Last week Gossip Wolf was six kinds of stoked about the new album from Fielded, aka former Ga’an vocalist Lindsay Powell; this week we’re stuck on Night Terror, a project from former Ga’an bassist and synth dude Tyson Torstensen! Last month Torstensen released his debut full-length, a cassette called Night Terrors, on LA label Living Tapes, and its solid synth squelch wouldn’t be out of place in a spooky John Carpenter soundtrack....
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Steppenwolf Theatre Company Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The play focuses on a middle-aged couple—bookish, seemingly ineffectual George, an associate history professor at a small New England college, and his lusty, binge-drinking, ball-breaking wife, Martha, daughter of the school’s president. After a punishing 23 years of marriage they’ve developed a bleak routine in which light jests turn into cutting jabs and trivial disagreements escalate into major battles....
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » This is all very commonplace in “real” soccer. Go to the Globe Pub on Irving Park Road on a Saturday morning to watch matches in the English Premier League — that is, excuse me, the Barclay Rum Premier League — and good luck figuring out which team is which until you know the code. Arsenal jerseys urge fans to “Fly Emirates,” Manchester United promotes AIG (don’t ask me what that means, or even what’s “United” about Manchester), and Liverpool, thank their hard-drinking British-Irish stars, is backed by Carlsberg Beer....
Tal Rosenberg, Reader digital content editor Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti, House Arrest This is the album I’ve listened to the most in the past three months. Originally released in 2002 and reissued in 2006 by Paw Tracks, it’s not as revelatory or bracing as The Doldrums, which introduced Pink’s sound, but it might be the better album. It’s catchier, more colorful, and includes fragments of lyrical genius such as “Pop music is free / For you and me / Pop music’s your wife / Have it for life....
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » “I argue: (1) that global warming (climate change, climate chaos, etc.) will not become humankind’s greatest threat until the sun has its next hiccup in a billion years or more (in the very unlikely scenario that we are still around), (2) that global warming is presently nowhere near being the planet’s most deadly environmental scourge, and (3) that government action and political will cannot measurably or significantly ameliorate global climate in the present world…....
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Reading the August 16 Headline article was tantamount to concurrently having both mortifying hallucinations and horrific realizations that carnivorous anthropocentrism is exacerbating and perpetuating mankind’s descent into perdition. The columnist’s grandeur for the omnipotent intelligence of man and irreverent lack of respect for the earthly value for animals is palpably laden with vainglory. Instead of sanely promoting the virtues of veganism he spirals out of control and condones the hunting, butchering and unpalatable consumption of squirrels....
How Green Is Your Olympics? Sloopin Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » I appreciate the pride that would be felt and the memorable spectacle Chicago is capable of putting on, but I’m afraid the temporary glow would quickly fade in the reality of paying the piper—when you think of it, not much different from the situation so many find themselves in because of financing a house they could ill afford....
At the end of June, underground Connecticut emo band the World Is a Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid to Die landed on several Billboard charts with its debut full-length, Whenever, If Ever: number three on the Heatseekers and vinyl charts, eight on the Internet chart, 66 on the rock chart, and 196 on the Billboard 200. The album, which came out on tiny independent label Topshelf, might have done even better had it not leaked a month earlier via torrent site What....
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The bloom started to wear off King’s media rose when he turned his attention to Northern racism. The central defense Southern segregationists offered when thrust on the national stage was that their Jim Crow was no more of a brute than the North’s. King agreed, and in announcing his organization’s move into Chicago, he called the North’s urban ghettos “a system of internal colonialism not unlike the exploitation of the Congo by Belgium....
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » I’ve watched Sons of Anarchy since it debuted in 2008, to my various roommates’ bemusement and my own surprise. I’m no real fan of motorcycles or lawlessness. But the series’ premise was said to be inspired by Hamlet, and I am a sucker for all things Bard. Six years into a seven-year bid (creator Kurt Sutter has said season seven will be Sons‘ last), we’ve strayed from the Shakespearean blueprint, only to return to it with a vengeance in the season finale....
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » “I laughed,” says Pickett, recalling her response when features editor Christine Ledbetter called with the assignment to breast-feed her infant son in public places and write about it. “I have to say I didn’t take it terribly seriously.” She’d seen other Sun-Times stories begin with an “outrageous premise” then get negotiated into something not beneath the dignity of adults....
