Genre-bending jazz-rap troupe Not Lovely started almost on a dare. In summer 2015, vocalist and producer Jack Clements remixed Wilco’s “EKG,” rapped over it, and uploaded his version to the Soundcloud account of Auburn Hills, his studio hip-hop project with rapper-producer Alex Singleton—aka Why? Records cofounder Joshua Virtue. “EKG” eventually earned Clements and Virtue an invite to the Wilco loft, and when Jeff Tweedy asked the duo if they had a band, they decided to put one together....

In a 2017 interview with Sixty Inches From Center contributor (and Reader staffer) S. Nicole Lane, Fran front woman Maria Jacobson talked about her nightly routine of playing her acoustic guitar just before she goes to bed. “A lot of times I still will use it kind of in response to things that happen in my life,” she said. “If I’m overwhelmed with anxiety or trying to unwrap some emotion, I’ll kind of take to the guitar....

Michigan’s Cloud Rat bill themselves as grind punk, but the truth is that they tear, slouch, and ooze across multiple genres of pissed-off and heavy music. Their 2015 full-length Qliphoth (Halo of Flies) howls from frantic hardcore head snapping to doom trudge, pausing in the middle for an ambient touch. Their three 2017 releases continue to show off their stylistic range and consistently feral attitude. On their split with Crevasse (Halo of Flies) they contribute four short bursts of aggression that forcefully flatten the line between hardcore and thrash, with vocalist Madison shrieking as if she’s being eaten by rabid bats before actually doing something recognizable as singing on their last track, “Fish in a Pool....

Q: I’m a woman who watches porn—we do exist—and I have a mad crush on a male porn star named Small Hands. Unfortunately, his videos focus less on his handsome face and more on some girl’s ass. Do! Not! Want! Is there a way to ask a porn star to please make a few movies in a certain way? I would like to see some movies that feature less of her and more of him!...

Welcome to the Reader‘s weekday news briefing. Happy Holidays! Report: Taxpayers paying a price waiting for Joseph Berrios to start anti-patronage reforms Cook County taxpayers are paying for county assessor Joseph Berrios vintage Chicago Machine-style politics, according to a new investigation by the Tribune and ProPublica Illinois. Reports from monitors “reveal a persistent pattern in Berrios’ office of improper hiring and firing, arbitrary staffing decisions and resistance to change.” Any reforms to happen in the assessor’s office have been slow-paced, and Berrios does not seem enthusiastic to adapt, according to the report....

As the singer for local R&B band Astro Samurai, Thair has shown he has the fresh skills and magnetic allure to hypnotize a crowd. That serves him well in his solo project, in which he makes huge, colorful collage pop. Thair’s self-released 2018 debut EP, Summer Luhh, has a rough-hewn DIY charm; its lo-fi electronic clacks and occasionally chintzy synth tones help make his loftiest ideas feel closer to earth....

MondaysLoyola Farmers Market | Rogers ParkLocated steps from the Loyola Red Line station, this Monday market was conceived of and created by students back in 2011. It even features student-grown produce: veggies from the school’s retreat and ecology farm in Woodstock, plus flowers, herbs, and veggies grown on campus by students in the urban ag program. You can even preorder tilapia raised in their Ecodome. 6/8-9/21: Mon 3-7 PM; 9/28-10/12: Mon 2:30-6:30 PM, Loyola Plaza, 6540 N....

Kevin Coval’s poetry has always focused on the margins of identity and community. Tackling subjects like his Jewish upbringing and structural racism, the self-styled breakbeat poet has drawn inspiration from working-class Chicagoans and people of color whose stories were not often told. Coval had been wanting to write a book about Wicker Park for a long time, but it wasn’t until artist Langston Allston came into the picture that the idea became a reality....

When all hell broke loose two years ago over the yanking of Persepolis from the Chicago Public Schools, Mayor Emanuel’s press handlers wrote it off as a misunderstanding. They said some bureaucrat in the bowels of the central office misunderstood what he or she had been directed to do and things got out of control. To his surprise, the central office sent him copies of internal e-mails that high-ranking officials—including Barbara Byrd-Bennett, the CEO—wrote each other regarding the book....

Popular books about punk history tend to focus on the best-known bands from scenes in metropolitan centers, including London, New York, Los Angeles, and Washington, D.C. But punk also proliferated thanks to outcasts living in towns their big-city peers couldn’t find on a map—they too might hear something about themselves reflected in a strange, confrontational sound. The companion compilation to Punks in Peoria, released by Chicago archival label Alona’s Dream Across the river and ten miles south of Peoria, the hometown of Bill Love and Jay Goldberg was an unlikely hotbed of musical activity....

