Carl Court / Getty-AFP
Nick Cave has been singing about mortality for decades, and he's really good at it. Whether the narratives are biblical or pulpy, the victims innocents or death row convicts, the circumstances comprehensible or cruelly random, Cave's songs are on intimate terms with the infinite ways a life can be extinguished. And yet, "Skeleton Tree", his latest album with his estimable band, the Bad Seeds, is a relatively concise song cycle shadowed by death that feels different than all the rest. Read the full review.
AP
On "22, A Million," Justin Vernon reimagines his music from the bottom up by letting technology — synthesizers, treated vocals, electronic sound effects — dictate. The songs retain their melancholy cast, but now must fight for air beneath static and noise. Read the full review.
NorthFoto / TNS
The Grateful Dead in concert on Aug. 3, 1994 in East Rutherford, N.J. From left is Phil Lesh, Bob Wier, Jerry Garcia and Micky Hart.
Jean-Baptiste Lacroix, AFP/Getty Images
The new album embraces her individuality more explicitly than ever, both more autobiographical and more politically and socially direct than anything she'd recorded previously. It's a rawer, less elaborate work than its predecessors, yet still hugely ambitious. Read the review
Matt Sayles/Invision/AP
Kendrick Lamar's "Untitled, Unmastered" is presented as an unfinished work, though it rarely sounds like one. Read the review.
Lawrence K. Ho / Los Angeles Times
"Lemonade" is more than just a play for pop supremacy. It's the work of an artist who is trying to get to know herself better, for better or worse, and letting the listeners/viewers in on the sometimes brutal self-interrogation. Read the full review.
John Konstantaras / Chicago Tribune
On her seventh studio album, "Golden Hour" (MCA Nashville), the singer-songwriter doesn't get hung up on genre. She's made a style-hopping pop album that infuses her songs with a relaxed spaciousness while muting, but not ignoring, her country roots. Read the review
Nuccio DiNuzzo/Chicago Tribune
Now "Schmilco" (dBpm Records) arrives, a product of the same recording sessions that produced "Star Wars" but a much different album. Though it's ostensibly quieter and less jarring than its predecessor, it presents its own radical take on the song-based, folk and country-tinged side of the band. Read the full review.
Jordan Strauss / AP
"Blonde" is a critique of materialism with Frank Ocean employing two distinct voices, like characters in a play, a recurring theme throughout the album and perhaps its finest sonic achievement. A party spirals out of control, the music rich but low key, a melange of organ and hovering synthesizers. Ocean uses distorting devices on his voice to add emotional texture and to enhance and sharpen the characters he briefly embodies. The upshot: They're all little slices of Ocean's personality with a role to play and they each sound distinct. Read the full review.
Chris Sweda / Chicago Tribune
Warpaint's unerring feel for gauzy hooks and slinky arrangements germinated over a decade and flourished on the quartet's excellent 2014 self-titled album. But the band has always nudged its arrangements onto the dance floor — subtly on record, more overtly on stage — and "Heads Up" (Rough Trade) gives the group's inner disco ball a few extra spins. Read the review.
Laurie Sparham / AP
A grown-up Christopher Robin returns to the Hundred Acre Wood and his best friend Winnie the Pooh. Read the review.
AP
Not many albums could survive Ed Sheeran performing reggae, but Pharrell Williams always took chances — not all of them successful — in N.E.R.D.Despite the Sheeran gaffe, "No One Ever Really Dies," the band's first album in seven years, is a typically diverse, trippy ride from the group that established Williams' career as a performer in the early 2000s alongside Chad Hugo and Shay Haley. Read the full review.
Erika Doss / AP
An Atlanta teenager (Amandla Stenberg) deals with the death of her friend in "The Hate U Give," director George Tillman Jr.'s fine adaptation of the best-selling young adult novel. Read the review.
Tobin Yelland / AP
Risk-prone 13-year-old Stevie (Sunny Suljic, left) shares some of his angst with one of the local LA skateboarding idols, Ray (Na-Kel Smith), in writer-director Jonah Hill's "Mid90s." Read the review.
Teresa Isasi / AP
Reunited for a family wedding, former lovers played by Penelope Cruz and Javier Bardem find themselves embroiled in a kidnapping in "Everybody Knows," directed by Asghar Farhadi. Read the review.
Nuccio DiNuzzo / Chicago Tribune
"Black America Again" (ARTium/Def Jam) arrives as a one of the year's most potent protest albums. The album sags midway through with a handful of lightweight love songs, but finishes with some of its most emotionally resounding tracks: the "Glory"-like plea for redemption "Rain" with Legend, the celebration of family that is "Little Chicago Boy," and the staggering "Letter to the Free." Read the review.
