The through line of Spektral Quartet’s first studio release in four years, Experiments in Living, is that there is no through line—at least on the surface. The double album covers 150 years of history, from Brahms to living lions such as George Lewis, but rather than foist a chronological or thematic flow onto the recording, the Chicago ensemble encourage nonlinear pathways and heavy use of the “shuffle” feature. Preorders of the album through their site even come with a deck of tarot-like cards with collages from Danish artist ØjeRum; each card corresponds to a different track, so that every reading reveals a distinct playlist....

When COVID-19 forced Chicago’s concert venues and DIY spaces to shutter in March 2020, the timing was especially bad for local punks Spread Joy. Because they wanted to have a tight set worked up before they played live, they put in several months of intensive rehearsal before scheduling their first gig—and then gigs stopped happening. Spread Joy still haven’t played a single live show, but instead of losing their momentum, last summer the four of them—bassist Nick Beaudoin, drummer Tyler Bixby, singer Briana Hernandez, and guitarist Raidy Hodges—spent a whirlwind two days tracking a batch of songs with Doug Malone at Jamdek Recording Studio....

test Chicago has distinctive and well-manicured parks to be sure, but for a stroll off the beaten path on a nice day, local mentalist and magician Neil Tobin urges folks to explore the city’s cemeteries, the north side’s Rosehill in particular. “Most people completely overlook [them],” says Tobin, “because we’ve become a cultu re that tries really hard to ignore death. We happen to have a place in the middle of our city that occupies 350 acres right next to Andersonville....

Salvation awaits at The Total Bent, the bitingly irreverent musical satire from Haven Theatre. Papa Joe is a gospel preacher and singer hell-bent on saving souls through televangelism. His son, Marty, is the real talent, though, a radical singer-songwriter during the tumult of the civil rights era. Enter Byron, a British record producer who wants to capitalize on their music, and the passions that divide father and son grow, pitting religion against revolution....

Barney the Elf As a non-Christian, I have no brief for Christmas. But the Other Theatre Company brings a whole chorusful of gold lamé briefs to this oddly compelling holiday tribute. I say “oddly” because the 90-minute show sure as hell doesn’t follow the usual path to yuletide cheer. Santa Claus has died, to start, leaving behind a widow and one grown son, Junior, who’s expected to follow in dad’s footsteps....

This story was originally published by ProPublica Illinois. ProPublica Illinois is an independent, nonprofit newsroom that produces investigative journalism with moral force. Sign up for The ProPublica Illinois newsletter for weekly updates. Federal and state officials said Tuesday they want to close loopholes that allow families to get need-based financial aid they would not otherwise receive by giving up guardianship of their college-bound children. The move, they said, could end “potential student aid fraud” when parents turn over guardianship of their children in hopes of obtaining a tuition break....

I’m not a homesick Brit, but I’ve read enough English novels, both historical and contemporary, to feel like I could be one. There’s probably a German word to explain the feeling of nostalgia for things you’ve only read about but never experienced in real life, and I felt a wave of this the first time I went to Spencer’s Jolly Posh, when the cafe was still in its original location on Irving Park Road....

John Luther AdamsThe Wind in High Places (Cold Blue) John CarpenterJohn Carpenter’s Lost Themes (Sacred Bones) Leather Corduroys, aka Save Money rappers Joey Purple and Kami de Chukwu, include a skit on their debut full-length, Season, that explains how you can make your own pair of leather corduroys with polyurethane, “adhesive,” and 50 dried banana peels. I imagine that pulling off such an outfit also takes a degree of finesse bordering on the magical—but Joey and Kami have it....

Atmosphere is everything in Cloudgate Theatre artistic director Kristin Idaszak’s new Strange Heart Beating, in which a nameless midwestern town by a nameless lake becomes the disturbed burial ground for a variety of human ills—racism, alcoholism, factory farming, mob vigilantism, climate change, and the mysterious disappearance of many girls. In this heavy-handed production, the Lake (Stephanie Shum, in a fantastic ball gown of nets and weeds) is the first to speak of what she has witnessed—a girl, hands sticky with ice cream, egg-white substance between her legs, deposited in her waters....

For those who say I’m too tough on Mayor Emanuel, I’d like to take the time to credit him for doing something I never thought possible: uniting Andy Thayer and Rick Garcia around a common cause. He’s generally the guy in the T-shirts and jeans bellowing into the bullhorn while the cops haul him away to jail. He’s been arrested for civil disobedience so many times he’s lost count. He was there to protest a TIF deal under which the mayor proposed to spend about $16 million on an upscale high-rise at Montrose and Clarendon, just a few blocks from the lake....

