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Chicagoan Jonathan Scott founded his indie-rock band Doleful Lions in 1996, and though they’ve been active ever since (albeit with a revolving-door lineup), they’ve mostly gone overlooked. That could be in part because Scott has avoided aggressively promoting his group, but I still wonder why more people haven’t found and fallen for Doleful Lions. Their effervescent power-pop melodies, topped with Scott’s unsettlingly sweet and appealingly out-of-focus vocals, should’ve at least made the band a sleeper success....

The Pitchfork Music Festival celebrates 11 years this year—12 if you count 2005’s Pitchfork-curated Intonation Music Festival—which is more than long enough for familiarity to set in. (The jury is still out on the contempt.) During that time, most of the changes to the event have been incremental: For 2016, for instance, three-day passes have gone up by $15 to $165, and they no longer come with a subscription to the website’s print quarterly, The Pitchfork Review....

One of the last shows Gossip Wolf saw before the pandemic brought live music to a halt was by Chicago indie-rock darlings Ratboys. They were at Lincoln Hall, celebrating the release of Printer’s Devil—and it’s too bad more people didn’t get the chance to see the band play songs from that great album in person. But as Tim Crisp wrote for the Reader last April, Ratboys have turned lemons into livestreams, becoming champions in the virtual performance arena—not least by broadcasting 40 episodes of Ratboys Virtual Tour....

There are plenty of shows, films, and other events happening this week. Here’s what our critics say about what we recommend: Tue 4/17-Wed 4/18: “The concept for [Eric] San’s Art Institute performances grew out of a series he hosted in Montreal in which he invited fans to sketch or write in public while he spun cosmic, ambient-leaning original compositions he had made with synths, strings, and, yes, turntables. The songs appeared on his first non-sample-based record, last year’s Music to Draw to: Satellite (Arts & Crafts), and he devised a unique interactive live show....

In 1986, Julie Smolyansky’s parents brought commercial kefir to the U.S. when they launched Lifeway Foods. More than 30 years later, Smolyansky—now CEO of the company—has published The Kefir Cookbook, a collection of recipes that incorporate the tart cultured milk—along with one for making kefir itself. It’s a memoir as much as a cookbook: she’s written her family’s history in the personal stories that accompany each of the 100 recipes....

This week, Hubbard Street Dance Chicago returns to the Harris with a new work by company member and Chicago native Rena Butler in its fall program, Forge Forward. This, That, and the Third, Butler’s second work for the company, was inspired by the concept of code-switching. “I’ve had to do that my whole life,” says Butler, who attended a private Catholic school in Beverly. “I went to speech classes to clean up my vernacular to be comfortable in that predominantly white school....

Before Wild vaulted her to fame and fortune, Cheryl Strayed offered literally free advice. She wrote (for free) the “Dear Sugar” column at the Rumpus from 2010-’12. Nia Vardalos of My Big Fat Greek Wedding fame decided that the columns, which were published in book form under the title Tiny Beautiful Things, were stageworthy. It’s hard to imagine this show working as well as it does without Janet Ulrich Brooks as Strayed....

Since 2011, Chicago-based experimental radio platform Radius has broadcast some 600 episodes of far-out sound art, both live and prerecorded. These days it’s hosted on WIIT 88.9 FM and streams online at theradius.us, and at 7 PM on Friday, July 29, local musician Anthony Janas will perform one of the series’ most ambitious pieces yet. In Water Has Nothing to Say and Neither Do I, Janas will perform on a treated sailboat—basically a 25-foot daysailer outfitted with hydrophones and contact microphones, the sounds of which he’ll filter through a modular synthesizer as he sails from Adler Planetarium to 31st Street Beach....

When Lili Trifilio shakes off the cold in a Wicker Park coffee shop in the middle of a January snowstorm, her asymmetrical pink hair feels beamed in from a sunnier dimension. Since Trifilio’s band Beach Bunny evolved from a solo project into a regular group, their heartfelt, punky indie pop has built a devoted audience so quickly that they’ve barely been able to keep up. Trifilio and Vogrich began writing together, forming the short-lived duo Fingers x Crossed....

Conceptual artist Natasha Marin’s Black Imagination creates a safe haven for Black folx during a time when it is needed more than ever. As Black communities continue to be disproportionately impacted by COVID-19, Black Imagination is not only a book but also a project: an invitation to acknowledge and extend beyond the limitations of our current reality by envisioning a future that centers our wishes, healing, and dreams. My typically salty teenager suggests that getting there is the hard part....

