

On October 26, frisky Chicago indie rockers the Trenchies dropped their debut album, Addie’s Got a Famous Dad, but the lineup of the emerging band is in flux. Drummer Thom Weiss has moved to Virginia for grad school, and bassist Claire King (Weiss’s girlfriend) has stepped back from the group too. But when the Trenchies […]

The post The Trenchies celebrate a new record with an old lineup appeared first on Chicago Reader.

New York dance DJs and producers DJ Swisha and Kush Jones befriended each other through Soundcloud, but they soon became part of the same footwork-loving collective, the Juke Bounce Werk crew. Their collaborative tracks thrum with giddy looseness and always feel like they could change shape at a moment’s notice. In February, they self-released (Respectfully), […]

The post DJ Swisha and Kush Jones find heaven in footwork appeared first on Chicago Reader.

Omaha five-piece Bib play hardcore like the last survivor in a horror film, army crawling through the mud to escape something so nasty they don’t dare look back. On the August release Live in Liverpool (Convulse), Bib make their case as skilled purveyors of filth: they can use their collective brawn to stir up a […]

The post Omaha hardcore band Bib will drag you through the muck in fifth gear appeared first on Chicago Reader.

No one can accuse Awakebutstillinbed guitarist, vocalist, and bandleader Shannon Taylor of not knowing emo. Her fidelity to the genre’s traditional use of all-lowercase letters (she styles the band’s name and all its song and album titles that way, even though the Reader doesn’t) and her equally traditional omission of spaces between words ought to […]

The post Awakebutstillinbed know emo’s past and command its future appeared first on Chicago Reader.

For more than three decades, Thomas Kendricks, better known as DJ Slugo, has been DJing, producing, and celebrating ghetto house, a sound he helped pioneer. Slugo grew up in the Robert Taylor Homes and began building his reputation in his neighborhood; in the 1990s, he became part of a network of underground house producers connected […]

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Since 2013, local power trio Chicken Happen have been making excellent tunes that share more than a vibe with 90s alternative rock. Gossip Wolf can imagine the band landing a video or three in MTV’s Buzz Bin, alongside Veruca Salt, Jawbox, or maybe Letters to Cleo. Over the past few months, singer, guitarist, and keyboardist […]

The post Power trio Chicken Happen whip up a new album with a dash of Meat Wave appeared first on Chicago Reader.

Chicago percussionist Daniel Villarreal is such a workhorse that his CV wouldn’t fit in a concert preview like this. But I think I can get my point across just by mentioning his role as cofounder and coleader of local Latine five-piece Dos Santos: Villarreal has a gift for rhythms that command your body to move. […]

The post Chicago percussionist Daniel Villarreal celebrates a chill new album appeared first on Chicago Reader.

Since Ella Williams moved to Chicago in March 2020, she’s become one of the most celebrated indie rockers on the local scene. That year, she released her breakout album as Squirrel Flower through stalwart downstate indie label Polyvinyl. Williams’s arrival came just as COVID-19 brought live music—including Squirrel Flower’s spring 2020 tour—to a halt. COVID […]

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Veteran Chicago gig-poster artist and graphic designer Shelley Howard died Saturday, October 14, at age 76. For decades, Howard designed concert advertisements for Jam Productions, a Chicago-based independent entertainment producer. Jam placed his work in the Reader, the Illinois Entertainer, the Tribune, and the Sun-Times, among other spots. “He was essentially the person who was […]

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The folks at Last Rites know that if you’re going to launch a metal festival, you better have an irreplaceable Rolodex. For the debut of Heavy Chicago, these veteran local underground rock promoters have booked some huge out-of-town headliners whose histories go back to the early 1980s: sludgy riff masters Corrosion of Conformity (Saturday, November […]

The post The Heavy Chicago fest debuts with Trouble’s first local show in five years appeared first on Chicago Reader.

Indie rocker Joseph Farago sings in a falsetto that can get nearly as high a teenager singing chipmunk style with a lungful of helium. He leads the band Joey Nebulous, which he formed as an Oberlin student in 2015, and he now lives in Chicago, where he’s also played in the bands Jodi and Tenci. […]

The post Chicago trio Joey Nebulous celebrate their wacky, heartfelt new indie-rock album at Schubas appeared first on Chicago Reader.

