Tumultuous noise rock. Experimental electronics. Monotonous, relatively indecipherable vocals. Unrelenting drums. California. Arty, often damaging HEALTH is best known for its work with Crystal Castles, but the band’s live show is more than notable, an appropriately insane experience that’s both exhilarating and incomprehensible. The melodic injustice boils over at every turn—you just have to trust the band knows what it’s doing. The band’s set at Pitchfork over the summer was one of the festival’s highlights, and seeing it perform in a room as small as this should be the equivalent to attending a late-night dance party at a long-boarded-up asylum. (Tom Lynch)
Cooling It: A Preview of Colleen Green at Cole’s Bar When Green strums power chords or chiming notes on top of her backing track, you might think you’re at Ramones karaoke night and Madonna is taking her turn.
For “Want” of a Change: A Preview of Rufus Wainwright at Ravinia Park Rufus Wainwright isn’t the first singer-songwriter to reinterpret earlier work through an orchestral lens. And much of Wainwright’s third and fourth albums, “Want One” and “Want Two”—whose twentieth anniversaries are the prompt for this new tour—is fully scored. But when Wainwright hits the Pavilion stage at Ravinia tonight, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra will be behind him.
Brutal Finesse: A Preview of King Crimson at Ravinia There have been few new compositions from King Crimson these past two decades, but the live arrangements of songs from its catalog are often strikingly different than the recorded versions.
Can’t-Miss Music Events (Fall Arts Preview 2023) This fall we get new albums and tours from iconic acts like Wilco and Kurt Elling, plus a Corrine Bailey Rae project inspired by Theaster Gates' Stony Island Arts Bank.
