After becoming an Oscar nominee at age 14 for her remarkable film debut in the Coen brothers’ True Grit (2010), Hailee Steinfeld posed a conundrum to Hollywood—she was difficult to categorize. What to do with this intense young teen, who wasn’t a blonde or ethereal Dakota Fanning-type, nor an easy fit into one of the three standard film roles offered to young women: Ingenue, bombshell, or Manic Pixie Dream Girl?...
Have you ever been to San Diego?! It’s not remotely macabre, not a lick. Yet somehow America’s Finest City birthed the Black Heart Procession, an eclectic, mutating orchestra of woe whose solemn, gently writhing indie rock (complete with rapt saw playing) has led to a modestly successful decade-plus career. Forged by Pall Jenkins and Tobias Nathaniel in 1997, the Black Heart Procession eventually blossomed with 2002’s Amore Del Tropico and 2006’s The Spell, both of which feel and sound theatrical and thematic in their sinister yarns, but their stark early records—including their 1998 debut, 1, 1999’s 2, and 2000’s Three—still carry weight....
Gapers Block gapersblock.com Runner-Up: Chicagoist
The Everygirl theeverygirl.com Runner-Up: Chicago Looks
Brown Elephant Runner-Up: Buffalo Exchange
A Reader staffer shares three musical obsessions, then asks someone (who asks someone else) to take a turn. Blink-155 podcast Another podcast that aims to cover a band’s entire career, Blink-155 is an effort by Canadian musicians and writers Sam Sutherland and Josiah Hughes to provide incredibly in-depth analyses of all 155 songs Blink-182 has written and recorded, one song per episode. The episodes are hilarious, with plenty of sarcastic bite, and an astounding amount of thought and research goes into each one....
For anyone interested in a whole range of issues, from women’s rights to collegiate culture to the state of American journalism, the story at the heart of Calamity West‘s Rolling was a big deal. The November 19, 2014, issue of Rolling Stone magazine featured “A Rape on Campus,” Sabrina Rubin Erdely’s report on allegations made to her by a University of Virginia student called “Jackie,” who said she’d been lured into an upstairs room at the local Phi Kappa Psi fraternity house and gang-raped as part of an initiation rite....
Here’s the deal between you and that Donald Trump crowd: you don’t like them and they don’t like you. Come November, one or the other is moving to Canada. But until that happens, wet your whistle. The Nation has just made you a very sweet offer: “Are you looking for that perfect Malbec to pair with Donald Trump’s xenophobic and misogynistic rally speeches?” The Nation Wine Club is asking. “Perhaps a complex Cabernet over which to discuss Bernie’s case for democratic socialism?...
Paulina Meat Market Runner-Up: The Butcher & Larder
The emerging fifth-wave emo scene has given me a great excuse to stay glued to social media. I’m not shy about my enthusiasm for emo, and I got a little giddy last month watching a cross-section of Twitter music fanatics go wild for pop-minded Chicago emo songwriter Eric Reyes, who records as Snow Ellet. Hugo Reyes had included Snow Ellet’s music in a great Medium roundup of recent Chicagoland emo on April 19, and after interest snowballed on Twitter, on May 7 Pitchfork ran a review of Snow Ellet’s debut EP, the March release Suburban Indie Rock Star....
ARTIST: Steve Krakow SHOW: Plastic Crimewave Syndicate, Shadow Show, and Bleach Party at Cafe Mustache on Tue 5/21 MORE INFO: plasticcrimewave.com
Q: I am a 40-year-old woman; I came out when I was 16. When I was 17, I met M and we dated for eight years. M was a horrible human being—emotionally and occasionally physically abusive. M still sends me the occasional (creepy) e-mail, wishing me a happy birthday or giving me updates on people I don’t really recall. I don’t respond. A few years back, I got an e-mail saying that M was now “Mike....
Last night, after reading this week’s Reader cover story about alleged abuses at Profiles Theatre, Gaby Labotka, a Chicago actor and director, decided to go to the theater and hand out copies of the paper to passersby. By 1:30 PM, a rotating group of six or seven people, some affiliated with the Not in Our House advocacy group, stood on the four corners of Broadway and Buena and under the theater awning distributing newspapers....
Chicago Truborn 1741 W. Chicago 773-420-9764 chicagotruborn.com Runner-Up: Galerie F
Jlin Its Chicago roots notwithstanding, footwork is a global phenomenon now, with vital communities popping up as far afield as Japan and Poland. So it was no leap at all for this adventurous, fast-paced dance music to reach Gary, Indiana, home to footwork producer Jlin, aka Jerilynn Patton. Her steel-mill job keeps her grounded in Gary, but the Chicago scene has gladly claimed her as its own: footwork progenitor RP Boo has gravitated toward her as a mentor, offering her words of encouragement and feedback, and she’s a member of Bosses of the Circle, a collective led by Low End producer DJ Roc....
“Van Gogh’s Bedrooms” at AIC 111 S. Michigan 312-443-3600 artic.edu Runner-Up: “China’s First Emperor and his Terracotta Warriors” at the Field Museum
Gillian Flynn gillian-flynn.com Runner-Up: Joe Meno
“Lady Mocha has come to Bronzeville bearing the gift of fashion,” says William Salaam of his wife, Treva Johnson Salaam, aka Lady Mocha. The pair, both born and raised in Chicago, opened Bronzeville Boutique by Lady Mocha in October 2009 in the graystone where Gwendolyn Brooks once wrote the poem “Kitchenette Building” (a mural-size portrait of Brooks is next to the store’s display window). Johnson Salaam’s keen eye is apparent in the garments she picks for the store, purchased wholesale online and at apparel shows all over the country....
Chicago archival label the Numero Group opened its Little Village brick-and-mortar store, the Numero Factory Outlet, on Friday, July 8. As label cofounder Rob Sevier told Gossip Wolf last week, the store is open only on Fridays, and it carries only Numero releases. As longtime Numero admirers know, its catalog is large enough to make for a healthy inventory—the shop’s rows of LPs, seven-inches, and CDs fill out its angled pathways nicely....