Chicago band Deeper can translate chilly UK postpunk into a midwestern dialect—their music has lots of space and lakeshore bluster, and these guys have clearly spent uncounted hours packed into an unheated van driving to out-of-town gigs. Since issuing their 2020 breakthrough, Auto-Pain, Deeper have expanded their lineup from three to four with the addition […]

The post Deeper make cold postpunk shine bright on their Sub Pop debut appeared first on Chicago Reader.

In September 2021, Macie Stewart of Finom released her debut solo album, Mouth Full of Glass. She enriched its gentle, intimate songs with opulent strings and horns, but she’s infrequently performed those arrangements live due in part to the difficulty of bringing them to the stage. She assembled a sextet for a pair of release […]

The post Macie Stewart gives her solo songs their grandest canvas yet appeared first on Chicago Reader.

As Heartgaze, Clemente Calandra makes skewed underground pop songs that stitch together stiff-legged drum ’n’ bass breaks, nimble acoustic guitars with the raw vulnerability of mainstream emo, and shocks of feedback that smell like dimly lit basement noise shows. Born and raised in Argentina, Calandra created Heartgaze in Chile and then moved to Chicago in […]

The post Heartgaze’s outré pop will twist up your emotions appeared first on Chicago Reader.

In 2021, Twitter user Benjamin Deshawn Hoard posted a photo of himself looking glum and out of sorts while sitting on a replica of SpongeBob SquarePants’s bed. His caption read, “I Shoulda Never Smoke That Shit Now Im At Spongebob House.” That joke launched a meme, where other posters would superimpose Hoard onto increasingly absurd […]

The post Draag Me’s warped pop feels like a roller-coaster you’re not tall enough to ride appeared first on Chicago Reader.

Gossip Wolf was getting rock-star vibes from Nathan Graham even before hearing his music. For years, this wolf has been seeing the singer-songwriter on the street and at club shows, dressed in his usual uniform—skinny jeans, cowboy boots, an impeccable hat, guitar case in hand. He’s low-key a Chicago style icon! Graham has been working […]

The post Nathan Graham blends blues, country, and soul on his star-making debut album appeared first on Chicago Reader.

Eris Drew’s debut album, 2021’s Quivering in Time, embeds lots of attention-grabbing details in its collagelike, psychedelic-tinged dance tracks—among them sounds of turntable scratching. There’s one near the end of “Time to Move Close,” after a slyly funky and somnolent synth melody guides listeners through six minutes of Hi-NRG percussive loops and several divergent synth […]

The post Chicago’s Viva Acid fest brings Eris Drew back to town appeared first on Chicago Reader.

For the past week, Chicago’s indie-rock scene has been mourning the unexpected death of Ryan Deffet, who played guitar and sang in Space Gators and Faux Furrs. Deffet moved here from Dayton, Ohio, and enmeshed himself in the northwest-side underground scene in the 2010s; for years he organized Deff Jam, a DIY festival that presented […]

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If it hadn’t been for the COVID pandemic, power-poppy Kansas punk trio Get Smart! would’ve played a 40th-anniversary show—their first gig in three decades—in November 2020. That date ended up pushed back to November 2021, and luckily for us, it didn’t turn out to be a one-off affair. The band formed in Lawrence in 1980 […]

The post Get Smart! can teach you more about punk’s past in person appeared first on Chicago Reader.

Last week, Chicago Latinx artist collective and label Future Rootz teamed up with Toronto counterpart Canal Sounds to reissue Yoyi, a trippy Afro-Cuban album that Cuban multi-instrumentalist Jorge Soler León released under the name Grupo los Yoyi in 1977. Yoyi originally came out on the Areito imprint of EGREM, which for decades was Cuba’s only […]

The post Future Rootz teams up to reissue a rare album of trippy 70s Afro-Cuban funk appeared first on Chicago Reader.

Update Tue 9/27: Young Fathers have postponed this show till April 11, 2024. The new date is also at the Vic, and all tickets already bought will be honored or refunded. For about a decade, Scottish trio Young Fathers have been releasing subterranean-sounding experimental hip-hop songs whose strange arrangements combine brawny percussion, squeaky synths, polyphonic […]

The post Scottish hip-hop group Young Fathers embrace their light on <i>Heavy Heavy</i> appeared first on Chicago Reader.

