Pop Culture

There was a guy who lived in the apartment complex where I grew up who everyone—and by everyone, I mean the six or eight other kids I more or less ran with—said had been on Death Row, but who had been released after he’d survived the electric chair three separate times. The rumor was that

Less than a year after her luscious solo debut, Pacífico Maravilla, Nidia Góngora returns, this time as the frontwoman of Nuevos Ríos. Alongside her are members of her longtime group, Canalón de Timbiquí, and Toulouse-based Reco Reco, an ensemble that focuses on plugged-in renditions of South American styles. Together, the collective perform lively, electrified versions

Iowa Ohyung Ohyung / Trans Music Archive 6 March 2026 Composer and performer Ohyung (Lia Ouyang Rusli) takes an impressionist approach with real depth on the new experimental album Iowa. Created based on her 11-month stay in the album’s namesake state, Iowa, is an act of counter-cartography. Against the grain of static pastoral heartland narratives,

The jazz world lost some fine drummers in the last year. Roy Haynes was still playing in his 90s before he passed in November of 2024, and Jack DeJohnette left a giant hole in the music when he died this past October. Al Foster will also be sorely missed. Though he died in May of

British soul band the James Hunter Six are well known for their smooth, gritty style of music based on American Soul of the 1960s, but they do more than mimic the tropes. Lead singer Hunter infectiously inhabits the deep emotional roots of the past and brings it to the present through his storytelling chops and

Many bands experience growing pains when creating the Difficult Second Record. Still, that’s cold comfort when you are in the middle of it. Just ask Zayna Youssef and her bandmates in Sweet Pill. After generating significant buzz from their debut, 2022’s Where the Heart Is, playing festivals like Best Friends Forever and opening for emo

Oded Ruskin’s rich manga adaptation, Drops of God, may look fancy and bizarre, but it is a rare show that meaningfully touches upon art, wine, and philosophy. If you partake, you’ll be squiffed before you know it. Adapted from Tadashi Agi’s television manga, Kami no Shizuku (2004-14), Drops of God is set across Provence, Tokyo,

The Sandbox Kenya-Jade Pinto Together Films 11 March 2026 | One World Screened in the International Competition at One World Film Festival, The Sandbox, Kenya-Jade Pinto’s debut feature, begins with an idea strong enough to sustain an entire documentary. The title gives the film its central metaphor. In technology and gaming, a sandbox is a

Unbalance Carlos Ferreira and Dasom Baek Beacon Sound 20 March 2026 While it sounds like it might be the work of some mysterious intergalactic orchestra, Unbalance is the work of two musicians performing with little to no advance direction. Brazilian experimental guitarist and composer Carlos Ferreira and Korean performer and composer Dasom Baek combined their

Tenor saxophonist Mark Turner is an improviser’s improviser—other musicians speak of him with great respect, and his playing is often cited as an influence. His associations with a group of musicians from his generation, such as guitarist Kurt Rosenwinkel and the cooperative trio Sky (with bassist Larry Grenadier and drummer Jeff Ballard), have aged very

Lindsey Jordan’s songwriting has always pinned down feelings in sharp, immediate terms. On Ricochet, her third album as Snail Mail, she loosens that grip. Letting those emotions slip into something more diffuse and uncertain, she traces the uneasy realization that most of life only makes sense after it’s already gone. Where her earlier work often

In the heart of Tunisia lies a giant salt lake called Chott El Djerid, or “Lagoon of the Land of Palms”. Measuring 160 miles across, the lake has been the subject of numerous works of art, most famously Star Wars, where it was used as a filming location in A New Hope. Although Chott El

Love Everybody loves Joni Mitchell, and everybody has a favorite Joni Mitchell album. That album is Blue (1971). No, not really. It’sCourt and Spark (1974). Ladies of the Canyon (1970). Hejira (1976). What’s that? Is your favourite Mingus (1979)? That’s a good, left-field choice—the culmination of her jazz explorations through the 1970s. Nobody’s favorite came

Since 1980, American guitarist Steve Tibbetts has crafted some of the world’s boldest, most varied, and original guitar music for ECM Records, across 14 releases, including his newest, Close (2025), and his not-to-be-missed, two-CD career retrospective, Hellbound Train (2022). Tibbetts boasts one of the widest palates in guitaring, with a style that fuses elements of