Sports and art are typically worlds apart, but Marc Bamuthi Joseph pulls the two together in /peh-LO-tah/—A Futbol Framed Freedom Suite . . . , the new performance piece he brings to the Museum of Contemporary Art this weekend. During a trip to South Africa before the 2010 World Cup, Joseph saw soccer bring people from all over the world together, inspiring him to create a work that explores the global and personal impact of the game....

When I finally saw the film Moonlight—now nominated for six Golden Globes, including Best Motion Picture-Drama—I couldn’t watch it with any sense of comfort or detachment. After about 45 minutes in the theater, I realized I’d been sitting with my fist balled up against my lips. I sat frozen like that until the lights came on. I came of age on Chicago’s south side as a young, black, queer person who often felt vulnerable about my place in the world....

Last week, animal lovers throughout the Chicago area were devastated by the news that a fire at Bully Life Animal Services (formerly known as D&D Dog Kennel), near the suburb of West Chicago, had taken the lives of more than 30 dogs. Firefighters were able to rescue over 20 more dogs. The cause of the fire is under investigation. Owner and operator Garrett Mercado, who lived in an apartment in the building, arrived home after the fire had started, and sustained injuries while opening hot cages....

I’d rather not describe New Jersey posthardcore heroes Thursday in nostalgic tones, but the group played such a part of my early musical development it’s hard not to. I was all of 17 when they flooded my world (or what I chose to understand as my world) through a $5 subscription to Alternative Press I purchased at the 2003 Warped Tour and the public-access music-video program where I first saw a grainy broadcast of the band’s cinematographically erratic video for their single “Signals Over the Air,” from their 2003 album War All the Time (Island/Def Jam)....

Street View is a fashion series in which Isa Giallorenzo spotlights some of the coolest styles seen in Chicago. “Fashion is at once a caterpillar and a butterfly,” Coco Chanel famously said. “Be a caterpillar by day and butterfly by night.” Stylist, clothier, and model Lexi Kingery (@clear_bones) subverts Chanel’s rule by being a butterfly in the light. “I’m so sick of black and white,” she says. “Right now I’m giving you a mixture of 70s flow with some colorful 60s mod realness....

Early Tuesday morning, between 7:30 and 8 AM, approximately 200 women, some of them wearing cat ears and noses, and a few good men gathered at the corner of Wacker and Wabash. Many of them were carrying handmade signs they’d made out of posterboard. They gathered beneath the statue of George Washington, Robert Morris, and Haym Solomon and stood on the steps facing the street, holding up their signs. Even now, now that I know better and even have useful words to describe things that happen to me—”sexual harassment,” “microaggression,” “mansplaining,” terms that were invented because these things happen so often they might as well have names—I still don’t know how I could have responded to the boys in Hebrew school who felt so validated because of that stupid prayer....

Three Disney World cast members find themselves trapped in the smoldering, electrified remains of the “It’s a Small World” ride in Jillian Leff and Joe Lino’s darkly comedic 85-minute exercise in tonal irony. Like a theme-park-set contemporary No Exit, the trio of clashing personalities—an impaled Mickeyphile (Stephanie Shum), a downtrodden company skeptic (Jackie Seijo), and a conservative, murmuring zealot (Pat Coakley)—work with and against one another to survive an unspecified disaster that’s wreaking havoc across the park and maybe the world at large....

For film critics, covering the Sundance Film Festival is practically a rite of passage. Sundance has aimed to nurture independent filmmaking since its inception, and its continued success has meant that the films it chooses to accept (and the directors behind them) can be made or broken there. Attendance means audiences get to view potential blockbusters and stars before they get launched into the stratosphere. Everyone’s either looking for emerging trends and talent, or just the latest offering from industry veterans....

On the first-floor stage of iO Theater eight years ago, the members of Cook County Social Club started performing scenes about fellatio. Why? It’s unclear. Cook County Social Club moves at lightning speed—troupe member Brendan Jennings got on his knees without hesitation, ready to perform stage fellatio on Mark Raterman, as per the scene’s needs, and Raterman immediately turned around and dropped trou. Cook County Social Club consists of Jennings, Raterman, Bill Cochran, Greg Hess, and Tim Robinson (who was a cast member on Saturday Night Live for one season)....

It was a bitter cold February day—the kind of day that Chicago is famous for, and the kind of day that makes lifelong residents wonder why they haven’t broken down and moved to Miami—when I first explored Gethsemane Garden Center. On this particularly brutal day, I met up with a friend to take a walk around Andersonville. In a pre-pandemic reality, we might have gotten lunch indoors or simply rescheduled, but the need for human interaction outweighed the frigid temperatures, and we weren’t going to risk exposure to the virus to get it....