Reviews, profiles and news about music in Chicago
Given Belle and Sebastian’s birth in a haze of obscurity in the pre-Internet age, it somehow makes sense to write about a soundtrack to a movie I haven’t seen, based on a graphic novel I haven’t read.
Vic Mensa and Jesse Rutherford head up a month of powerhouse acts including Weyes Blood, Aldous Harding, Black Keys and Marquis Hill.
Brittany Howard’s bold, brassy, yet vulnerable attitude has far from disappeared from the scene. Her debut solo album, “Jaime,” will be released the day of her Chicago tour appearance.
Is it too early to call this album a classic?
While the commercial fortunes of The Vibrators were somewhat limited, their influence extended far beyond their limited record sales.
That midsummer night, David Berman kept at his post at the crook of the bar. White light on face, halation, white reflected on smudged lenses, halo.
Sting’s solo catalog boasts more than a dozen studio albums. He may not rack up the hit singles like he once did, but he remains a compelling writer, musician and performer.
In its rousing rendition of “Television,” IDLES decried body negativity (“The bastards made you / not want to look like you / so you pay through the nose / to look like someone else”) without the faintest whiff of victim-blaming. Listening to these lyrics while looking at the IDLES’ Lollapalooza audience was more than a bit mind bending. How often do you see thousands of white men—the crowd had an obscenely high bro quotient—wildly applauding a set list that is effectively a feminist manifesto?
Julian Casablancas has an inimitable voice that has not so much aged well as not aged at all, and Hammond’s guitar work remains glorious. You don’t have to dance at a Strokes show but you do need to move: the band’s best tracks are fast, fierce and over before you know it, the abrupt ending being something of a Strokes signature.
Hancock’s Miles Davis Quintet-backed piano chops, alongside Washington’s artful sax, assures a genre-bent night of jazz and beyond.
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