A few weeks ago, on one of the first chilly nights, I sat in the grass wearing a mask and watched my first live comedy show in over six months. It was like a light was reignited in my body and in my face—real laughs from real people! It was clear the audience around me felt it too; even if not all the jokes landed, there was barely a silent moment in the crowd, which spanned from a spacious Logan Square backyard to the boulevard....
Kris Esfandiari is no stranger to side projects. Since cofounding doom-metal band King Woman in 2009, she’s released solo material under the names Miserable, Kris, Dalmatian, and Nghtcrwler. Her latest project, Sugar High, is a collaboration with Berlin-based songwriter and producer Darcy Baylis, whose credits include recordings by Wicca Phase Springs Eternal and Camp Cope singer-guitarist Georgia Maq. The two met and forged a creative connection over Instagram, and in summer 2018 they spent a week together recording in Esfandiari’s Los Angeles practice space....
The YouTube video opens with a young woman seated at a vanity table, writing in her diary and waving good-bye to end a FaceTime chat. The soundtrack begins with a brief acoustic-guitar intro, and then a soft, sweet voice floats into the arrangement, slightly sad but still comforting. A good voice to listen to in hard times, or when sheltering in place. Elena HT Par’s song “Melody” is by far her biggest success, with nearly two million YouTube views....
Cherry Glazerr are a rock band. Now, you can go and split that hair a thousand different ways—comparing them to a predictable string of women-fronted groups that were popular in the 90s or acknowledging that their not-so-delicate balance of styles is two parts vintage this and one part modern that, among other critiques. But the only thing that matters is that Cherry Glazerr are a goddamn rock band led by Clementine Creevy, a rising star who’s as likely to balance herself atop a bass drum or kick over a floor monitor onstage as she is to flick forward airy vocal harmonies....
As a public service for the multitudes who didn’t see Mayor Emanuel’s massive New Year’s Eve e-mail dump about the Laquan McDonald case, let me tell you what you missed. Or at least it contradicted the version as put out by a spokesman for the Fraternal Order of Police, which effectively became the city’s official version since no one, including the mayor, bothered to refute it. I will give Mayor Emanuel credit for this....
When I saw T.J. Miller perform this past January, he was joined by his longtime sketch group, Heavyweights. But what Miller did can’t really be described as “sketch comedy.” In a solo scene he remained silent, using only a clown horn to communicate with an unsuspecting audience member whom he brought onstage. He proceeded to silently act out a first date with this person while using a pair of skeleton hands as his real hands (he later tried the same bit on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert)....
What a journey it’s been for the Hecks. When the Chicago group started out in 2012, they were a duo: guitarist Andy Mosiman and drummer Zach Hebert, who made a mind-bending racket out of minimalist, Sonic Youth-inspired art-rock noise and spooky drone-pop. By the time they released their self-titled debut full-length in 2016, they’d expanded into a trio with second guitarist Dave Vettraino, blossoming into a herky-jerky juggernaut that touched on the genius of postpunk touchstones such as Devo and Wire....
F or a surly old man in Victorian muttonchops, Henrik Ibsen has turned out to be endlessly adaptable. It seems every generation gets the Ibsen it needs. In the early aughts you couldn’t go a season without watching at least a few Hedda Gablers blow their brains out because of the patriarchy. Now we’ve got a spate of Thomas Stockmanns—courageous, tenacious, not a little nuts—blowing the whistle on small-town oligarchs in productions of An Enemy of the People....
The Reader’s archive is vast and varied, going back to 1971. Every day in Archive Dive, we’ll dig through and bring up some finds. There will be many tributes to the Fall’s Mark E. Smith, who died yesterday, including a very fine contribution by the Reader’s Peter Margasak. But there will be none more heartfelt than the one spotted more than seven years ago by the late, great Cliff Doerksen at the Berwyn YMCA on the upper left arm of a fellow gymgoer: a tattoo of Smith’s face....
Last week we gave you eight holiday-show reviews; here are eight more—including some for Hanukkah—with still more bounty to come. —Tony Adler The Christmas Schooner John Reeger and the late Julie Shannon, creators of this facile, treacly Christmas musical, implant a purportedly rhetorical question at its center: Why would Michigan sea captain Peter Stossel risk his life sailing his schooner laden with Christmas trees 300 miles to Chicago across a stormy November Lake Michigan in 1882 just so that others “can know the joy of Christmas?...
Q: I’m a 24-year-old male, married three years, monogamous. My wife and I are religious and were both virgins when we got married. I’m sexually frustrated with two things. (1) How can I get her to give me oral sex? (She has never given, and I have never received, oral sex. I regularly give her oral sex.) She is afraid to try it, saying she’s not ready yet. About every six months, I bring it up and it leads to a fight....
