Five albums and a dozen years into a career seems a bit long to determine that an artist isn’t just having a laugh and cashing in on a pre-existing TV career while embarking on this music thing out of vanity. But with each Juana Molina release, questions about whether that is the case pop up […]

Chicago is cold in February. January technically might be more frigid, but not by much. It’s the time each year that the Windy City’s sticky summer feels a world away, and those refreshing breezes off Lake Michigan are memories lost in the salty snow sludge and bleak skies that seem to hang for months longer […]

Like the youngster whose artistic prowess might have gone unnoticed had it not been for the Crayola mural on the living room wall or the track star who first got discovered while outrunning a gym teacher to ditch class, sometimes a child’s youthful mistakes can turn into career-making happy accidents. Then there’s A-Trak (born Alain […]

Tom Waits isn’t for everybody. And if the iconic, scruffy Californian takes some time to get used to, what chance does an even scruffier Pennsylvania transplant have at endearing himself upon first listen? But it’s at a second (and then a third, fourth, and fifth) go-round that Matt Arborgast’s phlegm-throated warble finally begins to sound […]

There’s that gray area where black meets white, that taste where oil and vinegar blend, that divide where north becomes south, and that tiny pocket of music where grunge meets guitar pop. It’s in this little burst of mid-’90s music history that New York’s Figgs have thrived — even before there was such a thing […]

You wouldn’t know it by the way the Scottish songwriter offers up his heart for all to see as part of the epic-sounding Frightened Rabbit. Or by the way in which the unassuming frontman hops from interview to interview throughout a seemingly endless routine of press for his band’s second LP, The Midnight Organ Fight, […]

Naked Raygun’s Jeff Pezzati has long been an ambassador for the original punks and their hometown. Even today, more than a quarter-century since his days in fellow seminal Chicago ensemble Big Black and almost 20 years since his last Naked Raygun album, the hard-spun vocalist isn’t afraid to dish out a few quips about the […]

Catching a glimpse of an overweight, half-naked bearded bald man covered in fake blood is shocking once. Seeing it twice is rare. Witnessing the spectacle for a third time must mean you’re on tour with NYC’s artful punk legends Les Savy Fav. And if that’s the case, it also means you’ve had your share of […]

Chicago’s Indignant is “dead set” on delivering the “life-affirming” sounds of rock ‘n’ roll. If nothing else, the quintet is skilled in the art of biographical hyperbole. But it’s this die-trying-to-live attitude that the group carries throughout their straightforward guitar-laced catalog. The hook-laden tunes on the band’s second LP, The Good Fight, blend their hometown […]

Oasis is a collection of pairs: Two iconic members. Two classic albums. Two unmistakable unibrows. And, most importantly, two clearly-defined halves to their career. From 1992 to 1999, the quintet was the face of Brit-pop, with brothers Noel and Liam Gallagher fronting the original lineup on classic recordings such as 1995’s (What’s the Story) Morning […]