The television series Hoarders is, for many, the first encounter with the consequences of being unable to let go of one’s material possessions. The series is a kind of consumption porn in which viewers click their tongues in shame for… Read More
George C. Wolfe’s direction of Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, like Denzel Washington’s direction of 2016’s Fences, adheres to the theatricality of August Wilson’s script, propelled by minimal set variations and the characters’ maximal backstories and dialog. The film’s focus is… Read More
The title of Steve McQueen’s five-part series, Small Axe (BBC in the UK, Amazon Prime in the US), is a powerful, political homonym. Formally, each part of the series is itself a small axe, working to tear down the dominant… Read More
Jack Name’s past work was exceptionally epic and wild. On Name’s first two albums, 2014’s Light Snow and 2015’s Weird Moons, songs were long, pitch-shifted, or just plain weird, and sometimes all of these things at once. There was a… Read More
The Creative Crisis of COVID For musicians, the pandemic and consequent closing of performance venues has been a crisis. In the new century, nearly every musician beyond the largest stars has been largely dependent on income from live performances, with… Read More
You won’t catch Martin Amis standing still, mucking about, or idling around. Amis, the British novelist and essayist about and for whom there is always something new, has been writing seriously since the 1970s. The Rachel Papers (1973), although a… Read More
“The reason American art is so good and holds one’s attention is that it is built on the underlying psychosis that results from truly fending for oneself,” said a guy I was talking with at a bar in Amsterdam a… Read More
15. Megan Thee Stallion – Good News [1501 Certified/300] When a rising rap personality graduates from the mixtapes to the event studio album, they often exchange their established and uncompromising street flow for easy pop hits, gaining mainstream success while… Read More
15. Dan Deacon – Mystic Familiar [Domino] Mystic Familiar, Dan Deacon’s latest record, fits right in with the composer’s catalog of shimmering, welcoming electropop. The product of meditation and Brian Eno’s creative-inspired card set, the album follows the titular character,… Read More
In 2019 I was targeted by Facebook ads; the algorithm knows I’m a sucker for a Netflix romantic comedy promo. I watched the trailers for two Netflix Christmas movies, The Knight Before Christmas, starring Vanessa Hudgens and Josh Whitehouse, and… Read More