MUSIC

Piano, which foregrounds her love of ambient music: she spends much of the album allowing little details to collect until they sparkle like a garden full of morning dewdrops. The light electronic percussion that pulses through “La Langue d’Lamitié” provides a boost of energy and a sturdy backbone, working like a hip-hop breakbeat without distracting too much from the lush composition or disrupting its calm, soothing mood. Margaret’s voice first peeks in halfway through the album, and her tender performance on “City Song” feels like the arrival of the long-lost friend whom Romantic Piano has been preparing you to welcome.

No Lonesome

FlOwErS ReCoMpOsInG

The collective of teen indie-rock groups that make up Chicago’s Hallogallo scene has expanded significantly over the past year, no doubt in part because two of those groups, Horsegirl and Lifeguard, have signed to Matador. On May 25, the second annual Hallogallo Fest took over Lincoln Hall (a capacity upgrade from Beat Kitchen last year), and immediately afterward the crew announced another

DJ Kool Herc threw the very first hip-hop party in the Bronx on August 11, 1973, just a few weeks after Chicago producer and rapper the Legendary Traxster was born. As hip-hop celebrates its 50th anniversary this summer, it’s impossible to discuss Chicago’s contributions to its global culture without mentioning Traxster. He emerged in the early 90s as a member of the Ill State Assassins collective and half of cultishly beloved duo D 2 tha S (whose other half, Kay-Tone, is the late uncle of Herbert

Romantic Piano , the modest and largely instrumental third album from Chicago singer-songwriter Gia Margaret, grew from a recording where cicadas paint in the space between slow, sleepy tumbles of piano notes. “Cicadas” was the first track she made for the album, and its quietly reflective playfulness makes it a great addition to the tiny canon of recent recordings by local artists that prominently feature the buzzing bugs—it also includes “Now (Forever Momentary Space)” by Damon Locks’s Black Monument Ensemble and Fuubutsushi’s “Cicada Season.” Margaret’s “Cicadas” made a great seed for Romantic

No Lonesome bandleader Jeb Backe makes songs whose leisurely, swaggering saunter lends itself equally well to country, folk, and indie rock—and all those genres mingle on the group’s new album, Flowers Recomposing. Backe infuses the record with homemade charm and a spirit of informality, as if No Lonesome were performing an impromptu set around a campfire on a cool summer evening. Backe accomplishes this with seasoned sophistication, so that you know the looseness is an aesthetic choice. They get a little help from a couple contributors too, including drumming on one track by Austin Koenigstein of throwback psych-pop project Smushie (whose June album, Doofus Casanova, should win over fans of Unknown Mortal Orchestra). On “To Begin,” No Lonesome assemble exquisite instrumentation—a couple of picked acoustic guitars, soft handclaps, drums, a shaker, flamboyant horns—into a layer cake that towers higher and higher as the song progresses. Backe uses a restrained touch even while making ostentatious turns, which gives Flowers Recomposing an extra dose of o anded charm.