Pop Culture

Bruce Springsteen’s make-or-break album Born to Run is a tale of resilience and hope, betrayal and perfidy—a rock and roll odyssey complete with a bloody denouement. Magic Rat, the protagonist in “Jungleland” (the last track on Born to Run), travels from New Jersey to New York City, where he ends up trapped and gunned down—dead.

Kathleen Edwards went from running a coffee shop to exploring her freedom and releasing a basic covers EP. That doesn’t sound like a path to becoming a billionaire, yet here we are. Or at least her new release is named Billionaire, an effective title that’s undermined by nearly every cut on it. On her second

Parasites & Butterflies is the first Nova Twins album in three years, and the first since 2022’s Supernova, which made them big names in the UK. The press materials for the new record tout the duo’s gigs opening for Muse, Foo Fighters, and Bring Me the Horizon, and there’s no question that this is a

Big Thief return as a three-piece on their sixth studio album, Double Infinity. Only ten years ago, the former Berklee College of Music alumnae signed with Saddle Creek (eventually transitioning to 4AD) and were well on their way to becoming one of the biggest names in indie rock today. With the departure of bassist Max

Egypt’s Youssef Chahine is among the world’s important filmmakers who remain woefully unfamiliar to audiences in Region 1, so it’s no minor event that Criterion finally brings one of his films to Blu-ray. Perhaps ironically, that film was Chahine’s most notorious failure upon its 1958 release. Decades later,Cairo Station(Bāb al-Ḥadīd) was rehabilitated into possibly the

Wartorn Ukraine might not be the first place you’d expect to find the Dropkick Murphys lead singer, Ken Casey, but that’s precisely where the Boston legend found himself this past summer. After dedicating considerable time, money, and merchandise sales to Ukraine’s ongoing humanitarian crisis amidst a brutal, decades-long conflict with Russia, Casey thought it was

I am going to get on my usual hobby horse about August supposedly being a slow month! And it covers the full spectrum! Starting from the outskirts, Abhorrent Expanse continue to abstract away death metal into drone and free improvisation, while the collaborative effort of Mendoze/fluke-mogul/Perez is a wild ride through the avant-metal headspace. In

My obsession with shoegaze was not immediate. I got through My Bloody Valentine’s “Only Shallow”, with its heavy, driving guitars fine enough, but then the sound on Loveless devolved into disparate, unconnected, almost shimmering bits, no centrality of clear lyrics or three-chord melody propping them up. It was the same with Slowdive, though, being from

Ichikawa Raizô brilliantly brought Emil Cioran’s fatalistic attitude to life when he portrayed Kobuse Takuma in the 1966 film The Betrayal. Emil Cioran, that insomniac poet of pessimism, wrote, “Only optimists commit suicide, optimists who no longer succeed at being optimists. The others, having no reason to live, why would they have any to die?”

In 2022, Craft Recordings celebrated the 50th anniversary of one of the most significant musical events of the 1970s, when nearly 100,000 Black Los Angelenos crowded the Los Angeles Coliseum to enjoy Wattstax. Featuring many of the outstanding musicians on Stax Records, the concert commemorated the seventh anniversary of the Watts riots. Seven years prior,

It’s summertime in Berkeley, and that means the time is right for the Tedeschi Trucks Band to visit the historic Hearst Greek Theater on the beautiful University of California-Berkeley campus. The acclaimed 12-member blues rock ensemble are back, and the Greek is packed, as there are few, if any, who do it better when it

Brad Mehldau is a jazz icon who has never done things the usual way. While the gifted pianist has traveled more traditional routes with works like his acclaimed Art of the Trio series, and has released plenty of solo piano albums that certainly fall within expected parameters of the jazz genre (Live in Tokyo, Elegiac

Almost everyone has some sort of COVID-19 memory or story. While it’s not a time in recent history that many want to revisit, it remains tied to our ongoing experiences. Films and books set during the pandemic are beginning to emerge, and yet the subject matter can be a hard sell for an audience. Director

Suede are in the midst of an impressive, productive second act, and their latest goth-infused Antidepressants is a testament to that. Since 2013, three years after their live reunion, Suede have released five studio albums, equaling the total number of records during their first act (ignoring their lustrous B-sides, taking a lesson or two from

A largely philosophical question exists when it comes to supergroups. When can a supergroup shed that cumbersome designation and just be considered a band? Based upon the concept alone, the quite obvious explanation is never. However, the New Pornographers make an interesting case, seeing as how they are considered a supergroup based mainly upon what

