Maria Calderon

Chi Birmingham

I’ve always been a huge Milton Avery fan, so the instant I stumbled across the work of Californian artist Chi Birmingham, I was head over heals. I really enjoy how every year Birmingham decides to take his distinctive style in a new direction, from various American landscapes to basements (as if, after all those wide open landscapes, he needed to feel a little more protected?), to various everyday rooms (not quite ready to venture back into the wide outdoors, but tired of the dank basement day in day out?). I’d certainly recommend popping by Birmingham’s blog as well, as the subject matter on there are a lot of fun doodles and cool figurative bits. Read more

Zohar Lazar

Zohar Lazar does some nice cartoon-y illustrations, but I find his kenetic, spacially confounding landscapes the feature crashing cars and abstracted junk to be particularly compelling. Read more

Andrew Foster

Andrew Foster’s whimsical and erotic nudes seem to simultaneously lampoon and pay homage to the Impressionists. His pastel landscapes are completely devoid of men, and the women that inhabit them seem not to mind. Read more

Everything Is Terrible website

I met one of the Chicago contributors of this New York, LA, Chicago collaboration site in front of a local bike shop this past summer. He was happily showing off his latest thrift store VHS scores to a mutual friend of ours. I slept on the “blog” he said he was collecting the tapes for for some time. Sometimes I make mistakes. Everything is Terrible is a brilliant library of all things unsettling. These are not posts of mindless YouTube anomalies. These are serious and hilarious documentations of what could be lost on most people were it not for these ironic excavators.

Tristeza’s new album, Fate Unfolds

From the surreal opening to the feverish end, Fate Unfolds captivates with a tonal palette that is both broad and gripping. Indie kings of the southwest, Tristeza, have been at it for slightly over a decade. Their latest full-length delivers without a drop of disappointment. Fate Unfolds is drenched with the seemingly long lost art of crafting an album that plays as one solid piece. I could pick several ’singles’ that I hear on this record, but to do anything but drop the needle and park it does a huge disservice to the artistry and arrangement of this record as a whole. Herein are huge washes of guitars and synths, layered with drums dubbing back and forth from programmed to acoustic with ease and a backbeat that is anything but ‘indie rock’. Read more

Lasers and Fast and Shit perform Pittsburgh

This band is one of the most promising acts to appear in Chicago in the past few years. Their live shows have set them apart from their stoner-spazz rock counterparts, with an elaborate light set up that they bring to each show. Yes, you see correctly, lead vocalist joe is ‘playing’ the lights. I can’t imagine these guys ever quit working being that they build their own amps, and drummer, Mizzola plays in like ten other great Chicago bands. Look out for Lasers and Fast and Shit’s new 7″, Introduction, out now.