In this, the decade of emo’s revival, with young bands refashioning the sound as a vital component of contemporary indie-rock and the 90s bands that inspired them playing reunion shows to larger crowds, it’s been encouraging to see folks reexamine the genre’s past. Finally, after decades of the midwest largely (and perhaps rightfully) being remembered for emo projects associated with the Kinsella family, young listeners have the tools to get a better sense of all the other bands who’d fill out weekday shows at the Fireside Bowl in the mid-90s—and see those bands too....

Tinkerbelles Local duo Tinkerbelles played their first show a little less than a year ago, and tomorrow night they celebrate the release of their debut EP, Fine Asses. The band—made up of Adam Mohundro, who played in indie-rock band Gypsyblood, and Wedding Dress drummer Christian Dawson—play supersimple, hypermelodic, driving pop-rock with a heavy postpunk bent, kind of like a really accessible version of Wire. The demos for the seven-inch I heard back in the winter were excellent, and the finished product is out of this world, creating an abstract collision of noisy weirdness and perfectly crafted pop sensibilities....

1 White God Could Hungary be the new Romania? Next month Chicagoans will get a look at László Nemes’s debut feature, Son of Saul, a Holocaust drama like no other, and earlier this year the Gene Siskel Film Center presented the local debut of Kornél Mundruczó’s arresting, dreamlike White God. A child could follow its story, about a spirited schoolgirl who scours the city in search of her big old mixed-breed dog, but that child would be in psychotherapy for years if he saw the climax, in which hundreds of shelter dogs tear through city streets on a deadly rampage....

Philip Glass’s 2013 opera about Walt Disney is based on a 2001 novel by Peter Stephan Jungk. Focused on the last three months of Disney’s life, The Perfect American imagines what might have passed through the mind of the flawed visionary as he lay in the hospital dying, including outlandish visits with Andy Warhol and an animatronic Abe Lincoln. This production, directed by Kevin Newbury, is coproduced by Chicago Opera Theater and Long Beach Opera, where it opened last month....

Regular readers already know that saxophonist JD Allen has one my favorite jazz artists for nearly a decade, thanks largely to his limber, madly swinging trio with bassist Gregg August and drummer Rudy Royston. On a remarkable series of albums over the past decade—and a searing set at the 2016 Chicago Jazz Festival—this group has braided together motific improvisation and outward-bound searching, giving both an inexorable sense of propulsion and buoyancy....

“The future is now!” Jim Carrey shouts prophetically in a scene toward the end of the 1996 movie The Cable Guy. “Soon every American will integrate their television, phone, and computer. You’ll be able to visit the Louvre on one channel, or watch female wrestling on another. You can do your shopping at home, or play Mortal Kombat with a friend in Vietnam. There’s no end to the possibilities!” Tsui’s doc zeroes in on the arcade era of Midway’s existence, as opposed to the home-console period....

Michael Gebert Like a rhinestone cow, boy The official photographer looked a little miffed that I kept taking photographs of the photographers, especially with my $100 pocket camera, but I got a kick out of it. The most amusing thing, though, was the idea of being lined up in front of a repeating background to have my picture taken with people who’ve been on TV and stuff. I tried to strike a modest pose off to one side, and let the spotlight fall to more naturally beautiful people like Top Chef/The Chew’s Carla Hall (who feels tall as a giraffe when your troll self is standing next to her), Jeff Mauro (who clearly understood that becoming the Sandwich King called for hiring a really good personal trainer), Bon Appetit editor Adam Rapoport (who’s somehow as thin as an exclamation point), and River Roast chef John Hogan—OK, him I might look like, but he has the porkpie hat look going for him....

As the days slowly tick down toward next year’s epic gubernatorial showdown, a conventional strategy has emerged as to how Democrats can unseat Governor Rauner. Rally behind a Chicago-area personality—preferably one wealthy enough to match our billionaire governor buck for buck—who will coalesce all of the city’s animus toward Rauner and Trump. (Lord knows there’s a lot of that!) Then use the massive resistance to overwhelm Rauner’s downstate support. “I’m probably the only shop teacher who’s ever run for governor,” he says....

Bassist, composer, and bandleader Ben Allison is one of the most deliberate and focused figures in jazz, a musician who conveys a clear-cut conception in everything he does. Over the years he’s led a wide variety of bands with shifting personnel, but whether through a lineup shuffle or a total overhaul of his stylistic framework, the sounds he shepherds change in sharp, satisfying ways. His forthcoming new quintet album, Layers of the City (Sonic Camera), is no exception....

AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez A leaping Brandon Marshall snares a second-quarter touchdown pass last night against the 49ers. He added two more TDs later. Last week’s season-opening overtime loss to the Buffalo Bills put some Chicago sportswriters in full panic mode, no one more than Steve Rosenbloom of the Tribune. Rosenbloom declared that “the Bears’ season is over,” and added, “Raise your hand if you think the Bears could challenge for the No....

