May is, by sheer volume, the year’s biggest month for music yet, with long-awaited new releases from Carly Rae…
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There’s a unique kind of intimacy to sitting in a theater with 974 other people in total silence, no one so much as…
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There’s a single line that’s tossed off midway through Jeff Tweedy’s new memoir that effectively sums up the entire…
Riot Fest 2018 was an oddly muted affair. No big reunions or “one time only” performances of the kind that have so…
On August 18, 1998, two albums were released that would migrate two misunderstood genres from minor curiosities to…
2006 was a simpler time. Not necessarily a better time, but a simpler one. And the soundtrack to all of it, from…
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Loyalties to fast food French fries run deep. But for all the love they garner, few fast food chains have made…
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There’s a specter hanging over the entirety of POST-, Jeff Rosenstock’s fourth solo album, that goes unnamed…
In a year as full of outstanding music as 2017, best-of voting can be a difficult task, and the wide variety of…
There was too much to listen to in 2017—not just albums, of which there were once again thousands, a barrage of…
Julien Baker is unfailingly polite. After the release of her 2015 debut album Sprained Ankle, several profiles made…
Destroyer comes back strange, Bully channels ’90s fuzz, Jessie Ware evokes Whitney and Mariah, and doom duo Bell…
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The entirety of Brand New’s career feels like a coup. In 2001, it was impossible to predict that the band known for…
No two Pile albums are alike, and that’s what makes hitting play on a new one so exciting. Those first few notes…
Pile is the kind of band that inspires people to do crazy things, like start a record label or write a concept…
Last year a book was released chronicling the history of one of Chicago’s best rock clubs, The Empty Bottle.…
Twin Cisterns is the solo moniker of Chris Tenerowicz, one of many players in the ever-shifting Self Defense Family.…
Hold Steady frontman Craig Finn is a deeply empathetic songwriter. That’s not always obvious, since his characters…
Two-piece rock bands are often viewed as a curiosity, due in large part to their inherent limitations. The exclusion…
Even when South By Southwest was solely music-focused, there was no way to catch everything of import, and as it’s…