AP
"Love & Hate" shows Kiwanuka breaking out of that stylistic box. His core remains intact: a grainy, world-weary voice contemplating troubled times in intimate musical settings. The album announces its more ambitious intentions from the outset, with the trembling strings, episodic piano chords and wordless vocals of the 10-minute "Cold Little Heart." It's a striking, if atypical, approach to reintroducing himself to his audience — a five-minute preamble before Kiwanuka begins to sing. Read the full review.
Graham Bartholomew / AP
A tropical island boat captain (Matthew McConaughey) and his much-abused ex-wife (Anne Hathaway) enter a vortex of rough justice and fancy riddles in "Serenity." Read the review.
CBS Films/Lily Gavin
Penniless, driven, the Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh (Willem Dafoe) regards his next canvas subject in "At Eternity's Gate," directed by visual artist and filmmaker Julian Schnabel. Read the review.
Jonathan Hession / AP
Isabelle Huppert and Chloe Grace Moretz star in the thriller "Greta." Read the review.
Frank Gunn / The Canadian Press
Sound often says it all in Drake's world, but "Views" plays in a narrow range. The trademark hovering synths and barely-there percussion edge out most of the hooks, in favor of long fades and enervated tempos that start to drag about halfway through this slow-moving album. Read the review.
David Appleby / AP
Elton John (Taron Egerton) lays down a track for his express train to super-stardom in "Rocketman." The musical biopic co-stars Jamie Bell as lyricist Bernie Taupin. Read the review.
WellGo USA
Childhood friends and uneasy lovers played by Yoo Ah-in (left) and Jeon Jong-seo (center) find their lives disrupted by a mysterious man of means (Steven Yeung, right) in "Burning." Read the review.
AP
Vanellope von Schweetz (voiced by Sarah Silverman) and Ralph (John C. Reilly) zip around the web in a mad dash to save Vanellope's arcade game, "Sugar Rush," in this wild sequel to the 2012 "Wreck-It Ralph." Read the review.
Armando L. Sanchez / Chicago Tribune
In contrast, "Junk" (Mute"), M83's seventh studio album, sounds chintzy — a bubble-gum snyth-pop album that indulges Gonzalez's love of decades-old TV soundtracks, hair-metal guitar solos and kitschy pop songs. Read the full review.
Steve Wilkie / AP
Unburdened by Batman and Superman, the DC Comics realm turns in a not-bad origin story buoyed by Zachary Levi as the superhero version of 15-year-old Billy Batson (Asher Angel). Read the review.
Patti Perret/CBS Films
Cystic fibrosis patients Stella (Haley Lu Richardson) and Will (Cole Sprouse) negotiate a tricky mutual attraction in "Five Feet Apart," directed by Justin Baldoni. Read the review.
Tatum Mangus / AP
Stephan James and KiKi Layne play Fonny and Tish, expectant parents in 1970s Harlem in the new James Baldwin adaptation "If Beale Street Could Talk." Read the review.
Atsushi Nishijima / AP
This image released by Fox Searchlight Films shows Olivia Colman in a scene from the film "The Favourite." (Atsushi Nishijima/Fox Searchlight Films via AP)
AP
"Everything Now" is a tighter but not better album. The heavyweight arena anthems of Arcade Fire's 2004 debut, "Funeral," are long gone, replaced by brooding lyrics encased in lighter music. Read the review.
Chris Sweda / Chicago Tribune
"American Dream" is a breakup album of sorts but not in the traditional sense. This is about breakups with youth, the past, and the heroes and villains that populated it. It underlines the notion of breaking up as just a step away from letting go — of friends, family, relevance. Read the review.
Chip Bergmann / AP
A high-powered ad agency executive (Tika Sumpter, right) takes in her ex-con sister (Tiffany Haddish, center) in "Nobody's Fool." Read the review.
Matt Kennedy / AP
Washington D.C. power brokers Dick Cheney (Christian Bale) and Lynne Cheney have a date with destiny in Adam McKay's "Vice," co-starring Steve Carell as Donald Rumsfeld. Read the review. Nomainted for: Best Picture, Best Actor for Christian Bale, Best Supporting Actor for Sam Rockwell, Best Supporting Actress for Amy Adams, Best Director for Adam McKay, Best Original Screenplay, Best Film Editing,
Chris Sweda / Chicago Tribune
"Ye" isn't so much a musical statement as a 23-minute, seven-track therapy session. Read the review
Atsushi Nishijima / AP
Queen Anne's (Olivia Colman) court wrestles with the question of how to finance a war with France. Lady Sarah (Rachel Weisz), the Duchess of Marlborough, uses her wits, her body and the queen's bed to coerce Anne into raising taxes on the citizenry in order to keep the off-screen battle going. Then the unexpected arrival of her country cousin, Abigail (Emma Stone), a noblewoman fallen on hard times. A dab hand with medicinal herbs, Abigail quickly rises above servant status to become the queen's new favorite. Game on! Read the review. Nomainted for: Best Picture, Best Actress for Olivia Colman, Best Supporting Actress for Emma Stone and Rachel Weisz, Best Director for Yorgos Lanthimos, Best Original Screenplay, Best Cinematography, Best Film Editing, Best Production Design, Best Costume Design,
AP
"Peace Trail" — Neil Young's second album this year and sixth since 2014 — is occasionally fascinating. It's also not very good, a release that surely would've benefited from a bit more time and consideration, which might have given Young's ad hoc band — drummer Jim Keltner and bassist Paul Bushnell — a chance to actually learn the songs. But the four-day recording session sounds like a getting-to-know-you warmup instead of a finished product. Read the full review.
