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Writing and dance have always been connected for choreographer Lin Hwai-min. The founder and artistic director of Taiwan’s Cloud Gate Dance Theatre began his professional career as a writer, and his dancers study calligraphy because the two art forms share a core philosophy of releasing and controlling energy to create. “A writer does this with a brush, a dancer with the core of the body,” says Lin. As he approaches retirement in 2019, Lin returns to his writer’s roots with Formosa, a tribute to the land and people of Taiwan....

Few active country artists possess the deep knowledge and love of the tradition’s history and lore of singer-songwriter Marty Stuart, who’s evolved into a gray eminence with a mixture of elegance and unquenchable curiosity. His latest album, Way Out West (Superlatone), draws upon this background to send a trippy love letter to the southwest, cowboy culture, and the drifter lifestyle. The record was coproduced by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers guitarist Mike Campbell at his studio in Los Angeles....

On the first day of October, the Washington Post carried a portrait of a Trump supporter named Melanie Austin. A middle-aged woman living in a coal town in western Pennsylvania, Austin has a strong hunch, based on some evidence at her disposal, that President Obama is gay, Michelle Obama transgender, and their children had been kidnapped. All this may be true. But it’s uncurious. And it’s kind of lazy. It admits only one uncertainty: after the election maybe Trump’s supporters will go away; but maybe they won’t....

If the great surrealist painter Salvador Dalí and iconic LSD proponent Timothy Leary designed an after-hours club during the height of a pandemic in Cabaret-era Berlin, it would definitely look something like Eschaton. Its title comes from the Greek for (roughly) the end of history, or the last event in some higher power’s divine plan. Eschaton didn’t start out as a virtual show, with audiences meandering via mouse clicks through the tantalizing shenanigans of a labyrinthine club where a weird new adventure lies within each of a dozen or so Zoom rooms....

Reaching the delegate majority he needs to be nominated at the Republican convention remains a “big challenge” for Donald Trump, the New Yorker’s John Cassidy observed Wednesday. But even if Trump falls short, Cassidy doubts he can be denied: Trump will come into the convention with far more delegates than anyone else, and he’ll have won them all over the country. It’s now a commonplace to observe (here for example) that the Republican Party is getting what it deserved: when Barack Obama was elected president its leaders indulged his demonizers, contentedly riding the tiger that today is swallowing them....

Sharon Fairley came to public prominence in 2015 as Rahm Emanuel’s pick to lead Chicago’s police oversight agency—then the Independent Police Review Authority (IPRA)—in the wake of revelations about the city’s attempts to conceal the killing of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald by Chicago Police officer Jason Van Dyke in 2014. She’s now among ten candidates vying to replace her former boss, Illinois attorney general Lisa Madigan. Fairley has spent the last two years under intense public scrutiny as the head of an agency that the Department of Justice found failed to deliver justice to victims of police misconduct....

Dwight Yoakam’s most recent single sounds like it could’ve been found in a jukebox of obscure 45s at a 1960s California honky-tonk, despite having been written and released (on Reprise) last year. “Pretty Horses” has a steady backbeat shuffle, and Yoakam peppers his smooth tone with twangy flourishes. He leans into his high notes hard, almost turning them into pitch bends, and gives an occasional yelp—though they’re usually masked by driving drums or dropped into organ solos....

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....

New Jersey native Harry James Brenner found his footing in Chicago’s music scene partly by playing in art-rock group Chandeliers; he joined in the mid-aughts as a percussionist, and he’s since played keys for them too. The sharply defined clatter of Brenner’s drums has kept Chandeliers’ mercurial instincts from running away with them, giving even their most ostentatiously experimental escapades an irresistible groove. He’s also part of Chandeliers offshoot Songs for Gods, whose 2017 single “Boss” grafts mutant synth blurps and swooning R&B vocals onto a driving, workout-ready rhythm....

With another mayoral election upon us, my urge to offer advice is matched by my sense of futility. I mean, don’t take this the wrong way, Chicago, but when it comes to mayoral elections—man, you suck. It’s sort of like my love for the Bulls. After each devastating season I declare—that’s it, I’m through with those bums forever. Under a promise of confidentiality, I asked what they thought were the most important and compelling issues the next mayor faced....

