With Thanksgiving only days away and festive lights overtaking Evanston, the time of year has become blatantly obvious. ‘Tis the holiday season — a season for eating gelt and decorating pine trees. But it wouldn’t be the holidays without the right mood music. Here we have collected some great Christmas songs and covers to help [...]

Cover of Zeitgeist

Back in 1988, the Smashing Pumpkins played their first show at the Metro theater in Chicago. This Friday at the Auditorium Theater, the Pumpkins celebrated 20 years of music (or “20 years of burning bridges,” as lead singer Billy Corgan put it) with the third of four shows in their hometown and the [...]

In embracing one music genre, our writer doubles his geekiness and hair volume.

Photo by author.

“How long has it been, Chicago? Three months? My, how you’ve grown. So big!”
Following an on-par opening performance by Abstract Rude, Atmosphere’s frontman, Slug, took the stage; coat on, hood up, gloves donned. “It’s fuckin’ cold out,” he explained.
Atmosphere’s Paint the Nation tour had the potential to be incredibly disappointing. Paint the Nation [...]

Vinyl has seen a 36.6 percent sales increase over the past year.

SPACE aims to have two college-oriented shows each week.

These pictures aint the half of it. Photos by the Spencer Kornhaber / North by Northwestern.

A lot of crazy shit happened at Of Montreal’s show at the Riviera on Monday, but the craziest thing may have been that it all wasn’t, you know, insane. Sure, some may look at 2008 as the year when front [...]

The record store was an interesting place to explore, but the magic soon faded.

Chatting with the star of Northwestern’s music scene

One half of the DJ duo chats with us before their Sigma Chi performance Friday.

Photos by Emery Mathieson.
Brit rockers the Kooks took the stage in front of a diverse audience at the Riviera Theater on Saturday night. The vibe of the concert was a contrast to the more somber sounds of Death Cab for Cutie, who performed the night before at the same venue for A&O Productions’ fall [...]

Video for Deerhoof’s “Fresh Born”
Few efforts in my life have been as futile as trying to turn people on to all-over-the-place rockers Deerhoof. It’s rare for a musical outfit to make sounds so uncommon that I want to tell everyone about them, but even rarer [...]

Stereolab / Laetitia Sadier (vocals). Photo by the author.
Without knowing anything else, the name Stereolab conjures images of horn-rims and lab coats in a room full of neon beakers emitting bubbly harmony in stereo. “Experimental” certainly seems to belong somewhere in a description if they are a rock group. So a guess that “Stereolab” might [...]

Their concert at the Vic finds band more focused than at Dillo Day 2008.

The album is stuffed with dance- and afro-beats, chanting, tribal drums, and Spanish and tropical influences.