Growing up in the church is a common backstory for black R&B and soul musicians. The choir director is often their first vocal coach, and “He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands” is often the one of the first songs they learn, second only to the ABCs. For Chicago soul artist Christian JaLon, the church is a house of worship, a springboard into musicianship, and something greater than both—it’s the home of love....

There’s plenty to do in Chicago this weekend. Here’s some of what we recommend: Sat 3/4: To celebrate Chicago’s 180th Birthday, the Chicago History Museum (1601 N. Clark) welcomes guests with song, dance, storytelling, Eli’s cheesecake and lemonade, and a reading by this year’s DuSable essay contest winner. 10 AM-2 PM Sun 3/5: In the Air Sex World Championships at Subterranean (2011 W. North) participants simulate the physical act of love live on stage....

David Roth’s Evanston home is full of links to the past: the old typewriter on which he composed a high school term paper, a defunct parking meter from Detroit (his hometown), his father’s bronzed baby shoes. The mantel is lined with archival photographs—one even includes his great-great-great-grandfather, the first in Roth’s family to immigrate from eastern Europe. “Stories end up getting mangled and changed, and you don’t quite know exactly what happened....

Street View is a fashion series in which Isa Giallorenzo spotlights some of the coolest styles seen in Chicago. “Why do we need permission to get dressed up?” asks real estate broker and mother of three Terri Franklin. “Sometimes after women hit a certain age they start to melt into this submission of ‘I don’t need to get dressed up anymore.’ Moms who used to feel conscious about their style just seem to play everything down....

Dwayne Appling was sentenced to more than 27 years in federal prison for overseeing an operation that moved heroin from Chicago to Iowa. The movement for reduced drug sentences didn’t help Dwayne Appling. It’s happened despite more than four decades of ever-tougher drug policies that have sent hundreds of thousands of offenders into state and federal prisons. Prosecutors portrayed Appling as one of the dealers who encouraged and then capitalized on heroin habits....

Last summer, when I first heard Vukari‘s debut full-length, Matriarch, the “band” was a studio project led by front man, guitarist, and composer Marek Cimochowicz. Originally he had no intention of playing in public—a common choice in extreme metal, in part because it’s difficult to find like-minded musicians with the chops to get through such demanding songs onstage, where they can’t piece together a perfect take digitally. But during the nine months he spent recruiting studio players and recording, he changed his mind—and at an Arkona show in November, Vukari made their onstage debut, leaping into the world fully formed like Athena from the head of Zeus....

Fred Zwicky Republican Bruce Rauner wants your vote for governor—or else. You’ve probably heard about Dave McKinney, the well-respected political reporter who resigned from the Sun-Times because he didn’t feel the paper’s owners went far enough in defending him against an assault on his integrity by Bruce Rauner, the Republican candidate for governor. The answer is that Rauner has made quite a showing. Here’s a list of our top ten bullies from recent times:...

Oriez/Wikimedia Commons A complex ecosystem I wasn’t paying much attention to the car radio until I heard this: I imagine Sisyphus happy. I imagine Chicago journalists so happy they kiss the ground Ryan and Blagojevich and Vrdolyak and Medrano (I’m leaving out a few names, maybe hundreds) walk on. If in the 40-some years I’ve been a journalist in Chicago journalism hasn’t made a dent in our city’s political corruption, neither has corruption made a dent in our journalism....

Stephen Malkmus‘s solo career doesn’t match the consistently brilliant, slack triumphalism of his work with Pavement, but it’s been better than the solo careers of many other indie-rock artists. Malkmus has a new album out today on Matador called Wig Out at Jagbags that’s just like his last two albums (Mirror Traffic and Real Emotional Trash): polished indie pop full of serpentine guitar solos, clumsy jokes, and 70s-rock melodies. One song, “Rumble at the Rainbo,” got me wondering if Malkmus was talking about local watering hole Rainbo Club, particularly with its pointed barbs at aging artists....

Anyone within earshot of my person over the past week has heard me not shut up about the release of Total Control’s Typical System, which is both phenomenal and dropping here in the States on June 24 via Iron Lung Records. The Melbourne band broke through with the sometimes-erratic, mostly dark Henge Beat in 2011—there were plenty of singles prior—and have only sharpened their ominous aesthetic to be more unstoppable. A prime example is “Flesh War,” which, coincidentally, is today’s 12 O’Clock Track....

