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The concert movie Urgh! A Music War (1982), which Chicago Film Society will screen on Monday at Music Box, is an invaluable document of late punk, post-punk, and new wave music, with live performances by XTC, Devo, Gang of Four, Oingo Boingo, Magazine, Gary Numan, Klaus Nomi, the Cramps, the Fleshtones, the Go-Go’s, the Dead Kennedys, the Police, and more. Here are five additional films that showcase the 80s’ gritty, original, sometimes experimental, and always vibrant new sounds....

TV Land Oh, to be younger again. Pop culture has a terrible habit of pitting older women against younger women (and vice versa, but to a much lesser extent). I know this because I’ve watched a lot of Lifetime movies, and as much as they’ve developed a reputation for engendering mistrust of men, a younger woman is the source of a mature woman’s misery just about as often. Assuming you’ve emerged from your midtwenties, you’ll recall that being 26 has its pros and cons....

She Speaks in Tongues Kate McCandless samples music as hungrily as Girl Talk, but she doesn’t use a computer. With her band She Speaks in Tongues, the singer and guitarist repurposes well-worn rock and blues classics into new narratives. For the group’s debut, 2014’s Gloria, Guitar, they recorded original arrangements that consist entirely of pieces of other people’s songs recombined in surprising juxtapositions. On album opener “Blue,” Bessie Smith and Etta James vie for space with Whitney Houston’s “I Will Always Love You,” and Kate Bush shows up too for good measure....

Last year Englewood rapper, multi-instrumentalist, and studio engineer Christopher Horace, aka F.A.B.L.E., grew frustrated with his lack of progress on an ambitious full-length and released the EP (IX) The Hermit as a stopgap, throwing it together in an effort to break his creative blocks. The EP’s seven irrepressibly joyful songs have become some of my most cherished music over the past 12 months, so my expectations were high when I heard that Horace was finally about to drop the album he’d been working on when he made them....

Harry Houdini and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle were more like frenemies than friends. Their real-life relationship in the 1920s could be adversarial—Doyle believed in the occult, and Houdini repeatedly (and sometimes successfully) tried to debunk its existence (sorry, kids, his magic wasn’t real). They eventually had a massive falling out and became rivals—but according to Houdini & Doyle, a new drama on Fox, their opposing views made them the perfect pair of rogue detectives....

Chicago rapper-producer Tree has one of the most distinctive voices in hip-hop. I’m not just referring to his deep, grainy vocals, but the range of emotions he’s able to conjure in just a few short bars. His brand-new Trap Genius furthers his peerless spin on hip-hop, and it’s got all the mystifying power I’ve come to expect from a Tree release. One of the ten Trap Genius cuts I’m obsessing over at the moment—and, mind you, it’s more than just one—is “New Or Leins / Training Day,” a collaboration with Seattle production group Blue Sky Black Death....

Census self-response opened on March 12. The next day, “we were in the full throttles of the health pandemic,” Anita Banerji of Forefront, a civic organization that coordinates grantmakers and community nonprofits, recounts. At Pilsen’s Mujeres Latinas en Acción, plans for census outreach were well underway when the virus hit: weekly education efforts that regularly reached hundreds at the Mexican consulate, Saturday morning canvassing trips where promotoras (census outreach workers) and volunteers regularly knocked on over 700 doors in a single morning, and one-on-one conversations with community members....

When local label and collective FeelTrip hosted a showcase at Beat Kitchen last month headliners Peoples Temple of America were about to release an album called Trust No Man. Guitarist Ben Leach tells me the pop-leaning punk outfit began working on the record in the summer of 2013, and Trust No Man came out at the beginning of this year. PTA doesn’t sound like the other acts in the FeelTrip family, which includes psychedelic mastermind Dam Gila (aka Adam Gil of Yawn) and electronic wiz Starfoxxx (who cofounded the label), but all these musicians skew toward making music with strong hooks....

With his 2014 breakout release, The Water[s], Chicago rapper Mick Jenkins demonstrated that his complex vision and deep lyrics benefit from the large canvas of a full-length record. That said, he cooks on EPs too. At the top of January, he dropped The Circus (Free Nation/Cinematic Music Group), which despite running less than 20 minutes provides him with plenty of time for clever verses. Atop the sleepy synths of “Different Scales,” Jenkins surveys hip-hop’s complicated landscape, framing his observations with a reference to Chief Keef’s underground staple “Faneto”: “Sosa been call this shit here the zoo,” he raps with levelheaded clarity and an unruffled flow....

Hyperprolific rapper and Culture Power45 label co-owner Marcellous “Infinito 2017” Lovelace and Chicago hip-hop scene player Sterling “Pugs Atomz” Price are both former members of the Nacrobats crew, and when Lovelace asked Pugs last year about releasing a vinyl compilation of old Nacrobats tracks, it kicked off a wave of celebrations that will continue through 2020. Pugs founded Nacrobats as a Kenwood Academy student in 1993, and the group ballooned to around 200 members before dissolving in 2003....

