Pop Culture

Sit down and pour yourself a glass, stein, or cup of whatever you like to drink from. Before you sip, chug, or quaff, raise the vessel to Dubravka Ugrešić and thank her for being among our time’s best independent, iconoclastic, and undersung authors. Ugrešić is no longer with us, but she left many valuable guideposts

The end of the year is approaching, and October is stacked with heavyweight works. The return of Kevin Martin under the Bug moniker is a highlight, and listening to The Machine next to Master Boot Record’s Hardwarez reveals the influence of the legendary artist on the scene today. On the fringes with noise rock, the Eugene Robinsion-fronted

Masahiro Shinoda’s Demon Pond (Yashagaike) is a lavish 1979 production that made a splash for the Shochiku Studio but has gone largely unseen since its theatrical release. Criterion now offers a 2021 restoration produced by Shochiku for its centenary, and it marks the film’s digital debut in the West. Still alive at 93, Shinoda is among the

NPR’s anthology How Women Made Music: A Revolutionary History is both a celebration and a reckoning—a rich, meticulously curated collection of writings addressing women’s underrepresentation across all facets of the music industry. Compiled from NPR’s Turning the Tables series (2017-2023), the book doesn’t offer any new material but instead distills some of the most powerful

With Tension II, pop diva Kylie Minogue extends her startingly long run of great-to-brilliant studio albums that started with 2018’s country-flecked Golden. Last year’s Tension is arguably one of the singer’s best efforts, and even if its sequel doesn’t match up, it’s still a fabulous collection of high-energy electropop tunes. It fails to reach the emotional highs of

Sophie Allison, who records under the moniker Soccer Mommy, rose to prominence during a fortuitous time; however, depending upon how one looks at things, the timing of that ascent might have stymied her individuality. Her visibility immediately followed that of—or coincided with—Julien Baker, Lucy Dacus, Hand Habits, Snail Mail, Phoebe Bridgers, and Tomberlin, amongst others.

At the same time that a handful of friends Tweeted and updated their Facebook statuses to celebrate the premiere of TeenNick’s The 90s Are All That lineup, I was stabbed with my millionth pang of regret that I still can’t afford cable television. As a 23-year-old with an entry-level job, a loan repayment schedule, some

Teri Garr was arguably one of the most beloved comediennes of American cinema. She seemed born in the wrong era, her style of witty, effervescent comedy better suited for the screwball genre of the 1930s, and yet, she flourished in the 1970s and 1980s, bringing an innate likability and charm to her roles. Though some

Winston Cook-Wilson, Office Culture‘s vocalist, keyboard player, and primary songwriter, had a dream about an album with a pelican on the cover. Yet it was not a single vinyl LP. In the dream, it was definitely a compact disc, which allowed him to envision the latest Office Culture album as one lengthy collection of songs

“I believe in communism,” says Ted Lasso, coach of the London-based soccer team AFC Richmond and hero of the eponymous hit show on Apple TV+, in the 2021 episode “Rainbow”. His team sits in rows in front of a television, slumped and dejected, reviewing their mistakes from a recent match. Some seem confused that their

​10. “Andy’s Chest” (Transformer, 1972) Lou Reed helped define a subgenre with this seminal glam rock record, which yielded some of the most memorable hits of his career, such as “Perfect Day” and “Walk on the Wild Side.” Yet early in the tracklisting, he managed to weave a bizarre and often ludicrous narrative of transmogrification that falls

“What, no elevator?” You will never forget the first words that Lou Reed said to you, and Reed’s future archivist, Don Fleming, heard them through an intercom in a recording studio on a three-floor walkup. “The first time I met Lou was when I was recording with Moe Tucker, and he came to add a

Kris Kristofferson, who died September 28, might be my favorite country songwriter. He understood the beauty of language like perhaps no other lyricist in popular music, including Bob Dylan. His classic songs were filled with verbosely flowing lines that nonetheless made sense to millions of listeners, including awestruck fellow musicians. His storied life included stints

Giant Robot: Thirty Years of Defining Asian American Pop Culture Eric Nakamura, ed. Drawn & Quarterly October 2024 Identity in the United States (and some will argue, elsewhere, too) is a fraught labyrinth. These days, seemingly at every turn in America, you must negotiate who you are and where you fit in the “melting pot”.

