Ramen Runner-Up: Poutine

Byron Miller Bim A brand-new garage-punk supergroup has emerged, and this Ohio-meets-Texas collaboration is truly a force to be reckoned with. The new band is called Blaxxx, and it features Cleveland’s Lamont “Bim” Thomas—a member of about 100 killer bands, including Obnox, This Moment in Black History, and the Bassholes—on drums and lead vocals, with Orville Neely and Tom Triplett of the Austin-based OBN IIIs on bass and guitar, respectively....

Did your childhood crush, well, crush your spirits? The performers at Mortified: Valentine Shmalentine know the pain all too well. It’s one of the many events happening this weekend. Here’s some of what we recommend: Sat 2/10: Now in its tenth year, Bye Bye Liver, the aptly named production about alcohol, has moved to Stage 773’s Cab Theater (1225 W. Belmont). What’s not changing are the booze-themed sketches and drinking games....

In Danny Boyle’s new film Yesterday, a struggling musician named Jack (Himesh Patel) wakes up after being hit by a bus during a 12-second global blackout to discover he is the only person in the world who remembers the Beatles. After a brief will-he-won’t-he, Jack relaunches his failing career to stunning success by claiming the songs of Lennon and McCartney as his own. Immediately, it was apparent to me that our new home was different....

I was once taken by well-meaning hosts to a large Italian chain restaurant in the midsize city of Gwangju, South Korea. After several weeks of stuffing me with everything the putative bread basket of the peninsula had to offer, they thought I might be missing a taste of home. So we went for pizza. Jennifer Kim of Passerotto is the next candidate for this esteemed club. Kim, you may remember, was formerly a chef at the ungoogleably named, extortionately priced, and ultimately doomed C Chicago, who escaped that shipwreck with her then- boyfriend, chef Bill Montaigne, and resurfaced to open Snaggletooth, a marvelous Lakeview microdeli where the two made art with cured fish and bagels....

In What Is Democracy? Astra Taylor, a Canadian filmmaker, writer, and organizer, poses that question to Greek scholars, Guatemalan immigrants in North Carolina, Syrian refugees, a Miami barber who’s a convicted felon, and many others. In one scene, black middle-schoolers discuss how their voices are often ignored by teachers. “What you say to us all the time is, ‘Go to college so you can do what you love,’ but you don’t even love what you do,” says one student, to the applause of her classmates....

In my preview of this weekend’s performances by trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith at Constellation, I discussed how active he’s been of late, dropping strong new work at a prodigious rate. But his partner in Celestial Weather, the project he brings to town, bassist John Lindberg, has also been getting busy, releasing new albums by a pair of very different-sounding trios. Lindberg remains best known for his invaluable work alongside Anthony Braxton during the 70s and 80s and as a founding member of the String Trio of New York, a combo that forged a special brand of chamber jazz, but these new efforts reinforce an easy versatility in his abilities....

Chicago multi-instrumentalist Ben Astrachan was born nearly two generations after 1967’s famous Summer of Love, but he understands the whimsy, grace, and joy of that era’s music so well you’d think he helped make it happen. He impressed me with his contributions to a rough-around-the-edges 2020 album by freak-folk duo Berta Bigtoe (where he plays with Austin Koenigstein), and he’s now branched out into further flower-power experiments as a solo artist....

Lime Lyft Finalists: Bird, Grüv, VeoRide

Brown Elephant various locations howardbrown.org/brown-elephant Runner-Up: Crossroads

There are a couple of things you need to remember when listening to a new Bob Mould record. First off, Mould will never be able to meet the fervor and frenzy of his Husker Dü days or the heartfelt perfection of the Sugar records. And when an artist has a discography as vast as his, there are bound to be some missteps. Take 2005’s Body of Song, where Mould edged away from his signature punky college rock for trancy, vocoder-infused dance punk....

My clock says it’s a few minutes before 6 AM. I said I would arrive at 5:30 but I miscalculated my morning and now I’m late. It’s also cooler than I expected for a July morning. I dig for a sweater as I remember to also grab my mask. I walk along the cool grass of the park towards the south side of the Point, a man-made peninsula that curves into Lake Michigan in the Hyde Park neighborhood....

How do you write dramas about dystopia and alienation in the middle of a pandemic, especially when the people in charge have seemingly signed a blood oath to a nihilist death cult? Isn’t doomscrolling Twitter enough to make most of us imagine the worst? Langford was inspired in part by Westinghouse’s 1930s foray into creating prototype robots designed to look like Black men—one of whom was actually named “Rastus” and was also referred to as a “mechanical slave....

Jennifer Reeder Bing Liu Finalists: Joe Swanberg, Vincent Martell

Tamale Spaceship thetamalespaceship.com Runner-Up: 5411 Empanadas

The Hideout Second City Finalists: Zanies, Comedy Clubhouse

In 2019, my body became a walking cancel culture. I now envision my younger self as a new can of pop, shaken constantly by the conservative, white, hetero hands gripping them. Crash diets, bad boyfriends, divorced parents, an unruly adolescence. As training season continued, I joked that all I did was run and work. In reality, I ran, worked, ranted about sobriety, and went to therapy twice a week. The miles began to stack up, and suddenly I was doing nine without stopping....