Daniel Smith / AP
Genie (Will Smith, right) explains the three-wishes thing to the title character (Mena Massoud) in Disney's "Aladdin," director Guy Ritchie's live-action remake of the 1992 animated feature. Read the review.
Armando L. Sanchez / Chicago Tribune
On their new album, "Existentialism," the Mekons turn their audience and the recording space into accomplices for the band's high-wire act. Read the full review.
Jessica Kourkounis / AP
Capping the trilogy started with "Unbreakable" (2000) and the surprise hit "Split (2017), Shymalan's treatise on superhero origin stories brings James McAvoy, Bruce Willis and Samuel L. Jackson together for a plodding psych-hospital escape. Read the review.
AP
The real stars of "Godzilla: King of the Monsters" are sound designers Erik Aadahl and Ethan Van Der Ryn. Their aural creature designs actually sound like something new — part machine, part prehistoric whatzit. Read the review.
Daniel McFadden / AP
In "First Man," Ryan Gosling reteams with "La La Land" director Damien Chazelle to relay the story of astronaut Neil Armstrong, the first man on the moon. Read the review.
Ross Gilmore / Redferns via Getty Images
On "Here" (Merge), the band's first album in six years and 10th overall, the front line of Norman Blake, Gerard Love and Raymond McGinley once again trades songs (four each) and lead vocals, over sturdily constructed pop-rock arrangements. But the band has taken some subtle evolutionary turns to where it's now a faint shadow of its "Bandwagonesque" incarnation. Read the review.
AP
When Aretha Franklin recorded her bestselling gospel album in early 1972, director Sydney Pollack's camera crew shot many hours of footage, unseen publicly until now. "Amazing Grace" is now in theaters. Read the review.
NBC
Kanye West's "The Life of Pablo" (GOOD/Def Jam) sounds like a work in progress rather than a finished album. It's a mess, more a series of marketing opportunities in which West changed the album title and the track listing multiple times, to the point where the very thing that made West tolerable despite a penchant for tripping over his own ego — the music itself — became anti-climactic. Read the review.
AP
Six miles beneath the Pacific Ocean surface, a team of oceanographers and experts discover an entire hidden ecosystem laden with species "completely unknown to science." But Meg comes calling, attacking the submersible piloted by the ex-wife (Jessica McNamee) of rescue diver Jonas Taylor (Jason Statham). Read the review.
Nick Cave has been singing about mortality for decades, and he's really good at it. Whether the narratives are biblical or pulpy, the victims innocents or death row convicts, the circumstances comprehensible or cruelly random, Cave's songs are on intimate terms with the infinite ways a life can be extinguished. And yet, "Skeleton Tree", his latest album with his estimable band, the Bad Seeds, is a relatively concise song cycle shadowed by death that feels different than all the rest. <a href="http://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/music/kot/sc-music-nick-cave-skeleton-tree-ent-0916-20160916-column.html" target="_blank">Read the full review.</a>
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The long-awaited Grateful Dead documentary “Long Strange Trip” is here and it’s just as expansive as rock’s most unlikely success story’s 30 years.
The 241-minute film, directed by Amir Bar-Lev and executive produced by Martin Scorsese, will be screened twice at the Music Box Theatre on May 28: once at 2 p.m. and again at 7 p.m.
In a series of live performances, rare photos, backstage moments and never-before-seen and new interviews with original band members Bob Weir, Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann, as well as others including Jerry Garcia’s daughter Trixie and comedian-turned-senator Al Franken, “Long Strange Trip” explores the Dead’s lifelong experimentation and influence.
The film is also said to provide insight into the psyche of late lead guitarist Jerry Garcia, who died in 1995 and whose disdain for authority is often cited as the reason why the band stayed on the road for so long.
The film will be screened in more than 50 venues across the nation, so if you miss the Music Box screening you can take to the road in true “Deadhead” fashion.
“Long Strange Trip” will also be available through Amazon Prime starting June 2.
Tickets are $15 and can be purchased at www.musicboxtheatre.com.
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Photos: Grateful Dead at Soldier Field
Grateful Dead over 3 nights: Missing Garcia, finding the spirit in the crowd
Graphic: Every Grateful Dead song ever played in Illinois since 1972
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