I realize I’m in the minority when I say I love the days when autumn bleeds into winter. I love the crisp air that descends with the first seasonal chill; I love the smell of trees shedding the last of their leaves; I love that it all reminds me to embrace the warmth of cozy […]

The post Shoegaze pioneers Slowdive drop a new album just in time for the colder days ahead appeared first on Chicago Reader.

The earliest Spotify track uploaded by Indiana-raised singer-songwriter Delaney Bailey is the gentle 2020 song “Loving & Losing,” whose delicate, cycling acoustic guitar melody sounds like wind chimes in the breeze. Before the official release of the song, Bailey uploaded a TikTok video where she performs part of it in a dim, cluttered room. Lyrics […]

The post How do Delaney Bailey’s intimate songs speak to you? appeared first on Chicago Reader.

I discovered the work of videographer Josh Horton through local music-media outlet Real Ones, which began as a podcast in 2020 and evolved to produce concerts and shoot interviews with local and national artists. Horton has shot Real Ones interviews at several festivals. He immersed himself in Chicago’s overlapping hip-hop and R&B scenes after graduating […]

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In July, I attended a community meeting at the Broadway Armory in Edgewater about the city’s plan to turn the Park District facility into a temporary shelter for asylum seekers. A group of protesters, angry that much of the armory’s programming would be relocated or otherwise disrupted, carried bright yellow signs reading “Don’t Displace Us.” […]

The post The <i>Reader</i>’s guide to World Music Festival Chicago 2023 appeared first on Chicago Reader.

Gossip Wolf first became acquainted with multi-instrumentalist Joel Styzens via his remarkable hammered dulcimer playing on the Elijah McLaughlin Ensemble album III, which Reader writer Bill Meyer praised in May for its attempts at “musical transcendence.” As you might expect from that record’s shimmering acoustic textures and accessible melodies, Styzens’s own compositions play out across […]

The post Hammered dulcimer player Joel Styzens celebrates a lushly orchestrated new solo album appeared first on Chicago Reader.

In late August, veteran Chicago house DJ and organizer Craig Loftis launched a GoFundMe to try to save the Great Lakes Elks Lodge in Washington Park from closure. Loftis says the building is more than 100 years old, and that the Elks have occupied it for 86 years. He also runs an underground house club […]

The post House veteran Craig Loftis needs help to keep the music going at the Lodge appeared first on Chicago Reader.

Chicago rock trio Dead Lucid self-released their debut, titled simply EP, in 2016, and since then they’ve tightened up their bedraggled, bluesy psych-rock style by borrowing from classic postpunk. On their self-released third EP, May’s Vision, they summon an austere composure to compress their former fuzz and fury into newly sparse arrangements. The EP’s best […]

The post Dead Lucid suture together postpunk and psych rock into tantalizing freak-outs appeared first on Chicago Reader.

In the mid- and late 1980s, Deeon Boyd built a reputation as one of the best DJs in Chicago’s Low End. He lived in Stateway Gardens in Bronzeville, and he’d spin records in the projects. “He liked playing music for people,” says Tranz, a hip-hop producer from the Low End. “He would set up outside […]

The post DJ Deeon brought the Low End to the world appeared first on Chicago Reader.

Pianist Pat Leary has played in so many local ensembles it’d be easy to lose count. These days he tickles the ivories in Latin R&B band Partywatcher and indie country outfit Thompson Springs, accompanies jazz singer Livia Gazzolo, and improvises in free-jazz quartet Heuristic with saxophonist and flutist Eric Novak, bassist Jeff Wheaton, and drummer […]

The post Jazz pianist Pat Leary celebrates a sleek, bustling electric trio album appeared first on Chicago Reader.

Update: Precocious Neophyte have canceled this September appearance. The band’s next scheduled show is Mon 10/2 at Cafe Mustache in support of Jyonson Tsu, current vocalist for Acid Mothers Temple & the Melting Paraiso UFO. By 2021, I knew every dusty corner of my two-bedroom apartment so well—and my world during that stage of the […]

The post Precocious Neophyte’s home-recorded dream pop sounds bigger than the sky appeared first on Chicago Reader.

