Let It Be After the reunited Replacements played a gigantic homecoming show in Saint Paul, Minnesota, a couple of weeks ago, the Internet started buzzing with the possibility of a new record from the indie-rock legends. While I absolutely love the Replacements, so many reunion records of the past have been such overwhelming disappointments (see: Indie Cindy by the Pixies) and I don’t think I can handle seeing that happen to another band so dear to me....

Brian Jackson / Sun-Times Media Alderman Howard Brookins Jr. argues—and hopes—that his support for the policies of Mayor Rahm Emanuel won’t haunt him at election time. It’s increasingly clear that in the upcoming municipal elections, everyone will be running against Mayor Emanuel in one way or another. This is especially the case in black and Hispanic areas that have borne the brunt of the mayor’s closings and cuts. And if Lewis, Fioretti, or other mayoral candidates inspire pissed-off people to get to the polls—which hasn’t happened in big numbers since the 1980s—lots of aldermen could be in trouble....

During the early era of Demdike Stare, the Manchester duo of Sean Canty and Miles Whittaker didn’t bother with subtlety in cultivating their mystique. Their interest in horror and the occult was reflected in their album-cover art, their name (appropriated from a 17th-century English witch), and their experimental live performances, which were augmented by dark, menacing visuals assembled from obscure films. It all went quite well with the ominous qualities of their ambient sound, which is sometimes eclectic in its sampling of unearthed subgenres and sometimes dead still, hinting at the kind of paranoia you might feel if you were alone downstairs in an old-world house and heard a creak from a floorboard above you....

More in the New World was the last great album by the LA postpunk band X and also its penultimate effort with original guitarist Billy Zoom. The 1983 album is getting reissued for the second time tomorrow by Real Gone Music, but really, there’s no need for such an occasion to sing its praises. On this release the group embraced a bigger, more polished sound, although the timeless rock ‘n’ roll riffery of Zoom remained at the center of the band’s attack—the album includes the band’s cover of the Jerry Lee Lewis classic “Breathless,” which it had recorded for the awful remake of the Jean-Luc Godard film with Richard Gere....

Damaged Bug The garage-rock world took a hit right before Christmas when John Dwyer announced that his ultraprolific band Thee Oh Sees, one of the biggest names in independent rock, would be going on indefinite hiatus. Dwyer is a man who never stops creating, so it was only a matter of time before we heard from him again, but the big question everyone had was, “What’s next?” Well it took less than a month for Dwyer to resurface, and this time around it’s as Damaged Bug....

When I entered Vape312 I had half a pack of cigarettes on my person and zero intention of buying anything. If you’re not familiar with “vaping,” it’s the act of puffing away on a long electronic cigarette that’s actually a lot like smoking a hookah. Vape312 is cornering the market on the trend early by stocking the smoking devices and a way bigger and higher-quality selection of vapor “juices,” with and without nicotine, than you’d find at a regular old head shop....

Kid Sister On Saturday there’s plenty of opportunity to catch a lot of great performances for free thanks to Record Store Day—check out the Reader‘s RSD listings to fill your afternoon with live music. There are plenty of other great shows to see that aren’t associated with Saturday’s retail “holiday.” “John Cale is revered thanks to his years in the Velvet Underground—possibly even more so since the passing of Lou Reed last fall—but he earns our continued attention with his new music,” writes Monica Kendrick....

When my friends and I walked in here recently to the strains of the Buzzcocks’ “Harmony in My Head,” I imagined that we were making a triumphant entrance. In truth, no one looked up from their drinks. This is a place that can politely be described as understated—stucco walls, ball games on muted TVs in the corners, beer by the can and bottle only, bartenders who’ll offer an extra shot just because it’s 7:47 PM on a Thursday, cases of High Life and Old Style stacked in the hallway to the john....

Last week after demonstrators gathered in Millennium Park and the South Loop to protest the Chicago Police Department’s delayed release of the video of officer Jason Van Dyke shooting Laquan McDonald to death, members of the activist communities in Chicago and across the nation proudly posted photos of the marchers and speakers on social media. “As an organization rooted in a Black queer feminist framework, we take reports of sexual assault extremely seriously,” BYP100 leaders wrote on the group’s Facebook page Saturday....

Courtesy of Dueling Critics Jonathan Abarbanel and Kelly Kleiman Last June I told a melancholy tale of economic retrenchment at WBEZ. Because revenues were falling programming was being overhauled; the station was giving the brush-off to paid contributors who’d been rounded up for their expertise, and giving its audience—bright, engaged, and happy to contribute gratis—new opportunities to call in and sound off. Among the experts to bite the dust were WBEZ’s Dueling Critics, Kelly Kleiman and Jonathan Abarbanel, who’d been discussing theater for the station in one format or another—on air, podcasts, blogs—since 2007....

