Best Show I've Seen in a Long Time: Rachel Unthank
Best Show I’ve Seen in a Long Time
The Reader’s Choice: Rachel Unthank & the Winterset at the Old Town School of Folk Music, September 21, 2008 and Mikkey Halsted’s Web-site release party at PLP Studios, January 20, 2009
I see so many radically different kinds of live music that this one was even tougher to call than Best Record Label. British folkies Rachel Unthank & the Winterset take the prize by a nose, though, for so pleasantly and thoroughly confounding my expectations when they played at the Old Town School as part of the World Music Festival. Though I really liked the group’s recent album, The Bairns (Real World), I figured they’d be a subdued live act—folk musicians are often pretty serious onstage, if not outright somber, and most of the tunes on The Bairns are gentle, sparse, and slow. But the Winterset were raucous, charming, and full of energy, bringing infectious warmth and impressive precision to their repertoire; they were clearly having fun playing off one another musically, and the stories they told to provide background for each song were funny, fascinating, or both. In the months since, I’ve found myself remembering certain moments from that show out of nowhere—I sure hope Unthank and company become regulars on the U.S. touring circuit, so I can make some more of those memories. 
myspace.com/rachelunthank. —Peter Margasak
If I hadn’t tailed hip-hop blogger Andrew Barber to a studio in the South Loop to get some background for my column—I was writing about his blog, Fake Shore Drive—I probably wouldn’t have spent the night of Obama’s inauguration at a party to celebrate the release of Mikkey Halsted’s new Web site. I mean, up till then I hadn’t even been aware that rappers were having Web-site launch parties, and it seemed an insufficiently momentous event for such a historic occasion. But though there was some structured business about Halsted’s site early on, that stuff soon fell by the wayside as the party turned into a freestyle cipher, with the mike ending up in the hands of everyone from well-known local talents—Que Billah, Mic Terror, members of the Ivy League—to no-name dudes who’d driven down from Wisconsin. The subject they kept returning to in their rhymes was the joy, pride, and relief that so many people seemed to be feeling that day—a fitting way to inaugurate the first hip-hop president. mikkeyhalsted.com. —Miles Raymer
Our readers’ choice: Andrew Bird in Millennium Park, September 3, 2008
