Pop Culture

I’ve been covering the BFI London Film Festival for over a decade. Each has been its unique experience—like a combustible reaction, in which the films, their directors, and cast bounce off one another in ways you cannot anticipate. It’s difficult to articulate how 20-plus films emotionally and intellectually affected you. While you can say which

Office CultureEnough(Ruination) A Brooklyn-based art-pop quartet that refuses to adhere to any particular genre, Office Culture are led by vocalist/keyboardist/songwriter Winston Cook-Wilson. They take cues from off-kilter 1980s pop artists like Talk Talk and China Crisis while also digging into the stylings of Joni Mitchell, Steely Dan, and Avalon-era Roxy Music. On their fourth album, they

Vancouver’s Peach Pit are one of those rare, self-aware bands that take criticism in stride. Early in their career, after they performed at a Battle of the Bands, they received rather negative feedback from a judge, something to the effect of “generic indie rock band”. So they saw it fitting to name their self-released debut

25. Guided by Voices – Strut of Kings (GBV Inc.) Strut of Kings by Guided By VoicesStrut of Kings by Guided By Voices The title Guided by Voices’ Strut of Kings is a giveaway for the attitude of the LP, which is confident while also possessing an undertone of self-deprecation. It is also unusual, given Robert Pollard’s

This has been a notable year for hardcore and punk, with several up-and-coming bands continuing to build on the promise of their previous releases and reliably excellent records from more established artists. The scene is as far-ranging as ever, with musicians taking pages from late 1980s New York to Revolution Summer to the heyday of

This was another year of riches in jazz and creative music, with barriers between the tradition and the avant-garde melting away. A thriving global scene of brilliant musicians playing “mainstream” post-bop is out there, of course, but it is not retro or at war with newer structures and bolder flavors. Instead, it is proof that

Nicoletta Favari and percussionist Christopher Salvito, known collectively as Passepartout Duo, thrive on creating works derived from unique instruments and processes. Their previous full-length releases, Vis-à-Vis (2020), Daylighting (2021), and Circo Pobre (2022), derived from original concepts that translate into music that excites, inspires, and transcends. It’s experimental music in the truest sense of the word, but also manages to be

Arthur Russell has become a cult figure over the past three decades for his work as a musician and composer in New York during the 1970s and 1980s. Like many polymaths of that fertile period, such as Patti Smith or Andy Warhol, Russell experimented with many genres that reflected an eclectic set of interests. However,

The most widely held Garifuna ethnogenesis story is one of resistance and resilience: escaping from shipwrecked European slave ships, a group of West African survivors made their way to the island of Yurumein, already inhabited by Indigenous Arawak and Kalinago people. Their shared descendants would fight against the colonists claiming Yurumein as Saint Vincent, leading

It’s another big weekend in the Bay Area with STS9 (aka Sound Tribe Sector Nine) making their highly anticipated return to the region with two shows at Oakland’s Fox Theater on 15-16 November. It’s been over a year since the illustrious instrumental quintet’s previous shows in the region, a special two-night stand at the Quarry

It was the dis heard round the film world. In the summer of 2019, Martin Scorsese raised eyebrows in the moviegoing community when he famously dismissed the entire output of Marvel Studios—still riding high on the record-breaking success of Avengers: Endgame—as something other than cinema. “Honestly, the closest I can think of them,” he told Empire

In 2024, independent games outshined big-budget AAA releases in quality and innovation. This year, scholar Brendan Keogh’s exegesis The Video Game Industry Does Not Exist serves as gospel. Indie developers utilize the platforms and distribution methods owned and operated by Nintendo, Valve, Microsoft, and Sony to challenge these multinational corporations’ grip on the medium. Hence, why

Erupting from the early aughts post-grunge volcano came the band Shinedown, then a group of troubled talents, now the clean and sober record-holders for most No. 1 mainstream rock singles. The pensive Jacksonville, Florida quartet, ever distilling their lives into song, inadvertently composed seven studio albums that chart a nearly 20-year climb from the mire

It’s been a strange year, and it’s not over yet. But as critics have noted in the past, exciting times make for great art. This year is no exception to the rule. Many outstanding Americana records came out as part of the recent deluge of available music. According to Will Page, former Chief Economist of

PopMatters’ Best Folk Albums celebrates and explores some of the most compelling folk music releases of 2024. Each record weaves stories that honor cultural roots while embracing experimentation to capture a spectrum of human experience. These albums transcend genre boundaries, merging folk with Americana, indie rock, Afrobeats, and even electronic influences. Yet, each entry remains

