In a review of Con Todo el Mundo (Dead Oceans), the second album by Khruangbin, Pitchfork writer Erin MacLeod observed that the instrumental Texas trio makes “music for the Spotify era.” Streaming services give listeners an entire globe of sounds to pick through, and the members of the band haven’t been cagey about where their numerous influences comes from—the same review notes the presence of vintage Thai pop music the group injested from MP3 blog Monrakplengthai....

Last Wednesday Benjamin Netanyahu was reelected as Israel’s prime minister, set to serve an unprecedented fifth term. Leading up to his victory, Netanyahu promised to annex Israeli settlements in the West Bank, diminishing hope even further for the future of a Palestinian state. Our country’s mainstream news media—which, like many of those in power, favor an Israeli perspective—play down Netanyahu’s transgressions, thus depriving many Americans the chance to see their impact on the Palestinian people....

Ka Pow” is the accidental way Ocimum tenuiflorum, aka holy basil, aka ใบกะเพรา, aka ka-prao, announces its presence among the produce at Talard Thai Asian Market. All that’s missing on the label is an exclamation point and the clenched fist of a superhero to communicate the seriousness of this intoxicating green herb’s arrival in Edgewater, where Supasin “Pete” Ratchadapronvanich and Simon Atapan have opened a dedicated Thai market—let’s call it a supermarket—the scale and ambition of which the city hasn’t enjoyed since the closing of the beloved Thai Grocery almost 12 years ago....

Roberto Bolaño’s 2666 isn’t what you’d call an easy read. And I ought to know–as of this writing, I’ve gotten only about halfway through it. Published in Spanish following the Chilean novelist’s death in 2003 and translated into English by Natasha Wimmer in 2008, the book is epic and eerie, at times the sort of nightmare vision you’d expect from Franz Kafka if he were Latin American and read the newspaper....

One of the most absurdly delicious things I’ve eaten this winter was a humongous lump of deep-fried chicken breast with a core of molten cheese from Hot Star Large Fried Chicken, a Taiwanese chain with several outposts in and around Toronto and Los Angeles. It’s the kind of thing that blinds you to how truly bad for you it is until your greasy paws are empty, there’s cheese dripping down your chin, and you want to fall over and die....

Transient founder Chris Betts with some of the barrels in which his beers acquire their special qualities As much as it must suck to make beer that nobody cares about, making beer that rivets the attention of bottle-trading nerds comes with its own aggravations. Count yourself lucky if you’ve never seen a full-grown man whining like a spoiled child in an attempt to guilt a brewer or shop manager into parting with a small-batch bottle that’s reserved for someone else....

More often than not, I’m obliged to organize my listening around release dates and live performances—I spend time with music that I’m writing about, either to preview a show or review a new album. The problem with this is that it leaves too few hours to check out stuff that I don’t have a pressing reason to get to. Recently I found myself with a chance to grab something that was released back in May and dig into it, and I’m very glad I did....

There’s more to do this weekend in Chicago than Pitchfork. Here’s some of what we recommend: Sat 7/16: At MSI After Hours: Brick Bash, the Museum of Science and Industry (5700 S. Lake Shore) hosts a big, ol’ party featuring a live podcast by Adam Reed Tucker, curator of the institution’s Lego sculpture display. 7-10 PM

Over the course of its career the Scandinavian juggernaut known as the Thing has collaborated with a wildly diverse group of musicians: art-pop singer Neneh Cherry, free-jazz warrior Joe McPhee, Japanese experimentalist Otomo Yoshihide, polymath (and former Chicagoan) Jim O’Rourke, and Sonic Youth front man Thurston Moore, among others. The trio—saxophonist Mats Gustafsson, drummer Paal Nilssen-Love, and bassist Ingebrigt Håker Flaten—surveys classic free-jazz tunes by Don Cherry as well as garage-rock classics by the Sonics—highlighting the inextricable link between soul and muscularity, and digging into how sound can be both a weapon and a balm....

On April 5, 2010, a coal-dust explosion at Massey Energy’s Upper Big Branch Mine in Raleigh County, West Virginia, killed 29 miners. Though subsequent investigations found that a pervasive pattern of negligence and safety violations had led to the entirely preventable tragedy, in 2015 Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship got off with a slap on the wrist: a single misdemeanor conviction for conspiring to violate mine safety and health standards and a one-year prison sentence....

