Pop Culture

Producer, performer, and composer Satomimagae’s new album Taba is a work of emergence. On it, she steps out of the introverted depths of pandemic isolation, moving more directly through the gauzy layers of sound she builds. The chrysalis is left behind, the wilder world open before her. It’s a journey gently taken. Taba never moves

If You Asked For a Picture Blondshell Partisan 2 May 2025 Blondshell’s If You Asked For a Picture is one of the most overtly polemical and confessional albums since Hole‘s Celebrity Skin. A cascade of riffs is interspersed with lyrical portraits of characters experiencing distress fueled by societal expectations and an unhealthy dependency on alcohol.

Some might think we have had enough documentaries about New York City in the mid-to-late 1970s. These people can be described as misinformed, misled, or simply missing the point. There is a good reason filmmakers continue to produce documentaries about this period, and will likely do so as long as the form exists, as they

Accelerator, the first album from New Orleans-based duo the Convenience – multi-instrumentalists Nick Corson and Duncan Troast – was released in 2021 and was a joyous celebration of drum machines, synths, and sugary hooks. While their commitment to this particular style seemed to deeply define the band, their press materials indicate otherwise, describing the record

“When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life,” the 18th-century English writer Samuel Johnson quipped. The Golden Dregs’ fourth album, Godspeed, is a paean to London, specifically to the people who make up the city, whose existence is its pulse, and whose stories, whether good or bad, reflect the city. In

The most popular jam bands have a tough go of it when it comes to studio albums. They will never capture the singularity of a live show, which varies not just in terms of setlist but in how each song is played. What ends up being featured, the length of a jam, or a nod

Does anyone still follow the hocus pocus about the Bermuda Triangle? Maybe you do, or maybe it’s all Greek (or Atlantean) to you, but you’ll gain a little insight and a lot of nonsense on this far-reaching phenomenon in Kino Lorber’s new Blu-ray of a 1979 “documentary”. As a concept, the alleged triangular stretch of

In most RPG narratives, the story belongs to the present, to the immediate triumph of the living. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 resists this convention. It frames the journey not as an individual victory, but as a dialogue with those who will someday walk the same ruined streets, breathe the same air, and find traces of

Language shapes and sculpts our reality. It delineates what’s possible, what’s probable, and what’s merely a flight of fancy. It helps us clarify what’s possible, stand up for our rights, and call out injustices. Words are our roadmap and the keys to our prison. The powers that control language control our reality, and we might

On View at the Five Spot Café: The Complete Masters Kenny Burrell With Art Blakey Blue Note 25 April 2025 Since there is not a lot of golden-era jazz music left in the vaults, the question begged by the constant stream of reissues is, Why? There is money, of course. However, many classic jazz titles,

Space Junk Marty Stuart and His Fabulous Superlatives Snakefarm 12 April 2025 It takes all of two seconds of Space Junk to realize what Marty Stuart and His Fabulous Superlatives are up to. That alternate-picked run is straight out of the surf rock playbook; Dick Dale would be proud. Stuart has played a little bit

Song of the Earth David Longstreth, Dirty Projectors, and s t a r g a z e New Amsterdam / Nonesuch 4 April 2025 As floodwaters rise and we “Walk the Edge”, Song of the Earth emerges as a reckoning. David Longstreth’s recent album is an ambitious 24-part song cycle for voice and orchestra, performed

Irma Thomas, the “Soul Queen of New Orleans”, has teamed up with that city’s beloved funk band, Galactic, to deliver a joyful and life-affirming new album,Audience with the Queen. While acknowledging that some things aren’t great right now, the LP brims over with love and hope, and fabulous music. Audience with the Queenis the perfect

In the relative safety of comfortable hindsight, think back to that moment of propulsion as our collective species hurtled towards one of time’s inevitable barriers. One of the most expansive and reflexive centuries in history was slamming to a close, and an equally mythologized future was careening toward us, promise, and uncertainty reaching out to

Safety has become a virtue. Yet what if too much safety becomes dangerous? What happens when ensuring one’s safety causes one to avoid the pleasures of life? When does the fear of being hurt mutate into a refusal to engage, relate, and change? Two absurdist cartoon television series—SpongeBob SquarePants and South Park—expose the dangers of