Chicago four-piece the Trenchies combine self-aware bookishness with carefully controlled energy, which work together to give their whimsical indie rock its irresistible momentum—their songs can make you feel like your day is filled with unforeseen possibilities. On their self-released debut EP, March’s You Are Listening To, the Trenchies juggle goofy funk (“Talk Show”), slacker pop […]

The post The Trenchies will make you believe in indie rock’s future appeared first on Chicago Reader.

For more than two decades, saxophonist Dave Rempis has been a key community builder in the improvised-music scene, both locally and internationally, working behind the scenes as well as onstage. He’s made incalculable contributions during his long association with Chicago nonprofit Elastic Arts: since 2002 he’s booked its Thursday-night Improvised Music Series, and he’s served […]

The post Dave Rempis steps away from Elastic Arts after more than 20 years of service appeared first on Chicago Reader.

By halfway through the summer, I’m reliably burned out on music festivals, and lots of them I wouldn’t attend even if I were still in tip-top shape. So you know that a festival is special if I’m willing to tell you to spend one of your dwindling number of precious summer weekends paying to hang […]

The post ARC Music Festival’s dance extravaganza is a hell of a way to send off summer appeared first on Chicago Reader.

I threw the worst pitch of my life on a Saturday afternoon in Gary, Indiana. My brain lagged behind my body as it went through the motions that should result in a clean throw; everything went sour once my torso began to twist in the direction of home plate and I became fully conscious of […]

The post First pitch: a journey through ceremony and baseball appeared first on Chicago Reader.

When Chicago teen four-piece Neptune’s Core formed in 2018, they wrestled with punk, indie rock, and power pop—sometimes it felt like they weren’t quite in control of their music, but the results were always at least interesting. They self-released their debut album, Can’t Have It All, in 2020, playing snaggletoothed melodies with enough feverish energy […]

The post Chicago teen rockers Neptune’s Core celebrate their big new EP at Metro appeared first on Chicago Reader.

It’s been years since the duo of Tim Kinsella and Jenny Pulse (aka Jennifer Polus) dropped the name “Good Fuck” and began recording and performing under their own names. Their industriousness remains undiminished: they began developing the new Giddy Skelter, their debut full-length for Kill Rock Stars, nearly three years ago, and they made a […]

The post Tim Kinsella & Jenny Pulse have finally decided their new album is done appeared first on Chicago Reader.

Chicago rapper Demauris “D2x” Dixon performs like he insists on giving his absolute best to every facet of his life. Sometimes that pressure gets to him—when he races to squeeze a knotty, weighty lyric into an otherwise easygoing verse, for instance, he can disrupt his crisp flow and casual charisma. But there’s beauty even in […]

The post Chicago rapper D2x fuels his promising career with kindness appeared first on Chicago Reader.

In 2016, Reader music editor Philip Montoro profiled local progressive-rock weirdos Lovely Little Girls upon the release of the album Glistening Vivid Splash, describing their “absurd and jarring contrasts” and “knotty, intricate songs” that “heave and dance and skitter, sometimes gracefully dexterous and sometimes grotesquely lumpy.” The band have been steadily evolving since their confrontationally […]

The post Lovely Little Girls drop a dazzling new album of grotesque, theatrical prog rock appeared first on Chicago Reader.

Smushie main man Austin Koenigstein (also half of Chicago duo Berta Bigtoe) plays psych-leaning indie rock whose relaxed, sun-dappled melodies will convince you he’s figured out the secret to an unbothered life. Radiant keys, limber bass, loose and understated guitars, and cool, in-the-pocket drums float through Smushie’s latest album, June’s self-released Doofus Casanova, and Koenigstein […]

The post Smushie’s psych-pop will make you believe in endless summers appeared first on Chicago Reader.

In Nina Corcoran’s recent Pitchfork Rising profile of Chicago postpunk trio Lifeguard, guitarist-vocalist Kai Slater described what draws together the teenagers in their Hallogallo scene. “It feels like everyone involved is really desperate to make music,” Slater said, “like it’s not a choice, but their natural role.” This sense of necessity invigorates the high-wire tension […]

The post Lifeguard make a break for indie’s big time with <i>Dressed in Trenches</i> appeared first on Chicago Reader.

