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Since the Chicago Blackhawks debuted the Fratellis’ “Chelsea Dagger” as its goal-celebration song in late 2008, the team has won the Stanley Cup three times. During every championship run, “Chelsea Dagger” has become as inescapable as “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” the day after Thanksgiving—and it remains just as irritating when you’re subjected to it over and over. In a 2013 Reader essay, Aimee Levitt calls it “one of the most annoying songs ever recorded,” part of a chorus of complaints about “Chelsea Dagger” that has mounted over the years—complaints I’d endure read aloud in their entirety rather than listen to the ploddingly delivered gibberish the Fratellis pass off as a hook....

Reflecting on the sexual misconduct allegations against Charlie Rose Tuesday morning on CBS, Gayle King voiced some thoughts that may be floating through many people’s minds these days: “I’m really struggling because how do you . . . what do you say when someone that you deeply care about has done something that is so horrible?” she asked. “How do you wrap your brain around that? I’m really grappling with that....

Although I’ve tried often in the past, I’ve never been particularly moved by the music made by either Shearwater or former Chicagoans Cross Record, but there’s something about Loma, the new project from Jonathan Meiburg of the former and Emily Cross and Dan Duszynski of the latter that’s gripped me these last few weeks. The group’s self-titled Sub Pop debut is a slow dazzler, with Cross at her most smoky and soulful, as the group unfurls melodies at a crawl worthy of Low....

A couple years ago, Naperville native Eric Johnson retired his long-running pop band, the Fruit Bats, opting to release an album under the name EDJ. At the time I found his decision a little odd, because Fruit Bats’ lineup had been shifting constantly from the beginning, both in their original Chicago incarnation and later in Portland, Oregon—how can you break up a band that doesn’t really exist? Earlier this year, when Johnson announced that Fruit Bats were returning—they dropped a new album called Absolute Loser (Easy Sound) last month—I was likewise at a loss to explain why....

This past weekend the 13th annual Hyde Park Jazz Festival brought 36 performances by local, national, and international artists to more than a dozen venues and stages in and around Hyde Park. Saturday’s programming included two new works commissioned from Chicago composers in partnership with the U. of C.’s Logan Center for the Arts: Angel Bat Dawid‘s Requiem for Jazz and Isaiah Collier’s The Story of 400 Years, both of which employed large mixed-discipline ensembles to address the history of jazz, the history of slavery, and the African American experience....

In June rapper Kembe X, raised in suburban South Holland but now based in Los Angeles, sent the hip-hop rumor mill into overdrive when he posted a photo of himself wearing a chain with the TDE logo. For the uninitiated, that stands for Top Dawg Entertainment, the label behind LA rappers Kendrick Lamar, Schoolboy Q, Jay Rock, and Ab-Soul, the four of whom make up the Black Hippy Crew. TDE has expanded its roster slowly in the past few years, signing Tennessee MC Isaiah Rashad and New Jersey singer SZA in 2013....

Sizzy Rocket—the self-proclaimed “royalty of the punks and the letdowns”—is a perpetual motion machine. The LA pop star is a near constant presence on social media, tours frequently, and has released a steady stream of singles and EPs since dropping her debut full-length, Thrills, in 2016. This month, she’s embarking on her first headlining tour to celebrate the release of her second album, Grrrl. The title track is a shimmery neon-drenched love letter to the 80s, complete with massive choruses and a music video loaded with faux VHS effects....

Several times each year since 2013, a network of improvising musicians called the Bridge has facilitated exchanges of players from France and Chicago. Each iteration assembles a core group drawn from both sides of the Atlantic, and they perform a series of concerts, sometimes welcoming additional players and always developing a unique ensemble chemistry and repertoire. The Bridge 2.02 includes guitarist Raymond Boni, bassists Anton Hatwich and Paul Rogers, and alto saxophone and clarinet player Mai Sugimoto....

I’d just finished reading Caste, Isabel Wilkerson’s brilliant new book, when the Republicans convened their national convention and Mayor Rahm raised his head to offer advice for Democrats that no one sought or should follow. She dissuades people from using the “R word”—as our “fixation with smoking out individual racists” is “a losing battle in which we fool ourselves into thinking we are rooting out injustice,” when, in fact, it can help keep “the hierarchy intact....

Wonderful Town, the second Broadway collaboration between Leonard Bernstein, Betty Comden, Adolph Green, and to a lesser extent Jerome Robbins, was created during the height of McCarthyism, a menace that must have weighed heavily on the show’s authors. Robbins—who’d choreographed the trio’s first production, On the Town, and doctored important sections of Wonderful Town without credit—landed before the House Un-American Activities Committee a few months after the show opened in early 1953....