Modern cities are endless sites of reinvention, and movies about New York in particular demonstrate how the greater world is changing. Three movies set in the city from the 1970s to the 1990s exemplify how capitalism as a social relation has transformed. In William Friedkin’s The French Connection (1971), the drug trade is simply the

The Summer We Ate Off the China Devin Jacobsen Sagging Meniscus Press March 2025 At the outset ofThe Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain felt it necessary to explain to his readers that he had portrayed the panoply of voices along the Mississippi River, and did not want readers to think “all these characters were

That many current university students remain saturated in the infantilising world of fantasy generated by comics is a problem for contemporary pop culture pedagogy. In these early years of undergraduate studies in literature and cultural studies, the battleground of critical ideas often orbits around the universes of Marvel, DC, and Harry Potter.Moreover, students are emboldened

Turn a Midnight Corner Mike Mattison and Trash Magic Landslide 16 January 2026 Singer-songwriter Mike Mattison is best known as the lead vocalist for both the Derek Trucks Band and Tedeschi Trucks Band for more than 20 years. His third release as a band leader is a concept album based upon a novella he wrote

It’s not often that you hear about a concept album based on Walter Isaacson’s biography of Apple founder Steve Jobs, but Robert Stillman is no ordinary composer or musician. His music skirts multiple genres: jazz, pop, experimental, you name it, while remaining simultaneously unique and a bit odd. His arrangements, stylistic jumps, and consistently solid

Let’s be real, falling in love can feel good, but it can also feel really, really bad. At the best of times, it can feel like going over the edge of some colossal rollercoaster, your heart pounding as your guts climb up into your throat. At its worst, it can feel like having your soul

Growing up, I was a good generation removed from Pink Floyd’s worldwide rise to fame. Heck, my parents barely climbed onto the bandwagon in the 1970s. However, I was such a fan that my room was papered with cutouts from Pink Floyd live shows, which my family affectionately called “The Wall”. It got to the

Any concert that begins with a Preservation Hall Jazz Band second line is gonna be a good one. When that second line is led by Jon Batiste and Bill Murray, however, the night is gonna be great. Kicking off the 10th annual Love Rocks NYC concert, Ben Jaffe and the Preservation Hall Jazz Band marched

As Paul McCartney has been one of the world’s most famous pop-rock musicians for more than 60 years, it seems reasonable to assume the rumor that he died in 1966 and was replaced by a lookalike would have subsided by now. Absurdly, this is not the case. In November of 2025, for an interview with

In The Blue Trail (in Portuguese O Último Azul), Gabriel Mascaro imagines a near-future Brazil in which ageism ceases to be merely a diffuse prejudice and becomes state policy. Under the discourse of easing the economic burden on the young and the “economically active”, the government compulsorily removes elderly people to national rest colonies, an

After seven years, the Twilight Sad return with their latest studio album,It’s the Long Goodbye,a record that reminds listeners of what they have come to expect over two decades. Lead singer and principal lyricist James Graham experienced considerable volatility over that time, both in public and behind the scenes. This effortattemptsto capture that raw emotion.

Against the Dying of the Light José González Mute / City Slang 27 March 2026 When singer-songwriter and acoustic guitarist extraordinaire José González warns us about the dying of the light, he does not mean in the Dylan Thomas sense about individual death. González sings about the possible mass destruction of human life caused by

Below is a list of 20 of 1991’s most memorable songs, presented in alphabetical order by performer name. It is, by no means, an exhaustive list of the best songs from the year — it would be easy to come up with 20 more songs, then 20 more. While there are no doubt glaring omissions

The late, great Tony Wilson of Factory Records fame reckoned contemporary music revolutions occurred every 13 years: the Beatles‘ first album was released in 1963; after which, in 1976, punk kicked off; then 13 years later, in 1989, dance music came up smiling. Wilson’s theory ran aground shortly after. Otherwise, 2002 should have been something

Mary Ocher was born in Moscow in 1986, raised in Tel Aviv, and has called Berlin home for nearly 20 years. As a result, the singer, musician, and songwriter – who happens to sing in English – has accumulated a wealth of unique experiences, born at a crucial juncture during the Cold War, as well

Everything All the Time – 20th Anniversary Edition Band of Horses Sub Pop 20 March 2026 Band of Horses’ debut album, Everything All the Time, is one of those great serendipitous moments in music. When it was released in March 2006, it joined My Morning Jacket‘s Z from the previous year as a desperately needed