A debate is under way over how much–and at what financial cost–discharge from our wastewater treatment process should be cleaned up before being released into the Chicago and Calumet river systems. Though wastewater treatment technology and standards have improved tremendously, this network of rivers and canals remains polluted from years of receiving bacteria-laden effluent; you can now canoe the Chicago River, for example, but signs along it warn you not to even touch the water at risk of illness....
More Bliss on a Bun Named for the puissant but unseen Sausage King of Chicago in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, this newish Humboldt Park coffee shop has yet to ramp up to an ambitious program of breakfast dishes, sandwiches, and sides. For now the menu is limited to Chicago-made products like Filbert’s sodas and local sausages such as those from Vienna, Best Kosher, Bobak’s, Leon’s, and Sausages by Amy, grilled on a panini press and bunned on Gonella or S....
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Twenty-three labels are listed under Touch and Go’s distribution arm. Some are inactive and for years some have used only Touch and Go’s distro service, not its manufacturing operation; several others just recently entered the fold. For some of these labels the deal was perfect; Touch and Go could be a one-stop shop. How were they going to survive this shocking change of course?...
“Afrikan-centered” theater company MPAACT presents the winter edition of its late-night performance series, Solo Jams. Kicking it off is a panel discussion featuring three African-American directors: Chuck Smith, who staged Goodman Theatre’s Race; Timothy Douglas, who resigned last month after just six months as artistic director of Remy Bumppo Theatre; and Jocelyn Price of Sankofa Theatre. The evening includes performances by Tim’m T. West and Jonathan Kitt (Wed 2/8, 8 PM, free)....
Patrick Wilson in Stretch I was looking forward to writing about Stretch—a cartoonish action comedy about a Hollywood limo driver having the worst day of his life—when it was supposed to come out in theaters back in March. I’m a fan of the film’s writer-director, Joe Carnahan (Smokin’ Aces, The Grey), and I welcomed the release as an opportunity to address what makes him special. But Universal Pictures pulled Stretch at the last minute, and despite rumors that it would open theatrically this fall (after Carnahan reedited the movie to make it tighter), it was released onto VOD instead, and with virtually no fanfare....
thursday1 Thursday1 Digital PrimitivesWhite Hills Friday2 Anti-Pop Consortium Saturday3 Fever RayMonotonixMoore Brothers Sunday4 Living Colour Tuesday6 OmYo La Tengo Wednesday7 Butthole SurfersFaustKylie MinogueYussuf Jerusalem WHITE HILLS New York combo White Hills have covered a lot of territory in the past few years, from searing guitar freak-outs on 2007’s Heads on Fire (recently reissued on vinyl by Thrill Jockey) to spacious ambient meditations on 2008’s A Little Bliss Forever (Drug Space), which may be why people can’t decide whether to call them stoner rock or space rock....
Atomix This sunny room furnished with 50s-modern-style tables and chairs doesn’t have a huge menu, but who cares when you can design your own sandwich using a grease pencil to mark off options on a laminated card? Ingredients include hummus, cold cuts, and lots of homemade spreads including tapenade, pesto, and garlic-roasted red pepper. Vegans can also order vegan baked goods, veggie chili, or a grilled soy cheese sandwich, and there are plenty of coffee drinks....
Guy Massey’s brilliant performance as George W. Bush anchors Theater Oobleck’s new political satire, which imagines the Decider as a present-day equivalent of Mersault, the antihero of Albert Camus’ 1942 novel, The Stranger. In this absurdist comedy by Mickle Maher–who costars as John Kerry–set during a 2004 candidates’ debate, Bush tries several times to murder unflappable moderator Jim Lehrer (Colm O’Reilly) on the air, giving his reasons in a narrative as scrupulously detailed as Mersault’s....
With the release of The World’s End, a science-fiction comedy about five chums who reunite to tackle their hometown’s marathon pub crawl only to find out that the village has been taken over by robots, director Edgar Wright puts a cap on his so-called Three Flavours Cornetto trilogy, which also features the genre-busting cult classics Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz. The name comes from the British dessert company Cornetto, whose prepackaged ice cream cones are referenced in all three films, but there are more similarities than that....
