Pop Culture

On 13 June 2025, Israel carried out a string of precision assassinations inside Iran. Code-named Rising Lion, the attack used a blend of pre-planted explosives, fighter aircraft, and AI-enabled autonomous drones. The operation killed senior Revolutionary Guard commanders and civilian nuclear scientists in their private residences, triggering the 12-day Iran-Israel War. Despite geopolitical tensions already

In Canadian author Liann Zhang’s debut novel Julie Chan is Dead, Zhang takes us on a winding journey through the sordid underbelly of the influencer economy. Told from the perspective of Julie, a downtrodden grocery store cashier, Julie’s life is turned on its proverbial head after she receives a mysterious call from her estranged twin

In the 2020s, Hailey Bieber, spouse of the pop star Justin Bieber, began to outshine him as the more prominent public figure in their relationship. While Justin‘s 2019 album Changes received mixed critical reception, and, due to health concerns, the singer cancelled 2022’s Justice World Tour, Hailey’s beauty company, Rhode, was acquired by the conglomerate

In the cinematic world of Pete Travis’ dystopian cyberpunk film DREDD (2012), the Peach Trees megablock housing project is more than a setting — it’s a concrete colossus that functions simultaneously as a city-state, a tomb, a prison, and a vertical battlefield. The Peach Trees setting is not unique. Across film, games, comics, and real-world

On July 25th, Marvel Studios will release Matt Shakman’s The Fantastic Four: First Steps. On the eve of the new film’s release—the fourth attempt at a summer blockbuster—it seems an opportune moment to look back upon the original Fantastic Four comic books and explore how Marvel’s first family plays a vital role in offering contemporary

Imagine you’re an executive at Cinemax. Let’s say you suddenly find yourself in possession of a warehouse full of gory special effects equipment—fake severed limbs, the gear for numberless decapitation gags, and especially the mechanical and pneumatic systems that create arterial spurts. Palettes full of those. Also, there are crates full of katanas, swords, saws,

In their latest single, “Killing Fields”, released on 15th July 2025, hard rock band Shinedown burst back onto the emotional battlefield armed with sharpened convictions and a flame-throwing authenticity. The multi-platinum, chart-topping Florida quartet have fortified their motivational modus operandi, as showcased in this year’s earlier singles—”Three Six Five” and “Dance, Kid, Dance”—as well as

Cosmopolitanism, scholar Paul Gilroy tells us in his 2004 work After Empire, is a dangerous framework when applied from the top of the power structure downward. Too often, he writes, powerful agents who participate in such “have never paused over the actual history of past imperialism and the ongoing effects of colonial and imperial governance”

Personal is not the first adjective you’d reach for when describing techno, a genre made almost entirely out of sculpted electricity or shaped samples. Technically, it’spossibleto program slides, slurs, trills, or other affectations that give instrumentalists and vocalists a unique identity, but it’s time-consuming and a bit of a pain. Also, techno is primarily meant

Deadguy have a new record, an outcome as surprising as it is disorienting, 30 years after their first and only full-length release. In the time since, these pioneers of metalcore transformed into something like a cautionary tale, or maybe a cult object, depending mainly on how much you’re willing to sit with music that’s essentially

The Martians: The True Story of an Alien Craze that Captured Turn-of-the-Century America David Baron Liveright August 2025 In a better universe – where HBO is never called Max, everyone can agree on which prestige show we should watch, and The Walking Dead has never happened – a late season of Julian Fellowes’ The Gilded

Elliott Smith’s self-titled second album, Elliott Smith, marks a significant turning point in his recording career. It’s not his first album, but it might as well be, as 1994’s Roman Candle was more of an attempt to get down a bunch of songs during a particularly prolific period for Smith. It’s raw, scrappy, full of

“I write when I feel overwhelmed in my life,” explains Miles Chandler, singer, songwriter, and guitarist with the Boston-based band Clifford. “I want to disobey the impulse to keep these things private.” True to this confession, which appears in the press materials for their latest album, Golden Caravan,Clifford are a quartet that produce lumbering, guitar-heavy

The World Is on Fire Isaiah Collier & the Chosen Few Division 81 18 October 2024 It’s a Friday night in the People’s Republic of Berkeley here on 20th June, and the man that Downbeat has hailed as “The Next Sax Giant” is back in the Bay Area for a Summer Solstice blowout at The

The British-American poet W. H. Auden, in his poem “The Age of Anxiety” (1947), highlights humanity’s isolation in an increasingly industrialized and failing world. Nearly 80 years later, the Sick Man of Europe is picking up the threads of the same discussion: how to navigate in a world that is diametrically opposed to our needs?