Based on Vicki Baum’s 1929 novel and its 1932 Hollywood film adaptation, this 1989 musical focuses on a group of people staying at a swank Berlin hotel in 1928. Among them are a handsome young German baron in debt to a gangster; an aging Russian ballerina on yet another farewell tour; the dancer’s devoted secretary, secretly in love with her employer; a young typist who dreams of Hollywood stardom; a businessman on the brink of bankruptcy; a mortally ill Jewish accountant who has cashed in his life’s savings in order to spend his final days in luxurious living; and a cynical doctor, a morphine-addicted veteran of World War I....

Fantagraphics Books About three years ago, when she was 27 and single and awaiting the publication of her second book, the graphic memoir Relish: My Life in the Kitchen, comics artist Lucy Knisley had the opportunity to do some traveling. She spent one September in Europe, speaking at a comics conference, visiting friends, and having a sweet but doomed relationship with a Swedish man who lived on a commune. Six months later, she accompanied her grandparents on a Caribbean cruise as their caretaker....

Inside a west suburban bungalow-style home, Alejandra* sits at a small table in her newly remodeled kitchen and asks me if it’s OK if she smokes during our interview. I say yes. She hops off the stool and makes her way behind the counter, pulling out a rolling tray from an old shoebox. She apologizes that we weren’t able to meet. The garden apartment she rents in Pilsen, she says, is built like a fortress....

In the first week of August, as he was preparing for his 25th year as a middle school social studies teacher, Rob DiPrima got the call CPS teachers have come to fear. At age 52, DiPrima’s something of a legend at southeast-side Jane Addams Elementary School, where he’s taught seventh- and eighth-grade social studies since 2000. DiPrima was one of roughly 1,000 CPS employees—including 500 teachers—laid off last month because of budget cuts....

On September 14, 2004, a scene unfolded in the West Loop that would have been unthinkable a few decades before. The city unveiled a 3,200-pound bronze sculpture commemorating the Haymarket Affair of 1886. A seminal moment in international labor history, the Haymarket Affair started as a labor strike for an eight-hour workday and ended in a violent confrontation between demonstrators and police. Someone threw a bomb, four workers and seven cops were killed, dozens of people were injured, and more than 100 arrested....

Concentrate on the cookies. Practice your song. We won’t speak ill of Pastor Eddy at the poor man’s funeral. It doesn’t matter what unfinished business you and he had left when he died by falling off a ladder the other night. It doesn’t even matter whether you think he was pushed. Keep it to yourself. Only you can’t. Good Lord, this is going to be one of those messy funerals isn’t it?...

There’s a steely determination inside “Don’t Shut Me Up (Politely),” a song from Irish singer-songwriter Brigid Mae Power’s recent second album, The Two Worlds (Tompkins Square). As the song thrums on within a single chord, she quietly but firmly chastises someone intent on controlling her and makes it clear she won’t be silenced. “You’d try to convince me / That I was somebody / Somebody that I’m definitely not,” she intones before asserting her own agency....

As the days tick down to the March 20 election, I feel like a flag, flapping in the breeze. Man, I can’t decide who to vote for in the gubernatorial primary! Is that asking for too much? So as much as I like Daiber—and I still like him a lot—I flipped toward Biss, the state senator from Evanston. I figured he’s smart—a former University of Chicago mathematician. Plus, he’s served in both the state house and the state senate, so he knows how Springfield works....

Last winter, the wildly popular Netflix documentary series Making a Murderer turned a pair of Wisconsin attorneys, Dean Strang and Jerry Buting, into celebrities. Although Strang and Buting weren’t able to spare Steven Avery from a murder conviction—he was charged after serving 18 years in prison for an unrelated sexual assault he didn’t commit—the documentary raises significant questions about how the American justice system works. We generally get local moderators....

Ron Gallo channels his contempt for the world into the songs that fill last year’s Heavy Meta (New West), a snarling assault on selfishness and phoniness set to sharp, ringing 70s protopunk. The former Philadelphian moved to Nashville in 2014, leaving behind the destructive relationship that haunts the album’s reflections on emotional abuse (“Young Lady, You’re Scaring Me”), romantic atrophy (“Put the Kids to Bed”), and self-medication (“Kill the Medicine Man”)....