Pop Culture

One of the more fascinating solo artists I encountered while checking out the lineup for theKilby Block Partyfestival, which takes place 15-18 May in Salt Lake City, is a multidimensional Renaissance woman with a one-stage name. She isn’t Madonna, Rihanna, or Shakira.Want to take a guess? Sasami is a Northern California-based no-fear musician who learned

Scowl’s debut, How Flowers Grow, was a blast of traditional-leaning hardcore that showed promise. However, the follow-up EP. Psychic Dance Routine, suggested they were already outgrowing a classic hardcore sound, incorporating more sung vocals from lead singer Kat Moss and embracing Riot Grrl and indie rock influences. This trajectory continues on Are We All Angels,

Guitarist William Tyler’s albums are typically made for sipping a backyard beer or for soberly looking out the window as your van drives down a faceless, nameless highway. Take “Highway Anxiety” on his albumModern Country:A reverb-tinted guitar spends about seven minutes rolling out a slow-developing pick pattern that eventually slides into a smooth synth fade.

One of my more entertaining music experiences during trips to Nashville over the years occurred at the Bluebird Cafe. The iconic club located in a strip mall away from the insanity found in tourist traps along Broadway is considered a space for songwriters (some unsung) who are the “heroes behind the hits”. That was the

In The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha, when Don Quixote affirms for Sancho Panza the truth of the proverb, “Where one door shuts, another opens,” he is steeling himself for a more exciting adventure than the exploits that did not materialize or resulted in setbacks. In the character of Quixote, Cervantes creates a

For those concerned they won’t remember everything fromMission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One, there is no need to worry. The half-hour preceding the credits ofMission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning(confusingly not titledMission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part Two) serves as a handy exposition download packet. Flashbacks from across the series’ nearly three-decade history flicker

Do you remember that suicide poem, “Resumé” by Dorothy Parker? The narrator lists the various ways one might kill oneself and concludes they are all too messy, unpleasant, or just plain dull. “You might as well live”, the speaker wearily concludes. Tony Kamel’s new album features a host of songs about death and dying, but

Born in Australia, raised in Seattle, and currently based in New York, singer/songwriter/pianist Eliana Glass learned to sing and play piano by ear as a child. Hiding underneath her parents’ piano, she felt moved and inspired. “I felt protected under the wooden beams,” she explained in the press materials for her debut album, E. “I

To Hell with Poverty! A Class Act: Inside the Gang of Four Jon King Akashic September 2025 There’s no question that Gang of Four are legends of punk, but where do they belong in the conversation really? When they formed in 1976, punk was still shiny, new, and considered revolutionary. Yet even in their embryonic

NI HUI – Voices of the Forest Kayatibu Da Lata Music 9 May 2025 It’s not every day that the rich tones of a remote Amazonian commune find their way up the sonic ladder to a global audience. The Indigenous Brazilian music collective Kayatibu bring us to the nucleus of their world on their stunning

Who was Tom Tyler? This forgotten matinee hero, known mainly for B westerns and serials, receives a bout of resurrection in The Tom Tyler Silent Film Collection, newly on DVD and Blu-ray from Undercrank Productions. According to the bonus slideshow on the disc, Tom Tyler was born Vincent Markowski to parents who immigrated from Lithuania.

“The Weight” appears on the Band’s now legendary 1968 album Music from Big Pink. Wikipedia says that Robbie Robertson wrote the song. However, to borrow a phrase fromGeorge Gershwin‘s Porgy and Bess, it ain’t necessarily so. Or, to borrow a phrase from “Luck Be a Lady”, best known in Frank Sinatra’s version, “there is roomfor

If you were an alto saxophonist any time after 1940, the question was not whether Charlie Parker was inside your sounds, but how and what you did with that influence. Bird changed how people played jazz on every instrument, but in playing his instrument, it was tough to avoid comparisons to the master. Jim Snidero

Gee Whiz: The Get Away From Me Demos Nellie McKay Omnivore Recordings 9 May 2025 Twenty-one years ago, the 21-year-old Nellie McKay released her debut album Get Away From Me to much critical acclaim. Reviewers from the New York Times to Pitchfork and PopMatters praised its eclectic mix of musical styles from Tin Pan Alley

Too often, dub is used as a superficial shorthand for slowed-down, chilled-out, reverb-laden instrumental bonus tracks. I tend to encounter “dub versions” of songs tacked onto the ends of albums like musical petit fours, which can come across as a tropicalist trope with broad appeal; who doesn’t like a breezy beat, after all? Other artists

In 2019, André 3000 appeared to be in the grips of an existential crisis. “In my own self, I’m trying to figure out where do I sit?” speaking to Rick Rubin, he continued, “I don’t even know what I am, and maybe I’m nothing. Maybe I’m not supposed to be anything.” These somber musings were

It’s a surreal time for America in the spring of 2025, with the Trump regime’s fascist assault on the republic feeling like a dystopian sci-fi movie come to life. However, the psychedelic rock counterculture will never yield to authoritarianism, being a movement that has long stood as a beacon for peace, freedom, and personal liberation.

