Philip Montoro,Reader music editor
Mgła, With Hearts Toward None It’s pronounced “mgwah,” roughly, and it means “fog” in Polish. I’ve been listening obsessively to this 2012 album at work: hideously lush with corrosive dissonance, its stark, dessicated black metal harrows its mournful melodies with regimented rhythms. I especially like the busy, intricate cymbal work, which glitters atop the music’s seesawing churn like silver filigree on the face of a seaside cliff, giving its hopeless trudge an almost sprightly swing. “I can’t go on, I’ll go on,” as Beckett put it.
Melissa Oglesby, Girls Rock! Chicago outreach director
Mikal Cronin at the Empty Bottle on Tue 6/11 Mikal Cronin‘s new MCII is full of beautifully orchestrated, shimmery summertime jams, and I can’t stop, won’t stop listening—don’t kill me for saying this, but it may be the Pet Sounds of 2013. Given MCII‘s hooky, catchy charm, it surprised the hell out of me when Cronin abandoned his sensitive-boy-next-door affect at the Bottle last month and put on one of the rawest, most frenetic live shows I’ve seen in ages. Making especially fine showings were drummer Emily Rose Epstein and Cronin’s incredibly dirty hair, both of which kept me blissfully smashed up against the stage for the entire set.
Kate Walsh, saxophonist, Girl Group Chicago
Janelle Monae, “Q.U.E.E.N.“ This newish single from Janelle Monae (which features Erykah Badu) is your liberating summer jam. This is the song for when the too-cool kids are holding the wall at the house party and you and your friends say eff this and dance it out in the living room ’cause you got no time at all for the haters. There’s a brilliant video, a rap that’s like the best bits on The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, and affirmations of twerking in the mirror and dancing alone late at night. What more can I say?
