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Mono have been making dramatic, orchestral, largely instrumental experimental rock for 20 years, and in that time they’ve played in nearly 60 countries and released ten full-length albums. Their latest, January’s Nowhere Now Here (Temporary Residence), is arguably their best yet. It almost feels like a reunion record: Mono took a break in 2017 after founding drummer Yasunori Takada left the band, their first lineup change since forming in 1999. Mono returned to the stage and studio in August 2018 with new drummer Dahm Majuri Cipolla, and taking a year to find him proved to be a good move....

It was a great weekend for contemporary opera in Chicago. Lyric’s not-to-be-missed Dead Man Walking (here’s our review) continued at the Civic Opera House while across the Loop at the Harris Theater, Chicago Opera Theater presented a two-performance, one-weekend run of the 2014 one-act Everest, with an astounding score by Joby Talbot and a libretto by Gene Scheer that turns the tragic 1996 adventure that was the subject of Jon Krakauer’s book Into Thin Air into an emotionally taut opera....

Leonard C. Goodman is a Chicago criminal defense attorney and co-owner of the newly independent Reader. Americans will surely recall that during the past year of a heated contest to determine the Democratic Party’s presidential candidate, we were repeatedly told by the corporate-backed candidates and by the corporate press that our government has no money to pay for Medicare for All, a program favored by a majority of voters. Yet, in the blink of an eye, Congress and the Federal Reserve have startlingly come up with $4 trillion to bail out such essential industries as cruise ships and casinos....

Deanna Isaacs Andrew Patner, remembered at Orchestra Hall Since WFMT critic-at-large (and Chicago Sun-Times music critic) Andrew Patner’s sudden death on February 3, a number of people have confessed that they not only admired him, but actually wanted to be him—the irrepressible, erudite man-about-town with a seat at every table and a world of friends. Laura Emerick, Patner’s former editor at the Sun-Times, noted that he could also handle art, architecture, film, theater, dance, and literature....

When I first heard of local outfit Hitter coming together—with Adam Luksetich of Foul Tip on guitar, Madalyn Garcia of Lil Tits on bass, Ryan Wizniak of Meat Wave on drums, and Hanna Johnson of Lifestyles and Lil Tits on vocals—I was expecting them to be the coolest, punkest band I’d ever hear. But these four steered away from the laser-focused punk of their other bands in favor of scuzzy heavy metal and sleazy, riffed-out rock ‘n’ roll....

László Nemes’s acclaimed Holocaust drama Son of Saul opens Friday at Music Box, and longtime Reader contributor Jonathan Rosenbaum weighs in with a four-star review. We’ve also got new reviews of: Anesthesia, an indie ensemble drama featuring Kristen Stewart, Sam Waterston, Gretchen Mol, Michael K. Williams, and Tim Blake Nelson (who also directed); The Barkley Marathons: The Race That Eats Its Young, a documentary about the annual footrace that leads through Tennessee’s treacherous Frozen Head State Park; Cemetery of Splendor and Mekong Hotel, the two most recent films by Thai filmmaker (and SAIC graduate) Apichatpong Weerasethakul, who will attend the Monday screening of Cemetery; The 5th Wave, a sci-fi adventure about invading aliens that stars Chloe Grace Moretz; and The Finest Hours, a Disney drama about the daring U....

This week’s featured gig poster celebrates Grammy-winning Chicago percussion quartet Third Coast Percussion. In February they hosted an online fundraiser called the TCP Family Reunion, which gathered many of the composers, performers, artists, and other collaborators who’ve worked with the group over the years. It featured live and prerecorded music written or performed by the likes of Jlin and Sérgio and Clarice Assad, as well as the world premiere of a globally crowdsourced musical montage titled Family Tree....

The Condition Inspired by a vague radio ad on her drive home, an aging actress in need of quick cash submits herself to a mysterious medical study at a seemingly normal clinic. Unaware of what she’s being examined for, Ruthie answers increasingly cryptic and personal questions asked by a furtive, too friendly physician named Dr. Kick. Joshua Fardon’s psychological two-hander benefits from dynamic performances by Erin Diamond and Bob Fisher even as the script’s plot twists get progressively tangled....

UIC student projects, clockwise from top left: ROKA, Cave, Hex-Catch, and Hum Like many aspiring product designers looking for creative support and capital from the Kickstarter community, Jonathan Owens turned his bio into his sales pitch. The video he posted on the crowd-funding site to convince backers to buy his Cave Picnic Tray, a stylish walnut carrying case for serious cheese fans, references the summers he spent working at farmers’ markets for Wisconsin’s Brunkow Cheese....