One scene defines D.A. Pennebaker’s 1967 documentary Dont Look Back (the title omits the usual apostrophe), which chronicles Bob Dylan’s 1965 UK tour at the ascension of his stardom. It’s the long shot from behind Dylan as he performs on stage surrounded by darkness, a single spotlight bearing down on him. One scene also defines

In his debut novel, Not Long Ago Persons Found, poet and fiction writer J. Richard Osborn invites us into a shadowy landscape in which the murder of a child impacts the governments of two unidentified countries. This novel is doubly enigmatic: the narrative atmosphere is mysterious, intimidating, and obscured by ambiguous events, and the narration

Twenty-six albums into their career, pop duo Sparks have maintained a level of sophistication that stands up with their older work, complete with a production sheen that gives their idiosyncratic backdrop a contemporary flavor. Having explored their shared history on Edgar Wright’s 2021 documentary The Sparks Brothers, Ron and Russell Mael have pointed their attention

I’m With Her is a folk/Americana supergroup. The all-female trio (Sarah Jarosz, Aoife O’Donovan, and Sara Watkins) have won several Grammy Awards individually and collectively and been nominated for dozens more. Their sophomore album, Wild and Clear and Blue, will win them even more honors. The three singer-songwriters penned all 11 lilting and literate songs

Over the past decade, Will Toledo has done the opposite of what helped him build a solid fan base early in his career. As an artist under the moniker Car Seat Headrest, Toledo released 11 albums over four years and was quickly snatched up by Matador. The record label milked a lot out of his

Eight years have elapsed since TajMo, a blues record that melded old and new by virtue of guitarists Taj Mahal and Keb’ Mo’. It was a pleasant, albeit safe, affair, and Room on the Porch proves to be much the same, providing a formidable, if conventional listen. However, like they did on the 2017 album,

Jenny Hval’s latest album, Iris Silver Mist, was conceived by the artist as an olfactory experience. Heavily informed by scent, Hval first got a whiff of the central idea for Iris Silver Mist while touring back in 2022. Named after a fragrance designed by French perfumer Serge Lutens, Hval’s album emits the same cool, layered

I Said I Love You First, the title of singer and actress Selena Gomez’s fourth studio album, is a blunt statement, hinting at happiness and conflict. A listener might wonder, “Why did one partner say, ‘I love you’ first?” Did the other hesitate?While promoting the record, Gomez and fiancé Benny Blanco, her main collaborator, projected

There are no creative half measures for Farnaz Ohadi. She comes by it honestly. Born in Iran to parents with strong musical inclinations, she recalls her father playing reel-to-reel tapes front to back, over and over, of music from around the world. At the forefront of his interests was flamenco. A “life-affirming” trip to southern

It had the makings of just another year. Annual archetypes were hollowed out anew, trends awaited the spark of resuscitation, and disappointments and surprises alike were handicapped by the legions of obsessives. The year saw its share of bands that altered their attack and, as a result, alienated factions of their fan bases while attracting

Few albums embody rock’s essential contradictions as vividly as Guns N’ Roses’ Appetite for Destruction from 1987. It is both high art and primal sleaze, anthemic yet nihilistic, precision-engineered yet volatile, an album of self-annihilation that became a commercial monolith to rival Michael Jackson’s Thriller (1982). Released into a late-’80s rock landscape bloated with posturing

Grey DeLisle’s new double album is chock-full of empathetic songs that are equal parts silly and sincere. DeLisle has a unique voice that makes her singing seem girlish even when she’s serious. There’s something comic and odd about the effect. This ambiguity makes the lyrics’ emotional concerns seem deeper and heavier. If one can’t laugh

That’s the Price of Loving Me Dean Wareham Carpark 28 March 2025 The last time Dean Wareham and Kramer were together in the studio was almost 35 years ago, when they recorded Galaxie 500′s swan song, This Is Our Music. On Wareham’s newest solo effort, That’s the Price of Loving Me, the two reunite, picking