Photo by ANDY WILSH Generally speaking, and for good reason, it is considered poor form to simply cut and paste a band’s press kit bio onto your Q&A and call it an intro, but this time we’ll make an exception, for the following will likely be the closest we ever get to a definitive explanation of the hushed grandeur of The Clientele: The Clientele formed a long time ago in the backwoods of suburban Hampshire, playing together as kids at school, rehearsing in a thatched cottage remote from any kind of music scene, but hypnotized by the magical strangeness of […]
WAVVES + CULTURE ABUSE: Up And Down
Wavves and Culture Abuse play Union Transfer with Joyce Manor on November 7th.
DAY OF RECKONING: #MuellerIsComing
RELATED: On Monday morning, after America learned that Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, and Manafort’s lobbying partner, Rick Gates, had been indicted and turned themselves in to federal authorities, the president tried to distance himself from the unfolding scandal. “Sorry, but this is years ago, before Paul Manafort was part of the Trump campaign,” the president wrote in one tweet. A few minutes later, he added, in another, “Also, there is NO COLLUSION!” At almost the exact same time, news broke suggesting that the F.B.I. has evidence of collusion. We learned that one of the Trump campaign’s foreign […]
WORTH REPEATING: The Lost Children Of Tuam
Ugly story beautifully told by @DanBarryNYT and @KassieBraken. NEW YORK TIMES: A slight girl all of 6, she leaves the modest family farm, where the father minds the livestock and the mother keeps a painful secret, and walks out to the main road. Off she goes to primary school, off to the Sisters of Mercy. Her auburn hair in ringlets, this child named Catherine is bound for Tuam, the ancient County Galway town whose name derives from a Latin term for “burial mound.” It is the seat of a Roman Catholic archdiocese, a proud distinction announced by the skyscraping cathedral […]
HOT DOCUMENT: It’s Mueller Time!
RELATED: The Complete 31-Page Indictment Against Manafort
GIMME SHELTER: Homeless, Trans And Afraid
Illustration by ALEX WILLIAMSON via THE NEW YORKER BY SAM ARCHER I My roommate fantasizes about torturing people. “What I really want to do,” he says, “is take someone, right, to an abandoned warehouse, and tie them up and leave them for a while, then come back and make them crawl over broken glass.” It is January, and he is sitting cross legged by my bed, speaking in a soft voice I have to strain to hear. His face is calm, even though he has just punched a hole in the wall. I envelope him in silence. “Uh huh,” I […]
CINEMA: White Flight, White Heat
SUBURBICON (Directed by George Clooney, 104 minutes, 2017, USA) BY CHRISTOPHER MALENEY FILM CRITIC Wouldn’t it be nice to go back to the simplicity and innocence of the 1950s? The postwar economy was booming: food was cheap, gas was cheap, and houses were cheap. The United States was on top of the world, justifying the excess of capitalism like never before. We were morally pure, with strong leaders, sanitized communities, and wholesome television. Kids played outside. Neighbors said hello to each other. Everyone had a job. Except, that’s not all true, is it? The fear of atomic annihilation pervaded the […]
BEING THERE: Bruce Almighty @ PFF
Photo by EVAN HUNDELT Last night Bruce Willis was in town to receive the Philadelphia Film Festival’s second annual Lumière Award, which is bestowed on “those that have demonstrated a passion for the furtherance of filmmaking as a vital artform and growing industry in Philadelphia,” according to the PFF web site. Willis has appeared in four movies shot in Philadelphia: Twelve Monkeys, The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, and Glass — the latter three directed by M. Nigh Shamylan, who presented the award to Willis. The two are currently shooting Glass, which is the final film in a superhero trilogy that began […]
CINEMA: The Tragic Kingdom
THE FLORIDA PROJECT ( Directed by Sean Baker, 115 minutes, U.S., 2017) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC With 2015 much-discussed indie hit Tangerine (forever remembered as “the film shot on an iPhone”) audiences began to catch up with New Jersey-born writer/director Sean Baker. Tangerine’s electrified storytelling, following a pair of audacious transgender streetwalkers as they hunt for one’s cheating boyfriend along the Hollywood strip, revealed Baker to be a director who could capture a rare naturalism that obscured his savvy plotting and instinct for drama that made his films transcend mere anthropological curiosity. Tangerine seemed to come out of nowhere […]
GEEK SQUAD: How Wonder Woman Got Her Groove
BY RICHARD SUPLEE GEEK SPACE CORRESPONDENT Wonder Woman is everywhere this year. From her own box office record-breaking movie that actually has critics praising a DC film to her role in Justice League next month and all the rumors/news about the sequel there is no escaping the Lasso Of Truth-wielding superheroine. But who created Wonder Woman? The character is over 75 years old and yet very little is spoken of the man who created her. The Secret History of Wonder Woman (2014) by Jill Lepore details the strange life of William Moulton Marston that would be considered scandalous even […]
21ST CENTURY SCHIZOID MAN: Q&A With King Crimson Lead Singer & Guitarist Jakko Jakszyk
BY JAMIE KNERR PROG-ROCK CORRESPONDENT Prog-rock lodestar King Crimson has made smashing musical boundaries their stock-in-trade since its inception in 1968. Nearly every adjective and superlative has been directed their way in the 49-odd years since they first burst onto the scene, ranging from the fawning to the not-altogether-flattering. They’ve been labeled everything from “pompous”, “bombastic” and “overly-intellectual”, to “brilliant”, “complex”, “challenging”, “futuristic” and “pure genius.” On one point there is little disagreement: From one project to the next throughout the years the band’s transformation has repeatedly defied convention or even definition. Under the leadership of acclaimed virtuoso guitarist […]
NPR 4 THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t
FRESH AIR: Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria have shown how extreme weather can destroy towns, cities and islands. My guest Jeff Goodell is the author of a new book about what cities around the world face in a future of rising seas and increasingly intense storms. It’s called “The Water Will Come.” Goodell is a contributing editor at Rolling Stone and has covered climate change for 15 years. He’s also written about fossil fuels, including the coal industry and their impact on the environment. GROSS: So your book opens with a very upsetting description of what Miami might look […]