Pop Culture

Musicians have long drawn inspiration from armed conflict. Scotland’s the Sensational Alex Harvey Band addressed the American Revolution in its 1976 hit “Boston Tea Party”, for example, while Paul Kennerley’s White Mansions (1978) employed the likes of Steve Cash and John Dillon (both from the Ozark Mountain Daredevils), Jessi Colter, and Waylon Jennings to musically

WhenReflections, the debut record from Halifax’sGodthrymm, was released, it was an immediate stunner. Led by Hamish Glencross (ex-My Dying Bride/Solstice), Godthrymm found themselves between two parallel UK traditions, the sorrow-laden doom/death of the Peaceville Three, and the more weight-driven, epic doom of Solstice.Distortions, the second part of theVisionstrilogy, followed by refining rather than reshaping that

Spatial, No Problem Lee “Scratch” Perry and Mouse on Mars Domino 5 June 2026 Lee “Scratch” Perry became a legend for his production and the influence it had on reggae, dub, electronic music, and more. Ironically, though, for the last 40-odd years of his life, he was known for something else. Of course, many albums

When Belgian singer-songwriter and multidisciplinary artist Camille Willemart, alias Camille Camille, sings over a fingerpicked acoustic guitar, you feel as if memories are holding onto you or you’re holding onto them. Inescapable either way. She’s an arresting folk artist—more than that, though, her songs are fey lullabies as if plucked from some forgotten century or

Renoir is a courageous film. Courageous because it is deeply personal. It is not a film that tries to seem radical all the time, nor one that calls attention to its own form as if that were enough. The courage seems to come from facing a memory that is too intimate, almost uncomfortable in its

With her full-length debut, 2020’s Forever Blue, and 2022’s elegant follow-up, As the Moon Rests, A.A. Williams explored the intersection of doom rock and dream pop, integrating exquisite dread and compelling fragility. With her covers album, Songs From Isolation, released in 2021 during the COVID era, she paid tribute to a variety of songs—from the

There was a time when live albums felt dangerous. Not polished. Not corrected by committee. Dangerous. You could hear the room breathing. You could hear amplifiers misbehaving and drummers pushing a little too hard. Sometimes the singer missed a note. Sometimes the singer found one nobody knew existed until that exact second. A live record

Many rock fans are familiar with the Beatles’ universally reviled television movie, Magical Mystery Tour, but how the Beatles managed to make it and get it aired in December 1967 is relatively unknown. The story of how Magical Mystery Tour came to be is one of tragedy, hubris, and the price of extreme fame. The

Through the years, Spirit Adrift transformed from a traditional doom metal sound toward a classically inclined heavy metal approach. Listening to their new, and by all accounts final, record, this evolution does not feel so much like a gradual change as a rediscovery of a forgotten truth, one heard in the shift from lumbering doom

Brandon Seabrook, a guitar and banjo virtuoso, is about as unique an improviser as contemporary music has produced. His music can be whimsical and edgy, often at the same time. There is plenty of beauty and atmosphere in his tiny string symphonies, but they are rarely designed to sustain a single luxurious mood. Appalachian textures

In the two decades since its release, Madonna’s seminal tenth studio album,Confessions on a Dancefloor, has taken on a complicated legacy. Many critics in the mid-aughts declared it one of the decade’s best pop albums and said it reaffirmed the pop music legend’s place in the culture, timeless and ever-evolving. David Hutchinson of Attitude magazine

Pop music can be divided between songs that affirm the status quo and those that, in longtime Village Voice critic Barry Walters’ words, “epitomize an alienation not specific to LGBTQ people but familiar to those of us who feel an anguish that exceeds what pop typically articulates.” Mighty Real, Walter’s mammoth history of LGBTQ music

Since 2024, Kou Records, a label co-run by experimental vocalist Charmaine Lee and sought-after producer and composer Randall Dunn, has been “dedicated to artists who have built their own musical language”. A listen to their small but potent roster bears this out. From Lee’s processed, often violent vocal contortions to Aliya Ultan‘s foreboding song cycle

Folktronica musician Beth Orton’s latest record, The Ground Above, is made up of two halves, musically and thematically. The first part is dark and downbeat, full of sad lyrics and strange and somewhat scattered accompaniment. The second is more hopeful and sonically melodic. As the album’s title suggests, if we look up, all we see