Joseph Cedar may be one of Israel’s most respected dramatic filmmakers, but he was born in New York City, lived there until he was six, and returned as a young man to earn a graduate degree in film at New York University. Raised in Jerusalem and now based in Tel Aviv, Cedar has won growing acclaim for a series of dramas steeped in the culture and politics of his adopted home—most notably Beaufort (2007), which drew on his experiences as a teenage soldier in the Israeli Defense Forces, and Footnote (2011), about the professional rivalry between a disgraced Talmudic scholar and his up-and-coming son....

People keep declaring that bacon is over as a trend, despite plenty of evidence to the contrary. BaconFest Chicago expanded to three sold-out sessions this year (its seventh), selling 4,500 tickets. And the Bacon and Beer Classic, a national event that launched last year, came to Chicago for the first time this past Saturday with two sessions at Soldier Field: one in the afternoon and one in the evening. I don’t know if the tickets sold out, but the length of the lines for food at the afternoon session were a testament to the popularity of the event (or maybe to the fact that there were a lot more places serving beer than food)....

Weeks into the new fiscal year, Governor Bruce Rauner and house speaker Michael Madigan can’t agree on a budget, a pension plan, a policy agenda, or especially a scapegoat for the ongoing mess, with each pointing to the other as the guy responsible. Plenty of citizens would argue that Madigan has a civic and ethical obligation to open his doings to the public, even if the law doesn’t mandate it. But that’s not the view of the speaker....

From its inception, drummer-composer Mike Reed’s quartet People, Places & Things has served as both a vehicle for exploring memories and a platform for collaborations. He continues on both fronts with Flesh & Bone, a new record based on a program Reed presented as part of the Art Institute of Chicago’s “Extensions Out” series in 2015. On Flesh & Bone, the core PPT quartet of Reed, bassist Jason Roebke, and saxophonists Tim Haldeman and Greg Ward is joined by bass clarinetist Jason Stein, cornetist Ben LaMar Gay, and vocalist Marvin Tate for a sequence of tunes and texts inspired by the day in 2009 when the racially integrated combo wound up in the midst of a neo-Nazi rally while waiting for a train in the small town of Přerov, Czech Republic....

There’s a lot going on at the General, a bar/taqueria/general store in Logan Square that, like the neighborhood, is named after General John A. Logan. It’s a western-themed saloon serving locally sourced food with southern and Mexican influences. The general store in front offers staples like milk, bread, eggs, and produce, as well as beer and wine. And, improbably, it all works—especially if you’re seated on the back patio on a late summer evening....

I have hacked into Samir Jilani’s network with my iPhone in order to browse a virtual dossier containing his private e-mails. My next task: deciding whether or not the tech CEO poses a terrorist threat to the U.S. Created by Chicago-based indie developers Mike Boxleiter and Greg Wohlwend and released in April, TouchTone is designed to play like most of the innocuous fare on Apple’s App Store—at least on the surface....

The album that gives this musical biopic its name has been heralded as one of the most important in popular music. Straight Outta Compton (1988), by the Los Angeles rap outfit N.W.A. (“Niggaz Wit Attitudes”), thrust gangsta rap (or as characters in the film sometimes call it, “reality rap”) into the mainstream, combining Dr. Dre‘s funk-fused production style with some of the most violent, enraged lyrics ever heard. The first three tracks, “Straight Outta Compton,” “Fuck tha Police,” and “Gangsta Gangsta” became particularly notorious for their murderous allusions....

Chicago singer-songwriter Owen Ashworth has left behind the border­line twee indie-pop of his best-known project, Casiotone for the Painfully Alone, but his current output as Advance Base remains modest, earnest, and even sweet. The second Advance Base album, Nephew in the Wild, which comes out this Friday on Ashworth’s own Orindal label, is a quiet record, filled with serenely luminous electric-piano melodies and gentle, sashaying percussion. But evil lurks beneath the surface....

Brian Jackson/Sun-Times At least one person in this photo has a definite challenger (hint: it’s Alderman Pat O’Connor). I got a call the other day from a political junkie I’ll call Tom Keane—in honor of one of my favorite alderman. Anyway, my friend the political junkie said he had something really cool to show me, so . . . In any event, my friend, Mr. Keane, has spent the better part of the last few weeks steadfastly surveying the Internet, keeping track of press releases, Facebook postings, and other announcements by anyone thinking of running for alderman in our 50 wards....

Last month Genius chief content officer Brendan Frederick spotted something funny in Soundcloud’s streaming rankings. “Love that all the millennial Hot Topic rappers tag their songs as ‘Alternative Rock’ on Soundcloud,” he posted to Twitter, including a screenshot of the top 11 slots on Soundcloud’s alternative-rock chart—every one of them filled by a rapper. I can’t get behind the use of “Hot Topic” to describe someone’s music, but I’ve seen the same thing—young MCs, among them Lil Uzi Vert and Lil Peep, are making melodic, sometimes lo-fi songs that bear the influence of 1990s/2000s pop-punk and emo and then uploading them as “alternative rock....