“Volcano girls, we really can’t be beat/ Warm us up and watch us blow.” – Veruca Salt “Readers are often poorly served when an author writes as an act of catharsis,” wrote Jon Krakauer in Into Thin Air, his firsthand account of the 1996 Mount Everest climbing disaster. This quote kept popping into my head

The Night the Zombies Came Pixies BMG 25 October 2024 It’s hard to believe that with The Night the Zombies Came, Pixies have now released more albums without Kim Deal than with her legendary contributions. That is assuming we are not counting the debut mini-album Come on Pilgrim (1987), in which case, the math is

In pagan times, Halloween or “Samhain”, meaning “summer’s end” in Gaelic, marked the time of year when people believed the boundaries between the physical and supernatural worlds were at their thinnest. They built bonfires and wore masks to communicate with spirits and prepare for the coming winter. These days, while Halloween often means getting a

It’s a Friday night here on 4th October, and a new autumn tradition in the Bay Area is taking shape. Greensky Bluegrass are at the Fillmore, and tonight’s performance will feature a collaboration with local keyboard phenom Holly Bowling for the fourth year in a row. This follows sensational team-ups with Bowling at San Francisco’s

Though her home is in Austin, Texas, Kelley Mickwee’s heart is tied to her roots in Memphis, Tennessee. The singer-songwriter acknowledges this attachment in her second solo album, Everything Beautiful, a pulsating, irrepressibly good recording with a heavy emphasis on all aspects soulful, each song an object of spirit-driven affection. “Stylistically, I’ve always wanted to

There comes a time in any veteran artist’s career when she starts to assess her work and legacy and revisit some of her past. On her latest album, Key, Alison Moyet seems to be just in such a nostalgic mood. As the voice of the New Wave outfit Yazoo, Moyet’s voluptuously soulful voice brought warmth

Galaxie 500 have long presented an ideal blueprint for a college radio rock band: stylish, though relatable, in presentation; confident in musical tone but bearing elements of vulnerability; attentive to past influences, whether the Modern Lovers, Joy Division, or Yoko Ono; and, above all, songs that in their finished form still felt gorgeously unrefined, like

In the current cinematic landscape, the plethora of superhero movies, with their hackneyed plots and action sequences, let alone their dull scripts, have made the genre a synonym for banality and absence of creativity, leading to the infantilization of audiences worldwide. Some older superhero films, however, were willing to take risks and use these modern

Throughout the history of pop music, its artists have continuously pushed its musical boundaries. So when is pop music no longer pop? More specifically, but less intriguingly, when is rock music no longer rock? It might seem strange to ask this question of the down-to-earth Paul Weller, who, in the late 1970s, established himself as

Described in the press notes as “a collection of field notes exploring gratitude”, Clearwater Swimmers’ debut album shows a surprising and refreshing amount of maturity. It reaches into Neil Young‘s Crazy Horse files for ruminative, slow-motion riffs and the downbeat tunefulness of early R.E.M. You could even compare them favorably to more current artists like

New York’s Greenwich Village is a compact sanctuary that has attracted a legion of visionaries and non-conformists who had an outsized influence on 20th-century culture – on alternative lifestyles, progressive politics, and the arts, especially music. Within the maze of coffeehouses, nightclubs, and watering holes on its narrow streets, the legends-to-be of folk, jazz, and

Ever since childhood, we have been fascinated by different songs bearing the same title. There have been seven US Top 40 hits in the rock era named “Lady”, “Hold On”, “One”, or “You”, six titled “I Love You” or “Missing You”, and five named “I Believe”. Some were released within weeks of each other, some

. In 2007, my father and I visited the Czech Republic. There were many core memories during that trip, but the most meaningful were from the day we spent at Terezín. Known more widely by its German name, Theresienstadt was a World War II Nazi station where Jewish prisoners were sent before being transferred to

It shouldn’t be a shock that many of the New York psychics profiled by Lana Wilson in her fascinating and, at times, maddening documentary Look Into My Eyes are actors, writers, or artists. At the very least, they are fascinated by invented worlds. Mediums and other people who have claimed to communicate with the spirits of the

“You know this job is just a stepping stone for you, don’t you?” said a psychic medium, one of the patients at a cancer hospital in Manchester where Kelly Lee Owens worked as a nurse at 18. According to her prediction, the now-world-renowned Welsh-born DJ, singer, and producer would move to London and become a

One thing we have learned from the 2024 US presidential race is that pop music is the new gold dust – sought, treasured, and valued for the excitement, voters, and appeals it can generate for a party’s political brand. The recent Democratic National Convention at times appeared more like a music festival than a gathering