I’m compiling this list of online theater options on World Theatre Day, which feels more than a little ironic. Theaters all over the world are now shut down for the foreseeable future in light of the COVID-19 disaster.Removing the liveness from live theater and putting it on the flat screen can be a tricky proposition. But from PBS’s venerable Great Performances series to a number of small local companies who are putting together original content in quarantine, you can still enjoy theater without leaving your house....

Since Firebrand’s production of Always . . . Patsy Cline features its stars, Harmony France and Christina Hall, trading the roles of Cline and her Texas superfan, Louise Seger (whose correspondence sparked this 1988 bio musical by Ted Swindley), from show to show, you might consider this half a review. The night I attended, France played Patsy and Hall was Louise. But the chemistry between these two women (both have played Patsy in previous productions) is so strong and palpable that I imagine it’s equally enjoyable when they flip....

The operatives at The Ministry of Mundane Mysteries (now making their Chicago debut with Bramble Theatre after originating with Toronto’s Outside the March) do not offer your usual interactive show. This is apparent even before their sleuthing properly begins. After procuring a ticket, you must divulge the details of an especially vexing mystery from your life. It must be something you want solved. It can’t be anything too nefarious—no murders or kidnappings and the like....

Mike Sula Smoked hunter beef One of my obsessions over the last few years has been scheming to create the elusive—or perhaps nonexistent—hunter beef pastrami. It’s a basic brisket rubbed in Pakistani hunter beef spices that’s smoked and then steamed until buttery tender. I’d dabbled with hunter turkey breast in the past, but when Friends of the Food Chain Barn & Company Pit Master Gary Wiviott and coauthor Colleen Rush asked if I wanted to contribute a recipe to their recently released Low & Slow 2: The Art of Barbecue, Smoke-Roasting, and Basic Curing, I knew the time was nigh to bring hunter beef pastrami into the world....

More than a year has passed since west-side hip-hop group Sicko Mobb dropped their debut mixtape, the Dragon Ball Z-themed Super Saiyan Vol. 1, which compiled some of the duo’s most frenetic bop favorites. This wolf has been jonesing for another full-length of Sicko Mobb’s effervescent, slightly off-kilter party rap, and we’re all in luck: a follow-up titled Super Saiyan Vol. 2 comes out Wed 4/1. Gossip Wolf doesn’t have the track list yet, but with any luck the whole mixtape will be as good as the recently released “Kool-Aid,” whose buoyant rhythms feel sweet and relaxed rather than frenetic....

Emo has been around long enough to have shed its skin a few times—the melodic, cathartic strain of posthardcore first blossomed in 1985, and it’s continued to evolve since its mainstream breakthrough in the 2000s. Genre-blending Kansas rock band the Anniversary got saddled with the term in the late 90s and early 2000s, at which time guitarist and vocalist Josh Berwanger was a little insulted by it. But the stigma he was responding to has largely dissolved....

The University of Chicago is the place to be for long films over the next two weeks, with Lav Diaz’s 3-hour 46-minute (short for him) Filipino film The Woman Who Left (2016) showing today (February 9) at Logan Center for the Arts and Wang Bing’s 14-hour Chinese documentary Crude Oil (2008) showing over two days (February 16-17) at Gray Center for the Arts and Inquiry. Inspired by these showings, we’ve selected five more bottom-numbing masterpieces to spotlight....

If your patience with upper-class twits being bailed out by their underlings is thin these days, I understand. But if you’re in desperate need of a midwinter romp and can put class consciousness to the side for a couple of hours, then First Folio Theatre’s world premiere of Jeeves Saves the Day might provide a confectionary respite. Joe Foust’s production takes a little while to find its feet and to lay out the backstory for all the characters....

Oaxacan food isn’t the most well-represented subset of the vast regional Mexican canon that we have in Chicago, but we’ve had it both on the high and low end, from the mole dishes of the peripatetic Geno Bahena to the soft banana-leaf tamales at the Maxwell Street Market. Among the handful of established restaurants that do serve the great food of the mountainous southwestern Mexican state, few go at it full-bore....

The most challenging films about the stand-up world, including Chicago-based filmmaker Ned Crowley’s Middle Man, dwell, sometimes unbearably, in despair. The viciousness of the comedy format is easily accessible, as most contemporary stand-up is fueled by aggression. Even the parlance is violent: to perform well is to “kill,” to fail is to “bomb.” Over coffee at Atomix Cafe, Crowley and I discussed the pitfalls of a life in comedy, making a labor of love on a shoestring budget, and how his long-standing friendship with O’Heir inspired his directorial debut....

Q:I have been with my unicorn boyfriend for four months. The sexual chemistry between us is out of this world! I’m a woman who’s very open-minded when it comes to trying new things: I’ve had threesomes and foursomes, tried every toy on the market, done anal sex, BDSM, and many other things. He is sexually experienced, but he’s not open-minded. One thing he won’t do is kiss me after I’ve swallowed his load....