Danny Gallegos, who cofounded Cemetery in 2010 and fronted the Chicago death-rock band for its entire history, died on Thursday, July 27. “Danny had so many ideas. Too many,” says guitarist Dez Knuska, who became friends with Gallegos in 2007 because they went to a lot of the same punk shows. “He wanted to be […]

The post Cemetery founder and front man Danny Gallegos dies appeared first on Chicago Reader.

In the Bandcamp credits of their 2022 full-length debut, Psychokinetic Love Songs (Lonely Ghost), Montana indie-emo band Hey, ILY snuck in what looks like a mission statement. Lead guitarist Trevin Baker and front man Caleb Haynes mention their instruments, of course, but also their “average” or “above average” skill at Nintendo’s Smash Bros.—add in the […]

The post Indie-emo group Hey, ILY come from Montana but sound like they climbed out of an N64 appeared first on Chicago Reader.

Update 8/6/2023: The Back Alley Jazz event in Hasan Park on Sunday, August 6 (see third item below), has been canceled due to forecast weather. The Hyde Park Jazz Festival will announce a new date for the event. For more than 20 years, Chicago ensemble Magic Carpet have blended jazz, funk, reggae, and various flavors […]

The post Globe-trotting groove wizards Magic Carpet drop their FPE Records debut appeared first on Chicago Reader.

Until this summer, I’d have struggled to think of a trio of rising high school sophomores who’d landed a slot at West Fest just a few months after forming their band—but then Chicago postpunks Uniflora went ahead and did it. Drummer Ruby O’Brien and bassist Theo Williams have been friends since kindergarten, and guitarist-vocalist Quinn […]

The post Postpunk trio Uniflora take Chicago’s teen scene by storm appeared first on Chicago Reader.

Most music outlets have already published their listicles spotlighting the best albums of the first half of the year. As usual, I’m not even thinking about picking my favorites from among every album released anywhere—I’m overwhelmed just by the volume of quality Chicago music that I haven’t gotten to write about yet. This felt like […]

The post Nine great Chicago records to hear now appeared first on Chicago Reader.

So far this summer, few new indie-rock songs have affected me as much as “You Can’t Do It All,” the not-quite-title track from Cusp’s self-released debut album, You Can Do It All. Jen Bender’s sweet, straightforward vocals snuggle up against a fogbank of guitar fuzz, a quietly humming bass line, a waltz-time beat, and an […]

The post Cusp have made one of the best Chicago indie-rock albums of the year appeared first on Chicago Reader.

Cleveland protopunk band the Electric Eels existed for just three years in the early 70s, playing all of five gigs, and didn’t release a record till long after they’d broken up. But the legend of this notoriously self-destructive band keeps growing—maybe because founding guitarist Brian McMahon published a masterfully cantankerous memoir, Jaguar Ride, via HoZac […]

The post Two former Electric Eels show up to celebrate an obsessively curated new compilation appeared first on Chicago Reader.

I understand why people are sad that this year’s Silver Room Sound System Block Party will be the last. When Silver Room owner Eric Williams started the block party in 2002, he did so in part to address the fact that neighborhood street festivals routinely overlooked the Black musicians and artists in his community—if no […]

The post The Silver Room Block Party says farewell appeared first on Chicago Reader.

On July 14, student organizers at University of Chicago radio station WHPK released a public letter to university leadership requesting more financial support for the upcoming school year—in part to mitigate an oncoming crisis of equipment maintenance. In April, the student-run Program Coordinating Council, which allocates student government money every year, gave WHPK $20,600 for […]

The post WHPK faces a funding crisis that could take it off the air appeared first on Chicago Reader.

Like basically anyone who works or plays in a developed country, I’m familiar with the frustrations of technology that stops working properly—it bothers me irrationally that I have to really lean on my laptop’s “R” key to get the letter to appear. Sometimes I repeatedly hammer on the errant key, which produces spelling errors rather […]

The post Footwork pioneer RP Boo mines mundane details for dance-floor thrills appeared first on Chicago Reader.

