Alison Green Carrie Brownstein and Corin Tucker of Sleater-Kinney Brianna Wellen: Sure, a lot of memorable things happened before 8:30 PM. Bully started a respectable dance party at the Blue Stage, Ex Hex made the most of their few songs before the festival got (briefly) shut down, and a few measly raindrops caused a mass exodus to whatever nearby bar was accepting soaked-through dollars. The rain made things more fun, and those of us warriors who returned to the muddy park when it reopened surely deserve a badge of courage....

On Friday and Saturday at midnight the Music Box is showing Near Dark, Kathryn Bigelow’s first solo directorial effort, on 35-millimeter. The theater had planned the screenings as a commemoration of the film’s 30th anniversary, but now they double as a tribute to the actor Bill Paxton, who delivered a memorable supporting turn in the movie, and who passed away last month from complications following heart surgery. A chronically underrated player in American movies, the versatile Paxton fared well both in comedy (Weird Science, Club Dread) and drama (One False Move, A Simple Plan), bringing a likable earnestness to both genres....

Hip-hop has a bigger presence at Riot Fest this year than ever before—hugely influential acts such as De La Soul, Snoop Dogg, Ice Cube, and Cypress Hill are sure to steal some of the spotlight from the lineup’s army of guitar heroes. But some of the best rap artists at the festival are less well-known. If you want to see the shape of hip-hop to come, start with these five sets....

Despite forging one of the most recognizable sounds on electric guitar over the last three decades, Bill Frisell has emphasized an ensemble-oriented approach for much of his career, one where his improvisations tend to shoot out of airy but rich arrangements like ethereal, meticulously pruned tendrils of melody and clouds of ambience. He’s functioned more as a jazz guitarist in certain contexts, like his recent work with Charles Lloyd or his long partnership with drummer Paul Motian and saxophonist Joe Lovano, and it’s that sound he conjures on Small Town (ECM), his stunning new album with bassist Thomas Morgan....

When I interviewed actress Jodie Sweetin last week she said she wasn’t planning to watch Lifetime’s The Unauthorized Full House Story, a TV movie about the pukey, popular late-80s/early-90s kids’ shitcom she starred in. As a not-famous person whose only hope of becoming a character in a Lifetime movie is violently murdering my husband or cutting a baby out of someone’s stomach, it’s impossible to imagine not watching, especially if promotional photos released in advanced of the movie’s premiere indicated that it had been hastily cast by a blind person....

Six years ago, TimeLine Theatre had a hit with Fiorello!, the neglected 1959 musical about New York City’s Depression-era mayor Fiorello LaGuardia. Now director Nick Bowling and music director Doug Peck, who shepherded that show to success, have unearthed another rarity from 1959: Juno, by playwright Joseph Stein and composer-lyricist Marc Blitzstein, a faithful, straightforward musical adaptation of Irish playwright Sean O’Casey’s 1924 tragicomedy Juno and the Paycock. Relief seems to come when an elegant young English lawyer, Charlie Bentham, announces that Jack is set to receive a large inheritance from a deceased cousin....

At 79, Charles Lloyd has taken part in a major chunk of modern jazz history. He’s called himself a “sound seeker,” and during the 60s and early 70s he became an inheritor of John Coltrane’s spiritual yearning, his sinewy tenor sax casting a veneer of calm over roiling arrangements. More recently, in a stunning late-career renaissance, he’s melded meditative beauty with burning soulfulness, and last year he further demonstrated his refusal to coast with the release of I Long to See You (Blue Note), a simmering knockout recorded with a combo he calls the Marvels....

I’m not sure who, if anyone, will end up filling the Lil Peep-size hole in rap, but there are an awful lot of white rappers cribbing from third-wave emo’s salad days who seem like they’d love to do just that. Tonight’s show features artists who’ve made a home in similar frameworks as Peep, though such comparisons alone would shortchange opener 93Feetofsmoke. The 25-year-old Virginia native played bass in several metal bands, but once he got a copy of Ableton, he freed himself from the challenges of playing with others and started making beats and experimenting with Auto-Tune....

As Pitchfork Music Festival attendees flood Union Park this weekend, the Near West Side becomes the center of the city’s universe for three days and nights. For those unfamiliar with the neighborhood’s dining and drinking establishments—out-of-towners, those who rarely venture off Milwaukee Avenue—we’ve assembled a diverse list of spots to sip and sup within a 15-minute walk of the festival grounds. It’s definitely worth noting Pitchfork Fest’s draconian reentry policy: there is, um, no reentry....

I’m guessing that the reason Eileen Pollack’s new book is called The Only Woman in the Room: Why Science Is Still a Boys’ Club is because it’s a more interesting title than The Trials and Tribulations of Eileen Pollack. So three cheers to the marketing department at Beacon Press. They certainly suckered me into reading this—oh, what should I say?—hopelessly self-involved effort to explain a major social problem. And then there’s the dilemma of being a woman working in a field that’s still, in many ways, a boys’ club....

