RAWK TAWK: Q&A With Dr. Dog’s Toby Leaman

  BY MARY LYNN DOMINGUEZ On my first listen to Philly’s own Dr. Dog, I remember being hit by a brick wall of nostalgia, and not fully knowing why. They’re often compared to their most obvious influences such as The Beatles and The Beach Boys, but to me they seem a little less glamorous and more likely to be found jamming out alongside an old abandoned stretch of train tracks. The band’s catchy, bittersweet melodies, intertwined with melancholy lyrics, layered lo-fi instrumentation and bright, warm vocal harmonies had me hooked. Though I can’t always figure out what they’re singing about, I […]

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RIP: Pete Seeger, Inexhaustible Avatar Of American Folk And Fearless Populist Troubadour, Dead At 94

  EDITOR’S NOTE: This review of Bruce Springsteen’s The Seeger Sessions originally ran in PW back in 2006. I think it ably serves double duty as a Pete Seeger obituary, which was in the back of my mind when I wrote it given that he was 87 at the time. Goodnight Mr. Seeger wherever you are. It’s no accident that you don’t really know what Pete Seeger did. That he’s truly larger than life, an American original, the kind that walk out of storybooks, like Paul Bunyan or Johnny Appleseed, but more real. That he more or less singlehandedly carried […]

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SOCHI MAYOR: Ain’t No Homosexuals In Our City

  NATIONAL POST: The mayor of Sochi says there are no gays in the Russian city that will host the Winter Olympics in less than two weeks. Anatoly Pakhomov said homosexuals were not accepted in the Caucasus — despite there being several gay bars in Sochi. Speaking to the BBC’s Panorama program, Mr. Pakhomov was asked whether gay people had to hide their sexuality in the city. “No, we just say that it is your business, it’s your life,” said the mayor. “But it’s not accepted here in the Caucasus where we live. We do not have them in our […]

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NPR 4 THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t

FRESH AIR It’s commonly thought that the Catholic Church fought heroically against the fascists when Benito Mussolini’s party ruled over Italy in the 1920s and ’30s. But in The Pope and Mussolini, David Kertzer says the historical record and a trove of recently released archives tell a very different story. It’s fascinating, Kertzer tells Fresh Air’s Dave Davies, “how in a very brief period of time, Mussolini came to realize the importance of enlisting the pope’s support.” In 1933, fascist rallies typically began with a morning mass celebrated by a priest, and churches and cathedrals were important props in the […]

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#GRAMMYS: Beyonce’s Booty Breaks The Internet

    WASHINGTON POST: With her hair as damp as it is in the song’s beachy video, the singer, a 17-time Grammy winner, writhed on a chair solo for much of the song, but it wasn’t until she was joined by husband Jay Z that we suddenly felt the song’s siren call. With a single, so-subtle-you-shouldn’t-have-even-noticed butt grab — and yes, the little visual Beyonce seemed to give us every time she spat the word “surfboard” — we got a peek at the chemistry between Bey and Jay, married couple. And it was way sexier than Katy Perry on a […]

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BEING THERE: The Pixies @ The Electric Factory

Photo by NOAH SILVESTRY The Pixies weren’t just first to the indie rock party: they hosted it. They’re royals in the kingdom of rock, prophets in the religion of screamed lyrics, champions in the game of noise. Their subjects/followers/fanatics (or whatever else you may call them) flooded the Electric Factory floor to see the Pixies do what they do best, what nobody else can do — though Lord knows for 25 years they have tried and tried. This tour diverges quite a bit from others since the Pixies’ reunion in 2004: Paz Lenchantin plays bass, replacement of the replacement of […]

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CINEMA: The Past Isn’t Dead, It’s Not Even Past

  THE PAST (2013, directed by Asghar Farhadi, 130 minutes, Iran/France) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC Making a mystery out of everyday life, Iranian director Asghar Farhadi’s French-shot The Past quickly pulls us into a web of domestic intrigue. The family we meet is in severe dysfunction and at the root is an ever-looming past, an unspoken trauma whose role in which none of the characters truly understand. We arrive like Ahmad (Ali Mosaffa) understanding very little. He has returned to Paris from Tehran after a four year absence to sign divorce papers and end his marriage with Marie (Argentine […]

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