It was a “gigantic, derelict, empty, silent monolith” that sparked Australian multi-instrumentalist Kevin Parker’s imagination while composing one of the most memorable albums of the 2010s. Recently, Tame Impala’s acclaimed Currents turned ten. PopMatters celebrated Currents as a “pure alliance of vintage and modern sounds, psychedelic and dance sensibilities”. Rolling Stone has enshrined it on

Calling Eddington the greatest fictional film yet produced about the COVID-19 pandemic might seem like faint praise. It is not. True, the list of contenders is not robust. There were some gimmicky efforts that used 2020 lockdown policies as a framing device to isolate characters (Steven Soderbergh’s Kimi, Rian Johnson’s Glass Onion, both released in

Pulitzer-Prize-winning author Caroline Fraser’s latest work is a gripping, compelling, and frequently disturbing read. Well argued, thoroughly researched, and intricately connected,Murderland: Crime and Bloodlust in the Time of Serial Killers makes a unique argument for the toxic concoction that led to the “golden age” of mass murderers. Fraser’s serial killer recipe has a lengthy and

Without a doubt, Brandee Younger is one of the most celebrated and unique jazz artists to emerge in the 21st century. Following in the footsteps of pioneering jazz harpists Alice Coltrane and Dorothy Ashby, this Grammy-nominee continues to redefine the harp’s potential in jazz and beyond, with a matchless style that marries this American-invented art

Home Is Where’s last record, the whaler, was a memorable iteration on 1990s emo touchstones with enough personality to stand on its own. Their live shows are the best way to get to know them, full of heart and joy. They completely won me over at last year’s Best Friends Forever festival. Blending a high-energy,

Anyone who knows Julian Cubillos as a multi-instrumentalist on other people’s records – Office Culture, Alena Spanger, and Christian Lee Hutson are among the artists who’ve enlisted his services – might be pleasantly surprised to know that he makes excellent records on his own, and that his latest release is his first in seven years.

If you have been keeping up with the news lately, you hope BettySoo is right when she sings, “Things are gonna get worse before they get better.” The singer doesn’t mean politically—or just politically—life, love, and anything that really matters seems to suck right now, but BettySoo is no pessimist. The self-proclaimed “Queen of the

Sci-fi and rock music have been intersecting genres for several decades now. At least since David Bowie emerged with the story of Ziggy, featuring its progressive applications and some well-placed glitter, the imaginations of audiences have been captivated by the growing sagas and myths that have evolved out of popular culture. Hip-hop (at least in

In the lyrics of Kate Bush’s Hounds of Love (1985), a woman floats atop a sea, drifting in and out of consciousness as fear and exhaustion overtake her body and mind. She withers away in memories of a life filled with promise and regret, while also longing to run up a hill to fulfill an

Salsa de la Bahia Vol. 3: Renegade Queens Various Artists Patois Records 21 March 2025 In his liner notes to Salsa de la Bahia Vol. 3: Renegade Queens, renowned San Francisco Bay Area jazz DJ and music writer Jesse “Chuy” Varela offers crucial context. “As you listen to the music presented here,” he writes, “understand

It’s been nearly six years since we’ve heard from Sacred Paws, the UK guitar-and-drums duo consisting of Ray Aggs and Eilidh Rodgers. Following 2019’s Run Around the Sun, the duo were not particularly inspired by the COVID lockdowns. That may have had something to do with the London-based Aggs and the Glaswegian Rodgers preferring to

Perfect Teeth (30th Anniversary Edition) Unrest 4AD 28 March 2025 History loves to project the illusion of straight lines and clear boundaries. It’s appealing to think that the Renaissance started in 1300, ending the Dark Ages and the Black Plague. It’s attractive to consider the Roaring 1920s ended on 1 January 1930 with a black

A figure walks the shadowy streets of Berlin with a friend when they accidentally step into 2003. Holding their companion’s hand is like holding onto their former self. “Close to who I was,” Ronja Schößler confides, in a hushed tone, as if sucked in by the force of the memory. Another time, they hope a

It’s exciting to see a band reach another creative peak after following them for years, and the Ophelias are destined to reach an even wider audience with Spring Grove, which is their finest work to date. Produced by Julien Baker, the band has captured their dynamic live shows better than ever. “We have been reaching

All the films in Kino Lorber’s three-disc box Film Noir: The Dark Side of Cinema XIX are highly visual and suspenseful treats. We’re going to focus on the often overlooked gem, Mitchell Leisen’s fascinating and fabulous No Man of Her Own (1950), inspired by Cornell Woolrich’s noir premise that happiness is always just beyond reach.