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Adrianne Lenker was in the throes of a breakup this spring when she holed up in a one-room cabin in Western Massachusetts and spent a few weeks crafting the paired albums Songs and Instrumentals (both on 4AD). While Lenker is primarily known for her folk-rock band Big Thief, her comparatively pared-down solo work is equally striking. Her guitar playing is intimate, her light, soft voice is comforting, and her music exudes a mystical quality—it sounds ready-made to be played during early-morning strolls through the fog....

Broken Shaker 19 E. Ohio 312-940-3699 Fox Bar at Soho House 113-125 N. Green 312-521-8000foxbar.com

Eve L. Ewing

If you want a reminder of the cowardly cautiousness of mainstream Democrats, check out this moment from the Great Debate. Ifill said, It’s nice that you agree on something, and they went on to another subject. Generally, they’d go off the record to tell us that they had nothing against reefer. In fact, they may have—chuckle, chuckle—smoked some over the weekend. But, you know, don’t want to get too far ahead of voters....

[This article contains spoilers.] Yet in the hands of Black Mirror creator Charlie Brooker, Daly becomes a tyrant on par with Harvey Weinstein and Donald Trump while behind the controls of his own video game. What initially seems like a harmless escape from daily drudgery turns disturbing when we discover that the characters who populate the high-tech simulation aren’t merely programmed to obey Daly’s every command and regale him with constant praise—they’re virtual slaves whom Daly has physically tortured, blackmailed, or transformed into hideous monsters and stuck on some lifeless alien planet as punishment for falling out of line....

“In the simplest of terms, the novel and fluid political climate makes this election a choice between those who hope for change and those who fear change,” David Moberg writes in 1983 in the article “Guide for the Perplexed.” Moberg covers the race for mayor between Bernard Epton and Harold Washington. It was a battle between a candidate closely connected to the Chicago political machine and a liberal reform candidate. Sound familiar?...

Former Chicago trumpeter Jaimie Branch was one of last year’s big success stories in jazz. Her long-overdue debut as a leader, Fly or Die (International Anthem), captured her protean strength and melodic vision with stunning concision and soul, and synthesized some of her many musical interests into a cogent postbop direction that allowed for plenty of free expression. But Branch has endless curiosity about all sorts of music, and with Anteloper, a duo project with drummer Jason Nazary, she’s opened up fresh paths....

Blommer’s cocoa-shell mulch blommer.com Last summer I started noticing that I’d get smacked in the face by the smell of chocolate whenever I stepped outside my apartment on a hot day. It took me weeks to figure out the source of the scent, which is reminiscent of a freshly toasted chocolate fudge Pop-Tart. Then one day I saw a large bag of rich, brown mulch sitting in the yard. I was too far away to catch a whiff of Blommer, the River West chocolate factory that often bathes the Loop’s northwestern quadrant in its sweet bouquet, but my landlord had found a way to bring that intoxicating aroma right to our own backyard: a mulch Blommer makes from discarded cocoa-bean shells....

Eye Spy Optical Lab Rabbit Optics Finalists: Visionary Eye Care, CustomEyes

Maria Reyes, MD Zachary LaMaster, DO Finalists: J. Wesley Cook, DO, Ross A. Slotten, MD

Koval Distillery Runner-Up: CH Distillery

“I think I’m the cutest rapper,” Dev Bee told UMass Amherst radio show Hip-Hop Made Me Do It last year. Bee, a Boston musician who uses “them” and “they” pronouns, came up playing in punk and emo bands, and I’m quite tickled by their “burrito emo” group, the Baja Blasters. Under the guise of Pink Navel, Bee has built up a small library of DIY raps that sometimes concern sweet cultural froufrou—which they translate into hard, staccato lines and deliver with loopy aplomb....

In Thomas Nashe’s novel The Unfortunate Traveller, the young servant-soldier Jack Wilton swashbuckles his way through the Grand Tour about a century before such European travels became a standard part of a wellborn gentleman’s education. In Prop Thtr’s 2 Unfortunate 2 Travel, director Zach Weinberg and his excellent ensemble retell Jack’s story in the present day. But who is Jack, and why do we need to hear about his trip to Mexico?...

Of all the upsetting stories I heard while Aimee Levitt and I were investigating Profiles Theatre, the one that disturbed me the most came not from anyone who’d ever met or allegedly been harmed by artistic director Darrell W. Cox and his cohort. It wasn’t even a story about something specific he or his collaborators had allegedly done. Savage redacted the postscript and forwarded the message to another friend of mine, a local theater artist, and asked him if this sounded familiar....

Even by Serbian standards the komplet lepinja at Irving Park’s Astoria Café & Bakery is a breakfast of epic proportions. But is it a pizza? Is it a pastry? Is it a sandwich? This wasn’t her first turn at a bakery. When the family arrived in Michigan in 1999, via Germany, Suzi and Tanja both found work at a bakery owned by a Serbian woman. After the woman died Tanja would eventually purchase it....

Being catcalled on the street is annoying. It makes you feel exposed and unsafe. But the biggest problem with it is that, like so many forms of sexual harassment, it makes you feel powerless. You can’t stop it, you can’t confront it without escalating the harassment, and there’s no authority to defend you from it. In the past, I’ve been advised to ignore it, to cross the street, to avoid walking in certain areas without a male escort (including the block outside my apartment), and to laugh at the man in an otherwise empty subway car who decides to show me his penis....

In Ye Olde Tymes, some food historians speculate, pie was merely a vessel for food to get to the table. Everything that came inside was eaten and the actual pastry that contained it was rubbish. Arjun and Lilly Seigell had little sense of the mania said pies inspire in homesick expats when, after a visit to relatives in Sydney, they decided to open Chicago’s first Australian pie shop. On opening weekend last February Lakeview’s Barangaroos sold out of each of its nine varieties; not just the classics, but deliberately Yank-targeted ones like buffalo chicken, veggie pizza, and “Mexican” (steak fajitas, black bean, cheese, sour cream, pico de gallo)....

Lao Sze Chuan Sun Wah BBQ Finalists: MingHin Cuisine, House of Wah Sun