Pop Culture

Edmund White, who died in 2025 at 85, leaves behind one of the broadest, most transgressive, and most distinctive bodies of fiction in postwar American literature. His oeuvre moves restlessly between intensely confessional memoir, literary biography, and autofictional novels without ever quite settling on any of them. His reputation still rests largely on A Boy’s

From the grizzly opener “Stay in Your Lane”, Creature of Habit makes it plain for all to hear: Courtney Barnett is here to rock. No frills, no fuss; just rock. In some ways, it’s the perfect throwback to grunge and indie, earmarking a no-nonsense, heartfelt barrel of songs. “I don’t know how to trust you,”

Adam O’Farrill is a spectacular trumpet player and a sympathetic bandmate who plays with some of the best musicians in jazz, including Mary Halvorson, Anna Webber, Rudresh Mahanthappa, and Hiromi. His projects as a leader have been full of imagination and strong composition. The quartet he led called Stranger Things was, of course, cinematic and

It’s been another strong year for television, chock full of quirky and compelling stories… You may just not be aware of it. Sure, Adolescence erupted with its frightening, urgent story of teenage misogyny and violence, Andor made waves with its parallels to real-life genocide, and Fallout again hit a home run with its capitalist wasteland

Listening to The Dutchman’s opening narration, it’s as if the voice of Dr. Amiri, played by Stephen McKinley Henderson, reaches out across the void. It’s what we might imagine God’s voice to sound like. He threads the words with a rhythm that emphasizes their significance. The sound of the clock, whose ticktocks boom, and the

For a while in the late 1960s and early ’70s, if you heard the terms “French film” or “French New Wave” or even just “foreign film” (outside of France), many people’s thoughts went straight to Claude Lelouch’sA Man and a Woman(Un homme et une femme), a major worldwide hit of 1966 about the simple mysteries

Planet B (Justin Pearson and Luke Henshaw) enlist Johnny Whitney of the Blood Brothers for guest vocals on “War’s Coming Home”, a monumental blast of industrial fury with lyrics that recall the provocations of Whitney’s best-known project. From the opening lines, shrieked by Whitney, “Fake ass GI Joe / I-C-E war’s coming home”, the song

“Love is what makes it all worthwhile. Otherwise, there’s no taste. Life is just dry.”—Crispian Mills of Kula Shaker, 2026. In a candid Zoom discussion spanning thousands of miles between the West Coast and Western Europe, the frontman of English psychedelic rock band Kula Shaker treated me to a glimpse into his existential mind. Although

“It might not all be easy listening, but it’s certainly intentional.” That’s a direct quote from the press notes for the latest record from the Nicole Saphos Band. The new self-titled album from the Los Angeles-raised, Philadelphia-based artist is equal parts meditative, angry, sensitive, and intense, with a style rooted largely in indie rock but

My Word Against Mine (2025), screened in the International Competition at the One World Festival, begins raw. People sit facing the camera, framed head-on, answering a psychiatrist we never see. The face occupies the center of the frame; the office disappears; what remains is speech, the wait between one sentence and the next. Sometimes the

Saxophonist Jon Irabagon is the kind of modern jazz musician who makes hash of boundaries, categories, and debates about “the tradition” being at odds with the vanguard. He is a Juilliard-trained virtuoso with mastery of the jazz tradition dating back a century,anda musician who regularly runs roughshod over the so-called rules. He records electric and

There’s more than one reason they tell you not to reinvent the wheel. It’s to dissuade the people who don’t have the skills to do it, sure, but also to make sure you don’t find yourself in the dangerous profession of Wheel Reinventor. While there are certainly worse things to be known for than reliably

Few bands lodged themselves into the consciousness of a British youth generation as much as the Stone Roses. Emerging in the late 1980s with the single “Sally Cinnamon”, they seemed, for a brief shining moment, to embody the future of rock music itself. Yet the real measure of their importance is not the records but

In December 2017, Trinisha Browne opened for Azealia Banks at L’Olympia in Montreal. The lights had barely dimmed before her voice, bright, rhythmic, Caribbean, filled the room. Then, an emerging artist still shaping her sound, she began the evening with “Glow”, an unreleased song at the time but destined to return years later, reimagined and

Who could’ve predicted that a Chicago-based instrumental band that released two albums in 1998 and 2001 before dropping out of sight would release their third album in 2026? It’s been an insane 12 months, so nothing seems surprising these days. Pullman feature members of Tortoise, Come, Gastr Del Sol, and Eleventh Dream Day (among others)

