Losing Sharon Jones to cancer in 2016 felt particularly unfair. Jones didn’t breakthrough until she was in her mid-40s when Dap Dippin’ with Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings launched Daptone Records and played a pivotal role in the retro-soul movement.… Read More
It’s hard to imagine why Chris Stapleton would feel the need to start over just now. Five years ago, his debut solo album Traveller put him into permanent stardom (such as stardom ever is), and he’s only followed that with… Read More
By the late 1980s, the Fall were in as stable a place as their confrontational frontman, lyricist, and only constant member Mark E. Smith would allow. Guitarist Craig Scanlon and bassist Steve Hanley, who joined at the same time, had… Read More
Bloomsbury’s 33 1/3 series has gained a stellar reputation over the years for meticulously and lovingly analyzing classic and important albums. Almost every self-respecting rock music fan has at least a passing familiarity with the more than 150 albums covered… Read More
An out-of-time transmission from the late 1990s, when auteurs were fully embracing genre and pre-millennium jitters was tossing old artistic certainties out the window, Jim Jarmusch’s Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai is a spectacular oddity that still confounds… Read More
On 23 June 2016, the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union after months of campaigning. The vote – coined Brexit (a portmanteau of Britain and Exit) – was predicted to end in Remain’s favour. Much of the polls… Read More
North Carolina’s deep-rooted musical history has more to offer than James Taylor singing “Carolina in My Mind”. Like its geography, the Tar Heel state’s music comes from the backroads, the dirt paths, the main streets, the warehouses, street corners, and… Read More
Trent Reznor: industrial auteur, Generation X icon, Grammy Award winner, lavishly-praised film composer. When Reznor was toiling late nights to piece together the first Nine Inch Nails album Pretty Hate Machine (1989), did he ever conceive that the angst-laden electronic/rock… Read More
Yes, the band created the template for heavy metal and thrash, but even now, it’s instructive to acknowledge just how unique Black Sabbath were when they first emerged; how different from anything else anyone was doing. It’s not just that… Read More
New to the Paramount line is one of the few Robert Altman films that could be called delightful, although lots of people, as the saying goes, just don’t get it. Unfairly maligned as a bomb and a disaster, Popeye (1980)… Read More