Posts

In a 2013 Reader piece, Sarah Nardi described Nick Butcher and Nadine Nakanishi—the two members of local art studio Sonnenzimmer—as “naturally predisposed to working in a language that others can understand.” The same holds true for the duo’s music, which orbits the twin poles of reflective, ambient pop and glitchy electronica (and is often accompanied with painstakingly designed packaging and album art). Late last month, Butcher released Saccadic, a new cassette from his solo project Rhybadi that mixes archival recordings from his youth in Tennessee overdubbed with new vocal and instrumental parts....

The Belle of Amherst Here’s the problem: the intense inner life suggested by Emily Dickinson’s poems makes her an intriguing subject for theatrical exploration, yet her nearly complete lack of an outer life renders her hard to dramatize. In this 1976 solo piece, here revived by Court Theatre, playwright William Luce tried to turn the problem itself into a source of momentum. We first meet Dickinson near the end of her 55 years, living in almost complete seclusion—but cheerful, even perky about it....

Chicago trio Austaras aren’t an easy band to have heard of. This weekend’s CD-release show for their recent Prisoner of Sunlight is their first live gig since September 2012, and the new album is the first music they’ve put out since an EP in June 2011 (at which time they were a four-piece, with a bassist-vocalist who’s since departed). To make matters worse, that EP is their only other release....

Until last month, Puerto Rican six-piece Davila 666 had been quiet since 2011. The riotous outfit had earned a reputation as one of the best live bands in the world, fusing stripped-down, hard-hitting punk with psych ambience and garage-rock melodies: each sweaty set was a nonstop high-energy barrage of beyond-catchy tunes, with every member of the band screaming out the words over the top. When the Davilas went their separate ways (like the Ramones before them, they all share the same last name), some stayed the course while others explored new musical identities: bassist AJ Davila went on to front a Davila 666-flavored punk band called Terror Amor, while lead vocalist Charles Davila went a completely different route with the hip-hop trio Fuete Billete....

Before he moved to Amsterdam in 2016, percussionist Frank Rosaly was an integral part of Chicago’s improvised music scene, and his departure left many of his musical partnerships hanging. Rosaly’s bond with saxophonist Dave Rempis in particular runs deep, with collaborations dating back to the turn of the current century. Their 2009 release, Cyrillic (482 Music), reveals their high-energy rapport in a bruising yet agile set of interactive movements and terse melodic exchanges, their lilting postbop routinely exploding into furious expressionism....

In Thai culture, the first question people ask is not “How are you?” but instead “Gin khao reu yung?” Have you eaten yet? As a kid, I’d learn this phrase from my mom, who immigrated to the U.S. from Bangkok in 1989. It just made sense: If you hadn’t eaten yet, there must be something wrong. I hear this question often when I go with my family to the small outdoor Thai market in Bridgeview, where we peruse items ranging from sweet basil and stewed pork belly to herbal teas and handmade soaps....

We’re never supposed to judge a book by its cover, but I just bought a book for its jacket. I’m a lifelong bibliophile who should know better, but it might be the most beautiful jacket I’ve ever seen. Powell talked about the European tradition of “Grand Manner” portraiture—big, theatrical representations of important people, like generals, often in dramatic landscapes, frequently on horseback. American presidential portraits for the most part followed this tradition, Powell said, but Sherald and Wiley “raised the ante on it....

Today the city’s Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events announced the 2019 schedule for the annual Millennium Park Summer Music Series at Pritzker Pavilion, which begins Thursday, June 13, and ends Thursday, August 15. All the concerts are on Mondays or Thursdays (though not every Monday and Thursday), they all start at 6:30 in the evening, and as always they’re all free. Last year, DCASE significantly reduced the number of Summer Music Series events, presenting only ten double bills—down from 15 in 2017 and 20 in 2016....

[Content warning: The film features sexual violence and the following review discusses sexual violence.] While Bravo and Harris could have chosen to sit heavily in the weight of this cautionary tale, this deftly written road-trip story is held up by a scaffolding of excitement and mirth, channeling the zest of being young, hot, and out of fucks to give. When title character Zola (Taylor Paige) meets Stefani (Riley Keough) and they vibe instantly, the magic of the moment is punctuated by chimes and whistles....

Along with every other performance venue in town, Links Hall went dark in March of this year, cancelling the 40 remaining shows of the season and leaving its wood floor minus its customary dust and polish left there by the many bodies rolling across its lustrous surface. To launch its new season in a time when audiences and live performance are reinventing themselves, Links Hall is hosting a 96-hour pop-up performance festival—a four-day blitz of remote collaboration between teams of artists and technicians who have never worked together before and never worked together like this—during a pandemic....

