Pop Culture

As I listen to multi-instrumentalist and tradition-bearer Nana Osei Twum Barima’s debut album Journey into the Unknown, I have the distinct impression that I am not just an audience for his music, but a witness to him. His performance here is intimate. He sounds nearby. His voice and instrument—the seperewa, an Akan instrument resembling a

“So stop giving me your toxic positivity,” sings Bebe Rexha on her fourth studio album, Dirty Blonde. “You know you’re only making it worse.” The record marks her first release as an independent artist after parting ways with Warner last year, her label of over a decade. Since the release of her last LP, Bebe

Alexander Noice makes music that is full of complexity yet also full of mirth. On his 2019 album NOICE (also the name of the ensemble he gathered for that record), his guitar work joined forces with alto saxophone, bass, drums (both acoustic and programmed) and the twin vocals of Karina Kallas and Argenta Walther as

Palagoma Odd Okoddo and Ogoya Nengo Cool Waters 5 June 2026 Odd Okoddo and Ogoya Nengo, the artists behind the new album Palagoma, make for an eclectic combination. A Nairobi-based duo made up of German-born experimental drummer and producer Sven Kacirek and Kenyan-born dodo singer-songwriter and instrumentalist Olith Ratego, Odd Okoddo have been performing electrified

In the press materials for Union Made, Old Crow Medicine Show frontman and fiddler Ketch Secor talks about missing out on the party that was the United States’ bicentennial celebration in 1976. Born in 1978, he encountered leftover Spirit of 1776 memorabilia in antique stores and pawn shops growing up and was determined to be

Trumpets of Michel-Ange Vol. 2 Ibrahim Maalouf Mister Ibe 12 June 2026 Joy radiates from Trumpets of Michel-Ange Vol. 2, the newest release from acclaimed trumpeter Ibrahim Maalouf. It celebrates music and community, full to bursting with collaborators of many stripes and bright melodies, led by Maalouf‘s signature quarter-tone trumpet, an invention of his father’s

Before discussing Anne Hellman’s new novel, The Indecipherables, an understanding of Alfred Hitchcock’s concept of “pure cinema” is in order. In a 1964 interview for the CBC television series Telescope, Hitchcock conflates “pure cinema” with the editing technique called montage, which is when “complementary pieces of film [are] put together, like notes of music, [to]

Almost Grown: A New York Memoir Jesse Malin and Debra Devi Akashic April 2026 In the past few years, punk rocker Jesse Malin’s health issues have been a focus of press coverage, but they are not the focus of his memoir, Almost Grown. His story opens with him going out to dinner to commemorate the anniversary

2ŁØT are one of those brilliant bands blending R&B and electronic music into soulful blends that share music DNA with brilliant UK groups like Rudimental and Jungle. I call it “electrosoul”, and it fills dancefloors with delicious funkiness. On top of that, 2ŁØT have the honourable goal of social advocacy, including criminal justice reform and

Congratulations, the new album from songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Jacob Ungerleider, is the result of the casual playing of his demo tracks in the home of musicians Jenn Wasner and Alan Good Parker. Wasner, a member of Flock of Dimes and Wye Oak, kept asking Parker who was singing those songs on their Los Angeles stereo,

Based in the Thai province of Phetchabun, the multi-generational Khun Narin ensemble made their official global debut back in 2014 with Electric Phin Band. The group’s first release on Los Angeles label Innovative Leisure featured four tracks and 40 minutes of live performance centered around a plugged-in version of a phin, a lute that comes

You Seem Pretty Sad For a Girl So in Love Olivia Rodrigo Geffen 12 June 2026 In an interview with Dazed, Olivia Rodrigo said the title of her third album, You Seem Pretty Sad for a Girl So in Love, is a phrase her producer, Dan Nigro, said to her during a songwriting session. The

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

If there is a statement you didn’t expect to hear, it’s that one of the best TV shows in a meaty while happens to be a comedy about an ensemble of ludicrous, salacious upper-crust Brits (and Hibs) slamming into one another genitals-first in a deliciously mischievous rat race. Such is the intoxicating charm of Rivals, the

Dead Pioneers’ Wagon Burner arrives just in time for the United States’ 250th birthday, and it is the gift the country deserves and needs right now: An indigenous voice of reason taking the actual history of the country to task and rallying those of us who aren’t licking boots to unite and fight back. The