A Light in the Dark: The Story of Helen Keller & Anne Sullivan As with last year’s vibrant Snowflake, Chicago Children’s Theatre shows that speech isn’t the only language to tell a tale in its latest, a coproduction with Thodos Dance Chicago that recounts the story of Helen Keller and her teacher Anne Sullivan. The work opens with Anne, haunted by the early loss of her brother, and shows how this gave rise to her passion for teaching....
Seeking: adventures with dudes with brains Occupation: arts administrator What do you do when you’re not working? His friend says: “He’s wicked smart on art and politics, and he keeps fit by biking from Humboldt to Hyde Park. That biking also gives him a cute butt and strong arms.” Go on adventures. Smoker? No. Pets? Dietary restrictions? Nope. Love gluten and lactose. Children? Hahahaha. Religion? Love. If HBO made a miniseries about your life, who would you cast for the lead role?...
Since 1981, Green Jellÿ (yes, styled with an umlaut over the y) have doggedly pursued one goal: to be the world’s worst band. And by some indications, that title’s not unfounded. How many other groups have burned through more than 400 musicians, a number vocalist and sole original member Bill Manspeaker lists prominently on Green Jellÿ’s Facebook page? How many other groups have been halted less than a minute into a performance on The Gong Show, a fate that in 1987 befell Green Jellÿ just as Manspeaker—wearing a jack-o-lantern mask—looked like he was getting into the groove of “Rock ’n’ Roll Pumpkin?...
Field & florist, which opened in 2017 in a charming basement in Wicker Park on Division just east of Damen, grows its flowers on a 30-acre farm in southwest Michigan. Owners Heidi Joynt, 36, and Molly Kobelt, 32, say this land—surrounded by woods, vineyards, and blueberry fields—is the beating heart of their business. “Farm-to-table” isn’t just for restaurants anymore. Aside from floral arrangements and a unique selection of home goods and gifts, Field & Florist sells local products like mobiles handmade by Curio Curio, ceramics by Angela Vernachik (including the popular “convertible vases,” which adapt to shrinking bouquets), and postcards and book bags designed by the Normal Studio....
The streaming-video channel FilmStruck is currently featuring Alfred Hitchcock’s early British features from the 1920s and ’30s. Many of the director’s favorite themes, motifs, and visual devices are already in evidence, as is his dark, sardonic wit. Highlighted below are two of his more famous films from the period (The Lodger and Sabotage) and two real obscurities. The Lodger Alfred Hitchcock’s most famous silent (1927). Not a great film, but a remarkable one, with Hitchcock at his most “innovative,” shooting through plate-glass floors and generally one-upping the expressionist cliches of the period....
Peter Morgan’s dramatization of the televised 1977 interviews between the lightweight British talk show host and the disgraced former American president gets a deft and timely revival under Scott Weinstein’s direction. There’s nary a dull moment as Nixon and Frost prepare to spar in front of the cameras. Jeffrey D. Kmiec’s set manages to make Redtwist’s tiny stage work as a TV studio and a half dozen other locales through clever use of doorways and video elements....
Adele Nicholas didn’t sleep the night of the presidential election. She stayed up watching the results with her husband, and she couldn’t bring herself to stop even after it became clear what had happened: Donald Trump had won. Nicholas, like many other people in the Chicago legal and music communities to which she belongs, felt immediate dread and horror. A civil rights attorney as well as founder and front woman of synth-pop trio Axons, Nicholas remembers being struck with a sudden conviction as soon as the electoral votes were tallied: “Basically everything we do now is political,” she says....
For much of the aughts Ted Leo & the Pharmacists found themselves in the unusual position of being beloved avatars of the indie-rock scene. The group wasn’t as commercially successful as other acts that emerged from this broad milieu, but their sophisticated, punk-driven, oft-political songs had a scrappiness to them that spoke to the genre’s underdog spirit, and had an unexpected crossover appeal. Ted Leo & the Pharmacists’ bold and refined 2010 album, The Brutalist Bricks, which came out on the indie juggernaut Matador, appeared to be a culmination of their artistic expression and commercial growth over the previous decade....
Last month Alexis Thomas of Black Cat Kitchen and Eve Studnicka of Dinner at the Grotto officially joined forces by rebranding their binomial meal delivery service “Funeral Potatoes,” named for the classic midwestern cheesy hash brown casserole. It was a small but significant flag-planting for one of the first of many pandemic chef pivots I covered in the last year. In a time when we couldn’t (and definitely shouldn’t) go out to restaurants, Instagram pop-ups like theirs kept the creative life force of the Chicago restaurant industry alive....
