Mighty Chicago noise-rock outfit Melkbelly, named “Best cross between the Breeders and Lightning Bolt” in the Reader‘s recent Best of Chicago issue, are dropping new tunes! On Thu 7/2 they’ll release a seven-inch called “Bathroom at the Beach” b/w “Piss Wizard,” and this wolf is willing to bet it’s gonna kick a metric crap-ton of ass. (Thursday is the digital release date—the vinyl might take a couple more weeks.) Local label Automatic Recordings is putting out the record, and Automatic founder Aaron Dexter books shows at the Owl (which the Reader just declared “Best 4 AM bar for live music“)....

MARINA CHAVEZ Carlene Carter The music calendar gets fairly quiet the week after Lollapalooza, though “quiet” doesn’t mean silent. If you’re eager to get your live-music grind on this week there are plenty of great shows to see. “You don’t have to be a Tolkien fan to appreciate the Ravinia Festival’s screenings of the last film in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, The Return of the King,” writes Deanna Isaacs....

Chastity main man Brandon Williams grew up in the Toronto suburb of Whitby, roughly 30 minutes away from the big city. There his youth was dominated by church services until he became enamored with punk. At age 14, he began flocking to all-ages venue the Dungeon, in nearby suburb Oshawa, which by all accounts didn’t have the cleanest reputation; when it closed in 2008, Protest the Hero front man Rody Walker told local news site Durham Region that the Dungeon was “one of the dirtiest clubs in all North America,” and pop culture site A....

Rob Scallon doesn’t know how many musical instruments he owns. He has to walk around the Roscoe Village apartment he shares with his girlfriend, Tamara Chambers, to count them. They line the walls of his living room and fill part of his adjacent office: a double-­neck guitar, a purple cello, a white upright bass, a theremin, an electronic drum kit, a guitalele, a sitar, a berimbau, a rusty shovel outfitted with a single string and wired to play like an electric guitar....

Few if any working improvised music ensembles hit the listener with as much blunt force and manic energy as Ballister, the trio of saxophonist Dave Rempis, cellist Fred Lonberg-Holm, and drummer Paal Nilssen-Love. In February the group dropped Slag (Aerophonic), a live recording of a coruscating performance at London’s Café Oto in 2015. The following month Ballister dropped a second album, Low Level Stink (Dropa Disc), a recording of a performance at Antwerp’s Oorstof concert series in March 2015....

Q I have a slowly terminal disease and don’t have more than five or six years left. I haven’t told my wife, which brings me to my problem. We had lived together for seven years when she cheated on me the first time. We worked things out, we got back together, but we continued to live separately. Then I cheated on her. We got back together again but continued living apart....

The lights are brighter, the beer is better, and the bathrooms are finally clean. But Carol’s Pub still feels like the neighborhood honky-tonk it was when it opened in 1972. For many years, Carol’s was the last remaining spot on the north side where audiences could hear traditional country music. Diamondback got started in the mid-70s, with singer and pedal steel guitarist Teddy Douglas as bandleader. Over the years, as openings arose in the lineup, Carol’s bar manager and doorman Jimmy Curry slotted in new players—another anachronism in an era when bands tend to run themselves....

If you’ve driven the Kennedy Expressway this year, chances are good that you’ve spotted Northeastern Illinois University’s flashy new $27 million campus outpost, El Centro, perched above the east side of the highway at Kimball, just where the Kennedy takes a major bend. Even before the building got its gleaming fins, it was a striking sight, a big, boomerang-shaped whale of a structure looming over the traffic as if it had just landed from outer space....

My favorite overlooked trumpeter is New York veteran John McNeil, a wry, witty player who adds forward-looking accents to the language of west-coast jazz. Lately he’s found simpatico partners half his age—saxophonist Jeremy Udden, bassist Aryeh Kobrinsky, and drummer Anthony Pinciotti—in the quartet Hush Point. Last month they dropped their third album, Hush Point III (Sunnyside), on which they sound more confident and intimate than ever—they seem to be able to anticipate one another’s moves via some sort of musical telepathy....

Detroit quintet Hollow Earth started their half-life as a metal-inflected hardcore band—or perhaps it was a hardcore-inflected metal band—and with each release they’ve grown in complexity and stretched out farther and farther into the cold reaches of space. They really started to take on interstellar dimensions around the time of 2012’s We Are Not Humanity, but on last fall’s Dead Planet (Good Fight), guitarist-songwriter Mike Moynihan and vocalist Steve Muczynski craft an especially rich and pummelling apocalypse with the twin-guitar power of Sean Reed and the nimble, deep-rooted midtempo rhythms of drummer Mike Walsh and bassist Dennis Tuohey....