It’s just that it’s a little melancholy for me. Mick and I have been cohosting First Tuesdays—our monthly political talk show at the Hideout—for five and a half years. Or since not long after the last big teachers’ strike. The idea for First Tuesdays came from Tim Tuten, co-owner of the Hideout. Back in the old days, Mick and I were colleagues at the Reader, cranking out investigations into things like parking meter contracts, TIF scandals, marijuana arrests, and an assortment of often tedious budget topics....

Three women—one an MBA student in her early 30s, one a painter and real estate agent in her 40s, and the eldest a stay-at-home wife and mother in her 50s—hang out in the kitchen and debate relationships while the men linger offstage. So far, so familiar. But the twist in Fouad Teymour’s Twice, Thrice, Frice. . ., now in a world premiere with Silk Road Rising and the International Voices Project, is that the sticking point in the relationship debate is whether polygamy (that is, for men) is something devout Muslim wives should accept....

These days, what nationality would most people associate with refugees? In light of recent events, Syrians are probably the first group to come to mind. Asked for further examples, avid news readers might cite Iraqis and Ukrainians who have fled conflicts, or Palestinians who’ve languished in camps for decades. But what about Somalis? Who has heard of Dadaab, a Kenyan town (unmarked on any official map) populated almost entirely by Somali refugees?...

Q: I’m a straight cis woman in my early 40s and a single mother. I have not dated or hooked up with anyone in years. While I miss dating, the biggest issue right now is that my sex drive is off the charts. While watching porn and masturbating once my child goes to sleep helps, I really want to get well and truly fucked by a guy who knows what he’s doing....

With a war of wars erupting between Mayor Rahm and Bill Daley over who drove Chicago to the brink of bankruptcy, the time’s come to establish a Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Or as Rahm recently put it: “People chose their politics over the progress of the city. Did I create this problem? I did not create it. But I was gonna be determined to do something different, which is to fix it....

I’ve often wondered: Who is the king of Hunanese-style dry hot pot in Chicago? Until last March there was no answer to the question. Chen was born in Jiangxi, the province next to Hunan, but he attended university in Beijing before earning his PhD at Ohio State. He currently has locations in San Diego, San Francisco, and Sunnyvale, California; Dallas; and Bellevue, Washington, across Lake Washington from Seattle (he’s opening another in the latter city next month)....

Launched in 1994, Blue Groove Lounge wasn’t early enough to be Chicago’s first hip-hop series. Before DJ Jesse de la Peña started Blue Groove on Monday nights at Elbo Room, rapper-producer Kingdom Rock was hosting parties at Blue Gargoyle in Hyde Park; DJ and producer P-Lee Fresh ran a north-side hip-hop club called Steps; and MC and promoter Duro Wicks hosted two crucial series, first at Lizard Lounge in Wicker Park and then at Lower Links in Lakeview....

As DJ C, Chicago producer Jake Trussell has developed a gift for extracting the DNA from an eclectic variety of pop subgenres, then scrambling their nucleotides and recombining them—and his manipulations not only illuminate the hard-to-see strands connecting parallel musical histories but also encourage anyone with at least two brain cells to dance. Throughout the new Do Radly (Mashit), Trussell experiments with artful, ambitious hybrids: on one track he might blend smoky blues guitar and sparse, electrifying hip-hop drums spiced with dub effects (“Super Flyover”), while on another he’ll combine pinprick garage synths, mellow upright bass, solemn contemporary-classical strings, and a loopy keyboard that sounds like futuristic reggae (“Wellsweep”)....

The longer jazz exists, the more it broadens and splinters into new directions—a situation that in recent decades has not only made it harder to define but also to determine its high-water marks. That’s one of the reasons I admire the wide net cast by Chris Anderson, who runs the Jazz Art Record Collective, a live-music series that enlists local musicians to interpret some of their favorite albums front to back....

On Halloween, Auburn-Gresham one-stop shop and hip-hop hot spot Exclusive773 handed out bootleg rap CDs by Chicago rapper G. Herbo to trick-or-treaters. That evening owner Steve Wazwaz tweeted a video of fans gleefully clamoring for them. Their enthusiasm went through the roof after one of Wazwaz’s employees casually activated his phone’s video-chat program and turned the screen toward the kids so they could talk to his friend: G Herbo himself. I can’t blame the kids for freaking out....