In 2021, the Montreal-born, Los Angeles-based Mike Silver, often recording under his CFCF moniker, released a wildly unexpected album titled Memoryland. Having spent years working in the ambient/instrumental space, Memoryland was a leap into a new realm and an attempt to capture a new audience, where he swapped his tenderly rendered calm soundscapes for alt-dance

Adam Weiner released a public statement regarding the release of the latest Low Cut Connie album, Livin in the USA. His declaration is too long to quote here, but I recommend that observers interested in the role of artists during war and hard times check it out. Weiner is angry, energetic and eloquent. So is

The eccentric British singer-songwriter Robyn Hitchcock seems intent on telling his life story not in a grand rock opera but in a series of verbal 45s. The latest installment is Stranded in the Future, the follow-up to his sublime 2024 micro-memoir about the one year that most shaped his artistic vision and future, 1967: How

Psychological thriller series The Testaments opens with a black screen. We hear a radio signal — fragmented, static, fading in and out. “Radio Free Boston.” “Radio Free America.” “Forever the sound of freedom.” The voices overlap, cut off, begin again. Words and phrases appear on screen, one by one: Gilead. A totalitarian regime. Plummeting birth

Most college bands die quietly. A debut, a handful of shows, then the slow drift into jobs and separate cities until nobody bothers to announce it’s over. Matt Jones and the Bobs nearly went that way. They formed at Radford University in 2011, released “Brother’s Hymn” in 2014 while they were still students, and disbanded

The term tropicanibalismo has been circulating within experimental music scenes in Colombia since at least the early 2000s, broadly encompassing new and innovative approaches to coastal popular and folkloric music forms. Cumbión Planetario is Bogotá-based duo Rizomagic’s newest contribution to this tropicanibalismo landscape. Rooted in cumbia (with a particular nod to languid, Monterrey-born cumbia rebajada),

Paul McCartney thinks of life in sounds. Not just notes and chords, as one might expect of the lifelong musician. He sees the world as an aural library of memories. “I still remember that sound,” he sings in his latest album, The Boys of Dungeon Lane. Now exactly two decades older than his once far-away

In one of the Baroque galleries at the Cleveland Museum of Art, two paintings hang side by side. On the left is Murillo’s The Immaculate Conception, a picture of an ascended Virgin Mary in the clouds. Her eyes are heavenward, her head is adorned with rays of light, and her feet rest upon the moon.

Memorial Day weekend has become a particularly festive holiday occasion in the San Francisco Bay Area, thanks to the BottleRock Napa Valley music festival. The annual event at the Napa County Fairgrounds always heralds “the first taste of summer”, a signature tag line that’s grown undeniable. BottleRock has become a regional tradition for celebrating the

Pink Pocket Pistol Willow Avalon Atlantic Outpost / Assemble Sound 26 June 2026 The title of Willow Avalon’s new album, Pink Pocket Pistol, suggests she wants to have it both ways. She has a soft, feminine side as indicated by the color and small size of her gun. However, the fact that she has a

Here we are; summer has arrived with all its unbearable heat, and once again, I am very happy with the amount of extreme music out there to cool things down. On the grimmer side, Auzawandils continue the psychedelic experiments of the mighty Skaphe, Grave Pilgrim return to their off-kilter guitar playing (albeit with a touch

Crawlspace of the Pantheon Guided by Voices GBV Inc 29 May 2026 Guided by Voices are an institution that could have entered the “phoning it in” era decades ago, coasting on recreations of past success to appease their devoted fanbase. They cemented their legacy as one of the greatest indie rock bands in their 1990s

The Smiths: A Novella reads as an ekphrasis, or a literary description of a work of art, which is to say an ode to the Smiths. Although the Smiths serve, for the English writer Michael Bracewell, as a memory-laden madeleine to enter the 1980s, they are the obvious anchor for the book. To read Bracewell’s

Dead Pioneers should be the soundtrack to your discontent this summer as the country celebrates its milestone birthday with nary a mention of the genocides that occurred to “Make America Great Again”. The band, led by artist Gregg Deal, are on the rise with their brand of acerbic, rage-filled punk, including a run of shows