Every now and then Mayor Emanuel makes a comment about life in Chicago that is so preposterous you have to laugh out loud. Just to remind you, the arena is part of a larger project—including a Marriott hotel—that the mayor has already said will probably cost upwards of $1 billion in property and hotel tax money before it’s over. Under the old system, the mayor appointed members to the school board who were recommended by a nominating committee of local school council members....

I don’t know how to put this politely, so I’ll just come out and say it: Fuck Star Wars. Everyone from Lyft drivers to random strangers has asked, “Do you have tickets to see The Force Awakens?” And then inevitably, “Why don’t you have tickets to The Force Awakens yet?” But hey, at least the first trilogy’s got some chintzy B-movie charm and a semicompelling love triangle between the three lead actors, not to mention a transcendent, dryly humorous performance from Harrison Ford as the roguish space pilot....

Michael Moll Something like this The next few days are packed with local musicians putting together cover sets for Halloween, ranging from takes on the Descendents to Thin Lizzy, but what might be the holiday’s most interesting cover show is happening tonight, Thu 10/30, in a west-side DIY space. Some of Chicago’s gnarliest noisemakers are getting together to pay tribute to some of music’s weirdest and harshest acts. The event is headlined by confrontational synth project Panicsville (whose lineup includes Andy Ortmann and Brett Naucke), who will be covering some truly offensive material by English extreme power-electronics collective Whitehouse....

Frederick Wiseman, who turned 84 this week, is one of the great heroes of independent filmmaking. Since 1967, and without once relinquishing his right to final cut, Wiseman has directed 38 documentary features and two filmed theatrical pieces. His films cost next to nothing by Hollywood standards, and few have required crews of more than a dozen people, production and postproduction combined. Also significant are the film’s references to the distant future....

Thanks to ever-increasing access to technology, the world of podcasting is quickly becoming oversaturated with any and everyone holding opinions and a handy recording device. The ladies of the Nerdette podcast, Tricia Bobeda and Greta Johnsen, stand out amid all the chatter because of their refined radio technique (the two met in the trenches of WBEZ, where Bobeda is a producer) and their uncanny ability to bring out the nerd in everyone: on one episode they discuss science-fiction novels with former NFL punter Chris Kluwe, on another they trade lines from Arrested Development with Denise Kiernan, author of The Girls of Atomic City: The Untold Story of the Women Who Helped Win World War II....

325 Tudor Ct., Glencoe, 847-242-6000, writerstheatre.org Several Chicago-area theater troupes are developing new facilities right now, but nobody’s got sexier blueprints than Writers Theatre. Once housed in the back of a North Shore bookshop, the 22-year-old Glencoe company will soon break ground on a complex designed by Studio Gang Architects, the outfit headed by MacArthur fellow Jeanne Gang, whose Lakeshore East tower Aqua has been acclaimed worldwide. Under the circumstances—which include the need to hit a $31 million capital campaign goal—you’d think something besides the donors would have to give, that there’d be some slippage in production quality while artistic director Michael Halberstam builds his dream house....

Beth Stelling’s first album, Sweet Beth, couldn’t have been more aptly named; between the former Chicagoan’s toothy smile and her soft delivery she’s the definition of “sweet,” even while joking about her mother’s death virginity and brittle penises. In the past year the LA-based stand-up has been busier than ever, making frequent late-night talk show appearances, honing her 30-minute Comedy Central special (premiering October 10), and popping up in almost virtually every list of up-and-coming comedians....

Sun-Times Print Collection Martha Lavey Martha Lavey will be stepping down after nearly 20 years as artistic director of Steppenwolf Theatre Company and will be succeeded by ensemble member (and Tony-winning director) Anna D. Shapiro in the fall of 2015, the company announced in a press conference at the theater this morning. There were no audible gasps from the balcony, where all the members of the ensemble staff were sitting, which suggested that the change was not unexpected....

City Farm’s lot is just under an acre, but the compact parcel overflows with row upon row of crimson rainbow chard, tiny sweet yellow tomatoes, broad squash leaves, and brilliant green arugula. On a recent Wednesday a few volunteers knelt in the dirt while birds twittered through the dense underbrush. Chicago’s oldest urban farm has occupied this Near North Side spot for just over 12 years, but its days here are numbered....

This show has been canceled. In an era of emotionally vulnerable, face-tattooed Soundcloud rappers, Diego Leanos, aka Lil Xan, is currently leading the pack. On his first official album, this spring’s Total Xanarchy, the 22-year-old bares his soul over hazy, woozy, vapor-wavy beats. He muses on heartbreak and insecurities through catchy nursery-rhyme-like melodies, with verses filled with druggy giggles and nearly indecipherable, heavily auto-tuned mumbles—a collision of innocence and depravity that makes for an unsettling listening experience....