THE NEW YORKER: Reggie Walton, the FISA judge overseeing the [NSA’s warrantless spying on Aericans] at that time, wrote, in an opinion on January 28th, that he was “exceptionally concerned” that the N.S.A. had been operating the program in “flagrant violation” of the court’s orders and “directly contrary” to the N.S.A.’s own “sworn attestations.” Walton was considering rescinding the N.S.A.’s authority to run the program, and was contemplating bringing contempt charges against officials who misled the court or perhaps referring the matter to “appropriate investigative offices.” He gave Olsen three weeks to explain why the court shouldn’t just shut […]
DR. DOG: Oh My Christmas Tree
On Tuesday, December 10, Dr. Dog will release a collection of four delightfully weird and heartfelt original Christmas songs. The EP is entitled Oh My Christmas Tree and was initially intended as a gift to the band’s family and friends. Fortunately for the rest of us, the group has decided to make the songs public. As Dr. Dog’s Scott McMicken explains “Last year, in 2012, I wrote these songs and recorded them in two different kitchens over the course of the two weeks leading up to christmas. I made them with the intent to mail them to some of […]
INCOMING: Q&A With Lee Fields, Soul Man
To advance of his show at Union Transfer on Friday, we got soul survivor Lee Fields on the horn. DISCUSSED: Soul power, the Dirty South, Sharon Jones, Daptone, Desco, hanging out with James Brown and how to survive 40 years in the business that is show. Look for it tomorrow on a Phawker near you!
WORTH REPEATING: The Girl Who Wasn’t There
NEW YORK TIMES: She wakes to the sound of breathing. The smaller children lie tangled beside her, their chests rising and falling under winter coats and wool blankets. A few feet away, their mother and father sleep near the mop bucket they use as a toilet. Two other children share a mattress by the rotting wall where the mice live, opposite the baby, whose crib is warmed by a hair dryer perched on a milk crate. Slipping out from her covers, the oldest girl sits at the window. On mornings like this, she can see all the way across […]
BEING THERE: Cults @ The TLA
Photo by PETE TROSHAK Trippy NYC duo Cults brought their dreamy hybrid of 60s girl groups and psychedelic pop to the Theatre of Living Arts last night. Guitarist Brian Oblivion and singer Madeline Follin record as a duo but onstage they are augmented by a bass player, a drummer and a guitar/keyboard/xylophone player. Live the music has more teeth – clanging guitars, gut-rumbling bass and some primal drumming give the music more punch and aggression than their recordings would lead you to expect. Follin hung on the mic all night, giving the crowd intense smoldering stares as her powerful baby […]
CINEMA: Cycle Of Lies
THE ARMSTRONG LIE (2013, directed by Alex Gibney, 122 minutes, U.S.) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC Alex Gibney’s latest documentary The Armstrong Lie seems bound to come and go quickly if only because its subject has already been road-tested as a giant fib no one wants to hear. Beating the French seven times at their own game and coming back from cancer even stronger, now that’s a story to promote and cheer. The real story, that Armstrong’s Tour de France wins were the product of shameless blood doping is a drag we would all like to forget. But Gibney hasn’t […]
BROKEN BELLS: Holding On For Life
They play the Trocadero on March 3rd.
EARLY WORD: Car Talk
INGENIOUS is the incredible true story of the 2008 Automotive X Prize, a competition offering $10 million to anyone who could design the next big thing in automobiles: a safe, mass-producible car that gets 100 miles to the gallon. The prize attracted competitors worldwide, including hundreds of amateur entrants. Author Jason Fagone follows four teams as they navigate building a car, face financial and emotional turmoil, and make their way through the elimination rounds. You may be familiar with one of the teams: A group of students at West Philadelphia High School Academy of Automotive and Mechanical Engineering inspired […]
Nelson Mandela, Avatar Of Freedom, Dead @ 95
The truly heroic do not take up arms and kill for king and country. The truly heroic forswear violence and set their people free. Ghandi, Martin Luther King, Jesus Christ, Nelson Mandela. These are men with more guts than a thousand John Waynes. They came in the name of love — a love that made them more powerful than you can possibly imagine — and vanquished the tyranny of evil men. Tell your children. NEW YORK TIMES: Nelson Mandela, South Africa’s first black president and an enduring icon of the struggle against racial oppression, died on Thursday, the government […]
CINEMA: Deep Inside Inside Llewyn Davis
NEW YORKER: If you love the Coens, or follow folk music, or hold fast to this period of history and that patch of New York, then the film can hardly help striking a chord. Some of its joys are gleefully precise, like the quartet of white-sweatered harmonizing Irish crooners, or the novelty number “Please Mr. Kennedy,” which Llewyn, Jim, and Al Cody (Adam Driver) chant for Columbia Records. Yet something in the movie fails to grip, and it has to do with the hero. Bud Grossman, again, gets it right, telling him, “You’re no front man.” If that is […]
NPR 4 THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t
FRESH AIR If you are of a certain age and lived on the weird television shows that Nickelodeon aired in the ’90s, the to The Adventures of Pete & Pete gets you smiling strange. Mark Mulcahy was told to “write a theme song for the show, but don’t say anything about the show.” Turns out the former Miracle Legion singer already had “Hey Sandy” in his back pocket, and thus the show’s Polaris house band was born. Mulcahy has had a creatively fruitful solo music career since, but in 2008, his wife died, leaving him with twin 3-year-old daughters. […]
LANA DEL REY: Tropico
WARNING: Explicit DAZED DIGITAL: Last night, Lana Del Rey premiered her new short film Tropico at Cinerama Dome in Hollywood, a 30-minute visual directed by Anthony Mandler (“National Anthem”, “Ride”) and starring model Shaun Ross. Featuring her tracks “Body Electric”, “Gods and Monsters” and “Bel Air”, it’s a lurid tangle of Americana and an extension of her aesthetic, with themes of innocence lost, good vs. evil, and trading your body for money. As she puts it in the iconic words of Allen Ginsberg: “I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness.” Lana Del Rey exclusively premieres these […]
EARLY WORD: When The Leevee Breaks
THE KEY: For the longest while, there was a definite refrain you’d hear about heavy roots crew Levee Drivers. “Oh man, that band is awesome, you’ve gotta hear their song ‘Tennessee Girl.’” The Philly via Bucks County group’s signature tune from its 2008 self-titled debut is, make no mistake, a rager. It’s a blistering, burning railroad anthem chugging along like Johnny Cash through a distortion pedal. But for the longest time, that EP was the only recorded music the band had, and the Levees were being defined by a five-year-old song – even though catching any of their raucous […]