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 […]
Author Archives: J.R. Nelson
The inimitable but intermittent Roctober roars back with a hefty double issue
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 […]
Cellist and sound artist Dorothy Carlos brings My Ideal Is Windy to the Lincoln Park Conservatory
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 […]
Indie rockers Soft and Dumb pause work on their next album to drop an acoustic EP
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 Trenchies celebrate a new record with an old lineup
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 […]
Power trio Chicken Happen whip up a new album with a dash of Meat Wave
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 […]
RIP multimedia rock artist Shelley Howard
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 […]
Macie Stewart gives her solo songs their grandest canvas yet
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 […]
Nathan Graham blends blues, country, and soul on his star-making debut album
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 […]
Chicago indie rock mourns Ryan Deffet of Space Gators
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 […]
Future Rootz teams up to reissue a rare album of trippy 70s Afro-Cuban funk
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 […]
Hammered dulcimer player Joel Styzens celebrates a lushly orchestrated new solo album
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 […]
House veteran Craig Loftis needs help to keep the music going at the Lodge
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 […]
Jazz pianist Pat Leary celebrates a sleek, bustling electric trio album
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 […]
Dave Rempis steps away from Elastic Arts after more than 20 years of service
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 […]