I was eating a burrito at the local Chipotle on Monday because until earlier that morning my car was stuck within a deep drift of icy snow. We were on our way to replenish our depleted pantry, but we needed lunch. The point is, I was sitting there eating my food when I heard something over the speakers that sparked a memory. What seemed super faint at the start came rushing back with beautiful clarity: one of the greatest, most-haunting pop songs ever made....

The current Museum of Contemporary Art exhibition “The Freedom Principle: Experiments in Art and Music, 1965 to Now,” in part explores the history and legacy of Chicago’s massively influential Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians. Reedist and composer Roscoe Mitchell was a founding member of the organization and became internationally recognized for his membership in the Art Ensemble of Chicago. But that was then. Perhaps more than any AACM figure, Mitchell looks forward, making new work and collaborating with an ever-expanding cast of dynamic, progressive musicians....

On April 12, Chicago rapper Terrance Boykin, better known as Bump J, was freed from a federal prison in Elkton, Ohio. Bump J built his career and citywide reputation on a slew of Goon Squad mixtapes in the first half of the 2000s, then became the first Chicagoan to participate in DJ Drama’s celebrated Gangsta Grillz mixtape series, releasing Chicagorilla in 2006. (It came out a few months after Lil Wayne set the high-water mark for the series with Dedication 2....

Singer-guitarist Maceo Haymes and singer-keyboardist Nick Hennessey are journeymen musicians whose work behind the scenes backing musicians onstage—they occasionally performed with Chance the Rapper during his ascent, and they continue to collaborate with him—have made their soul group, the O’My’s, a crucial point connecting Chicago’s hip-hop scene with young musicians who dabble in R&B, funk, jazz, and soul. Their new full-length, Tomorrow (Haight), shows how easily those worlds intersect. On “Puddles,” pitter-patter percussion and watery guitars provide a bedrock for hushed, luxurious vocal harmonies and forcefully rounded, rapid raps from the great Saba; throughout the song the band make measured movements to ensure that every transition fits their relaxed mood....

There was a feast of epic proportions under way a few weekends ago at the then month-old A Bite of Szechuan. At the center of the sunlit dining room the staff had pushed nearly half the restaurant’s tables together to accommodate a family of some two dozen grandparents, mothers, fathers, aunts, uncles, brothers, sisters, and cousins, all celebrating some happy occasion with a long, leisurely Sunday lunch. And that’s why A Bite of Szechuan seems to have already attracted a devoted following in its brief existence....

Nobody has ever sounded quite like Elvis Costello. For that matter, Costello has never sounded quite like himself—at least, that sneering, brash version of Elvis Costello that the world quickly got to know in the late 70s, when he burst into public consciousness with a trio of albums, starting with My Aim is True, that still stand as some of rock’s greatest. Elsewhere, Costello treats his readers to countless anecdotes about the many famous musicians with whom he’s crossed paths....

M. Spencer Green/AP Photos Hey, Garcia—Fioretti is your friend here. With Cook County Commissioner Jesus “Chuy” Garcia suddenly jumping into the mayoral race, the time has come for me to say something nice about Alderman Bob Fioretti. Oh, people, when will you learn? I know I’ve mentioned this a few times before. But I feel an urge to mention it again—just in case you missed the last production of this show....

For a time it looked like Bernie Sanders might not make it through his stump speech in Chicago on Monday. The white-haired 73-year old Vermont senator had endured a sweaty appearance on a sunny soapbox stage at the Iowa State Fair the day before, and it showed. He sauntered over to the podium under the purple glow of lights at the Park West and almost immediately hunched over the wooden stand for support, his loose-fitting suit nearly swallowing him whole....

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Now in its second year, the Chicago International Latino Theater Festival continues this weekend with the midwest premiere of An American Odyssey by the California-based performance trio Culture Clash. This program of character monologues is written and performed by Richard Montoya, Ric Salinas, and Herbert Sigüenza, who founded Culture Clash in San Francisco’s Mission district on May 5 (Cinco de Mayo), 1984. The three men started the group “out of need,” says Sigüenza....

Prints by Josh Davis of Chicago’s Dead Meat Design turn up frequently in the Reader‘s Gig Poster of the Week—and almost every time Gossip Wolf steals a cool show flyer from a light pole or the wall of a record store, it has Davis’s name on it! (But seriously, if you absolutely have to take a poster home with you, don’t rip it down till after the show has happened. Otherwise, that’s a flyer felony!...

Weather defined Pitchfork‘s soggy second day. The storm that rolled through the Chicago area on Saturday resulted in a brief evacuation of Union Park, shortened sets from Ex Hex and Kurt Vile, and thousands of soaked festgoers trudging through muddy conditions between stages.

Jason Nocito Liturgy Brooklyn’s Liturgy was the most controversial band around when their second LP Aesthethica came out in 2011. The band’s epic and dramatic combination of screamo and black metal—propelled by the mind-bending blast beats of drummer Greg Fox—immediately polarized metal fans. A huge amount of disdain was directed at Liturgy for appropriating black metal—this was music made by Norwegian satanists, not New York City trust funders—and front man Hunter Hunt-Hendrix even went as far as to pen a manifesto outlining his personal philosophies on the genre....

Seth Perlman/AP Photos Alstory Simon left prison a free man yesterday. The page-one story in both the Tribune and Sun-Times Friday was the freeing of Alstory Simon, after State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez decided to dismiss his conviction. We can now ponder the complexities and ironies of an extraordinary legal saga—a double murder in a south-side park in 1982 that led to the abolition of the death penalty in Illinois while contributing hugely to the erosion of respect for Alvarez’s profession....

Rosario Zavala Chris Krypel Chicagoans is a first-person account from off the beaten track, as told to Anne Ford. This week’s Chicagoan is Chris Krypel, East Garfield Park neighbor. “And my fiance and I made a penny floor. When I bought the house, there was a tile floor that looked horrible. Whoever lived there before me must have just really wanted to live in Arizona, because it was all peach and light brown and tan....

Democratic presidential contender Bernie Sanders told an invite-only group of Latino activists and politicians Wednesday night that he plans to use executive orders as a means of bypassing Congress to guarantee a path to legalization for millions of undocumented immigrants. Sanders then proposed to use executive orders to broaden President Barack Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, and the Deferred Action for Parents of Americans (DAPA). Sanders said he believes this plan to be within the scope of presidential powers....