Pegged as the adult card game in which people play a sex-themed variation of “Would you rather?”, Weapons of Mass Seduction picks up where most couples’ games leave off: riding crops, Trader Joe’s, and Orthodox Judaism. Players win points by guessing which sexual act their opponent prefers—ranging from raunchy to ridiculous—with cards like: “Whip opponent with riding crop,” “Apply Trader Joe’s Speculoos Cookie Butter to your body for opponent to lick off,” or “Opponent does taxes, budgeting, or fiscal forecasting while topless with a little calculator and glasses....

Q: I’m sorry if my English is wrong. I’m a gay man writing from Germany, where I am being heartbroken and not knowing how to go on. I’ve been seeing a guy for a couple of months and slowly falling in love with him. “Peter” has always been very open to me about himself, his failed relationships, and his commitment issues. He talks frequently about his ex-boyfriend from five years ago and how being left created a deep fear of being left once again....

Welcome to the Reader‘s morning briefing for Tuesday, October 24, 2017. Emanuel interviews Apple CEO Tim Cook about Chicago, coding, education Mayor Rahm Emanuel discussed Chicago, coding, the new Apple store, and more with Apple chief executive officer Tim Cook on the mayor’s weekly podcast. Cook was in Chicago for the opening of Apple’s new flagship store on the Chicago River. The original Apple store at the corner of Michigan Avenue and Huron Street has closed, but Cook noted that it was groundbreaking when it opened in 2003....

Ask a child to name the most annoying things adults do for fun, and “drive around looking at houses” might top the list. “We’re just looking around,” Mom or Dad would say. Then I’d take her out for a drive around Chicago’s affluent north suburbs—Wilmette, Kenilworth, Winnetka, Glencoe, Highland Park, Lake Forest, and Lake Bluff—which offer a fascinating sampler of residential architecture of the late 19th and 20th centuries: Italian-style villas, French chateaus, and American takes on English country houses designed by the likes of David Adler, Arthur Heun, and Howard Van Doren Shaw; Prairie-style homes by Frank Lloyd Wright and his contemporaries (John Van Bergen, Dwight H....

Gossip Wolf got hip to local dream-pop singer-songwriter Claudia Ferme-Giralt, who performs and records as Claude, via her standout 2019 single “Turn” and an immaculate live set opening for Jimmy Whispers and Jungle Green at the Hideout that fall. On Friday, February 12, Claude will finally drop her debut EP, Enactor, via Side Hustle Records (run by staffers at music PR firm Big Hassle Media). Its six sparkling songs are beautifully sparse and glacially paced, and lead single “Screen” (with a video by queer filmmaking collective Bitchcraft) feels especially timely: it captures the disquiet of being confined to communicating through digital technology....

In 2018, Jori Apedaile moved his one-man atmospheric metal project, Eneferens, to Minneapolis from Montana, and he’ll soon be moving back. But for what he lost in isolation and scenic landscapes during his time in Minnesota, he gained in solidifying his sound. Last fall he released his third album under the Eneferens name, The Bleakness of Our Constant (Nordvis), whose nearly nine-minute “Weight of the Mind’s Periapt” summons its dreamy clean vocals and ethereal harmonies from within a maelstrom of growls and riffs, leaving the album’s title phrase floating in the ether and fading into the oceanic intro of “11:34....

Unless your mom is Cambodian, it seems like every time there’s an opportunity to eat Khmer food in Chicago, it’s the only opportunity. The first time I wrote about it, way back in 2008, there were no restaurants serving it, but twice a year, with a sincere offering to the monks of Uptown’s Watt Khmer Metta on Cambodian New Year, or Ancestors’ Day, you could join in a post-ceremonial feast of outstanding food made by a lot of moms....

Q: I’m a 29-year-old straight male. I’ve been with my 25-year-old partner for six years. I love her and think that we are perfect for each other. We have all the things that make existing with someone wonderful. But about two years into our relationship I had a two-week-long affair while I was out of the country. I fucked up. I came clean to my partner and we’ve done our best to work through this over the last four years, but it has obviously caused some trust issues between us....

The history of time travel began, at least according to James Gleick’s new book, Time Travel: A History, in 1895 when H.G. Wells published his novel The Time Machine. That’s not to say that no one had thought about traveling through time before, but those journeys had happened through supernatural means or the unexpected effects of getting conked on the head. Wells, Gleick explains, was the first to connect the notion of moving through time with science....

The more I read about the departure of George Lucas’s neofuturist storage unit, that unsightly blob of a building meant to house his movie posters and Yoda holograms, the sorrier I felt for the guy. He’s 72 and he just wants a museum. “A legacy piece.” Billionaires need their trap houses, too. This is America. “Where I live, a self-appointed group that starts making calls for the neighborhood, they’re called a gang,” the reverend said....