In 2019, music fans around the world fell in love with Japanese citypop due to an algorithmic boost in a Youtube upload of Mariya Takeuchi’s “Plastic Love”. No one knew how the song would appear in their video recommendations –… Read More
Green Day’s Dookie was the best rock album of 1994. Scores of critics admitted that, yes, this 14-track album full of speedy pop-punk tunes about panic attacks, boredom, and masturbation was quite catchy, but no one would’ve held it against… Read More
Douglas is one Amy Douglas White, an American electropop artist raised in Spain who picked up the landscape’s bright vista and infused it into her glittering music. Having performed with artists like M83 and West Indian Girl, Douglas is hardly… Read More
If you only have time to read one contemporary German writer, it ought to be Jenny Erpenbeck. The author of three novels and several short story collections, her last novel Go, Went, Gone was a masterful statement on the immensity… Read More
Apparently, the title of the latest outing for these titans of righteous noise-making, 2R0I2P0, translates as “2020 R.I.P.” Too damn right. I can’t think of a better double-act to read the last rites. 2R0I2P0 is, in fact, the seventh album-length… Read More
Prolific, Hamburg-based producer Farhot has not been back to Afghanistan since leaving it as a child with his family during the Soviet-Afghan War. Distance notwithstanding, though, his music speaks to the deep connection he feels to his homeland. On Kabul… Read More
Calico Jim‘s songs take place mostly in rural North Georgia, where James “Pony” Bradshaw has lived for the past 15 years. The location is essential. It helps shape the characters’ temperaments and behaviors. It’s a place where people say things… Read More
“…Well, I woke up this morning and I got myself a beer The future’s uncertain And the end is always near…” – Jim Morrison, Roadhouse Blues (1970) Silence. A battered old Ford screeched rounding our corner. Darkness screaming, and the… Read More
Like all of Pallbearer’s records, Forgotten Days is resonant with arched, dramatic melodies in the classic heavy metal tradition. Conceptually, it insists on confronting hard truths about time, memory, identity, and death. There are emphases throughout that are new for… Read More
The title of Diana Darke’s 2020 book, Stealing from the Saracens: How Islamic Architecture Shaped Europe, promises the reader that they are about to embark on a provocative, revisionist reading of architectural history. The choice of words is meant to… Read More