The United States once had a ban on the kind of semiautomatic rifle that was used in the Orlando massacre. The assault weapons ban was instituted in 1994, with a ten-year life span, and—thanks to the efforts of the National Rifle Association and the (mostly Republican) politicians in its pocket—was allowed to expire in 2004. The National Rifle Association has in the past given A ratings for their exemplary support of “gun rights” to the following members of Congress from Illinois: Mike Bost, Rodney L....

On May 18, 1892, a lawyer addressed a packed Englewood auditorium. The issue was whether to form a mob to remove their new neighbor, Dr. Cyrus R. Teed, or to let the law take its course. “Let us say that there is one spot in the State of Illinois where such a devil cannot exist,” E.S. Metcalf told the crowd. “Don’t talk about tar and feathers tonight; they will come later....

If you’ve ever seen Chicago ensemble Chandeliers, you’ve seen Scott McGaughey hunched behind a bunch of black boxes and patch cords. Chandeliers have long taken an ecumenical approach to electronic music, weaving together clattering drum programs, squelchy funk punctuations, and long, proggy melodies; the closest they get to a rule is that hardware, not software, determines the sounds. Synthesizers are also the dominant sound source on McGaughey’s first solo LP, but he’s swapped Chandeliers’ frequently lengthy jams for carefully layered constructions that sneak hints of complicated emotions into their catchy tunes....

You know that ominous, quasi-psychedelic, galvanizing music that plays when they introduce the Bulls before home games? Well, the band that created that song is playing Saint Charles on Friday. It’s the Alan Parsons Project, consisting of the man whom the band is named after, keyboardist Eric Woolfson, and a rotating cast of session musicians; Parsons is arguably more famous for being an engineer on and important contributor to the Beatles’ Abbey Road and Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon....

Chicagoans is a first-person account from off the beaten track, as told to Anne Ford. This week’s Chicagoan is undocumented immigrant Gilberto Soberanis. “I realized I was gay around 14, but I had to do everything in my power to hide it. Much later, I realized I had to tell my family. I told my mom in the car. She started crying. Later one of our family members told me that my mom called her and said, ‘I don’t know how he can be gay....

This winter, the Reader has set a humble goal for itself: to determine the Greatest Chicago Book Ever Written. We chose 16 books that reflected the wide range of books that have come out of Chicago and the wide range of people who live here and assembled them into an NCAA-style bracket. Then we recruited a crack team of writers, editors, booksellers, and scholars as well as a few Reader staffers to judge each bout....

One of the easier riddles to solve in Rupert Holmes’s 1985 musical comedy is why so few theater companies ever seem to produce it. Its orchestral and vocal bars to entry are significant—in true 80s Broadway form, Holmes’s score mashes up operatic arias and ornate harmonic chord progressions with toe-tappy, whistle-able melodies. Its required cast size can be prohibitively large for smaller companies, its plot is often inscrutable, its humor is irony-free, and its obscure source material—Charles Dickens’s last work—is literally unfinished....

M. Spencer Green/AP Photos Senator Mark Kirk oozes south-side cred. Oh, come on! It’s not just privileged, conservative white men who think it’s funny to affect the patois of people they’re not remotely like. It’s also my Sunday-morning crowd at Julius Meinl—privileged, liberal white men. It’s people of color I’ve eavesdropped on when I was supposed to be oblivious to their existence. It’s shocking, but I believe women do it too, and even the virtuous young raised from the cradle to atone for the insensitivities of their elders....

The Reader’s archive is vast and varied, going back to 1971. Every day in Archive Dive, we’ll dig through and bring up some finds. Then I started thinking about his past and I began to wonder: Am I being deceived? He had already demonstrated his ability to lie and maintain not one but several phony identities. How did I know he wasn’t lying now? “You Can’t Fire the Bad Ones!”: And 18 Other Myths About Teachers, Teachers Unions, and Public Education....

As the March gubernatorial primary approaches, two candidates have now expressed support for repealing Illinois’s Rent Control Preemption Act—a 1997 law that prohibits municipalities from enacting any form of regulation on residential or commercial rent prices. This week state senator Daniel Biss and wealthy businessman J.B. Pritzker spoke in support of a house bill that would lift the ban and allow local governments to grapple with the issue of rent control....