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Lula Cafe Runner-Up: Longman & Eagle

Reckless Records Runner-Up: Laurie’s Planet of Sound

The Annoyance Steppenwolf Finalists: The Den, Otherworld

The Autobarn Group Evanston Subaru Finalists: Elmhurst BMW, The Auto Warehouse

Five years ago, if you were shopping for, say, a pound of shrimp or some smoked chubs at Boston Fish Market in Des Plaines, you might have been treated to something from the huge spread of fresh, fried, or grilled sea creatures Louis Psihogios laid out every day to impress his large wholesale restaurant accounts. The business has grown exponentially. He says he has ten ships fishing the Great Lakes for whitefish, and 40 more under contract, which goes a long way toward establishing Boston Fish Market as the top processor of midwestern whitefish, now more than 100 tons per week, he says....

By the way, while we’re at it—the graffiti crew painted over a valuable work of art that was on the side of the Cards Against Humanity headquarters. As for Shatner’s enthusiasm for the deal—he doesn’t pay taxes here. He lives in California. Just goes to show you—the farther you are from having to pay for this thing, the more likely you are to support it.

When Charli XCX dropped the single “Blame It on Your Love” on May 15, she posted an Instagram story of herself posing with guest vocalist Lizzo and a sign reading “Bout 2 Save Pop Music.” The British singer’s new full-length, Charli (released last month), suggests that she’s not just trying to save pop—she’s trying to shift the pop paradigm. She hasn’t succeeded yet, but the complicated and occasionally chaotic Charli feels like a stepping stone in that direction—its songs don’t immediately feel ready for the Top 40, but they further her distinctive sound....

On February 20 a scrappy bunch of teachers from the North Lawndale and Urban Prep charter schools took to the streets to announce they were trying to form a union. As you may recall, charter schools are publicly financed, privately run institutions that in most cases are not unionized. They’re also supported by a lot of rich and powerful business titans who are of the decidedly antiunion persuasion. As always, the truth is somewhere in the middle, though leaning precariously close to me....

Chasms, the Los Angeles duo of Jess Labrador and Shannon Madden, is essentially a dream-pop outfit. But while the ethereal voice sighs and meanders breathily toward nirvana—in the tradition of artists such as the Cocteau Twins, Ivy, and Damon & Naomi—the atmospheric instrumentals draw from more disparate influences, notably electronic dance music. Their new record, The Mirage (Felte), opens with “Shadow,” which starts with a sparse, distorted beat that could pass as a dub track—at least until processed guitar noises and Madden’s singing slide in and lift things off that thumping bottom....

Last week’s Cocktail Challenge event at Salvage One—inspired by the Reader series of the same name—saw nearly 20 local bartenders creating cocktails around the theme “nostalgia.” Some looked back to childhood with drinks based on watermelon Sour Patch Kids or ginger peach lollipops, while others thought of a slightly different period of life: college. The Betty’s Melissa Pinkerton served a take on Jungle Juice and had a table set up for beer pong....

Bangarra Dance Theatre of Australia makes its Chicago debut this week at the Harris Theater. Founded in 1989 by American choreographer Carole Johnson and directed since 1991 by Stephen Page, an Australian dancer and choreographer of Nunukul and Munaldjali descent, Bangarra has been lauded for its celebration of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander heritage through a fusion of contemporary dance and Australian First Nations culture. “Australia was colonized by the British Commonwealth in 1788,” explains Page....

Savannah-based sludge/alternative-metal quartet Baroness have spent a long time nursing their fifth full-length, the forthcoming Gold & Grey, which is their first with new guitarist Gina Gleason, replacing the outgoing Pete Adams. (Adams will be missed, but if you ask me, it’s about time a band called Baroness had a woman member.) Singer-guitarist John Baizley has said this record is a look back at the band’s tumultuous first decade, and will be the last one titled after a color, a theme that runs through every album (and accompanying album cover) and has become interlinked with the band’s identity....

Fitness Formula Clubs

Reza’s Noon O Kabab Finalists: Taste of Lebanon, Middle East Bakery & Grocery, Galit

Last spring, the future of Nervosa seemed uncertain. The powerful Brazilian thrash-metal band had changed drummers a few times since forming in 2010, but in April 2020 bassist and vocalist Fernanda Lira and drummer Luana Dametto, two-thirds of the trio on 2018’s Downfall of Mankind, quit the group. That left just one founding member, guitarist Prika Amaral, to rebuild from scratch. That she did so in such a short time, under pandemic conditions—and emerged this month with the solid, blistering new album Perpetual Chaos—is nothing short of heroic....

“Northerly Island” may sound like the name of some obscure Steely Dan demo, but the venue is not an ideal place to see the band play. That would be Ravinia, where I took in the Dan last summer in appropriately bourgeois fashion: while sitting on a blanket spread over a patch of Highland Park grass, sipping a white wine, and grazing leisurely from a spread of cheese, meat, and olives. Unlike the ticketed audience seated in the covered pavilion, I had no sight line of the stage—but that didn’t detract a bit from the evening....

On January 26, when Mayor Rahm Emanuel and the CTA unveiled the route for the $2.3 billion extension of the Red Line from 95th Street to 130th Street, the big question was where the heck the CTA would get the money from. City officials said they planned to apply for more than $1 billion in federal grants for the project. Trouble is, White House infrastructure adviser DJ Gribbin says that Donald Trump’s forthcoming $200 billion infrastructure bill won’t include any new revenue and will cut existing transportation funding—specifically, Amtrak and public transit....

On December 4, 2015, Chicago bass clarinetist Jason Stein played his first arena show, at the BMO Harris Bradley Center in Milwaukee. He knew that the 14,000 people in the audience hadn’t come to see him, even though he’s toured on several continents and earned acclaim in the New York Times and DownBeat magazine—free jazz isn’t a lucrative racket. For Stein and the musicians who share his circuit, a crowd of 50 in a cozy bar like the Hungry Brain counts as a respectable turnout....