Silos Coming Down Again: A Preview of Denise La Grassa at New Rhythm Arts Center
La Grassa is usually pegged a jazz singer and keyboardist, but her compelling contralto owes more to Grace Slick than Sarah Vaughan.
Gator Raid: Alligator Records Shares Fifty Years of Sizzling Blues from Its Vaults
Alligator’s brand has become the blues that isn’t sad blues—“blues to make you forget your blues, to make you holler and dance and throw away your troubles.”
Music Top 5: June 2021
Outstanding new album releases by stellar Chicago artists.
Year In Review: Shawn Maxwell’s Dazzling 2020 Chronicle
“I came up with the idea of having, instead of an album of tunes, an old-school album where you have to listen to the whole thing.”
A Worthy Prize: A Review of Man’s Body’s “A Set of Steak Knives”
If it sounds like Man’s Body are trying to be all things to all people at times, you might not be wrong. But rather than “trying,” I get the impression that they just kind of “are.”
Loss and Renewal: Sons of the Never Wrong Share an Album of Incandescent Folk
It’s an extraordinarily grown-up album, and it works like a catharsis. Each time you listen to it, you feel physically lighter.
Cool Aid: A Review of Situation Chicago 2
The album does an outstanding job of bringing home the staggering sonic and stylistic range we deny ourselves when we return too often to the same genre well.
Music Top 5: May 2021
Outstanding new album releases by stellar Chicago artists, available now.
Fox Games: A Review of “That We Exist” By MAKS The Fox
The quartet’s third full-length, while still capturing their orchestral essence, has a more muscular backbone, crackling with rock impulses.
Bridey on the Brink: A Singer-Songwriter Leans In
“I feel like film, comedy and music go together really well. Especially in Chicago, because it’s such a big community and everyone does at least two of them.”
