660. Hunters & Collectors, Human Frailty (1987) In just about every way, Human Frailty was a breakthrough for the Australian band Hunters & Collectors. The band’s fourth studio album represented their first significant hit in their homeland, slipping into the … Continue reading College Countdown: CMJ Top 1000, 1979 – 1989 — #660 to #657
‘NO EXCESSIVE BARKING’: A Chevy Chase dog park divides the rich and powerful by Jessica Contrera Writing for The Washington Post, with a strong sense of playfulness fully engaged, Jessica Contrera examines a social skirmish taking place in a … Continue reading Outside Reading — The Twilight Bark edition
“Water Me Down,” the new single from Vagabon, is lovely and enveloping. A thrilling shard of neo-soul, the track boasts effortlessly elegant vocals and an array of quietly seductive synthesized sounds. What could be just another luxe come-on, hollowed out … Continue reading This Week’s Model — Vagabon, “Water Me Down”
If No Cities to Love, the 2015 comeback album from Sleater-Kinney, was an assurance that the beloved group could reemergence from a decade-long hiatus with their roaring power and vibrant creativity intact, then The Center Won’t Hold is the provocative … Continue reading The New Releases Shelf — The Center Won’t Hold
Sometimes comedy illuminates hard truths with a pointed urgency that other means can’t quite achieve. Sometimes comedy is just funny. This series of posts is mostly about the former instances, but the latter is valuable, too. The institutional heft that’s … Continue reading Laughing Matters — Leslie Jones on Alabama’s Abortion Ban
These posts are about great acting performances sustained across the full run of a television series. Rob Delaney as Rob Norris in Catastrophe (2015 – 2019) The television comedy Catastrophe begins with a one-night stand, or at least what seems to be … Continue reading The Long Haul — Rob Delaney in Catastrophe
These posts celebrate the movie trailers, movie posters, commercials, print ads, and other promotional material that stand as their own works of art. A long time ago, a studio’s marketing team was charged with convincing the general public that an … Continue reading The Art of the Sell — “Star Wars” trailer
664. Jason and the Scorchers, Fervor (1983) “When I came to Nashville, I was looking for a sound with a rural feel to it and a lot of energy, a sound that was American,” Jason Ringenberg told The New York … Continue reading College Countdown: CMJ Top 1000, 1979 – 1989 — #664 to #661
The Popeyes Chicken Sandwich Is Here to Save America by Helen Rosner In a divided age, when every day brings a new flurry of reasons for exhausting outrage at the crumbling norms of the republic, it was nice to have … Continue reading Outside Reading — Chicken Run edition
Raw and brilliantly vicious, “Like Envy” burbles up like magma from beneath the planet’s surface, spreading out to scald anyone in its way. The new single from New York band Weeping Icon bears characteristics familiar from Sonic Youth window-rattlers of … Continue reading This Week’s Model — Weeping Icon, “Like Envy”
Coffee for Two 