A slaughterhouse employee stands on his patio, looking out toward his suburban swathe of land. In front of him, colors swirl. Large animals appear dancing alongside him. Blood drips. Distorted voices waver in the distance. The man stands motionless, reverent at the specter around him, anticipating a series of magical and tragic events. His silhouette […]

Travel Jukebox is a semi-regular series that highlights songs befitting a life in transit. It also ignores the obvious flaw in its metaphor, since traveling with a jukebox is next to impossible. There’s a presumed confidence that comes with globetrotting. It’s the idea that only people with a certain bravado and of a specific brazen […]

Travel Jukebox is a semi-regular series that highlights songs befitting a life in transit. It also ignores the obvious flaw in its metaphor, since traveling with a jukebox is next to impossible. Few things sum up the optimism of youth more than Richard Linklater’s “Dazed and Confused.” On the film’s tie-dyed exterior, it’s a vehicle […]

During the summer before my 21st birthday, my cousin flew to Chicago for a visit. It was something we’d been talking about for years, and a few months before we each legally could kick back with a nice glass of wine, he took the cross-country flight from Arizona. Growing up a few train stops outside […]

There’s a level of confidence (or is it arrogance?) that comes with naming your band after one of the British Invasion’s staple songs, just ask California power poppers Hellogoodbye or Danish rockers Kashmir. So when Picture Books took on the moniker of arguably The Kinks’ most beloved tune, the band set itself up for a […]

Who says you can’t go home again? For 38-year-old Tommie Sunshine, the Windy City will welcome its prodigal DJ son back this month with open turntables. The now-New York-based beatsmith has built his decades-old reputation on mixing contemporary rock tracks into thumping dance club anthems. Even today, as his puffy beard comes highlighted with a […]

Music long has been a family affair for The Cribs’ Gary Jarman. It might be a tired cliché, but some things become common rhetoric because of their truthfulness. As the 29-year-old bassist/vocalist for the English ensemble, Jarman has built his lad rocking life around the things most important to him: music and his loved ones. […]

Chicago is home to many musical genres. It’s a blues city, with the down-and-out sounds of the Delta traveling up the Mississippi River and landing in the Windy City. It’s an industrial town, with the late-night house music of the ’80s settling into overnight, near violent dance parties. It’s a soul haven, with hip hop […]

It’s been eight years since Pete Yorn released his woefully underrated musicforthemorningafter, a somber, heartfelt collection of New Jersey Turnpike love songs with just a hint of Garden State gruff. But the 35-year-old songwriter’s subsequent two albums (in 2003 and 2006, respectively) found the brooding vocalist reaching too far beyond his crumbling relationships by writing […]

Does it really come as that big of a surprise that King Khan & BBQ had hallucinogenic drugs in their van? Is it all that shocking that the boundary-pushing, garage rock madmen who parade around stage in elaborate and oft-revealing costumes might associate with people who dig the proverbial trip? Those suspicions became fact on […]