Wreckless Eric Outside World Two years ago Outside World, cofronted by Hazel Rigby and former Brain Idea bassist Ben Scott, dropped its first songs and quickly became one of my favorite bands in town. The band’s two tape EPs—one self-released, the other on Night-People Records—are full of sunny, jangly indie-pop with a strong 90s influence. When the band first began, Scott said his and Rigby’s goal was to sound like Polaris, the band probably best known for writing the theme song from The Adventures of Pete & Pete....

Boundless enthusiasm. This is what comes across most clearly in the photos that make up Too Fly Not to Fly, a book published last year that invites children ages three to seven to think critically about issues such as health and colorism, using words connected to letters of the alphabet—D is for dream, H is for history, Y is for youth. The book also contains a collection of bright, playful, and ultimately thoughtful photos—some staged, some spontaneous—that celebrate Chicago and its youngest occupants....

Getting a foothold in a city’s underground music scene ain’t easy treading, especially if you’re an outsider. Publicity for shows at hole-in-the-wall unlicensed spaces is mostly limited to flyers stapled to telephone poles—an attempt to avoid unwanted attention (read: cops). And in Chicago, where dingy basements and barely habitable hovels often double as stages, the X that marks a venue’s spot is never as conspicuous as an Old Style sign beaming above the entrance....

Hulu Malocchio Jr., Prock, and Muscle Man are super. Some folks have hit their saturation point for all things comics-related, but not me. Some folks think we’ve plumbed the depths of all things superhero-related, but I don’t think that. And while I might have still been riding the high from seeing Guardians of the Galaxy (which was amazing), I enjoyed the season two premiere of Hulu’s original series The Awesomes....

If you’re a regular theatergoer, you’ll be forgiven for thinking Chicago’s theater scene is a godless place. Which isn’t to say that theater makers are more inclined toward heathenism than any other subset of the city’s population. But in a community overflowing with playwrights eager to write about Big Issues—police violence, gender inequity, mental illness, cyber bullying, addiction, homelessness, trauma, Alzheimer’s, gentrification, and seemingly every nuance of identity politics—it’s the rare scribe who tackles faith, the issue that has overwhelmed, mystified, and tormented several millennia’s worth of great thinkers....

Michael Gibson/FX Cory Stoll is Ephraim Goodweather on The Strain The Strain, a vampire horror novel trilogy written by Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan, tells the story of the rise of an ancient evil and the fall of humanity, the spread of an infection and the pursuit of a cure. Originally conceived for television, the trilogy’s been adapted (or returned to its rightful home, depending on how you look at it) for FX by del Toro and Carlton Cuse (Lost, The Bates Motel)....

It’s that time of year again: the 54th Chicago International Film Festival starts tonight. Included in the lineup are many films made by Chicago-born or -based filmmakers or else set in our city. Here’s a quick and dirty guide about the films that really put ‘Chicago’ in the festival: The Feeling of Being Watched Chicago-based Algerian-American journalist and filmmaker Assia Boundaoui, declared one of Filmmaker Magazine’s 25 New Faces of Independent Film for 2018, explores FBI surveillance of Arab-Americans in Bridgeview....

In 1943, the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical Oklahoma! stirred audiences with its youthful optimism, glorifying a hero who was willing to fight for the woman and the land he loved. “Oh, what a beautiful morning,” the singing cowboy crooned—just what Americans needed to hear at the peak of World War II. In Goodman Theatre’s excellent new version of Brigadoon, for which Lerner’s original script has been revised by Brian Hill, the witch metaphor is discarded entirely....

There are two versions of the story of how Britt, Iowa, became the Hobo Capital of America. The official version, as told by Bill Eckels, a volunteer guide at Britt’s Hobo Museum who also answers to the nom de hobo Boxcar Billy, goes something like this: Still, Britt takes its hobo heritage seriously. The first thing you see when you drive into town is a big sign that says national hobo convention topped with a picture of a hobo carrying a bindle and a can of stew....

“SSRI,” the first song on the self-titled EP from local punk four-piece Fitness, offers the one thing I want from an opening salvo: a shot of adrenaline. There’s no “right way” to deliver that shot, but I can’t argue with Fitness’s methods. The band burns through a meaty, forward-charging rock melody with the help of two guitars shooting off bottle-rocket riffs and some seriously gnarly, melodic scream-singing that occasionally gives way to some uplifting vocal harmonies....