Since breaking out in the 90s as front man of Brit-pop powerhouse Blur, Damon Albarn has turned into the rare rock star who’s unable to make a bad record—but that doesn’t mean everything he’s done has been great. As the wizard pulling the levers behind the curtain of Gorillaz, Albarn has managed to gift the animated cartoon rock band with a consistent, sometimes affecting hip-hop-inflected pop sound through a series of albums made with different Frankensteinian supergroups....

No other group of footwork producers carries as much weight in the international electronic-music community as Chicago collective Teklife. Its members include the biggest names in the genre, among them the pioneering RP Boo and world-class evangelists DJ Spinn and DJ Rashad. Of course, not everyone in Teklife has enjoyed the acclaim that’s greeted its stars, most notably DJ Rashad—but to Rashad’s credit, he always seemed eager to share his fame with the rest of the footwork community....

“Selfie!” a Sketchbook audience member yelled when asked to toss out a word that best sums up the state of civilization. The word also happens to accurately describe Sketchbook 14: 2049, Collaboraction’s festival of 17 new short plays. As the “2049” might indicate, this year’s fest has a postapocalyptic theme, but the offerings seem to mirror our current digitally driven times, giving us many a self-absorbed character high on pain, loneliness, and futility....

“If that movie had been in French, you would have loved it,” a friend recently said to me about Rick Famuyiwa’s Dope, an LA-set teen picture currently playing at multiplexes around town. He explained that the film reminded him of much French art cinema in how it frequently and surprisingly changes tone, something I only hinted at when I reviewed Dope last month. I described it as simply a “lively comedy,” giving short shrift to its passages of serious drama, social commentary, and shocking violence....

Nap Eyes, a quartet from Halifax, makes its Chicago debut at the Empty Bottle tonight. Last week the group’s terrific debut album Whine of the Mystic (Paradise of Bachelors) was reissued in the U.S.—it originally came out in 2014 in a very limited run on the small Canadian imprint Plus Factory—and the band definitely deserves a wider audience. The strummy, appealingly loose grooves hark back to a variety of top-notch antecedents, including the Velvet Underground and the Modern Lovers, with a nice dash of the Clean‘s shambling energy....

Grief is a shadowy guest at many holiday tables. The House Theatre of Chicago’s nonballet version of The Nutcracker transforms E. T. A. Hoffmann’s 1816 tale “The Nutcracker and the Mouse King” into a moving imaginative story of loss and rebirth. Created by Phillip Klapperich, Jake Minton, Kevin O’Donnell, and director-choreographer Tommy Rapley, the show moves from high-spirited holiday hijinks to deep sadness, as a family finds out at a Christmas Eve party that their son and brother has died in combat....

On Friday, January 20, the United States will inaugurate as president a man who has demonstrated himself to be racist, sexist, xenophobic, ignorant, reckless, intolerant, petty, authoritarian, and kleptocratic. He’s packing his cabinet with people either willfully blind or openly hostile to the diversity that gives America much of its strength and beauty, apparently on the principle that government should benefit only white people, straight men, and the rich. Meanwhile, a community radio station in Bridgeport that began broadcasting on the FM band just days before the presidential election is amplifying dissenting voices from Chicago’s vibrant margins....

After five-plus years and 58 shows, a Chicago musical-comedy gem bids farewell. Tomorrow night at the Hideout, Shame That Tune wraps its run of shaming Chicagoans on a monthly basis via familiar pop melodies. Begun in 2010 by piano man and former Baby Teeth front man Abraham Levitan and Outer Minds drummer and Reader contributor Brian Costello, the bizarro game show is a kind of self-inflicted musical roast presented in a wayward style that’s only slightly similar to This Is Your Life, and is also accompanied by a Wheel of Fortune-like “shame wheel....

This year’s Pitchfork Music Festival had an endearing combination of clear skies, colossal black metal, and lots of hand waving courtesy of Giorgio Moroder. The Italian producer behind Donna Summer’s big hits was one of 43 acts that played Union Park over the past three days, part of an eclectic lineup that featured Kelela, Hudson Mohawke, Pusha T, and Hundred Waters. Not every band was fit for the fest (Sun Kil Moon‘s intense, dour songs are better suited for a dark concert hall that forbids talking) and some groups had to struggle with severe sound issues (Neutral Milk Hotel sounded like hot garbage for a couple songs), but the festival’s exciting mix of artful R&B, introverted hip-hop, celestial folk, and noisy punk proved to be quite potent....

On her forthcoming album The Order of Time (due from Concord on March 10) Tennessee-bred singer-songwriter Valerie June settles into a more naturalistic groove, adjusting from her 2013 breakout Pushin’ Against a Stone—influenced by the heavy hand of producer Dan Auerbach—to something that feels morelike it belongs to her. Her music continues to draw from a wide swath of influences: bits of gospel, soul, blues, pop, and even a version of Tinariwen’s Saharan blues (“Shakedown”) are folded into an atmospheric amalgam that toggles between tender and taut, with June’s nasal drawl pulling everything together....