A Sunday Halloween had two tracks set out before it. It could have brought an amplification of the Sunday condition–that cloud that accompanies the ending weekend might be especially pointed in the aftermath of whatever mistakes were made at Halloween…
Death Valley Girls asked for the ignition of the smoke machine and lower lights before they began their set at the Beat Kitchen Sunday night–but if you got there halfway through, it would have been easy to believe the atmosphere…
Friday Night at the Empty Bottle seemed like the destined moment for Lala Lala’s underground buzz to overflow. It had been hedging that way for years–since 2014 when the droning, smirking first single “Fuck with your Friends” was released. Last…
Rolling Blackouts Costal Fever ran through a rollicking set to a sold-out Lincoln Hall crowd which bounced along. The Australians are touring on the back of their debut full-length “Hope Dreams,” released earlier this summer. It has drummed up hype…
I came to the Riviera Theatre Saturday night expecting to be an impartial observer to the beginnings of late aughts nostalgia. The sentiment that began to bubble when Obama left office is now a wave, cresting as flash-points from the…
Wicker Park Fest swallowed up Milwaukee Ave. from Paulina to Damen this weekend, drawing throngs to catch the likes of Against Me!, Snail Mail and Porches at the three-day event. Also on the bill Sunday was Ezra Furman, a Chicago…
Grapetooth is technically made up of just Clay Frankel and Chris Bailoni, but its show at Lincoln Hall Saturday night made the act seem much more like a community project. For one thing, the two members weren’t alone on stage.…
Since the Greenwich Village folkies put the aesthetics of beat literature to music in the early ‘60s, a cavalcade of singer-songwriter successors has followed. Stylistically, little has changed. Limiting oneself to guitar and voice challenges as much as it rewards, which…
A caravan of four stellar bands rolled through Chicago last night, stopping at the Cobra Lounge long enough to provide a sold-out crowd the opportunity to blow some steam out of its collective ears. pronoun, Oso Oso, Angel Du$t and…
Much of punk’s initial beauty was in its breaking of the fourth wall that arena rock had built–it allowed the kid who could barely form a power chord to start a band. The genre was an ideology as much as…
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