Greg Kot – Page 30 –

Porches performs at Barracuda onMarch 14, 2018, during the South by South West Music Festival in Austin, Texas.

SXSW goes global: Trupa Trupa’s post-punk to Gato Preto’s dance party in Austin

December 14, 2018 at 4:19 p.m.

AUSTIN, Texas – It was an international day of musical highlights Friday at the South by Southwest Music Festival. Here are some of the bands that made the entire day...

SXSW: A rising Mexican-American star, a country singer with a voice for the ages

December 14, 2018 at 4:09 p.m.

AUSTIN, Texas – Some highlights from a busy Thursday at the South by Southwest Music Festival: Omar Banos, a bespectacled Mexican-American teen who records under the name of Cuco, has...

Charlie Steen, frontman for British band Shame, in a Wednesday performance at Barracuda during the South by Southwest festival in Austin, Tx.

SXSW and the rush of the new: Shame, Bat Fangs, Sudan Archives

December 14, 2018 at 3:59 p.m.

AUSTIN, Texas – “Do you feel alone, do you feel replaced,” Shame singer Charlie Steen barked in tag-team vocals with bassist Josh Finerty, and a tightly packed crowd of fans...

OMD: Dystopian electro-pop and the Chicago connection

December 14, 2018 at 3:56 p.m.

Andy McCluskey, co-founder of U.K. synth-pop avatars Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark (OMD), cherishes his Chicago connection. As teenagers growing up in Liverpool, England, during the early ’70s, McCluskey and...

Neil Young on tech giants (‘jerks’), audio quality (‘bad’) and his new movie with Daryl Hannah

December 14, 2018 at 4:01 p.m.

AUSTIN, Texas — “The man in the black hat, steer clear of him,” says one of the crusty characters in a new movie, “Paradox,” directed and scripted by actress Daryl...

Pussy Riot, during a recent Chicago performance.

SXSW begins: Pussy Riot and Superchunk roar, Starcrawler rolls

December 14, 2018 at 3:46 p.m.

AUSTIN, Texas — The South by Southwest Music Festival ramped up Tuesday with some troublemakers from Russia. Pussy Riot was in the house and they weren’t about to let anyone...

Fleet Foxes, from a 2017 performance at the Chicago Theatre.

Pitchfork lineup is complete with Lauryn Hill, Fleet Foxes

December 14, 2018 at 3:34 p.m.

It’s finally finished. The three-week rollout of the Pitchfork Music Festival lineup for Chicago concluded Tuesday with Fleet Foxes and Lauryn Hill, performing her landmark album “The Miseducation of Lauryn...

Pink performs at the United Center in Chicago as part of her "Beautiful Trauma" world tour on March 9, 2018.

Pink flies even higher than her songs at United Center

December 14, 2018 at 4:32 p.m.

Pink was zipping around the rafters Friday in the first of two United Center concerts. Wearing a harness, stack-heel shoes and a silver body suit, she looked like the bride...

Chicago rapper Valee makes his mark on new EP, but gently

December 14, 2018 at 3:10 p.m.

Valee jump-started his career a couple years ago with a deceptively simple but addictive single, “Shell.” Now that the Chicago rapper has gone nationwide with a major-label deal, he repurposes...

Nick Cave has been singing about mortality for decades, and he's really good at it. Whether the narratives are biblical or pulpy, the victims innocents or death row convicts, the circumstances comprehensible or cruelly random, Cave's songs are on intimate terms with the infinite ways a life can be extinguished. And yet, "Skeleton Tree", his latest album with his estimable band, the Bad Seeds, is a relatively concise song cycle shadowed by death that feels different than all the rest. <a href="http://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/music/kot/sc-music-nick-cave-skeleton-tree-ent-0916-20160916-column.html" target="_blank">Read the full review.</a>

Hot Snakes: The return of the ‘down-stroke warlords’

May 2, 2018 at 4:36 p.m.

John Reis has been a commotion-starter in San Diego's indie music scene since he was a teenager in the '80s. "Jericho Sirens" (Sub Pop), his forthcoming album with Hot Snakes,...

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