This bum-out extravaganza organized by Nate Young of Wolf Eyes suggests that if you stay focused within the underground long enough there’s a good chance you’ll ascend—at least enough to headline Metro. The Trip Metal Fest features a crew of like-minded outsiders who’ve achieved a modicum of success without doing anything to curry favors; the work of each artist has gotten better over time, but certainly not any friendlier—it’s been carried out with uncompromising purity....

Eighth Blackbird www.eighthblackbird.org @eighthblackbird Runner-Up Morton Feldman Chamber Players

Striding Lion‘s Annie Arnoult Beserra can tuck a manifesto into a dance so it’s visible just under the surface, like a hand in a hand puppet. In the evening-length Dada Gert, she and her dancers slip into readymade roles—whore, wet nurse, witch, pimp, angel, waiter—and spin them into kaleidoscopic combinations. The readymades are inspired by the show’s muse, Valeska Gert, a transgressive Jewish dancer/performance artist/film star in Weimar-era Berlin who epitomized Dada’s anarchic gravitas....

Multiple locations thesoupbox.com Runner-Up The Bagel

In last week’s In Rotation I explained my fascination with the score to Andrei Tarkovsky’s 1972 sci-fi classic Solaris, which former Reader movie man Jonathan Rosenbaum describes as a “soulful Soviet ‘response’ to 2001: A Space Odyssey.” Russian electronic-music composer Eduard Artemyev was commissioned to build it, and the resulting product is a planet of taut soundscapes filled with high-frequency buzzes and clouds of airy nothingness that revolve around Bach’s solo organ piece Chorale Prelude in F Minor, which acts as the soundtrack’s bloodline....

The first half of the menu at Apogee, the Dana Hotel’s luxe rooftop bar, looks more like a high-end magazine than a drinks list. Printed on glossy paper, it shows strikingly beautiful cocktails set against a black backdrop that highlights the drinks’ myriad colors. Knowing what the options look like can be useful for ordering, but Apogee approaches aesthetic gratification as an end in itself. Their frilly appearance doesn’t mean the drinks lack substance....

Here’s what President Trump can do: He can schedule a news briefing and not let certain reporters attend, thereby designating them, in the eyes of his faithful, as enemies of truth and freedom. And not without resources of their own.

Larry Yando as Lear. Hotly anticipated. You’d expect this faculty to lend itself nicely to a portrayal of Lear, the inadequate king whose “best and soundest,” in the estimation of one of his three daughters, “hath been but rash.” Lear’s crucial act of folly, handing his realm over to those daughters while he still lives, can be read as the act of a man who’s begun to suspect that he’s not—maybe never was—much good at ruling yet still wants to be honored for what he never achieved....

When Next last did big meat with its 2013 menu the Hunt, the result was an edible survey of dining best described as red in tooth and claw, from a Michigan hunter’s game jerky to a lushly barbaric squab course on French china. So it was a bit of a letdown by comparison that three menus later, Chicago Steakhouse was pretty straightforwardly what it said it was—some old steak-house-style appetizers and sides and just one red meat course....

1723 N. Halsted 312-867-0110 alinearestaurant.com Runner-Up Girl & the Goat

I don’t think anyone could successfully argue that hairstyling isn’t an art, especially after seeing “Sportin’ Waves,” an exhibit of Ghanaian barbershop signs that Strange Beauty Show hosted earlier this year. Besides being artfully done in their sort of folksy, outsider-art way, the works featured amazing late-80s/ early-90s haircuts, like sweet fades with lines shaved in them and braids doing things that don’t look possible. The stylists at Strange Beauty Show can be similarly adventurous, especially with color....

Dakhabrakha As much as I hate to admit it, summer is coming to a close. Fortunately the seasonal concert schedule isn’t letting up, and that means there are a lot of minifestivals popping up throughout the weekend. You can take your pick of Chitcago Fest, Bash on Wabash, ElSounds Fest, and The Boulevard. Beyond those blowouts there are plenty of other shows to see this weekend. “Born in the Bronx, 25-year-old singer and producer Prince Royce is among the artists building bigger audiences around the country for an updated take on bachata—a Dominican form of popular song whose heart-on-sleeve ballads combine delicate guitars and heavy emotions,” writes Maura Johnston....

“Citizens” had already been chosen as the theme of this year’s Chicago Humanities Fest by the time Jonathan Elmer took over as artistic director last February, but he think’s it’s a good choice. “It must be for all citizens,” Elmer says. “But she looks at the different ways her two audiences approached the issue. At its heart are questions of racial equality.” READ THE REST OF OUR FALL PREVIEW

chicagoreframed.com The new website Chicago Reframed has several superficial similarities to the widely beloved and widely imitated Humans of New York. Both sites feature photos of ordinary people out on city streets, accompanied by snippets of interviews where they talk about their life stories or their feelings at that particular moment. But you’d be mistaken if you dismissed it as another effort by Chicagoans to be more like New Yorkers....

Seattle singer-songwriter Alexandra Niedzialkowski, who records and performs as Cumulus, understands the mystique of the style of indie rock that emerged from the Pacific Northwest a generation ago and was perfected by the likes of Death Cab for Cutie—the kind of sweetly sentimental rock songs whose easygoing, weightless melodies belie the mountains of emotion hidden within the notes. And Niedzialkowski weathered her share of hurt in the period leading up to Cumulus’s forthcoming second album, Comfort World (Trans), which gets its name from a billboard for a shuttered mattress store she spotted a couple hours out of Seattle....

Many of my favorite movies that received their Chicago theatrical premieres in 2018 expanded my sense of cinema history. Whether they were rediscoveries from past eras (such as the first and seventh films on my list) or new films by old masters (such as the films to hold the fourth- and tenth-place rankings), these works reminded me of how expansive the art form has always been in terms of visual beauty and social insight....

Runner-Up Kush Thompson

Since its release last spring, Daft Punk’s megahit “Get Lucky” has been everywhere—on the dance floor, on the radio in the grocery store, on the Grammys (it was named Record of the Year), even on its own line of Durex condoms. This spring Steppenwolf’s Russian Transport used it to deliver dread. In Erika Sheffer’s darkly humorous drama, a recent emigre from Russia (Tim Hopper, all the more scary for being cast against type) joins his sister (Mariann Mayberry, likewise) and her family in their Brooklyn home....

Nearly a year ago, Chicago producer and engineer Ivan “Ikon” Pryor nearly died in a fire that destroyed suite 42 at Fort Knox, an Irving Park building that housed several rehearsal spaces and recording studios—including the facilities of hip-hop collective and indie label Private Stock. Ikon had been resting his eyes in suite 42, and left the room just before the blaze. As my March Reader feature detailed, the Private Stock family have rebounded, and they’ve focused on getting out a mess of music this year....