Ferocity is an underappreciated aspect of art. If we exclude the more unrelenting forms of heavy metal, where anger and aggression are so endemic as to become slightly tedious, there are few genuine examples of popular art pursuing its project to the bitter end, regardless of audience reaction.Manic Street Preachers are among those few. Nirvana’s

In a way, Exalge, the new album from synthesist, composer, and improviser Matthew Ryals, is a fascinating and uncomplicated way to dive into the artist’s works. A totally improvisational live recording at a venue of the same name in Milan, Exalge is a direct, unvarnished sonic landscape, a real-time performance of the modular synthesizer, divided

Trio recordings by jazz groups don’t often feature a trumpet accompanied only by bass and drums. The chord-less (no piano or guitar, that is) saxophone trio has a long history, but the format of Strange Heavens, the new album from bassist Linda May Han Oh, is rare. Chet Baker recorded with such a trio in

The first 24 seconds of Swiss director Jasmin Gordon and her co-writer Julien Bouissoux’s The Courageous (Les Courageux) don’t suggest a drama about a single mother’s struggles raising her three children. Instead, it communicates terror and suspense, even a foreboding or haunting presence hidden from our view. As the camera slowly inches us towards a

With over 150 albums to his credit and counting, Bill Nelson may be one of the most prolific artists to emerge from the rock scene of the 1970s. This sonic chameleon has repeatedly damned the commercial consequences to follow his unquenchable muse into a multitude of genres – from glam, art-rock, and prog to ambient

Maybe it’s just a coincidence, but calling it a coincidence would be overlooking that Saint Etienne don’t just create pop music, they obsess over it. They are music archeologists, curators, and historians, parsing the esthetics and minutiae like botanists in a rainforest. What’s more, Saint Etienne‘s very career got off the ground with a brilliantly

When it comes to feminist music and what, if anything, is fashionable in feminism these days, Nancy Sinatra’s song about those soft-toe boots doesn’t come to mind. We’re more likely to think about how Taylor Swift presents herself on the world stage. “I don’t dress for women. I don’t dress for men,” she says, “Lately

My Light, My Massage Parlor Cassandra Jenkins Dead Oceans 15 August 2025 Cassandra Jenkins apparently doesn’t like leaving her work alone, choosing not only to tinker with it after its initial release, but also to make those updated versions available to listeners. In February 2021, she released An Overview on Phenomenal Nature, followed nine months

As the name suggests, West Texas Exiles are a ragtag group from assorted areas of the western region of the Lone Star State. The guys are rooted in Austin now, where 8000 Days was recorded (Studio 601) and where they have a residency at the country’s best dive bar (the Continental Club). The glory days

Water from Your Eyes exult in blasting through genre barriers to forge a bewildering and captivating persona. The Brooklyn-based outfit thrillingly contain multitudes; every song exudes acontagious vigor, and yet there is a studied intensity to their worldly music as well. On Water from Your Eyes’ breakthrough, the critically lauded 2023 album,Everyone’s Crushed, vocalist Rachel

In an interview, Apple Music’s Zane Lowe and Shane Boose, the musician also known as Sombr, agreed that social media “should be a tool, not a lifestyle”. However, this conclusion bites the hand that feeds it: TikTok drove Sombr’s singles “Back to Friends” and “Undressed” up the charts. Consequently, the singer described the completion of

This month, Cherry Red Records will release a four-disc box set, You’re No Big Deal: Grunge, The US Underground and Beyond 1984-1994, forsaking the usual selection of tracks from Alice in Chains, Nirvana, Pearl Jam in favour of deep cuts and rarities. As with any compilation of various artists, fans like me will almost certainly

Director Thomas Vinterberg’s acclaimed 1998 film, The Celebration, Festen in his native Danish, may be one of the best dark comedies in the global canon. It is both the best depiction of familial struggles, while, more broadly, the most important film to help viewers understand our current state of rising authoritarianism. Consider The Celebration’s basic

Artists generally dislike being labeled in the end. Musical mavericks would prefer that their music be met on its terms rather than lumped in with any passing trend and be free to roam wherever their muse might take them. Yet among musicians and fans alike, no label might be more often refuted than grunge. The

Katharina Volckmer’s new novel, Calls May Be Recorded, is a workplace satire taking place over the course of a single workday. While one can say of any novel that it is not for everyone, that would be a gross understatement in the case of this thoroughly kinky novel. The protagonist, Jimmie, works in a London