The Man Who Reclaimed His Head isn’t really one of Universal’s 1930s horror films, although that hasn’t prevented its inclusion in such film packages for lack of a better idea.That’s how I first saw it one Saturday afternoon. It’s certainly adjacent to horror, and for good measure, counts as a proto-noir while packing a punch

What an absolutely bizarre summer. While most of the United States has been suffering from record-breaking heatwaves, other parts have been cool and overcast. The news headlines have been the usual nonstop litany of cynical apocalypticism, yet much of the world is just vibeing out to the World Cup and Taylor Swift‘s wedding. Suffice it

Live percussion in electronic music so often feels decorative; in the hands of Ravish Momin, however, the percussion is the whole point, the axis on which everything else turns. As a drummer and producer, Momin—the main brain behind Sunken Cages—has spent the past 20 years building a uniquely idiosyncratic soundworld that fuses traditional Indian percussion

American Football – American Football (LP4) (Polyvinyl) American Football (LP4) by American Football Mike Kinsella still knows how to twist the knife, and that knife is most often lodged in his gut. It can be a lot if you are a lyrics person, but there is so much pretty melancholy in each of the four

Something Worth Waiting For Friko ATO 24 April 2026 Friko’s debut, Where We’ve Been, Where We Go from Here(2024), was the type of record that made many of us sit up and take notice. Their mix of shaggy, noisy guitars and melodies is an irresistible mix for my demographic, and I, too, fell under their

I get the cosiest feeling when I watch the old 1980s sitcom, Cheers (streaming on Hulu at this writing). There are several reasons for this. First, of course, is that it reminds me of being young: its run ended when I was 14. Second, it was part of the glorious 1990s Friday nights on British

I am a frenetic guy. I don’t nap much, and I prefer my days to be packed with projects, friends, and work. That’s why I was in the Knoxville Airport at 5:00 am on the Monday after the Big Ears Festival had ended. I wanted to get home to start my day after hearing so

Nu Metal Anomaly 1: Slipknot Slipknot’s rise wasn’t supposed to make sense, but it was undeniable. I’d seen them open for Coal Chamber on the Livin’ La Vida Loco tour, where they made quite an impression on my 13-year-old impressionable mind. Their feral energy was contagious, and they were contaminating Ozzfest-minded fans by the minute.

Christian-Jacque’sThe Second Twin(1966) is a very 1960s slice of French sleekness packaged like a murder thriller. Well, it kind of is a murder thriller, although it’s mainly a character-driven drama of an adulterous affair between glamorous people. It works either way, as revealed in Kino Lorber’s new Blu-ray. There are reasons to be confused. The

The five songs on Australian singer-songwriter Sarah Blasko’s latest EP,Forgotten World,were recorded and mixed at the same time as her highly celebrated seventh album,I Just Need to Conquer This Mountain,from 2024. Critics praised that album for its exploration of dark personal themes (e.g., divorce, religious doubt, death) that serve as a vehicle for looking toward

The Oakland-based band Mildred will fool you into thinking you’ve heard them before with their shaggy dog tales mumbled over slacker rock. A part of you will die inside, as you heard this 35 years ago—even though you weren’t alive. Today, you’re seemingly listening to another indie wannabe Pavement with a megalomaniac as President, and

A confession that will shock exactly no one: I have been a card-carrying Toriphile since 1994. Intellectually, I know the catalogue and career of Tori Amos with the encyclopedic recall of a savant; emotionally, I know the music of Tori Amos with the rapturous heart of my 14-year-old self, closely examining the light-soaked, soft-font lyric

The Red Hangar (Hangar Rojo) narrows its focus to the first day of Chile’s 1973 coup and follows one man through the speed and confusion of institutional collapse. Directed by Juan Pablo Sallato and based on Fernando Villagrán’s autobiographical chronicle published in 2002, Disparen a la bandada (Shoot the Flock), it follows Air Force captain

The diverging black metal strands prevail in April. On one side, Black Hurst take up the mantle of Necromantia and Varathron, imbuing their sound with a classically metallic tinge. On the other hand, Evil Warriors continue to blossom from their proto-black/death dreams into an overarching, hallucinogenic extreme metal beast, their third full-length being their most

Since their inception, there hasn’t been a band that sounds like the Afghan Whigs. Sure, you can play spot the reference like you can with any other band, but they create something so singular that if you are part of the Congregation, you know you can’t get a hit like this anywhere else. “House of