Pop Culture

Outbreak Festival is a hardcore institution. Throughout the 2010s, it built a name for itself as the genre’s centre in the UK. It hosted the country’s first set by Turnstile and established every band that would go on to be a major native act. As the decade drew to a close, the festival seemed on

Here’s the thing: if anyone is crazy enough to dream up a gagging, bent-over-and-cackling workplace series about the cringiest bunch of godforsaken, small-town despondents that is at the same time a deadpan, bone-chilling horror story, let them. Chances are, something so bonkers is a rare work of genius. This fusion of ideas might sound ludicrous,

What an absolutely bizarre summer. While most of the United States has been suffering from record-breaking heatwaves, other parts have been cool and overcast. The news headlines have been the usual nonstop litany of cynical apocalypticism, yet much of the world is just vibeing out to the World Cup and Taylor Swift‘s wedding. Suffice it

Pop music can be divided between songs that affirm the status quo and those that, in longtime Village Voice critic Barry Walters’ words, “epitomize an alienation not specific to LGBTQ people but familiar to those of us who feel an anguish that exceeds what pop typically articulates.” Mighty Real, Walter’s mammoth history of LGBTQ music

Considering Yes’ long and convoluted history, it would be unfair to compare Aurora to their early records. More fittingly, it should be considered among the albums Jon Davison has sung on. One of three younger members, Davison flits between the new blood (Billy Sherwood and Jay Schellen) and older guard (Geoff Downes and Steve Howe)

With 2024’s Dark Times, Vince Staples turned introspective, inventorying his trauma, disillusionment, and sense of being lost in a limbo (neither connected with the reality of his childhood à la 2021’s self-titled set and 2022’s Ramona Park Broke My Heart, nor particularly at home in the world of rap, gangsta-biz, and/or Hollywood). With his new

My memories of 9 November 1989, when the Berlin Wall came down, are fragments of images pulled from the television news broadcast. Back then, I was too young to recognize the significance of what was happening. For a generation, it wasn’t a surreal moment in time; it was incomprehensible. The event is mentioned briefly in

Ambition drives new artists. It is common to find up-and-coming musicians striving to extend traditions they deem valuable. More often than not, this is a gradual process of maturation, one that takes time to reach its end goal. Denmark’s Scimitar is one of these rare cases where ambition appears to be almost instantly fulfilled. Their

Scottish singer-songwriter Johnny Lynch, also known as Pictish Trail, has been writing, recording, and performing music that blends electronic and organic sounds for more than 20 years. On his new album, Life Slime, Lynch continues to mix and match sounds and moods in surprising and thoughtful ways.  Dualities abound throughout Life Slime: electronics burble throughout the album,

California native Tyler Sabbag has earned a reputation for his television compositions, earning an Emmy for the miniseries Live to 100: Secrets of the Blue Zones and nominations for Lost L.A. and Chef’s Table. So, it’s not at all surprising that his first solo album has an innate cinematic quality. Novella, an EP of sumptuous instrumental

The consolidation of Hollywood studios during the 1910s has never stopped regional independent filmmaking, but it’s obscured much of that history. That’s why researchers still discover odd little flawed gems fashioned from imagination and sweat. A case in point is House of Dreams (1963), a slice of nocturnal horror made by a handful of Indiana

A World of Our Own: The UK and Irish Folk Explosion of 1965 Various Artists Cherry Red 24 April 2026 Cherry Red Records compilation album A World of Our Own is a colossal release for one with such a finite scope. Comprising three discs and 86 tracks, it covers, as its subtitle suggests, The UK

Bob Dylan (née Zimmerman) recently wrote a piece for the New York Times about being 80 (Dylan is 85). He said the best thing about living to an advanced age is “the freedom from that lie that anything was ever under control”. The Nobel Prize-winning provocateur should know. In our youth we think we know all that matters

After two decades of nearly continuous touring, folk-Americana singer-songwriter Eilen Jewell is stepping away from the road—not as an ending, she insists, but as a recalibration. Her “indefinite hiatus” from touring marks a deliberate pause in a life shaped by motion, performance, and the steady accumulation of miles across continents. Yet even as she pulls

Consonance Live at the Jazz Showcase Joe Henderson Resonance 25 April 2026 Live in Chicago Live at the Jazz Showcase Ahmad Jamal Resonance 25 April 2026 Alight Upon the Lake Live at the Jazz Showcase Yusef Lateef Resonance 25 April 2026 Stardust & Starlight Live at the Jazz Showcase Mal Waldron Resonance 25 April 2026

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