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Tomorrow night at 8 PM, Logan Square’s multipurpose arts space Comfort Station will host a free program of short, queer-themed films that were made over the past several years. The program is titled “I’m Not Sure What You Mean?,” a witty summation of the themes reflected in the works. The six shorts consider not only queer identity, but also, per guest curators Rebecca Ladida and Jess Lee, “the feeling of being lost in translation and the necessity to make new languages, with all the hesitations, uncertainties, and ellipses this entails....

On Do Hollywood, the 2016 debut full-length from Long Island duo Lemon Twigs, the barely-of-drinking-age brothers Brian and Michael D’Addario show off their impressive chops and unending appreciation of Todd Rundgren. The album made a splash, exciting old rockers while introducing a whole new generation to the lush prog-glam underbelly of the 1970s. On the follow-up, August’s Go to School (4AD), the D’Addario brothers get even more ambitious—they’ve written and recorded a bizarre rock opera that tells the story of a chimpanzee who is raised by humans and tormented by his peers at the neighborhood school....

The three one-acts that make up the 32nd annual Chicago Young Playwrights Festival don’t shy away from big issues, but they struggle to convey those issues in a personal way. While it’s no surprise that high schoolers might have trouble dramatizing large topics such as sexual identity, domestic abuse, and immigrants grappling with gentrification in unique ways, there’s no questioning the earnest effort evident in each of these short plays, produced and performed by theater professionals at Pegasus Theatre....

A play about an Irish family rarely breaks the mold of being too long, too sad, and too predictable. Usually someone important dies halfway through and we’re stuck with the remaining characters who have to deal with it. But Shannon O’Neill’s May the Road Rise Up, directed by Spenser Davis at the Factory Theater, is a stellar example of why we shouldn’t always judge a play by its marketing. The people who die are already dead when the play begins, and it’s their absence that causes much grief and propels the plot....

Until arriving in the U.S. in 2013, Tigist Tesfaw, 51, was an attorney in Ethiopia and ran a large social service agency for survivors of gender-based violence. Despite the demands of her job she always found time to cook for her family and friends. She can’t share the circumstances that made her flee Ethiopia for fear of endangering her relatives. Today she regularly prepares Ethiopian meals for her husband and children, as well as other immigrants, refugees, and asylees at the Marjorie Kovler Center in Rogers Park....

Courtesy of Alexander Duvel For almost 15 years, Andy’s Music has sat unassumingly at the corner of Belmont and Oakley. From the outside, it looks like a no-frills storefront, but entering the shop unveils a seemingly never-ending network of rooms stacked with instruments from all over the globe—almost like a world music version of Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory. But the city risks losing one of its most original music retailers this summer....

There’s a sly bit of metaphor employed on “Melody Unfair,” a tune from Eucalyptus (Domino), the wonderful second album by Animal Collective charter member Dave Portner, aka Avey Tare. As he sings, “She crept up to my front door / Rang the bell and now she’s leaving,” he personifies a beguiling quality in his music, where catchiness is present but elusive. That sort of slipperiness can be maddening in romantic contexts; here it pulses at the heart of things....

It is a peculiar thing to see Radiohead live, particularly in the context of a massive festival such as Lollapalooza. In the nearly quarter century since the release of their first album, the Brits have trafficked in sounds best experienced while alone. It’s music written from a vaguely isolated perspective that has the general effect of making the listener feel distant, paranoid, alienated, even alien. This ethos runs counter to the harmony and camaraderie typically stirred by the most memorable festival acts like, say, the Flaming Lips....

Just about the time I was truly, finally, completely ready to close the book on the municipal elections, I got a call from John Garrido ripping it open once again. Garrido is upset over the inconsistency of the laws, which cap some donations while lifting the lid on others. Something you should know about campaign operatives, if you didn’t know it already: they have a low opinion of your intelligence, as I’m reminded every time I have an off-the-record chat with an operative, often with red wine mixed in....

In 2000 the Brazilian pop singer Bebel Gilberto—daughter of the brilliant bossa nova pioneer João Gilberto—achieved a breakthrough with her album Tanta Tempo (Six Degrees), a masterful blend of sensual bossa nova grooves with gentle club flourishes that, like Starbucks, quickly became a model of middle-class sophistication. Though the music remains lovely if a bit toothless, in the years since its release she has struggled to parlay this approach into something fresh....

