Al Green’s moment of truth: The 40-year legacy of ‘Belle’
In 1978, Al Green appeared on the Chicago-based WTTW-TV program “Soundstage” with his band. His career was in commercial decline, but you couldn’t have guessed it by watching Green. He...
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John McLaughlin on his final US tour and playing with Miles Davis
John McLaughlin is in the midst of his final U.S. tour, but he will never forget the lesson he learned from his mentor and friend, Miles Davis, when he first...
Ted Leo delivers nightly dose of musical catharsis
Things turned deadly serious Sunday at Ted Leo’s Thalia Hall concert with a solo version of “Lonsdale Avenue,” which the singer described as “the second most depressing song I’ve written.”...
Mavis Staples back on the freedom highway: ‘It’s like we have to start all over again’
“I have a mind to bury them whole,” Mavis Staples sings on her forthcoming album, “If All I Was Was Black” (Anti). It is not a very Mavis-like thing to...
Taylor Swift puts ‘Reputation’ on cruise control
Even some Taylor Swift diehards had to be cringing after the singer ushered in the publicity push for her latest album with "Look What You Made Me Do,” a single...
Kamasi Washington pours jazz into hip-hop and beyond
Kamasi Washington has been the recipient of some heavy accolades in recent years — “the future of jazz” and “the jazz voice of Black Lives Matter,” among them. The saxophonist...
LCD Soundsystem and a mirror ball reign supreme at Aragon
Among other, perhaps less significant reasons, LCD Soundsystem exists to remind us that cowbells and disco balls are great inventions. When singer James Murphy whupped the cowbell at just the...
Shamir regains his voice in low-fi setting on ‘Revelations’
“Can someone tell me why I always seem to let these straight boys run my life?” Shamir sings on his new album, “Revelations” (Father/Daughter). The Las Vegas-born singer has never...
Kelela: ‘You can never have enough music that empowers black women’
Kelela's debut album, "Take Me Apart" (Warp), is bold stuff — genre-blurring, trippy, glitchy, seductive, intimate, vulnerable — beauty and weirdness forged out of struggle and pain. It arrives only...
Dylan delivers more left turns at new Chicago arena
Bob Dylan once played an inscrutable character named “Alias” in a pretty good ’70s movie (Sam Peckinpah’s “Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid”). And Alias was once again his typically...