Celebrating Community
Todd Field’s Tár begins, essentially, with the end credits: dozens of names in white scrolling over a black background. It could be taken as an indication that it’s time to go home. Once the credits are done, things don’t pick up. The first third of the movie is belligerent in its boringness. It sets up the titular, successful orchestra conductor […]
With Dry Cleaning’s second album released in October—building on the unexpected success of their infectious 2021 debut New Long Leg—and the subsequent (and harder to fathom) popularity of Wet Leg’s chatty single “Chaise Lounge,” it seems what I want to call the talkcore movement’s got, you know, legs. Dublin’s Fontaines D.C. and Yard Act out of Leeds are more closely […]
Black paint (by numbers). The highlight of Liturgy’s set at First Unitarian Congregational Society in Brooklyn Heights last July (the first time the band ever played in a church, as frontperson Ravenna Hunt-Hendrix announced from the stage) was a monumental, pounding and then-unreleased 20-minute song which, it turns out, will be the title track of their next album, due in the […]
Almighty Aaron. Back in the early naughts, the mighty Isis was a vital force in defining what has since become known as post-metal with their long, slowly developing, often largely instrumental compositions. It’s been a dozen years since they parted ways, and guitarist Aaron Turner has followed the path the band forged in differing directions, most notably with the band […]
Too much paranoias. When in need of squeaky thin organ-driven new wave of late, I often turn to the endearing L.A. four-piece the Paranoyds. The fashionista four-piece (they call themselves an “eyebrow band”) is generally just the right mix of quirky, sarcastic and sick of it. Their first album, 2019’s Carnage Bargain, got some attention with the singles “Girlfriend Degree” […]
Lucifer on the dancefloor. A new of Montreal album is always a time of revelry—nobody does dark disco quite like Kevin Barnes. For a while, though, the albums have run thin fairly quickly for me. That’s not necessarily a problem; there’s far too much pop in the world for all of it to be permanent. But for a songwriter who […]
The Long Play festival, which ran in various venues around downtown Brooklyn from April 29 to May 1, was created to replace the previous Bang on a Can marathon, an annual single-stage daylong free presentation usually in Manhattan. Over three days at 10 venues, more than 60 acts represented a mix of contemporary composition, jazz-based improvisation and updatings of folk […]
Beauty runs deep. The surprise hit of the summer may turn out to be Kate Bush’s 1985 single “Running Up That Hill” which, after placement in an episode of the Netflix series Stranger Things, hit the top 10 in 14 countries and raced to the top of the Apple Music charts in the states. It’s not exactly a deep cut. […]
Résistance and futility. Ultravox! is remembered, and rightly so, as a progenitor of synthpop, but what gets missed out in that compact musicological truism is their remarkable 1977 debut. The band’s early incarnation—with singer and principal songwriter John Foxx and with the exclamation point in the name—was a remarkable amalgam of glam and bits of Brit blues revivalism with punk […]
Portrait of a lady in a world full of dirt. In hindsight, I’m not sure why I’ve been using this space in recent months to demand a new full-length from the voice of conscience for an angry, dying world known in her current form as Shilpa Ray, but I’m willing to take at least partial credit for her crucial, vital, […]