POLITICO: The FBI issued an extraordinary statement on Wednesday, pushing back on the release of a partisan congressional memo alleging the bureau used improper evidence to obtain legal permission to surveil a Trump campaign adviser. We’ve never seen anything like it. “[T]he FBI was provided a limited opportunity to review this memo the day before the committee voted to release it,” the bureau said. “As expressed during our initial review, we have grave concerns about material omissions of fact that fundamentally impact the memo’s accuracy.” The memo, written by Congressman Devin Nunes and barreling toward public circulation at the president’s […]
COMMENTARY: The State Of Our Disunion
BY CLAIR MALENEY Listening to the president’s State of the Union speech last night, I was (once again) struck by two things: his perversion of inclusive language to divide and alienate and his warped notion of politics as a high-testosterone blood sport intended to hurt and humiliate anyone who disagrees with him, and thereby is his sworn enemy. Trump has always had a cruel way with phrases. Consider the closing from last night’s speech: “As long as we are proud of who we are and what we are fighting for, there is nothing we cannot achieve. As long as we […]
LISTEN LIKE THIEVES: New Dr. Dog
On April 27th, Dr. Dog will release ‘Critical Equation,’ a new album that shows the band pushing themselves into perhaps the most fertile creative period in their history. To record ‘Critical Equation,’ they holed up with producer Gus Seyffert (Beck, Bedouine) and a 16-track tape machine to produce an inspired, playful opus that’s among their most imaginative statements.
BEING THERE: Snail Mail @ PhilaMOCA
Photo by FARRAH SHEIKY “Can you cut the drum mic,” Lindsey Jordan, the 18 year old frontwoman of Snail Mail, asked Saturday night at PhilaMOCA. Her voice is raspy and nonchalant. I don’t think ever uttered a sentence that cool when I was 18. Snail Mail is her first band. (Once again, much cooler than my first experiences with music in high school, which involved a lot of West Side Story.) Their debut EP, Habit, was released in July 2016. Since then, Jordan has toured with the likes of Beach Fossils, Priests, Waxahatchee, and Girlpool. The PhilaMOCA show may not […]
WORTH REPEATING: American Hustle
THE ATLANTIC: Shortly before the announcement of his job inside Trump’s campaign, Manafort touched base with former colleagues to let them know of his professional return. He exuded his characteristic confidence, but they surprised him with doubts and worries. Throughout his long career, Manafort had advised powerful men—U.S. senators and foreign supreme commanders, imposing generals and presidents-for-life. He’d learned how to soothe them, how to bend their intransigent wills with his calmly delivered, diligently researched arguments. But Manafort simply couldn’t accept the wisdom of his friends, advice that he surely would have dispensed to anyone with a history like his […]
CINEMA: The Dresser
THE PHANTOM THREAD (dir. by Paul Thomas Anderson, 130 min., USA, 2018) BY DAN TABOR FILM CRITIC After more or less going dark for three years, Paul Thomas Anderson returns to the silver screen with Phantom Thread, his follow up to 2014’s Inherent Vice, which reunites him with Daniel Day-Lewis for what reportedly will be the famously enigmatic actor’s final film role. Much like The Master, Phantom Thread is an evocative exploration of the ever-shifting power dynamics of dysfunctional relationships in Post-War period dress. But in stark contrast to sprawling American epics like There Will Be Blood and The Master, […]
IN MEMORIAM: Mark E. Smith Of The Fall
BY BRIAN W. MURRAY By the time I came to The Fall they were already well established as (post-) punk iconoclasts, their unique brand of contrarian, literate sonic terrorism already highly regarded by musos-in-the-know, of whom I knew virtually none. They surfaced late-night in my bland suburban adolescent realm in the form of the new video for “New Big Prinz,” an immediate classic amidst their dizzyingly vast output. I remember it being, well, orange. Steve Hanley’s throbbing, pulverizing bass line heralded their trademark relentlessness. Over the piledriver rhythm, Craig Scanlon’s jagged, cascading guitar somehow meshed with Brix Smith’s incongruous […]
NPR 4 THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t
Photo via PINTEREST FRESH AIR: The nominees for the 90th Academy Awards were announced Tuesday, and Paul Thomas Anderson‘s film Phantom Thread landed six nominations, including best director and best picture. Set in 1950s London, Phantom Thread stars Daniel Day-Lewis as a renowned fashion designer who makes gowns for wealthy women and royalty. Anderson — whose previous film credits include There Will Be Blood, Magnolia and Boogie Nights — says his latest film was inspired, in part, by iconic designers like Christian Dior and Cristóbal Balenciaga. “They’re known to be the most obsessive of obsessives,” Anderson says. “The relationship that […]
NPR 4 THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t
FRESH AIR: If watching President Trump and listening to American political discourse these days makes you feel something’s gone wrong, our guests today will tell you it’s not your imagination. Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt have spent years studying what makes democracies healthy and what leads to their collapse. And they see signs that American democracy is in trouble. In a new book, they argue that Trump has shown authoritarian tendencies and that many players in American politics are discarding long-held norms that have kept our political rivalries in balance and prevented the kind of bitter conflict that can lead […]
RIP: South African Trumpeter Hugh Masekela, The Man Who Blew Freedom’s Horn, Dead At 78
NEW YORK TIMES: The next year he joined Abdullah Ibrahim (then known as Dollar Brand) and four other upstart instrumentalists in the Jazz Epistles, South Africa’s first bebop band of note. With a heavy, driving pulse and warm, arcing melodies, their music was distinctly South African, even as its swing rhythms and flittering improvisations reflected affinities with American jazz. “There had never been a group like the Epistles in South Africa,” Mr. Masekela said in his 2004 autobiography, “Still Grazing: The Musical Journey of Hugh Masekela,” written with D. Michael Cheers. “Our tireless energy, complex arrangements, tight ensemble play, languid […]
SMUS: The Sh*tholing Of The American Presidency
BY WILLIAM C. HENRY No doubt this nation does need to be made “great,” (as if we were ever really and truly “great,” but I will grant you that our WWII participation and follow-up Marshall Plan achievements were exemplary exceptions) but for reasons you are about to be made fully aware of, I am extremely reluctant to add the word “again” to any such plea, plan or plaudit. One thing we surely DO NOT need — nor should we EVER become dependent upon — is a bigoted, racist, Russia-hugging, Nazi/fascist-embracing, thieving, bankruptcy reliant, altogether phony, traitorous, money laundering, pathologically […]