Stage Buzz
Frosted Blake
Out of the bedroom and into the fire: the fact James Blake has chosen to tour America either speaks to a fealty to public demand or an actual need for cash, because otherwise it’s completely counterintuitive.
Fried as a Berger
When sibling duo The Fiery Furnaces first popped up a decade ago, local writers would automatically mention that though they were based in Brooklyn, they were originally from Oak Park. Not Chicago, or Chicagoland.
Not your typography
You might notice a stubbornness in your IE, an inflexibility when it comes to how we present a band or artist’s name in print. We don’t bother with specific punctuation, unconventional capitalizing, or extraneous mother-effing ümläüts.
May days! May days!
Naturally we want you to read all about the new issue, but, most of our featured artists play Chicago later in the month. The first seven days of May, however, are packed with great shows. Click on to find out more.
Now go get your shine box!
Shoeshine Boys Productions celebrates its 11th anniversary with a party at Double Door, but before it gets a big head we also have preview Femi Kuti, and El Ten Eleven.
Won’t you be, won’t you be my neighbor?
A trio of local record-releases (Cameron McGill, The Part Five, Scattered Trees) pound the Chicago coast this weekend, bringing stormy emotions, windy verbage, and thunderous applause something.
Electro Pure, eh?
Don’t try to make sense of why some bands become critical darlings and others are denounced as namby-pamby trash. You’ll make neither heads nor tails of it, and everyone will still laugh at you.
Clean the wall when you’re done
Accept fans quietly rage when they run into people who only know the band for their biggest hit, “Balls To The Wall.” The German band did release two earlier albums that were more in line with the New Wave Of British Heavy Metal — speedy, aggressive — and never intended to become the teutonic AC/DC. […]
Dawn bringing
Almost as if they’re New York and Los Angeles, the Chicagoland’s suburban and city metal scenes have more differences than simple geography.
The hardest Parts
Within the first couple minutes of Parts & Labor‘s Constant Future (Jagjaguwar), a surge of electronic and other malfunctioning noises conspire to produce
Sunday’s best
Zion I, the forward-thinking hip-hop duo from Oakland, hits a particularly marvelous groove on three consecutive tracks halfway through the 13-track Atomic Clock
A Waxy salute
Some people plan to purchase a record when they turn 33 1/3rd, a quaint self-acknowledgement combined with retro consumerism. If you’re Wax Trax, however, you throw a party.
Record Store Day is Saturday!
Three years ago, Record Store Day seemed like a quaint, underdog rebellion in the face of foregone extinction. What music that was selling put change in Steve Jobs’ pocket or served as a tax loss for Walmart and Best Buy. Now it’s an event bound to outlast the stores themselves.
International Pop Overthrow returns!
International Pop Overthrow is about to make its 10th anniversary swing through Chicago, with a two-week run that will present more than 75 power pop and indie rock bands at The Abbey Pub and Red Line Tap.
Diddy? O diddn’t he?
With the name changes, crude samples, talent shows, and complicity in pillaging the B.I.G. archives, Sean Combs makes it easy to hate on him.
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