Goldenwings Opa Craft Recordings / Jazz Dispensary 22 November 2024 Uruguayan Jazz fusion may not be a well-known subgenre to listeners outside of South America, but the band that essentially defined it nearly 50 years ago are getting their due, thanks to an impeccable vinyl reissue. Craft Recordings and Jazz Dispensary have teamed up for

Small Changes marks Michael Kiwanuka‘s fourth LP in 12 years. He has been around for some time, but the lack of output gives the false impression that he is still relatively new. This is the artist whose track “Cold Little Heart” was the theme song for HBO’s Big Little Lies after all, a television series

The idea of mechanically reproducing sound opens up countless revolutionary potentials. Recordings may not be able to replicate every aspect of a live performance, but they make it possible to bring music to the masses. This capacity for circulation makes it possible to spread creative ideas beyond any conception of the local. Through increasingly sophisticated

The artist born Joshua Michael Tillman in Maryland in 1981 has seemingly led countless lives. Growing up in a strict Christian household where secular music was forbidden, he played drums in the post-rock outfit Saxon Shore and indie folk band Fleet Foxes, released a slew of rustic folk solo albums as J. Tillman, and eventually

The Grammy Award for Best New Age, Ambient, or Chant Album was first given out in 1987 but has contained precious few ambient records among its rank of nominees. There have been ambient-adjacent artists, but the Recording Academy’s view of the genre has always skewed towards either the safe pastures of Windam Hill-styled meditations or

When David Fincher‘s Fight Club hit movie theaters in 1999, Baby Boomer critics such as Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times deemed the film “fascist macho porn”, while the Observer’s Rex Reed wrote that Fight Club was a film with no redeeming value. Yet, ten years later, The New York Times dubbed Fight Club “the

It’s unclear why Loose Cattle named themselves that. The phrase usually refers to cows that break from the herd and roam about freely. With all respect to farm animals, this is generally due to ignorance and not paying attention rather than a bovine’s desire for liberty. They can be a danger to themselves and others

Ten Modern American Work Songs St. Lenox Don Giovanni / Anyway 25 October 2024 Andrew Choi has a distinctive style. He’s intelligent and talented, as his credits reveal. The son of Korean immigrants is a Princeton University graduate with a PhD in philosophy from Ohio State University and a law degree from New York University.

Last year, Rogê brought over two decades of experience in the MPB scene to the international stage with Curyman, his first US release. Having fully moved from his home in Rio de Janeiro to Los Angeles, he returns with Curyman II, another set of samba-based tracks through which he connects his carioca roots with his

A drawback of being the mastermind behind one of metal’s most acclaimed bands is that no matter how much he might want to expand their sound into realms beyond heavy/extreme music, there will always be strong opposition from metal purists to anything new Mikael Åkerfeldt attempts. Metal’s bizarre dichotomy – perpetually seeking new ways to

My colleague at PopMatters, Iain Ellis, has embarked on his most ambitious book project. Punk Beyond the Music: Tracing Mutations and Manifestations of the Punk Virus charts how punk has seeped into every crevice of contemporary life, far beyond its familiar associations with safety pins and three-chord songs. As a scholar steeped in punk and

We Will Be Wherever the Fires are Lit Tashi Dorji Drag City 22 November 2024 Search experimental, improvisational guitarist Tashi Dorji‘s vast Bandcamp page, and you’ll discover sinewy-yet-jagged nylon string excursions, electric smoke circles of noise and drone, duos and trios bashing it out, and even a digital album’s worth of yawps, grunts, and other

Even the Forest Hums: Ukrainian Sonic Archives 1971-1996 Various Artists Light in the Attic 18 October 2024 In the documentary Even the Forest Hums: Ukrainian Sonic Archives 1971-1996, made to accompany the Light in the Attic compilation album of the same name, journalist and narrator Vitalii Bardetskyi traces the contours of what he calls a

It’s Friday, 1 November, in the City of Angels, and there’s a buzz in the air surrounding the historic arena many know as “the fabulous” Forum, where King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard are set to kick off their fall 2024 tour. The Australian psychedelic rockers have grown into a genuine phenomenon in recent years,

The dreaded moment of compiling the end-of-year list is upon us, and this year has been particularly challenging. It is always an intense exercise, distilling all that an entire year has to offer into 20 picks, but it also helps to put everything in perspective. Looking back, would it be an exaggeration to call this