10. Lou Reed/Metallica – Lulu (2011) It’s tough putting this album above other career suicide albums that have more history on their side (see Hole’s Celebrity Skin and Garth Brooks’ Chris Gaines vanity project), but the volume of toxic prerelease… Read More
Edgar Wright’s bulky new rockumentary The Sparks Brothers—premiered at this year’s Sundance Film Festival—exposes a band not at the vanguard of pop experimentation at any point in their career, but drifting through separate eras of underground cool since 1967: from… Read More
Black Country, Road Road’s debut, For the First Time, is a frenetic culture clash. The influences that made this album sprawl across the globe and throughout history. The band’s line up is equally intriguing and features the standard rock formation:… Read More
Age and time have irrevocably shaped Martin Scorsese’s crime films. The veteran director has become synonymous with his trademark explosive, violent, high-energy gangster films like Mean Streets (1973) and Goodfellas (1990). His latest, The Irishman (2019), though, is different; it’s… Read More
Discovering Elvis Costello was probably the sole highlight of my strange and turbulent sophomore year of high school. It probably would have been runner-up had I kissed a girl. By all means, mine is an ordinary account, so I’ll try… Read More
Guitarist Nels Cline has released his third album for jazz’s Cadillac label, Blue Note. In a sense, though, it is his first Nels Cline recording for the label. In 2016 he created something riveting in Lovers, a moody music project… Read More
We all know that the Clash (1976-1983) wear the halo of eternal coolness. History has been very kind to them. What is the big deal, anyway? For me, the question is personal. Abiding loyalty as a Clash fan has been… Read More
Director Chad Hartigan’s fourth feature Little Fish (2020), adapted by Mattson Tomlin from a short story by Aja Gabel, is a science-fiction romance that frighteningly echoes the present day. Emma (Olivia Cooke) and Jude (Jack O’Connell), play a couple who… Read More
Pearl Charles spends much of her second album Magic Mirror thinking about who she is, refining her introspection even as she finds ways to reach out. As she seeks self-definition, though, she develops a more fluid musical identity. Charles has… Read More
In 1979, King Hu made two epics at once and in the same locations in South Korea. One was the three-hour Legend of the Mountain (Shan-chung ch’uan-ch’i), which PopMatters reviewed here in its Kino Lorber release. Film Movement now graces… Read More