“The creaminess and the fat from the almond milk and the sugar really mellows out that bitterness and acidity in the matcha,” Antonian says. “It’s like a cup of tea in a bowl.” Candied almondsBlanch slivered almonds. Toss in powdered sugar until well coated. Fry at 350 F until golden. Scoop matcha into a wide bowl. Heat water to 175 F. Pour water into matcha and whisk vigorously until frothy and all matcha is dissolved....

The huitlacoche turned the bright, fruity notes of cognac into “dates and figs and raisins, which was unexpected,” he said. (He considered using bourbon as the base spirit, but decided it was too dry.) To complement those flavors he used an oloroso sherry for its nutty, fruity aromas, and a ginger liqueur to add a spicy kick for contrast. Arms also used the “black ooze” from the can of huitlacoche (the liquid surrounding the corn smut), filtered it, and made it into a saline solution to add a touch of salt....

Last month I turned in a long-overdue review of Knife & Tine, a six-month-old Lincoln Park restaurant where the chef, Nate Park, a veteran of Moto and Ing, was doing some interesting, if problematic, things in the kitchen. Hours after I filed the copy it was announced that Park was out the door and replaced, and the review, naturally, was 86’d. All were served in short pours—three-, five-, and two-ounce wines, beers, and cocktails, respectively—which, if you were sharing food, would leave most folks a bit dry if they tried to share the pairings too....

Admittedly, that’s a pretty blatant example of defining the category to produce the winner. There are probably other places to get a cookie with your pork taco, but a place called Cookie & Carnitas has an obvious leg up. Never mind; on a nobody’s-next-hot-restaurant-row strip of Broadway in Edgewater, chefs Brad Newman and Mikey Taormina turn trendy locavore meat and produce (they also run a stand at the Green City Market on Saturdays) into unpretentious peasant-slash-regular-guy food like tacos, sandwiches, and chili....

In a recent interview with NPR Music, singer-songwriter Cale Tyson says the interest in country music he demonstrates on his new album, Careless Soul (At Last Records), turned out to be fleeting: now that he’s recorded it, he says, “What I’m finding is that I’m actually kinda going back to the indie-folk stuff that I grew up on, that I truly connected with first.” After getting his start in screamo punk bands in his native Texas—at which point he hated country—Tyson eventually got sucked into the music of Bright Eyes and decided to become a songwriter....

Dance has an implicit physics dancers grok mostly through kinetic ingenuity; the irresistible joy of dance hails from bodies pushing physical principles to their extreme. “Laws of Motion”—part of this year’s Pivot Arts Festival, themed “Art Meets Science”—takes a more cerebral approach. The Seldoms’ Exit Disclaimer: Science and Fiction Ahead focuses on the blindness and hypocrisy that surrounds the global warming crisis. Low movements in short spurts, dancers stomping and pumping vigorously side to side, caricature our unwillingness to adopt habits that are more ecologically sound....

Just minutes into A Tribe Called Quest’s headlining Pitchfork set Saturday night, when Phife Dawg‘s vocals streamed out of the speakers during what would’ve been his first big turn, the jumbotron right of the stage showed a crane shot of an empty space and unattended mike stand in front of Ali Shaheed Muhammad’s DJ setup. Phife Dawg, born Malik Taylor, died on March 22, 2016, a few months after he and rapper-producer Q-Tip got the group back together to play The Tonight Show in November 2015—a performance that convinced them they were meant to make music again....

I once wrote a profile on Bruce Norris for Chicago magazine. This was about eight years ago—after he’d pissed people off with evil-minded satires like The Pain and the Itch, but before they anointed him with a Pulitzer Prize and a Tony for Clybourne Park. The profile (which, I have to say, is very good) examines Norris’s perverse charm. He’s quoted at one point saying that Steppenwolf Theatre artistic director Martha Lavey “has referred to me as a ‘perseverator’: I enjoy things that are hectoring and terrierlike [and] refuse to drop the topic....