“Excuse me,” says Captain Kirk in 1989’s Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, directed by and starring William Shatner, “Excuse me, I just want to ask a question.” He says this not as a seasoned captain of a spaceship, but as if he were no more than a curious student, “What does God need with

Mailin María Silvia Esteve Party Film 12 March 2026 | One World María Silvia Esteve’s documentary Mailin is less interested in recounting trauma than in showing how it settles into ordinary life. The film follows Mailin Gobbo, an Argentinian woman seeking justice years after being sexually abused by a priest who once occupied a trusted

Project Hail Mary Phil Lord, Christopher Miller Amazon/MGM March 2026 Some may walk out of Phil Lord and Christopher Miller’s goofy and pop-operatic adaptation of Andy Weir’s novel Project Hail Mary trying to string together all the shards of hard science fiction-speak that just burst from the screen at them. They may be able to

Upon its initial release 30 years ago, Wes Craven’s Scream (1996) was hailed by horror fans and critics alike as a much-needed slice to the arm for the staid and stale slasher subgenre. Exhibiting a cunning self-awareness of the genre’s well-worn tropes and plot devices, the post-modernist overtones of Craven’s film heralded a sharp sea

Saxophonist Ben Wendel has been experimenting with form and technology throughout most of his career. He is an ambitious composer and fluid improviser, so that makes him a “jazz” musician by default. Whether on his own or as a founding member of the band Kneebody, he has played with groove-oriented rhythms, electronics, and unusual instrumentation,

For Footballhead’s Weight of the Truth, a “post-grunge revival” is hard to claim. There have consistently been new bands popping up that play the style, while Nickelback and Three Days Grace have never stopped being discussed. Perhaps “post-grunge reassessment” is a better wording. What in the 2000s was viewed as a gravel-throated cyst on the

There’s a documentary by directors Michael Dunaway and Tara Wood called 21 Years: Richard Linklater. The title comes from “the notion that an artist’s career can be summarized within its first 21 years.” If we go back in time from its release year of 2014, the 21 years of the title takes us back 1993;

Country Super Hits Volume 2 Jim Lauderdale Independent 5 December 2025 The last time I saw Jim Lauderdale, it was at a morning show at a bar in Nashville, where he was teaching the audience Tai Chi. He had a big smile on his face during his instructions, as he explained how Tai Chi helps

Peter and the Wolf billy woods, Mickey Diamond and Sam Seed Sukseed / Deep Fried Beats 20 March 2026 There is a version of underground hip-hop that has become so fluent in its own language. These are tough tales of street corners, the weight of cocaine and consequence, the documentation of hard lives lived under

Producer/collaborator Justin Raisen has unlocked another level of Kim Gordon’s eternal (no Sonic Youth pun intended) coolness on the three solo albums they have created together. The indie icon’s last album, The Collective, was a triumph, blending her inimitable voice and provocative, humorous commentary with trunk-rattling trap beats and blasts of abrasive noise. Play Me

Had Styles P not hurled a chair at Sean “Puffy” Combs, there’s no telling how the LOX would’ve settled their contractual dispute. However, this was the summer of 1999, and the Yonkers trio—composed of Jadakiss, Styles P, and Sheek Louch—had exhausted almost every resource at their disposal to get out of Bad Boy Entertainment, the

Xiu Mutha Fuckin’ Xiu: Vol. 1 Xiu Xiu Polyvinyl 16 January 2026 Xiu Xiu’s prodigious output is marked by some truly astonishing, far-reaching covers they’ve included over the past two and a half decades. Like the Afghan Whigs‘ Greg Dulli, they share a knack for choosing songs they can reinvent musically to reveal the desperation

In some respects, the “era” attitude towards pop is bad for the music. After all, what would culture sound like if Madonna had been expected to pivot to country pop after catching the world’s imagination with “Like a Virgin”? What if Britney Spears had switched to industrial metal after “Hit Me, Baby One More Time”

We live in the age of frictionless capitalism, and finally, we have a pop star to match. In a world where political leadership often feels chaotic, clumsy, or distressingly analog, Dua Lipa offers an alternative. She does not just perform songs; she executes a glitch-free protocol of joy that mirrors the fantasies of modern technopopulism.

Like many latter-day Talk Talk fans, I embarked on my journey searching for the Spirit of Eden, but while rummaging through the record racks, my eyes were drawn to The Colour of Spring, and I was intrigued to make it my first port of call. The album has a cover design depicting an entomological cabinet