Percussionist Samuel Scranton and bassoonist Katherine Young (who was, in the distant past, a Reader editorial staffer) combine improvised and composed material in the sui generis duo Beautifulish. Their name may sound tentative, and their preference for small-run cassettes may seem humble, but there’s nothing timid about their radical sounds. Beautifulish’s music arose from weekly sessions of improvisation, which gradually unearthed a shared vocabulary of electronically magnified textures and dogged actions that sound more like field recordings from an imagined world than any known genre of music....

Even as a dedicated member of the Kiss Army, I understand that Gene Simmons and crew have provided plenty of ammo for trash talkers. But it’s really hard to hate on lead guitarist Paul “Ace” Frehley. He’s a founding member of the greatest rock ’n’ roll spectacle of all time, and his sloppy, shredding, high-gain solos are as much a part of the Kiss fabric as fire breathing and blood spitting....

It’s easy to get the impression that Natalie Chami dreams in music—she’s immersed in it in practically every minute of her waking life. By day, she teaches choir, vocal technique, and music technology at the Chicago High School for the Arts. She spends her free time immersed in Chicago’s experimental-music community, making noisy drones as one-third of Good Willsmith and exploring ambient soundscapes with her solo project, TALsounds. In the decade or so that Chami has been active, she’s become a crucial contributor and even one of the faces of the city’s contemporary avant-garde electronic scene....

Welcome to the Reader‘s morning briefing for Monday, July 18, 2016. There’s a debate over the geographic center of Chicago

Since I wrote about the cuisine of Kerala and Glenview’s terrific grocery-caterer Kairali Food & Events last week, someone pointed out that there is, in fact, a full-service restaurant in the area featuring the food of India’s southwestern state. That would be the two-year-old Mainland India in Niles, whose menu looks very promising. In early May, she and Kalathil opened Thattu with a concise menu of four entree-size dishes and a few snacks, including the biscuits and egg curry, but also Kerala-style fried chicken, a mild coriander chicken curry, and a Portuguese-influenced vegetable stew called ishtu....

So many local hip-hop artists have helped me see the city anew through their work that I doubt I could name them all. Chicago hip-hop followed up on a tremendous 2016 with a flood of great releases that helped me get through the lows of 2017: to pick just three, Joseph Chilliams’s cheeky and tender Henry Church, Cupcakke’s brash and ecstatic Queen Elizabitch, and G Herbo’s introspective and ferocious Humble Beast....

There’s no way to complain about distracting music in a restaurant without sounding like a long and lingering fart. But this won’t be the first time I’ve been accused of that, so here goes anyway: Turn it the fuck down, Beatnik. Black Bull chef Marcos Campos’s menu takes a similar approach to collecting, drawing on a sweeping variety of cuisines, from Africa to Asia to Europe and South America. In these balkananized times, it’s nice to see so many cultures come together at once, and there are some interesting ideas here, like lemongrass-scented sepia steaks (since 86’d from the menu) perched on tubular squid-ink masa dumplings (Hey, you got your Thailand in my Mexico!...

A chance meeting at the corner of Clark and Winnemac. A one-woman show at iO Theater. A viral short film filled with local improvisers. In an alchemic combination, these quintessential Chicago events catapulted prolific Chicago comedian Abby McEnany into the national spotlight. Among subplots addressing mental illness, suicidal ideation, and sizeism head-on, moments of hilarity emerge, from a therapist dying midsession to a bitchy coworker buying Abby a large, plot-critical tub of almonds....

Peter Holderness / Sun-Times Alderman Danny Solis (above) says Governor Bruce Rauner is pretty friendly for a “conservative, right-wing Republican.” Governor Bruce Rauner scheduled time to meet with Chicago alderman Danny Solis on Friday, January 23, just a week and a half after he was inaugurated. When Rauner asked Solis for his input, the alderman says he advised him not to attack President Obama’s immigration reforms, as other GOP governors have done....

1. Cabaret is a landmark. When it opened in 1967 it was arguably the first Broadway hit to deal with subject matter that had been repressed, or at least buried, by the trauma of World War II and the Holocaust. The show needs the chaotic, sexy, self-destructive Sally Bowles. She is Cabaret‘s Manic Pixie Dream Girl. Or rather, its Manic Pixie Nightmare Girlfriend. Without her the narrator-protagonist would be just a depressed and depressing cipher sitting alone in his room, typing out a novel no one will ever read....