Local punks Absolutely Not have never been the type of band to release accessible music. The first releases they started putting out in 2013 showcased fairly standard garage punk, but they topped everything off with a serious dose of spazzy harshness. On their brand-new third album, Problematic (No Trend), the band—vocalist and guitarist Donnie Moore, vocalist and keyboardist Madison Moore, drummer Santiago Guerrero, and Meat Wave front man Chris Sutter newly appointed on second guitar—take the eerie dissonance they hinted at on their previous releases and push it to the brink, hammering out obtuse, disjointed, paranoia-inducing, sci-fi new-wave punk, and cramming more bad energy than should be legal into two-and-a-half-minute songs....

Seven years ago, the rap world’s spotlight affixed itself on the first wave of drill with such intensity I wouldn’t have blamed anyone for thinking it’d be permanent. But the attention began to move on sometime between when Keef dropped Finally Rich in December 2012 and when he started serving 60 days for violating his probation in January 2013. The couple dozen rappers who helped make drill’s first wave a phenomenon have since evolved as artists, and many of them have grown out of anything resembling drill’s icy, violent image....

Courtesy of the band’s Tumblr Oshwa If 2015 hasn’t exactly been kind to Chicago so far (nothing like subzero frigidity to ring in the new year), it at least comes with the promise of a whole batch of new music to anticipate. Chicago winters are the perfect time to take a break from playing shows and hole up in the studio; lucky for us, some of the city’s most exciting artists have been doing just that....

Sex, drugs, cursing, violence, New York City, the 1970s, mirrors smudged with coke residue, the Brill Building, a label acquisition, racial epithets, booze, broads, orgies, cooked books, deals made under the table, the enticing thought of Ray Romano vacuuming up lines of coke with his architecturally handsome nose, the sound of a skull cracking, cash stuffed in envelopes and record sleeves, Brooklyn accents, murder, a punk brawl, a trashed living room, and, finally, rock ‘n’ roll....

A historic 125-year-old home in Riverside Lawn, described by former owner Judy Koessel as “waiting to be saved,” burned down early Thursday morning. But the house was one of nearly two dozen located in a floodplain, and in 2016 the Cook County Land Bank Authority slated it for demolition. The land bank was required to conduct an architectural survey before destroying the homes, and Koessel’s home, at 3744 Stanley Ave....

Like most Mexican American women, I grew up idolizing Selena Quintanilla-Perez, always singing along and dancing around my grandparents’ house to her music—to this day, you can still catch me in my kitchen doing the “washing machine” while singing along to “La Carcacha” and reveling in the power that was Selena’s voice. It’s because of this that I often feel so protective of her and the way her story gets told....

For five straight summers, DJ, producer, and rapper Fess Grandiose helped put on Kimball House Rock, a daylong DIY hip-hop festival he hosted in the backyard of his Logan Square home. Though Grandiose, 30, was raised in south-suburban Hazel Crest, he’s completely embraced his new neighborhood: the final Kimball House Rock, held in 2014, offered a snapshot of the alternative-rap acts operating on the northwest side. The bill included rappers Angel Katz, Auggie the 9th, and Rich Jones; DJ Sev Seveer of beat-scene collective Push Beats; nomadic multi-instrumentalist Netherfriends; and now-defunct hip-hop group Hurt Everybody....

The Chicago Reader was nominated for several Peter Lisagor Awards from the Chicago Headline Club Thursday night. Police in Chicago Public Schools operate with no special training and little oversight, by @city_bureau @Chicago_Reader @Yanazure https://t.co/xbCsVvpFvR — BGA (@BetterGov) April 12, 2018 Drum roll please! Here are all the @Chicago_Reader stories nominated for @headlineclub #Lisagor awards this year! First up, for @rejburns‘s masterful investigation on contract-for-deed home sales (edited by @rsamer): https://t....

Sue Kwong This winter, the Reader has set a humble goal for itself: to determine the Greatest Chicago Book Ever Written. We chose 16 books that reflected the wide range of books that have come out of Chicago and the wide range of people who live here and assembled them into an NCAA-style bracket. Then we recruited a crack team of writers, editors, booksellers, and scholars as well as a few Reader staffers to judge each bout....

This month the Gene Siskel Film Center is screening The Owl’s Legacy (1989), a 13-part documentary series directed by the late Chris Marker (Sans Soleil, A Grin Without a Cat), one of the pioneers of the essay film. The Film Center is dividing the series into four programs over the course of four weeks, with each program playing on Sunday afternoon and Monday evening. I recommend checking out the whole thing, but don’t worry if you miss one of the parts....