A tomboyish siren with a thick red mane and lungs of fine Corinthian leather, Neko Case is equal parts gender warrior and indie aesthete, a potent hybrid aptly evoked by the Joan-of-Arc-on-a-muscle-car tableau on the cover of 2009’s Middle Cyclone. Case is also in possession of what is arguably the greatest voice of her generation — clarion in tone; trans-national in its reach; and bottomless in its capacity to transmute wryly-observed public fictions into inescapable private truths that all more or less boil down to: I am woman, hear me ruminate. She performs at the Keswick Theater tomorrow night […]
VAMPIRE WEEKEND: Harmony Hall
From the fourth Vampire Weekend album, Father Of The Bride, due out this spring. Stay tuned.
WORTH REPEATING: Chasing The Ghosts Of LBJ
NEW YORKER: I am constantly being asked why it takes me so long to finish my books. Well, it’s the research that takes the time—the research and whatever it is in me that makes the research take so very much longer than I had planned. I’m currently working on the fifth and final book in “The Years of Lyndon Johnson,” about the nineteen-sixties. I am also planning to write a full-scale memoir, describing in some detail my experiences in researching and writing my books about Robert Moses and Lyndon Johnson—my experiences in learning about these two men and their […]
AMEN DUNES: Miki Dori
Amen Dunes plays Union Transfer on Wednesday January 30th.
WORTH REPEATING: What Future Of Journalism?
Illustration by ERIK CARTER THE NEW YORKER: By some measures, journalism entered a new, Trumpian, gold-plated age during the 2016 campaign, with the Trump bump, when news organizations found that the more they featured Trump the better their Chartbeat numbers, which, arguably, is a lot of what got him elected. The bump swelled into a lump and, later, a malignant tumor, a carcinoma the size of Cleveland. Within three weeks of the election, the Times added a hundred and thirty-two thousand new subscribers. (This effect hasn’t extended to local papers.) News organizations all over the world now advertise their services […]
SH*T MY UNCLE SAYS: 8,158 Lies And Counting
BY WILLIAM C. HENRY Question: How can you tell if the President is lying? Answer: His mouth is open. So, after two-plus years of the President of the United States continuously lying through his dentures (the latest total by the Washington Post is 8,158 lies and counting) about his motives for failing to give a shit about the lives (literally) and livelihoods of millions of American workers and their families, I feel it only politic to conduct a deservedly dubious in-depth re-examination of the veracity of his claims regarding the benefits ensuing to his dupable I’m-always-going-to-believe-anything-he-says-regardless-of-any-documented-evidence-to-the-contrary-and-besides-he’s-a-dedicated-racist-and-misogynist-so-why-wouldn’t-I-believe-him “base” from previously […]
CINEMA: Shattered
GLASS (directed by M. Night Shyamlan, 129 minutes, USA, 2019) BY DAN TABOR FILM CRITIC Like most critics and moviegoers, I have a love/meh relationship with M. Night Shyamalan’s body of work. While I enjoyed his last film, 2016’s Split, a genre-bending story of a man with 24 distinct personalities, I didn’t love it until those final moments when Night served up one of his patented pretzel plot twist endings. The big reveal at the end of Split is that the whole time you’ve been watching quasi-sequel to 2000’s Unbreakable, a film that I will argue birthed the superhero […]
BEING THERE: Mineral @ Theater Of Living Arts
Photo by MATT SHAVER Mineral was one of those bands that got me through high school. Cliché as it may be, those angst-filled, sometimes brittle, but always powerful vocals, and the noisy, feedback-laden guitar riffs spoke volumes to me – speak volumes to me. Formed in Houston in ’94, Mineral became one of the most important bands in emo, and their first full-length album, The Power of Failing (1997), has become a staple of the genre. Their songwriting was unapologetically honest, and the highly emotional lyrics were carried by epic vocal harmonies through song structures that usually took the listener […]
Win Tix To See Brendan Dassey’s Lawyers Discuss Making A Murderer 2 @ The Keswick Theater
Calling all Making A Murderer binge-watchers and true crime obsessives, we have a couple tickets to give away to see defense super-lawyers Laura Nirider and Steven Drizin at the Keswick Theater on Friday where they will discuss coerced and false confessions, unscrupulous interrogation tactics, and the wrongful conviction of Brendan Dassey whose case and post conviction process has captivated the world in the Netflix phenomenon Making A Murderer. Laura Nirider is a Clinical Assistant Professor of Law and Co-Director of the Center on Wrongful Convictions of Youth (CWCY) at Northwestern Pritzker School of Law in Chicago. Nirider represents individuals […]
BEING THERE: A$AP Rocky @ Liacouras Center
Photo by ALEX PATERSON-JONES A$AP ROCKY’s latest LP,Testing, released last May, rocks a combination of eclectic, experimental head bangers and high-octane mosh pit fuel, perfectly-suited for live workouts on his current “Injured Generation” tour, which stopped at the Liacouras Center last night, with opening acts Smooky Margiela and Comethazine in tow. Just 16 years old, Smooky took the stage first and owned it with a charisma much larger than his body size. Throwing down his now-blowing-up hits “Stay 100” and “Vlone Flex,” Smooky made it clear why A$AP has chosen him to join his creative collective, the A$AP Mob. Next […]
NPR 4 DEAF: Giving Public Radio Edge Since 2006
Illustration by JIM MCDERMOTT FRESH AIR: Growing up, actor John C. Reilly remembers watching the comedy of slapstick duo Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy and feeling very touched. It wasn’t just that the two made him laugh, Reilly says, there was something more. “The brilliant thing about their work when you watch it, it seems so nonchalant,” he says. “It seems like they’re doing it for the first time.” Then Reilly got a role playing Oliver Hardy in the new film Stan & Ollie and he realized just how much planning and precision went into those seemingly effortless physical comedy […]
SET THE WAYBACK MACHINE TO NEVER: A Q&A With Jon Spencer, Legendary Blooze Traveler, Elvis From Hell, Noise-Rock Deviant & A Really Nice Guy
BY JONATHAN VALANIA With all due apologies to The Gun Club, Jon Spencer looks just like an Elvis from Hell. Where I come from that’s the highest praise you can confer on someone. And after 34 years of rocking righteously and outrageously, not to mention prodigiously — more than 40 albums and EPs, and countless singles and comp appearances spread across five different bands — he’s earned it. Back in 1985, his band Pussy Galore crawled out of the noise rock sewer of the Lower East Side and proceeded to define deviance downwards. They sounded like Einsturzende Neubauten raised on […]
SH*T MY UNCLE SAYS: Before The Big Fall
Artwork via WHAT THOR TOLD ME BY WILLIAM C. HENRY How do I hate the orange man who lives in a white house of pain and the theater of cruelty he has staged for the past 24 days? Let me count the ways. For starters, folks, did you know that the Texas REPUBLICAN U.S. Representative whose district includes more southern border — 820 MILES — than ANY other politician in the southwest does NOT want this COMPLETELY ASININE WALL constructed! But, this completely ASININE Republican President of ours DOES! And, to make matters even more horrendously ASININE, this completely ASININE […]