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Whenever an outsider style of rock music finds crossover success, it’s inevitably plagued with a surge of mediocre newcomers, but one band to rise above that fray in recent years is Swedish trio Monolord. The Gothenburg group formed in 2013 and released two promising albums on Rising Easy before making their Relapse debut with 2017’s Rust—as perfect a traditional stoner-metal album as anyone has put out this decade. On their brand-new No Comfort, Monolord have stripped back some of their characteristic fuzz to highlight their songwriting prowess and the sheer magnitude of their sound....

Q: I’m a longtime fan and part of the 47 percent of white women who did NOT vote for Donald Trump. I’m disappointed, horrified, scared, and mad about the election. I donated $100 to Planned Parenthood this morning because I honestly felt like there was nothing else I could do. That said, I wanted to share that on election night I had one of the most weirdly charged, hottest, and sexiest orgasms of my life....

Sarah Shook and Kelly Willis are a generation apart in age, but listening to each songwriter’s new album in succession prove that breakups, kiss-offs, and immediate consolation are timeless themes in country music. Just about every jacked-up song on Shook’s recently released second album, Years (Bloodshot), addresses good-for-nothings that the singer has either dumped or deems unworthy of her time. On the opener “Good as Gold,” she admits she’s afraid of losing, then quickly adds, “Not afraid of losing you”—sticking with a lover who doesn’t treat her well would cost her much more....

The Museum of Contemporary Art’s performance series has long been noted for breaking down barriers between disciplines. But reimagining what performance means in a pandemic presented its own challenges. This fall, two pieces—Last Audience: a performance manual, created by Yanira Castro and her ensemble, a canary torsi, and Chapter & Verse: The Gospel of James Baldwin by musician Meshell Ndegeocello and a team of collaborators—give audiences a measure of control and community in a time of chaos and quarantine....

Glaswegian Tracyanne Campbell understandably retreated from playing music after her best friend and longtime bandmate in Camera Obscura Carey Lander died from bone cancer in 2015 at the age of 33. The band has been on hiatus ever since, and it’s heartening to see Campbell reemerge on a new project with Bristol singer-songwriter and fellow pop auteur Danny Coughlan (who has performed under the name Crybaby). On their debut album, Tracyanne & Danny (Merge), which features crystalline production from veteran Britpop master Edwyn Collins, Campbell’s honeyed voice is as distinct and indelible as ever, projecting a blend of classic 60s girl-group sound and 50s dream-pop through a modern, Britpop filter....

German filmmakers have, of late, been revisiting the 20th century, exploring their nation’s tortured record under the Nazis and, later, Communism. On the heels of his fine two previous features, Barbara (2012), about an East Berlin dissident physician’s banishment to the provinces, and Phoenix (2014), in which a Jewish Holocaust concentration camp survivor, newly remodeled by plastic surgery, returns to Berlin to confront the lover who informed on her, writer-director Christian Petzold turns his gaze to France under Germany’s wartime occupation....

Aztec deities. Sistine Chapel replicas. Ancient mulberry trees. Ground Michelle Obama probably walked on. These are the elements that await within the latest adventures proffered by Chicago Children’s Theatre. Let it be said that if the CDC were to visit CCT, they’d approve of the 15-year-old company’s latest three productions. All are wholly outdoors and all will spur kids and their families to explore worlds completely inaccessible via computer screens. They are also marvelously engaging, no matter your chronological age....

Q: Why aren’t there flea collars for people? I see ads for all kinds of products to protect pets from fleas and ticks, and nasty tick-borne diseases are becoming more common. I’m tired of having to strip and do an extensive tick check after every walk in the woods. —Bill Costa A: The good news on the prophylactic front here, Bill, is that, particularly in developed countries, modern hygiene has rendered fleas pretty much a medical nonissue....

Scenes from last year’s event: MUST be 21+ Chicago – Join us for our marquee event Key Ingredient Cook-off (#KICO) Friday, May 20th from 7pm -10pm Venue ONE 1034 W Randolph St, Chicago, IL 60607 Inspired by our James Beard award-winning Key Ingredient series, #KICO Invites you to taste dishes created by 16 of Chicago’s most outstanding chefs using one of four specific ingredients. Then you get to vote on your favorite!...

Chicago politics ain’t for sissies. Neither is this game. The stakes are high. Some people think the mayor (da MARE) is the most important person in this town. But true political beasts like you know that most powerful is the chair of the Finance Committee. Not only do you control the money, the average Chicagoan on the street doesn’t know who you are, so you can serve in relative obscurity for decades, unless you do something foolish like get caught with a small arsenal in your office in City Hall....