People bombarded with images of what their lives can be can’t fully grasp the importance of representation in pop culture. When you don’t see people like you who are ahead of you in life’s journey, it can be difficult to conjure an image of the future. It was for Tiff Hannay, lead singer for Rodeo

Laura Glipin’s powerful poem “Two-Headed Calf” inspired Rodeo Boys’ first single from Junior, a raucous heartbreaker of an album that has staked a claim for one of my favorite albums of the year. The Lansing, Michigan-based band self-describes as “the sound of a quiet rebellion of a queer, blue-collar heart” and “what happens when the

A Living: Working-Class Americans Talk to Their Doctor Michael D. Stein Melville House April 2025 Michael D. Stein’s A Living: Working-Class Americans Talk to Their Doctor is a human-centric depiction of labor and identity. The book is a collection of vignettes based on conversations between Dr. Stein and his patients. Stein’s book serves as both

With the 2020s halfway over, the past seems painful yet tangible, the present chaotic, and the future… well, perhaps just an exercise in retaining the core of humanity’s soul in a world increasingly like that of Lord of the Flies. For many, emotional trauma seems to be life’s painful act of branding — hollowing out

It is always nice to see how varied the trends within a genre can be. Take death metal, for instance, where Ancient Death and Diabolizer represent two vastly different strands. The former are informed by Timeghoul’s off-kilter progressive visions, which Blood Incantation brought back to prominence with their early works. The latter find purpose in

Long After the Fire Vicki Peterson and John Cowsill Label 51 Recordings 18 April 2025 Nothing comes from nothing, especially in music. Every song has its roots in something that came before it. That said, the magic of a great new track is found in how creatively interesting the artist tweaks an older formula and

Living with grief is one of the most challenging assignments every one of us has to take on. The ones we love are imprinted on our memories and artifacts. At times, it feels like they are everywhere, and while that can overwhelm us, sometimes we can reach a place where we feel the presence and

Mogwai: If The Stars Had a Sound Mogwai Lightbulb Film Distribution 28 April 2025 There is an early moment inMogwai: If the Stars Had a Soundwhen John Peel, the esteemed BBC presenter, is quoted as saying he never thought Mogwai would gain wide acclaim. Peel made this remark as a diehard fan, and his assessment

What better way is there to mark Stephen Malkmus‘ past milestones and present achievements than to revisit his most memorable Pavement songs? Malkmus’ wordplay, enigmatic and open to interpretation as it was, revealed different aspects to Pavement, often hinting at a sentimental, emotionally in-touch side that belied the wiseacre reputation that preceded the band. This

Bands come and go, and sometimes come back (again and again, especially when the well runs dry). But the Denver indie pop-rock duo named Tennis, formed in 2010 by college philosophy students Alaina Moore and Patrick Riley, aren’t playing around regarding their music career. Calling their downtown Denver apartment “home” for over a decade while

Eli Winter’s debut album didn’t reveal all his tricks. The Time to Come was a solo acoustic guitar affair, a cathartic release put out while Winter was still in college. The nature of the LP and his references to Jack Rose and Daniel Bachman suggested he was heading down one path. Still, he was simultaneously

Some of the most creative guitar music of the past decade and a half has come from female artists. On the outer fringe of jazz, there’s the incomparable work of MacArthur Genius Mary Halvorson, along with her recently rising acolytes, Ava Mendoza and Wendy Eisenberg. For art rockers, there are the stylistic and disjointed riffs

Suppose one glanced at the pitch for Send a Prayer My Way. One could conclude that this collaborative project is fraught with the dangers of novelty, a wild-hair whim of two indie rock darlings who wanted to cosplay as country music artists, blowing off steam from their day jobs. Julien Baker and Torres have established

Asheville, North Carolina-based singer-songwriter Colin Miller’s latest record, Losin’, was written in the shadow of his friend Gary King’s passing. Miller became King’s caretaker in his final years, living in a home on King’s property and tending to his day-to-day needs for care and friendship. Losin’ is Miller’s way of working through his grief, but