Chris Aldana, 27, inspires Chicagoans—especially many who are LGBTQ and people of color—to listen to each other’s words. So, she decided to do something about it and, in July 2018, created Luya. The following interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.How did you come up with the name “Luya?”I knew that I wanted to use a word that was from my language and my culture. I was at AFIRE, a community organization here that does immigrant rights and domestic worker rights, and they had posters on the wall from a previous workshop about food....

Today is the 80th birthday of American musician Herb Alpert: trumpet player, denizen of numerous junk-store record crates, and “schlockmeister” according to a mid-90s “Spot Check” column by Peter Margasak. No argument with Peter there, though I would say that Alpert has one triumph under his belt—the late-70s double whammy of “Rise,” a number-one-charting single, and “Rotation,” which is essentially a continuation of the style and melody of “Rise.” Both are on the 1979 album Rise, and the title track is arguably more famous for being sampled by Diddy and Notorious B....

You’d think that with the pandemic still spreading, along with historic economic crises, uprisings for racial equity, and an attempted overthrow of our federal government, the city’s first openly gay and only second female mayor would have made more strides for justice and equality in her city. For a mayor just halfway into her first term, Lori Lightfoot has racked up a stunningly long and sundry list of controversies. But the disdain the mayor seems to have for some of her constituents, who she often refers to as Twitter trolls, has cemented her as a particularly callous leader; a far cry from what many thought, if misguidedly so, was going to be a term of progressive policy and racial justice....

On his latest album Blue Mesa (Bloodshot), suave roots-rock maven Luke Winslow-King has thankfully expunged the acrimony that dripped from his 2016 breakup album, I’m Glad Trouble Don’t Last Always—suggesting that album title was a testimonial. Back then his vitriol toward an ex was so strong he called her out by name, so it’squite a contrast when he opens his new album with an expression of unconditional support on “You Got Mine....

The Reader’s archive is vast and varied, going back to 1971. Every day in Archive Dive, we’ll dig through and bring up some finds. On Sunday, Lupe Fiasco Tweeted the video for his new song “Harold’s,” a tribute to the beloved south side fried chicken chain. As Leor Galil pointed out in a blog post yesterday, the track is part of a long and honorable tradition of referencing Harold’s Chicken Shack in Chicago hip-hop, going all the way back to Common in 1992....

Since forming in 2012, Montreal’s Big|Brave have strived to balance volume with silence, harshness with beauty, and stoic minimalism with full-on intensity, using tools such as space, breathlike rhythms, and a thundering low end that only seems more cavernous next to the clear, striking alto voice of singer-guitarist Robin Wattie. Each of the experimental trio’s four albums has been better than the one before, and the recent full-length A Gaze Among Them cements their transformation from band on the rise to heavy-music essential....

Although Donald Trump crept closer to Hillary Clinton in the polls this week, the most likely outcome of this year’s presidential race (i.e., a win for Clinton) can be largely explained by a few simple electoral maps. You’ve probably seen them making the rounds on social media. It didn’t happen overnight. For decades, voters of color have supported Democrats in national elections, largely because the party made more progress on civil rights....

It’s 2018, and Saturday, April 21, is the 11th annual Record Store Day—does anybody still need to have this peculiar holiday explained to them? If you’re reading this, chances are you’ve already woken up early on a Saturday in April to stand in line with vinyl addicts and record flippers. You know the score, for good or for ill. Record Store Day started as a way to celebrate and rally support for the last remaining independent brick-and-mortar music retailers, but not even the best-intentioned commercial undertaking can entirely immunize itself from the distortions of capitalism—for some small indie shops, Record Store Day is now basically an injection of overpriced major-label vinyl that turns them into hosts for a parasitic inventory that’s alien to what they usually sell....

Welcome to the Reader‘s morning briefing for Wednesday, October 25, 2017. Women want to open a dialogue about sexual harassment in the Illinois State Capitol More than 150 women in the Illinois State Capitol, from lobbyists to lawmakers, have signed a letter detailing the sexual harassment they’ve experienced in Springfield political circles. The goal of the letter is start an open dialogue about the subject and help assure women it’s OK to come forward....

The wonderful thing about Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest is that it’s escapism in its purest form. It makes no grand generalizations about society. The problems are ridiculous. The big fight at the end of Act II is over the consumption of muffins. A professor told me once that the competitive muffin eating symbolized sexual greed, but I think people who try to find that sort of significance in Earnest are looking at it all wrong....