Features
Indie Labels: Can Chicago Hip-Hop Save Itself?
Rising Tide Chicago’s hip-hop has blown up, but will indie stalwarts benefit? It’s been quite some time since Chicago hip-hop has received this much attention from the record industry and the rest of the country. After years of being lost in the middle of the three coasts, the heart of the Midwest is finally seeing […]
Cover Story: Arctic Monkeys
Arctic Monkeys Street Fighting Men The buzz hadn’t officially begun yet. But already you could hear it, bumblebee-droning. Getting louder by the minute. The time: A few short months ago. The place: A hip, Anglophile-oriented nightclub in San Francisco during an early-evening soundcheck. The cast of characters: Colorful, to say the least, including a long-haired […]
Beth Orton
BethOrton Stranger Things Have Happened Talk to musicians enough, and phrases reminiscent of sports cliches make their way to the fore. It only makes sense: we have our stock questions; they have their stock answers. Only instead of giving 110 percent or taking one game at a time, there’s “We really love coming to your […]
Editors
Editors Out Back There’s a bit of a misconception about Britain’s bell-tolling new Quasimodo-combo Editors (no “the,” thank you very much — just Editors), and guitarist Chris Urbanowicz would like to clear this up in short order. Judging by the grim funereal pall swirling around The Back Room — the quartet’s hazy debut for Kitchenware/Epic […]
Ben Harper
Ben Harper Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell No one can blame Ben Harper for not wanting to discuss his personal life with a stranger. He’s embarking on a tour that will enliven his 18-song, two-disc Both Sides Of The Gun (Virgin), which follows the Grammy-winning album he made with The Blind Boys Of Alabama in 2004. […]
Buckcherry
Buckcherry What Happens In Buckcherry Stays In Buckcherry Like the hourly commercials you now see on TV prodding you to get into trouble in Las Vegas, Buckcherry is the Sin City of rock ‘n’ roll, egging you on to stop shoegazing and have some fucking fun. What once might have been too raunchy, too racy, […]
Just A Fire
Just A Fire Stop Don’t Start You could almost mistake it for intention, and think Just A Fire were just another indie rock band poking fun at conventional rock ‘n’ roll. The Chicago band’s debut album, Light Up (Asian Man), was recorded almost immediately after they formed, punk pragmatism at its best. But the next […]
Just A Fire cont’d
Click here to return to page one. That’s not to give the impression Just A Fire’s songs even approach such levels of the vanguard. Chaotic on the surface, where Chris Daly (ex-Check Engine) probes with asymmetric guitar figures in between staccato power chords, Erskine and Adamson play stop/start, left/right but never venture off the map. […]
Build A Guitar!
If You Build It, They Will Strum The Chicago School Of Guitar Making Everybody plays guitar, right? Any musician’s classified section will turn up 10 or more guitar players for every bassist and keyboardist. Now, try to find someone to setup, maintain, or rewire all the instruments belonging to all those guitar players and the […]
Cover Story: Neko Case
Neko Case Time Won’t Let Me In order to reach Neko Case via phone, you have to dial the least-populous time zone in the continental United States. You must reprogram yourself and remember your scheduled 3 p.m. Mountain Standard Time interview means not calling at 2 p.m. Chicago time like it would be when calling […]
Queen & Paul Rodgers
Queen Is Dead, Long Live Queen The idea of a legendary band continuing without its original lead singer is by no means new. It’s been adapted by everyone from stadium rockers INXS, Journey, and Chicago’s own Styx to the slightly modified monikers of psychedelic superstars The Doors Of The 21st Century and The Dead. On […]
Shelley Short
Shelley Short O Captain My Captain Coming here was a very intense time,” Shelley Short says about uprooting her life from Portland to Chicago in September 2004. “I moved here with a friend and another close friend lives here that I’ve known since high school, so I wasn’t all alone, but I left a lot […]
Belle And Sebastian
Belle And Sebastian Everybody’s Talkin’ “We’ve been around for 10 years, but I don’t really feel like we’re an old band. At the moment, we feel quite new and current. And I think we are reaching a lot more people. I think, to a lot of people, we are a new group.” — guitarist Stevie […]
Rhett Miller
Rhett Miller Couldn’t Leave If He Tried “If I’m not mistaken, I cannot only do the Old 97’s in the future — y’know, doing shows and albums. Obviously we won’t do an album a year, an album every two years, even, like we did at one point. But I think we’ll be able to continue […]
Low Skies
Low Skies Democracy In Action Chicago’s Low Skies aren’t in line to win any Kid’s Choice awards, nor will they ever with the musical path they’ve chosen. Swirling around Chris Salveter’s tangled-in-the-sheets headgames, the new All The Love I Could Find (Flameshovel) skulks like a fog, limiting vision to a sea of minute reflections forlornly […]
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