I listen to music for most of every day, every week, and I can say without hesitation that the majority of music released today shouldn’t be. Though professional and competently played, it’s so generic—so lacking in passion or purpose—that I don’t know how the musicians involved can imagine that anyone would bother to engage with it. It’s not that I’m too jaded to hear value in anything anymore—rather, I’ve learned how much genuinely interesting new music is being made, and I don’t want to waste my too-scarce hours on anything else....

Welcome to the Reader‘s weekday news brief. What possible Emanuel challenger Paul Vallas could bring to the table in 2019 Speculation has grown that former Chicago Public Schools chief executive officer Paul Vallas will challenge Mayor Rahm Emanuel in the 2019 mayoral race. The former candidate for governor and lieutenant governor has helped turn around several urban school districts and served as the city’s budget director for three years. He’s resigning from his current position as Chicago State University chief administrative officer in March, which has fueled even more speculation that he’ll become the most formidable Emanuel challenger....

Kim Vavrick Seven of the eight contestants in the Beer and Metal blind tasting On Sunday, May 24, the last day of Chicago Craft Beer Week (“Chicago Craft Beer Eleven Days” doesn’t appear to be catching on), Thalia Hall comes down to earth with Crap Beer Day, a celebration of the Kamino clone troopers of the beer world—disposable, mass-produced, useful mostly in large quantities, and a source of widespread regret....

As one of the most popular methods for taking CBD, gummies have become the go-to for the old and young, experienced and newcomer. As it’s an easy way to take CBD, a lot of entrepreneurs have been looking at the gummy market with wide eyes, deciding that it’s the perfect opportunity to cash in on “the green rush.” With the massive amount of brands trying to enter the CBD gummy market, it can be overwhelming to study which brands are the best....

Avengers: Age of Ultron In this week’s issue Ben Sachs reviews Hyena, a new cop thriller from the UK, and we’ve got a preview of the Chicago Film Critics Festival at Music Box, with new work by Bobcat Goldthwait, Andrew Bujalski, Francois Ozon, BIll Plympton, Tomm Moore, Joe Swanberg, Kris Swanberg, and many more. And check out our new reviews of: The Age of Adaline, starring Blake Lively as a woman who hasn’t aged since the late 1920s; Avengers: Age of Ultron, the latest money machine from Marvel Studios; Blind, a documentary by Frederick Wiseman about the Alabama School for the Blind; In Country, a documentary about weekend warriors reenacting key battles of the Vietnam war; The Kingdom of Dreams and Madness, a documentary about the Japanese animation outfit Studio Ghibli, screening at Gene Siskel Film Center as part of a Ghibli retrospective; Material World, a program of offbeat short videos by Kaycee Conaway and Molly Hewitt; Scraps in Black and White, collecting some of the earliest images of people of color from the Library of Congress paper print collection; and Tangerines, a tense chamber drama about an old man nursing two bitter enemies during the Georgian civil war of the early 90s....

Chicago hosts one of the world’s most vibrant improvisational scenes, so it’s not automatically remarkable when three of the city’s musicians get together to create in a live setting. But this combination stands out because of the unusual affiliations each member brings to this first-time encounter. In addition to playing low-key rock music with Zelienople and abstracted folk themes with Scott Tuma, percussionist Mike Weis performs ambient soundscapes with Mirror of Nature and solo material influenced by forms of Korean rituals....

“If students are offended or triggered by statements made by Donald Trump or his campaign, we would recommend you to use any of our vast support networks,” Mercedez Jones, president of the Undergraduate Student Government at University of Illinois at Chicago, said this morning in an e-mail to the school’s students, faculty, and staff. “If you are put into a dangerous or life-threatening situation we have listed numbers you may call in order to best assist you....

Elizabeth Franco, 31, moved to Chicago from Mexico City in 2015. She returned to Mexico that same year but moved back to Chicago in 2016 and has been living in Pilsen ever since. She’s now a legal resident and works at Casa Michoacan, an educational nonprofit in Pilsen that promotes cultural activities and works to advance immigrant rights. This interview was conducted in both English and Spanish and translated from Spanish by the interviewer....

“After our first performance, I wasn’t sure they would have us back,” jokes Lucero vocalist Ben Nichols from Riot Fest’s Rise Stage, referring to the band’s 2014 appearance in Humboldt Park. It’s Friday night, and the band have just finished their sound check. To my right is a person who’s clearly come straight from work, muddy boots still on, standing alone and tall. To my left is a leather jacket with tassels that blow in the wind as the temperature drops....

Correction: This article has been amended to reflect the correct spelling of Charna Halpern’s name. In March 2015, Arnie Niekamp fell through a magical portal behind the Burger King on Irving Park and Clark and found himself in the enchanting land of Foon. Much like Narnia or Middle Earth, Foon is full of elves, dwarves, monsters, royalty, sorcery, and talking animals. Niekamp posted up in the Vermilion Minotaur, a tavern in the town of Hogsface....