Great seventh albums are a rare phenomenon. For a band even to stay together long enough to create a discography seven LPs deep would seem to run contrary to the fast-burn Dionysian spirit of rock ‘n’ roll and fly in… Read More
Sometimes a filmmaker can match their material almost too well. Bob Martin and Chad Beguelin’s 2018 Broadway musical The Prom is a high-energy comedy about big-city cluelessness and small-town small-mindedness whose braided humor and earnestness make for a heady concoction.… Read More
Even if it seems like the Grinch and Scrooge conspired to ruin the 2020 holidays by spreading the coronavirus months ago, leave it to Heather Maloney to provide the rightful remedy with Christmas Anyway. A global pandemic helped push the… Read More
Indie-pop singer-songwriter Lux Beauregard released her debut single titled “Fireworks,” a hypnotic indie track set to cement her rise as one of the most promising indie artists of our new era. Her lyrical confidence on “Fireworks” is matched by the… Read More
The night is coming down across most of the western world, cold winds rising while rolling waves of COVID lockdown seem inevitable. NIHITI’s new album provides an enthralling maximalist/minimalist backdrop to the faltering of the world’s energies. I’ve spent past… Read More
There is a moment in director Bong Joon-ho’s celebrated film Parasite (2019), a pivotal moment in my estimation, that brings to mind verses 5:43-45 from Matthew, a portion of a long sermon delivered by Jesus: “You have heard that it… Read More
A film’s opening scene, when done well, may reveal a great deal about the feature’s main character. The establishing credit sequence to Hooper (1978) performs the reveal in a savvy way. A camera pan leads the audience’s attention across a… Read More
10. Peel Dream Magazine – Agitprop Alterna [Slumberland] Fully in dream-pop/soft shoegaze mode, the New York-based band Peel Dream Magazine’s second album further expands their sound until it’s big-sky, widescreen-epic big. Their synths are clearly Stereolab-influenced, the noisy guitars beg for My… Read More
When I saw Juan Felipe Herrera perform his verse in Atlanta a few years back, I was struck by the musicality of his delivery. Herrera, the first Mexican-American Poet Laureate (2015-2017), has a jovial, Zen-like presence that simultaneously calms and… Read More
Flicker Alley presents a DVD/Blu-ray combo of the Austrian Film Archive’s restoration of H.K. Breslauer’s 1924 silent film The City Without Jews (Die Stadt ohne Juden), a title whose existence and survival are pretty much miraculous. In the imaginary city… Read More