The punishing five-song cassette that local D-beat crew War Effort dropped last summer was rumored to have been written and recorded in one day—and the band have maintained that pace on Path to Glory, a scorching seven-inch EP (released last month via Bay Area label Warthog Speak) that ups the ante on the tape’s aggression […]

The post War Effort drop a scorching EP of ‘first thought, best thought’ D-beat hardcore appeared first on Chicago Reader.

Last year, Chicago multi-instrumentalist Ryan Nolen launched a solo project called Footballhead as an outlet for material too poppy for his ongoing band, Kirby Grip, who play soaring, sometimes serious space rock. On Footballhead’s debut, the July 2022 EP Kitchen Fly, Nolen made his affection for 90s alt-rock radio hits, caramel-sweet emo, and turn-of-the-century pop […]

The post Footballhead will make you believe in alt-rock again appeared first on Chicago Reader.

Experimental artist Matthew Sage, better known as M. Sage, moved to Chicago from Colorado in 2014, and within a couple years I’d become quite fond of his work. The reflective solo material he’d put out on Atlanta label Geographic North and the gigabytes of other peoples’ recordings he issued via his own label Patient Sounds […]

The post M. Sage conjures serene, naturalistic sounds in his old Chicago home appeared first on Chicago Reader.

Gossip Wolf has been hailing Armando Perez for his work with local groove-tastic ensemble ÉSSO since 2015. This wolf was especially impressed with the band’s 2021 album, Xicao, and its broad palette of dance-floor-filling sounds.  For the past few years, Perez has been working on radically different solo material, playing drums, guitars, bass, synths, and […]

The post Armando Perez of ÉSSO goes solo on <i>oobs Rx</i> appeared first on Chicago Reader.

Do you ever feel incapacitated by the firehose of depressing news about our deteriorating environment and the stubborn nonresponse by the governments and corporations who could actually help? What about the deeply ingrained structural racism that disenfranchises and marginalizes large swaths of our communities, or the fascists who want to increase that misery? Maybe what […]

The post Fifth-wave emo band Home Is Where offer catharsis to a burning world appeared first on Chicago Reader.

Chicagoans rarely suffer from a shortage of music festivals, but few such events make me feel like I’m participating in the city’s cultural fabric like the Chosen Few Picnic. The long-running house-music celebration began informally in 1990, and its roots extend even further back. Wayne Williams founded the Chosen Few DJ collective in 1977 as […]

The post The Chosen Few have cracked the code for the perfect Chicago music festival appeared first on Chicago Reader.

Rising Chicago four-piece Rotundos make lo-fi rock with the kind of freewheeling glee that feeds any good DIY scene. They’ve released a handful of singles and demos, and they’re headlining Beat Kitchen to celebrate their new debut EP, Ya Nos Conocen (Sawyer), which corrals bubblegum-sweet power-pop hooks and rough-and-tumble punk grit into six lean bilingual […]

The post Punky Chicago four-piece Rotundos deliver a fast-acting shot of DIY rock energy appeared first on Chicago Reader.

Chicago artist Nicholas Clark first popped up on Gossip Wolf’s radar in 2016, when his Minnowland studio made a hilariously oddball Claymation video for “Sad Screaming Old Man,” a song by New York indie-folk musician and comic-book artist Jeffrey Lewis about his travails with a loud elderly neighbor. As it turns out, Clark also makes […]

The post Froghat fills an amphibian-shaped hole in the surf-rock firmament appeared first on Chicago Reader.

Gossip Wolf readers may already know Chicago steel-guitar maestro Tom McGettrick from leading instrumental band Mar Caribe, appearing on albums by guitarist Thomas Comerford, or touring with Jon Langford’s Four Lost Souls. McGettrick has been working on ingenious arrangements for a new group, Ghost Voice, that also features Jeff Parker (Chicago Cellar Boys) on double […]

The post Ghost Voice reimagine classical music for pedal steel, electric piano, and double bass appeared first on Chicago Reader.