Since 2004 Plastic Crimewave (aka Steve Krakow) has used the Secret History of Chicago Music to shine a light on worthy artists with Chicago ties who’ve been forgotten, underrated, or never noticed in the first place. In 1946, Kinsey married Christine McNeal, and for a few years he put music on the back burner while they started a family. By the late 50s he was gigging in Gary and Chicago alongside Windy City legends such as Jimmy Reed, Albert King, and his idol and muse Muddy Waters....

Henrik Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People (1882) is basically Jaws with an invisible shark: Ever since the founding of the local mineral baths, small town X has enjoyed a big fat financial boom. Tourists are flocking there to take the waters. But then along comes Dr. Thomas Stockmann, the physician at the baths, who sights a great white in the form of contamination from the tanneries upstream. “All that filth,” he tells a couple of hometown newsmen, “seeps into the feed-pipes of the pump-room [at the baths]; and not only that, but this same poisonous offal seeps out onto the beach as well....

Q: I’m a straight woman and have been sexually active for about six years. I’m in my mid-20s now and about ready to become a “man-hating feminist.” I feel like I can figure out what a guy wants in bed pretty easily. I cannot remember a single time when I’ve had sex with a guy that he has not had an orgasm. I, on the other hand, have never had an orgasm....

It could have been Lord of the Flies. Filament Theatre was giving over complete control of its space to a young audience for Forts! Build Your Own Adventure, an hour-long experiment in professionally designed creative play. Arming kids with boxes piled high to the ceiling, pillows, sheets, clothespins and flashlights—what could go wrong? Absolutely nothing. Hundreds of performances, and perhaps thousands of forts later, Filament has proven the value of trusting its young people with agency and influence in the world of its performances....

Iranian writer-director Shahram Mokri—whose second feature, Fish & Cat (2013), opens this year’s Festival of Films From Iran at Gene Siskel Film Center—has cited American slasher movies and the drawings of M.C. Escher as his primary influences for the film, which won a special prize for “innovative content” at the Venice film festival. The movie feels exactly like a fusion of those things: the setup recalls The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, but the execution is almost impossibly tricky....

If brutality and stupidity are to your taste, you had to love last weekend’s Cincinnati-Pittsburgh NFL game, won by Pittsburgh 18-16 thanks to a recovered fumble, an intentional shot to the head of the helpless receiver after an incomplete pass, and a personal foul that put the Steelers in range of the field goal that won the game as time ran out. Earlier, Cincinnati fans threw debris at Ben Roethlisberger, the Steelers quarterback, as he was carted off the field....

On April 13, LGBTQ health center Howard Brown launched its free safe-sex kit delivery program to support the stay-at-home order and to facilitate safe sex in your home. The program encourages people to social distance, and that includes not traveling to their clinic spaces. By providing the kits across the city (and the country) folks won’t have to purchase items for intercourse. Have no fear—Howard Brown is here to make sure all of your stay-at-home sex needs are met....

Michael Gebert Pierogi at Pierogi Street One thing I’ve noticed about online food discussions is that nobody gets into fights about steak or foie gras or other luxury goods. If you really want people to go nuts, start with the most plebeian ingredient of all: flour. People argue about pizza (and its crust), about bread and pie, about pasta, about ramen (and its noodles) and the soup dumplings known as xiao long bao—and, of course, about doing without it (and its gluten)....

Irreversible Entanglements will leave you shaken. The group make tight, synergistic free jazz anchored by the dynamic spoken-word declarations of poet Moor Mother, aka Camae Ayewa. Their music sometimes sounds chaotic and freewheeling, but it ensnares listeners with arrangements carefully considered to help deliver fiery political messages. The five-piece ensemble—the lineup also includes saxophonist Keir Neuringer, trumpeter Aquiles Navarro, bassist Luke Stewart, and drummer Tcheser Holmes—originally performed as two different groups at a 2015 New York benefit show called Musicians Against Police Brutality....

For New York noise artist Margaret Chardiet, aka Pharmakon, the body is a wet, alien thing that hangs on the self like meat on a butcher’s hook. Her defining album, 2014’s Bestial Burden (Sacred Bones), chronicles a serious illness and hospitalization. It opens with the multitracked sound of her desperate breathing, in a claustrophobic symphony that makes you feel like you’re being asphyxiated. Throughout the album she screams and coughs and vomits searing electronic barrages in a terrifying evocation of her own disintegrating shell....