Pop Culture

“Best get new dreams, these old dreams won’t last.”“Soon enough, work and love will make a man out of you.” After their self-titled debut and Sub Pop-released follow-up Shine a Light, Constantines seemed primed for a significant breakthrough. The Guelph, Ontario-based band’s fiery, energetic brand of punk was indebted to greats like Fugazi and the

In 1993, Michael Jackson was weighing his next move in the film industry. He set up a series of meetings in Los Angeles with his longtime collaborator, the Oscar‑winning producer and animator Will Vinton. “I always thought animation would be perfect for him,” Vinton recalls. “The projects he’d tried up to that point hadn’t really

The anniversaries keep piling up as the years tick by. In 2024, it was 30 years since Kurt Cobain’s death by suicide. In 2026, it will be 35 years since the release of Nevermind. That makes me feel both old, although I was only 12 then, and sad, as I don’t think there’s been a

Hodari is “Iradoh” spelled backwards – a wordplay on “irado”, Brazilian slang for something dope or badass, though it literally means “angry”. This duality of naughty playfulness and raw emotion runs through Hodari’s music. Based in Brasília, the capital of Brazil, Hodari is a singer, songwriter, musician, and model whose music lies at the intersection

The Cinema of Extractions: Film Materials and Their Forms Brian Jacobson Columbia University Press February 2025 There is a scene in the first third of Brady Corbet’s The Brutalist (2024), which sees László Tóth (Adrien Brody) shoveling coal after being fired from a remodeling project by an irate Harrison Lee Van Buren (Guy Pearce). Knowing

The term “New Wave” is open to many interpretations, but a simple description might be this: a more pop-oriented version of punk rock, with its anarchic edges smoothed and replaced by synthesizers and hooks. Musical artists of all stripes who weren’t quite raw enough to sound like the Sex Pistols, the Clash, Ramones, or the

It is rumored that Marsha P. Johnson *threw the first brick at the 1969 Stonewall Uprising. Although the historical accuracy of that claim remains debated, the symbolic weight of Johnson’s presence at Stonewall is undeniable. Yet Stonewall was only one chapter in a life defined by resistance. Marsha: The Joy and Defiance of Marsha P.

Listening toExcess of Loss, the new album from Xol Meissner, one can’t help but be transported to a different time and place, where the haunting baritone vocals recall Scott Walker, Nick Cave, and Jacques Brel, and the instrumental accompaniment consists of a hammered lap steel. The combination invokes a dream-like state that is dark and

Their first record in more than two decades, More drops Pulp headfirst into 2025. They aren’t trying to sound young, but showcase their truth as they see it from an older, more refined point of view, much like John Lennon did on his 1980 comeback, Double Fantasy. However, much like the Lennon work, it’s hard

Drew Lustman may be electronic music’s most restless experimentalist. Since he first burst onto the scene with 2009’s Love Is a Liability in the first flush of the post-dubstep implosion, he’s worked in everything from big room house anthems to steely glam post-punk over the last 16 years. His restless, relentless innovation means there’s simply

In the March 1920 edition of The Catholic World, writer and journalist Fitz-James O’Brien was memorialised as “the Celtic Poe”, a phrase that combines a compliment with a category error. “Celtic” is a label for languages, mythologies, and revivals; it’s for peoples, not persons. Indeed, it is an aesthetic posture barely evident in the author’s

As I wrote in a blog, “Longing in music takes many forms, whether in the sharp whine of a pedal steel guitar, the weary cry of a muted trumpet, the pulsating digital beat of an 808 kit, the blending of human voices suggesting loss and grief—and most obviously, in lyrics.” Songs with questions, instructions, or

Kai Crowe-Getty used to rock out when he fronted the band Lord Nelson, but he’s more introspective on his solo debut album, The Wreckage. Oh, he still rocks out, just not as much, and he is far removed from being a sensitive singer-songwriter.His music more closely resembles that of Neil Young’s country rock period of

Jazz guitarist and composer Mary Halvorson has plied her trade in a variety of configurations: as a solo guitarist, with vocalists, string ensembles, quartets, you name it. However, she’s currently in the midst of what may be her most acclaimed and creatively fruitful period. As the leader of the jazz sextet Amaryllis, Halvorson released Amaryllis

There’s something incredible that happens when you listen to an ABBA song; you’d think, at some point, they’d run out of melodies to sing or emotions to detail, but it never seems to happen. The unparalleled heights of their discography (“Dancing Queen”, “Mamma Mia”) stand solid next to their little-known ones of emotional turmoil (“The

