Arty Chicago punk trio Background Character just celebrated five years as a band and they’re still just as eager to try new ...

Stop Traffic on Redding Road feels like a Pan•American record, it doesn’t feel like a solo Pan•American record.

Los Angeles songwriter Tchad Cousins, aka Urika’s Bedroom, is well acquainted with the sort of dreamy Alice in Wonderland–style aesthetic of 1960s psychedelic folk.

A conservative journalist and father wrestles with the aftermath of the 2024 election and its effect on his relationships in The Day After.

Guitars of one sort or another reign supreme on this double bill of local trios. Under the name 60 Strings, pedal steel guitarists Justin Brown, Jordan Martins, and Sam Wagster use technical purism to ...

The Reader revisits a 2014 feature on Chicago sculptor Richard Hunt, who died in December 2023 after a career spanning seven decades.

A Jewish American playwright tries to unlock the story of her family's history in the Holocaust in The Berlin Diaries at Open ...

“What is art for?” asks art historian Katharine Kuh in the introductory wall text of the Smart Museum’s ambitious rehang of their entire gallery space. The question was likely at least ...

The Reader revisits a 1987 feature on iconic actor Robert Townsend that reads "like an absolute fever dream of impressions and quotations." ...

Jessica Hopper has been an important national voice in feminist music criticism since the 2010s, when she became the first music editor at Rookie magazine and assembled teams of top-shelf talent ...

Most days, you can find Cindy Mendoza and Matt Pospiech in the dining room at the Piggery slinging nachos, wings, burgers, and sass. “I’m always talking crap,” says Mendoza, “because I’m ...

In 1971, friends dragged me to see Grease, a musical that was getting its premiere run at Kingston Mines Theatre, on what was then the new Off-Loop theater strip along Lincoln Avenue near Fullerton.