10. Piranha 3D [2010] While he also scored big with the update of Wes Craven’s cannibals in the desert effort The Hills Have Eyes, French fright master Alexandre Aja made a true terror statement with the superbly schlocky Spring Break… Read More
Bharat Nalluri’s film, Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day, covers a glamorous 24-hours in London on the precipice of WWII. Although the film is deemed a romantic comedy the label doesn’t quite fit. The romance genre suggests something sappy and… Read More
“Mr. De Shields is a tireless performer. His stylized, rhythmic patter keeps the momentum of the performance building, and his singing, in a voice that seems to relish every full syllable, runs the gamut of shadings,” raved New York Times… Read More
Lydia Loveless doesn’t wilt. The past few years have been at least as fun for her as they have been for the rest of us, with a divorce and a move and the joyful political landscape of the US. In… Read More
A few years ago, Kevin Morby bought a house. It didn’t come out of nowhere. Deerhunter’s Bradford Cox had handed down some wisdom he’d received from Kim Gordon: the best thing a working musician could do for themselves was own… Read More
2020 needed an album like Friend Ship. Part of an emerging wave of artwork informed by the COVID-19 pandemic, the seventh album from Kiwi sextet, the Phoenix Foundation takes sweet solace in the human condition in all its complexities and… Read More
The first sound you hear on Waylon Payne’s new album, Blue Eyes, The Harlot, The Queer, The Pusher & Me, is a young boy enthusiastically proclaiming, “OK, ready! 14, 22, 89, go!” That is followed by a single guitar chord,… Read More
Laura Veirs’ My Echo sounds like it was written and recorded during the recent pandemic because of its claustrophobic themes of confinement and disintegration. But that’s not true, according to Veirs in the Bandcamp album description. Instead, she was restricted… Read More
The emotional restlessness and partnership-paranoia brought on by the doldrums of stay-at-home parenting fuel the polished, subtly poignant On the Rocks (Apple TV). It’s the latest effort from writer-director Sofia Coppola, who has certainly made more stylish films over the… Read More
Blue Note was one of the most important American jazz labels of the 1960s and 1970s with a roster of stellar talents including Horace Silver, Jimmy Smith, Lee Morgan, Art Blakey, Grant Green, and Wayne Shorter. They were known for… Read More