I pay attention whenever Chicagoan Owen Ashworth releases music through his Orindal Records label, and not just because I like his indie-pop project Advance Base. Orindal’s back catalog is a murderers’ row of indie artists, some of whom the label got behind very early in their careers: Julie Byrne (who will release The Greater Wings […]

The post Breakout North Carolina indie rockers Wednesday play Metro appeared first on Chicago Reader.

UPDATE: Friday 6/23/23, 11:30 AM: the Icewear Vezzo concert at the Promontory has been postponed to a future date yet to be determined. Refunds available at point of purchase. The Detroit Pistons promoted their 2021-’22 season with a campaign called “We Hustle Different,” which aimed to build civic pride in part with halftime performances by […]

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Is it bad form to claim Water From Your Eyes for Chicago? The duo of vocalist Rachel Brown and multi-instrumentalist Nate Amos, who released the buzzy album Everyone’s Crushed last month on Matador, live in New York City—but they met and formed Water From Your Eyes in Chicago in 2016 and issued their first full-length […]

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Pittsburgh native Bill Harris moved to Chicago in 2011 because he wanted to play improvisational and experimental music. Four years later, the drummer, engineer, and composer launched Amalgam, a record label that also serves as an umbrella for a loose creative collective. He’s released plenty of his own work via Amalgam, including solo recordings, a […]

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In 1991, rapper and promoter Duro Wicks began hosting a weekly hip-hop open mike at Lizard Lounge in Wicker Park. At that point, there hadn’t yet been many recurring hip-hop parties in Chicago. In 1986, DJ and producer Parker Lee Williams, aka P-Lee Fresh, had launched what’s believed to be the first such event at […]

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How could Gossip Wolf not love new Chicago trio Razed by Apes? Their lineup includes members of some of this wolf’s favorite knuckleheaded local hard-rock and punk bands—veteran drummer Patrick “Rusty” Gloeckle, for instance, has played in Satan’s Hallow, Midnight Dice, and Hitter, among others. Gloeckle, bassist Casey Moffitt,and guitarist Jared Mileger knock out the […]

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The past month has been productive for flutist, saxophonist, and composer Henry Threadgill. A Chicago native and an early member of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, Threadgill is one of the most important living voices in the Black avant-garde. He’s one of only three jazz artists to have won a Pulitzer Prize […]

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Sampa Tembo was born in Zambia and raised in Botswana, but she was living in Australia when she released her breakout second mixtape as Sampa the Great, 2017’s Birds and the Bee9. Sampa’s hip-hop career soon took off internationally, and after COVID-19 spread worldwide, she left Australia for Zambia. The move helped her expand her […]

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Chicago R&B artist Elijah LeFlore sings with the understated cool of someone who’s found peace and mostly just wants to share that whole-body tranquility with you. In January 2022, he self-released his debut full-length, Sunset Radio, where his lilting voice floats among gentle guitars, nimble electronic percussion, and soothing keyboards; he followed that up in […]

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Gossip Wolf has been fond of Wild Prairie Vinyl & Vintage since it opened in KStarke’s old spot at 1109 N. Western in late 2017, so it’s no fun to report that co-owners Natasha Rac and Alex Gonzales will permanently close Wild Prairie on Sunday, June 11. Gonzales says the couple have been feeling burned […]

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Stuck became one of my favorite new Chicago bands during the worst of the pandemic. Their taut, bracing postpunk is exactly the kind of music I love to see played in rooms so cramped that the walls sweat—and that’s exactly the kind of environment I’ve avoided since COVID-19 arrived. I find this irony alternately funny […]

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It doesn’t seem possible that only five years have passed since Elijah Montez arrived in Chicago and started creating psychedelic pop as Daydream Review. He’s had a devil of a time making the finances of post-COVID touring work, but here in Chicago we haven’t had to wait around for Daydream Review to bring their shoegaze-style […]

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It feels like a lifetime since Chicago pop-punk veterans the Bollweevils have put out an album. They formed in 1989, and unless you count a posthumous compilation, they haven’t released a full-length since 1996—that one was Weevilive, a live recording of a Metro set from the previous year. The group went dormant after a final […]

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In 2005, Czarina Mirani launched 5 Magazine to spread the word about the house-music scene she loves so much. Along with managing editor Terry Matthew and a pool of contributors, Mirani has published indispensable documentation of Chicago’s house history, including interviews with key players such as Frankie Knuckles, Paul Johnson, and Phuture’s DJ Pierre. Whenever […]