A Room With a Door That Closes Maiya Blaney Lex 13 June 2025 For artists, your room is everything. As Brian Wilson so poignantly puts it on the ethereal “In My Room”, “There’s a world where I can go and tell my secrets to / In my room / In this world I lock out

Canadian television has long wrestled with the paradox of national identity: Are we the friendly, quietly quirky neighbor to the north of America, or are we something stranger, rawer, and more fractured? Two of Canada’s most iconic rural comedies, Corner Gas and Trailer Park Boys, seem to answer that question in opposing ways. Both shows,

While the African heavy metal scene may not be as developed as other regions, the underground movement has steadily gained traction in recent years, offering a unique and powerful countercultural voice that rejects mainstream norms. From the politically charged lyrics of Tunisian thrashers Znous to the atmospheric post-metal soundscapes of South Africa’s Chaos Doctrine, African

When Cruising was released in 1980, it was reviled. Protested by the gay community, dismissed by critics, and largely ignored by awards bodies, it was seen as exploitative and grotesque. Yet today it stands as one of William Friedkin’s most provocative and enduring works: a film whose ambiguity, physicality, and bold aesthetic choices mark it

Songs From Behind a Mountain Nathan O’Flynn-Pruitt Figure & Ground 6 June 2025 A dozen years ago, Nathan O’Flynn-Pruitt was touring with Chicago street music legend Little Howlin’ Wolf. He began to lose confidence in the guitar feedback projects he was working on, so he pulled up stakes and moved to rural Humboldt County, California.

In Only Smoke, the new novel by award-winning Spanish writer Juan José Millás, the line between the everyday reality in which readers of a story live and the dimension in which the characters in that story ‘exist’ becomes fundamentally blurred. The line is even more hazy when a fictional character is reading a story, distinguishing

“Light-spirited hard rock” isn’t what you expect from a band ornery enough to call themselves Shitbaby Mammals. Yet it’s hard to describe the crudely named Swedish band’s latest, Godspeed, any other way. The album springs up, humbly and suddenly, from a heretofore unknown confluence of militant goofiness and earnest impressionistic nonsense—scrappy songs about British crime

While El-P found mainstream success with Run the Jewels, and many other greats of the 2000s indie hip-hop boom have hung up their hats, Aesop Rock steadily delivers another stellar release every few years. He is back with Black Hole Superette, and in many ways, it is business as usual–his inimitable voice, his dizzying, dense

If you’re more than a casual fan of the comedies of Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, you might know Bobby Burns as a supporting player in their films. There was a time, however, before Laurel and Hardy’s stardom, when Burns was the star and Hardy supported him. Resurrected from the mists of time and nitrate

In a 2025 interview with GQ, Alana Haim, the youngest member of the sister indie-rock trio Haim, addressed the tendency of critics to assign a genre to the band. “Pop isn’t a bad word,” she said, displaying ambivalence. “But rock isn’t a bad word either.” Since their 2013 debut, Days Are Gone, the sisters have

One Way Homeintimately understands a primal fear. Jimmy Taylor, waking up after a bus crash to find his hometown transformed, taps directly into a specific subset of childhood horror: the purgatorial space where trauma suspends children between life and death, reality and nightmare. This liminal horror has deep roots across media, yet its evolution reveals

Before Rob Halford of Judas Priest came out publicly in 1998, he was already channeling his identity into the band’s lyrics and imagery. The heavy metal community—often fixated on aggression, masculinity, and spectacle—rarely noticed the deep subtext woven throughout his work. From coded BDSM references to vivid homoerotic imagery, Halford’s lyrics form a complex, emotionally

The Universe Will Take Care of You Holden & Zimpel Border Community 13 June 2025 There’s always been something a little disappointing about the standardization of electronic music. For the first 40 or 50 years of its existence, it seemed like anything could happen, that not even the ends of a composer’s imagination were the

I was still trying to get my head around Turnstile’s new album when I happened upon a cover story on the band. Quinn Batley’s photo captures the members from a low angle, the sun glowing behind them, either setting or rising. Lightly psychedelic, it could be a classic LP cover from Columbia or Fantasy in

Despite their love of jokes, puns, and non-sequiturs, the legacy of the B-52’s is best stated bluntly: they are arguably the most consequential queer band to have ever existed. While most people know them as a party-pop group famous for jokey and meme-able anthems like “Rock Lobster” and “Love Shack”, the legacy and power of