Mohsen Makhmalbaf (in mirror) filming the title subject Taken at face value, Mohsen Makhmalbaf’s The Gardener, which opens at the Gene Siskel Film Center this Friday, is lightweight stuff. It shows the Iranian filmmaker and his son Maysam visiting the Baha’i gardens in Haifa, where they learn about the Baha’i faith (which was founded in Iran in the early 19th century) and discuss the value of organized religion in modern society....

On Friday, prolific Chicago hip-hop producer Thelonious Martin released TM, a collaborative album with LA-based rapper, clothing designer, and cereal enthusiast Theophilus Martins. When the duo first teamed up three years ago, for the single “Show Me Around,” Okayplayer suggested that they were using the similarity between their names to mess with the Internet. And when I read the Apple Music “artist” tag for TM, I did a double take....

Note: This review reveals who killed Laura Palmer. Lynch has always characterized his childhood as idyllic, and he resists autobiographical readings of his films. Yet The Art Life includes at least one traumatic incident that marked young Dave for life and would inspire one of his greatest works. As Lynch recalls, his father would emerge from their house every evening to call him and his younger brother in for bed, but one evening, right around that time, the boys were stunned to see a nude woman emerge from the dusk....

At the beginning of the summer I featured “Hot Sauce,” one of my all-time favorite soul-jazz jams by organist Big John Patton, as a 12 O’Clock Track. One of the things that makes that performance so irresistible is the groovy, supercatchy solo by guitarist Grant Green, a musician who knew how to repeat and break apart a single phrase with more imagination, grit, and soul than just about any electrist in the history of jazz....

Gnarled hands swipe chemicals across the floor. Clots of blood and bone, macramed between the blades and coils of antique slaughterhouse machinery, need to be cleaned, the works sterilized before the unseen boss’s new sausage line can go into production in the morning. Somebody’s gotta do it, and tonight, for 90 minutes, we’ll see who does it and how it’s done. The unheroic, degrading condition of the underpaid menial temp worker is the subject of British playwright and director Alexander Zeldin’s Beyond Caring, which is being presented at Lookingglass in a form revised from its original 2014 run at the National Theatre in London....

As the days tick down on the Obama presidency, and with his so-called farewell speech at McCormick Place imminent, I find myself going back in time to the years when most people didn’t know his name—and those who did weren’t sure how to pronounce it. If you haven’t read the book, I’ll set it up for you. Obama wrote Dreams in 1994. At age 33, he had just married Michelle and was making his way as a lawyer, already vibrant with big ambitions to show the world his stuff....

Nearly every August, veteran alto saxophonist Charles McPherson rolls into Chicago for an engagement at the Jazz Showcase, part of the club’s annual celebration August Is Charlie Parker Month. McPherson famously re-created Parker’s playing on the soundtrack of the 1988 Clint Eastwood biopic Bird, but while you can certainly hear Parker’s influence on his output, McPherson has always been his own man. For this listener, the work he performed with Charles Mingus between 1960 and 1972 will always stand as his greatest achievement—at Mingus’s side, McPherson jousted with a variety of killer horn players in gospelized settings both charged and serene....

Last month veteran pop auteur Matthew Sweet dropped his first new album in six years with Tomorrow Forever (out on his own Honeycomb Hideout label), which was culled from sessions that produced more than twice as many songs as what ended up on the sprawling 17-track epic. In 2014 Sweet and his wife moved back to their native Nebraska following years away, setting up a home studio where the singer began to stockpile material with the help of trusted colleagues like drummer Ric Menck, bassist-guitarist Paul Chastain, and guitarist Jason Victor; on a few tracks he’s joined by veterans like Rod Argent (Zombies), Debbi Peterson (Bangles), and Gary Louris (Jayhawks)....

Much of the press surrounding Octo Octa has focused on her gender transition, as detailed in an expansive 2016 feature for Resident Advisor. Less noted, however, is the way Maya Bouldry-Morrison’s sound has spread its wings in the three years since her dimly lit minor masterpiece Between Two Selves (100% Silk). That record’s tracks are best identified through their reverb-heavy glaze, snippets of vocal samples, and the mournful undercurrent that slinks below Bouldry-Morrison’s deep house....

Chicago indie rocker Jason Balla divides his time between Britpop-inflected four-piece Ne-Hi, atmospheric postpunk three-piece Dehd, and reverb-drenched duo Earring, all of which have made prominent places for themselves in the local underground rock scene. I can’t imagine Balla has much time on his hands, so when he starts a new creative endeavor, it’s likely because he feels he must. So here we are with his soft-spoken solo endeavor, Accessory; the show tonight is a celebration of the project’s first cassette release, Blue Tape (ACX)....