When a band has been hammering out metallic noise rock with enough intensity to blow down a skyscraper for nearly 20 years, a new release full of expertly crushing music is always welcome, but hardly a surprise. On their seventh full-length, Loved (Season of Mist), Winnipeg trio KEN Mode (named after Henry Rollins’s bleak expression “kill everything now mode,” from his days on the Black Flag tour for My War) lay out another blistering nine tracks of the hard stuff they’ve become known for, though they never settle into a formula....

COURTESY THE ARTIST AND WESTERN EXHIBITIONS, CHICAGO Conversations in Held Poses by Lilli Carré Feast your eyes on something visually stimulating this weekend. Here’s what’s going down in visual arts: “Are We There Yet?” at Arc Gallery The opening day of an exhibit featuring abstract paintings by Ann O’Brien. Reception 6-9 PM. “State of Mind: New California Art Circa 1970” at Smart Museum of Art The last day to view an exhibition of conceptual art that arose from California in the late 60s and early 70s....

Severe weather prompted an evacuation of Union Park on Saturday afternoon during the 2015 Pitchfork Music Festival. At around 3:40 PM, a voice came over the PA announcing that the thousands of attendees present would have to leave the park in 20 minutes. The rain-soaked crowd responded with boos as Ex Hex was forced to cut short its set after less than 20 minutes. With the storm clearing, the park is expected to reopen at 4:20, which has prompted the expected stream of pot-related humor on Twitter....

“It was the day that changed my life,” jokes Ed Wesly. “These reject lasers find their home in the reject holography studio,” he explains as he lists off the oddball prizes he’s collected over the years (a white-beam laser imported from China, a handful of multicolored machines donated by a student who worked at American Science & Surplus).

A Reader staffer shares three musical obsessions, then asks someone (who asks someone else) to take a turn. Nine Inch Nails meets the Unicorn Frappuccino Bless whoever noticed the similarities between the toxic-looking purple-and-blue swirl of Starbucks’ short-lived Unicorn Frappuccino “drink” and the cover art on Nine Inch Nails’ 1989 debut, Pretty Hate Machine. The resulting meme started out as a diptych of the alleged beverage and the classic album, then sprouted the inevitable mutations as it spread—it’s [100 emoji][fire emoji][laugh-cry emoji]....

In my endless search for the bright side of life in Chicago, I think I found some good news in the recent Sun-Times story about, of all things, Mayor Rahm’s latest financing scheme. Well, of course, there will be future tax hikes. Those pension bonds will have to be paid off with something—meaning, your taxes, Chicago. In short, it’s another election-eve gimmick that’s designed to make you think you’re getting something for nothing....

The fiery Norwegian quartet Cortex pull no punches with their new album, barreling through eight new tunes without a wasted gesture—although its title, Avant-Garde Party Music (Clean Feed), suggests they’re not above laughing at themselves a bit. With five albums to their credit, trumpeter Thomas Johansson—who composed all of the typically pithy material on the recording—saxophonist Kristoffer Berre Alberts, bassist Ola Høyer, and drummer Gard Nilssen have hit an undeniable groove as a working band, delivering some of the most thrilling, high-energy freebop made anywhere in the world....

Baritones Unbound Noted singers Nathan Gunn, Mark Delavan, and Marc Kudisch star in this informal celebration of the baritone in classical and popular music. The baritone range is located between tenor and bass—”between heaven and earth,” as Kudisch (who conceived and cocreated the show) notes. In story and song, the men trace the evolution of “the uncommon voice of the common man” in selections from opera (Mozart, Verdi, Wagner), operetta (Gilbert and Sullivan), American musical theater (Rodgers and Hammerstein, Lerner and Loewe, Porter, Sondheim, Jerry Herman), and the Great American Songbook (Irving Berlin’s “White Christmas”)....

Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin’s aphorism “Tell me what you eat and I shall tell you what you are” is one of the most overused cliches in food culture, appearing everywhere from the opening sequence of Iron Chef to T-shirts and coffee mugs. But to the culinary historian Laura Shapiro, learning what someone ate is just the beginning of unlocking his or her identity. Naturally, after spending so much time with people, even people who are dead, you tend to feel close to them (as Shapiro, a former alt-weekly journalist, points out, dead people never hang up on you)....

There’s no need to give in to Thanksgiving-induced cabin fever; the city has hardly shut down. There are still plenty of places to eat, movies to see, and markets to shop. Whether you need to occupy your family, escape your family, or just want to get out of the house on the day off from work, there’s lots to do. Here are some of our recommendations: Longman & Eagle The holiday menu includes roasted turkey, green bean casserole, cranberry sauce, and chestnut foie gras stuffing, with vegetarian options available....