The pandemic has constricted all our worlds—especially in its early months, I rarely went past my apartment’s front door. It’s been enough to make me want to scream, and Chicago multi-instrumentalist Juan Diego Bustillos reached that point at the end of 2021. “I’d been having a really shitty year,” he says. “In January, a really […]
Category: The Listener
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Raja Kirik refit a subversive Javanese trance tradition for modern uprisings
When my colleague Leor Galil looked back on 2021, he said he’d listened to 750 new-to-him releases that year. I won’t pretend to be in his league, but in 2021 I did have a clear favorite album—not a common thing for me—and I figure it’s never too late to share. The duo Raja Kirik, based […]
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Soul man Nate Barksdale makes disciplined songs that can help you relax
Over the past few years, Nate Barksdale has become one of my favorite emerging Chicago soul artists. His releases tend to arrive in clusters, and so far this year they include a handful of singles and the late-January full-length The Colors I’ve Never Seen, a collaboration with Canadian producer Chong Wizard. The producer’s label, Chong […]
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Atom & His Package tweaked the punk scene where it counts
I still often think about Atom & His Package, the one-man, one-sequencer band that charmed and annoyed the U.S. punk scene from 1996 till 2003—that is, mostly before I knew how to find my way into that world. I love the novelty factor of the act: bespectacled Philadelphia punk Adam “Atom” Goren would yelp over […]
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Ebony’s first and only album still Reigns
My nightly TikTok binge was going as it normally would. I swiped through comedic videos made by couples; calming videos of people recounting their day as they clean their homes, shop, and go out to eat; and other videos of people dancing to dancehall, soca, and Afrobeats music. When I was new to the app, […]
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Mouth Congress confront anti-abortion violence and bigotry in “The People Have Spoken”
Scott Thompson and Paul Bellini are better known from the Kids in the Hall than for their 80s queercore band, but the lead single from their retrospective compilation is no joke.
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The most disturbing punk song that ever came from Waukegan
I can’t tell you precisely how I came across URBN DK, but I’ve thought of them often since I first felt the creeping dread of “World Gone Crazy,” off the Chicagoland punk band’s 1982 self-titled seven-inch. URBN DK were hardly the only local punks to saturate their music with depravity—Deerfield’s the Mentally Ill, for instance, […]
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Finding solace in Jenny Moore’s Mystic Business
I’ve been hyperaware of my body lately, which I realize sounds insane. How could I possibly not be aware of it? I’m living in it! And I would answer: Have you ever found a tick on the back of your neck? How long has he been there? How much of your blood has he removed? […]
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Saint Louis postpunks Trauma Harness invite you to their “Bat Barn”
Every October I go hunting for music that captures the Halloween spirit. Chicago has no shortage of options, but today I’m sharing a find from Saint Louis. Postpunk trio Trauma Harness summon the creeping dread and giddy fun of horror stories with cavernous bass lines, foreboding laughter, and sheaths of echoing guitar effects. The playfully […]
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Adia Victoria’s bluesy new A Southern Gothic begs for repeat listens
All music worth listening to reveals more about itself with repeat listens, and sometimes our interpretation of it changes with time and our own growth. This is true for albums that lay out what they’re about as though they had a sandwich board for cover art, and it’s doubly so for albums full of intriguing […]
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Okay’s best song balances sunny and sinister
In 2005, I was working in Los Angeles for a few weeks on an outdoor collaborative project with an art group called Temporary Services that I was part of at the time. We were gathering materials and building structures on a vacant lot in Echo Park, across the street from a branch of the Los […]
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Kampala-based producer Slikback soundtracks the death algorithm
On Tuesday, September 14, my friend James Kennedy publishes his second novel, a sci-fi thriller called Dare to Know. (His first, the YA fantasy The Order of Odd-Fish, was reviewed in the Reader in 2008.) I’m not going to attempt to rate the new book, because I’ve destroyed my credibility on that front by admitting […]
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A song for our second pandemic Rosh Hashanah
Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, begins this evening, and for the second year in a row I have to figure out plans that stay within my pandemic comfort zone. That means forgoing anything resembling a large celebratory dinner full of friends, their relatives, and strangers whose vaccination status is unknown to me. As I […]
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Buddy Miles wrings every drop of emotion from “The Segment”
I was walking through Fulton Market on my way home from a work event a few weeks ago when “Yes, I Know” floated out into the summer air from the PA of a nearby restaurant. The song appears on Jiaolong, the 2012 full-length debut of Daphni, a dance-music project by Dan Snaith of Caribou. It’s […]
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Joan Armatrading had a pandemic plan in 1980
Joan Armatrading isn’t always recognized here in the States with the same kind of accolades that she receives in her native England, but her new album, Consequences (released in June on BMG), showcases her seasoned voice and songwriting skills in a way that should convert some more Americans. Armatrading played her first concert at age […]