For all its Yiddish inflection, Netflix’s 2020 miniseries Unorthodox is plainly a thriller. Esty (Shira Haas) a young, recently married woman, makes a shocking and sudden break from her insular Hasidic world in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. She bides her time until… Read More
The Y2K anxiety around the turn of the calendar on 31 December 1999 seemed to come to nothing when the sky didn’t cave in on 1 January 2000. Technology did not fail, leading to government and business catastrophes, as many… Read More
The first time I heard guitarist John Scofield, he was playing on an unusual date on CTI Records, working as a sideman with Gerry Mulligan and Chet Baker on a Carnegie Hall concert that reunited that saxophone/trumpet duo along with… Read More
In 1977, Belgian avant-rock group Aksak Maboul went on hiatus for three decades while founding member Marc Hollander dedicated his time and efforts to overseeing his wonderfully eclectic Crammed Discs label. While thus hardly a break from music itself, the… Read More
On 14 June The New York Times published Douglas Brinkley’s long important interview with Bob Dylan on the occasion of the release of his new album Rough and Rowdy Ways, and every Dylan fan will want to read it. There’s… Read More
“It will stand the test of time.” So says Jason Williamson of Sleaford Mods on the band’s new record All That Glue. The album, a retrospective on the band’s career over the past seven years, arrives after their previous effort,… Read More
Cavern of Anti-Matter are the perfect band to recruit for a surreal and perverse nightmare about a haunted red dress. Their creepily beautiful sound comes suitably retrofitted with a kosmische sprawl, an impish psychedelia, and a machine-tooled melodic nous, drawing… Read More
Central to Closet Cases: Queers on What We Wear is that we are what we wear. The identities we project and the identities we aspire to are communicated to others through our choices in self-presentation. Each of the 75 people… Read More
Wander Feeler is the sophomore release from Justine Brown, who performs under the Easy Love moniker. Loantaka Records has slated the LP for release on 10 July with 12″ vinyl and download editions of the record. In anticipation of the… Read More
Doug Martsch and his bandmates in Built to Spill are known to channel exquisite and off-kilter indie songs. Singer/guitarist Martsch’s gliding tenor leads the way dipping up and down through his passionate, wandering melodies. With a catalog of songs built… Read More