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Ever since singer, producer, and songwriter Krysta Rayford, aka K.Raydio, moved to Chicago from Minneapolis in summer 2022, Gossip Wolf has been on the alert for every bit of her soulful music. She has an endlessly alluring voice, a keen melodic sense, and a knack for beats that combine classic R&B and soul from the […]

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If you like hip-hop that foregrounds reflective lyrics, sumptuous production, and a heady mix of youthful optimism and ambition, Kayo may be your new favorite emerging rapper. On his debut full-length, January’s It Was Fun While It Lasted (released via Kayo’s label and streetwear company, Southside Blue Hearts), he raps over relaxed beats built from […]

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Chicago four-piece Pinksqueeze should be in the rotation of any local indie-rock connoisseur, and not just because of their skill with their instruments. Sure, these twentysomethings play with the confidence of seasoned veterans who’ve been gigging since before they were born. And sure, their musical chemistry gives an affable warmth to everything they play, whether […]

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Chicago saxophonist Mars Williams has been a key part of the international avant-garde jazz community for decades, but he’s arguably even better known as a pop musician—he played with cheeky new-wave band the Waitresses in the early 80s, and he’s recorded and toured with the Psychedelic Furs on and off since 1983. His jazz gigs […]

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In the early 90s, Dead Rider guitarist Todd Rittmann moved into a three-bedroom apartment with an attic on the corner of Paulina and Grace in Lakeview. He’d recently left DeKalb, where he’d studied at Northern Illinois University. Rittmann shared his Lakeview apartment with three musicians, including Tom Mioducki and Pat Samson, who’d formed a noisy […]

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Gossip Wolf first got acquainted with DJs Glenna Fitch (aka Sold) and Alex Bond (aka Hi-Vis) by shaking a furry butt at their gigs as the duo Farplane, but this wolf got to know them better at their 2018 Daphne festival workshop “Women in Experimental Electronic Composition From Past to Present.” The two of them […]

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In summer 2020, during one of my routine Bandcamp searches for new music tagged “Chicago,” I found OK Cool’s Anomia EP, and it convinced me of the local indie-rock duo’s potential. With that EP, guitarist-vocalist Bridget Stiebris and bassist Haley Blomquist proved that they know all the obscure flavors of indie and emo that precede […]

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When I first listened to the new collaborative album from Chicago rappers Defcee and CRASHprez, It’s Always a Time Like This (Closed Sessions), I lost track of how many times I replayed a passage to catch an ingenious turn of phrase that’d I’d missed when it zoomed by the first time. In “Safer,” Defcee rounds […]

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Record Wonderland co-owner Pat Deasey died unexpectedly on Saturday, April 22, at age 55. “He was a workhorse—you didn’t always know he was here, but he kept the place together,” says his friend Steve Young, co-owner of the store. “He was the order agent, and I’m the chaos agent.” Young met Deasey in the 1980s […]

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It’s hard to believe it’s been 11 years since Jessee Rose Crane and Philip Lesicko left Chicago for the teeny downstate town of New Douglass (population: 350 as of the 2020 census), partly because you can still feel their influence in our underground rock scene. With their old duo, the Funs, they’ve played noisy but […]

The post Jessee Rose Crane and Philip Lesicko of the Funs celebrate a stripped-down new album as Glow in the Dark Flowers appeared first on Chicago Reader.

Record Store Day began 15 years ago as a way to mobilize consumer support for independent brick-and-mortar record stores, which were seen as niche enough to be at risk of extinction from big online retailers. Streaming wasn’t yet the behemoth business it is today—Spotify also launched in 2008, and it wouldn’t reach the U.S. till […]

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The members of Chicago jazz-fusion sextet Cordoba drive an inventive creative community with their many overlapping projects. Vocalist Brianna Tong, for instance, also sings in funky experimental ensemble Je’raf and punky trio Bussy Kween Power Trip, both of which also feature prolific Cordoba bassist Khalyle Hagood. Hagood, meanwhile, also plays in soul outfit the Devonns […]

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