Reviews
The Smile Builds an Alternate Universe Radiohead on A Light for Attracting Attention
Fifty-nine seconds into “The Same,” the first track from The Smile’s debut release A Light for Attracting Attention, the unmistakable voice of Thom Yorke begins singing about how “we are all the same” atop a sci-fi pulse of piano, acoustic guitar, and analog synthesizers. There’s no easy release from the tension of the song’s slowly creeping dread, and it soon begs an important question: how is an album with Radiohead’s singer, lead guitarist, and producer actually not, well, a Radiohead album? The answer lies somewhere in between Jonny Greenwood’s simple desire to work on something — anything — with Yorke during the lockdown era of the COVID-19 pandemic and a larger philosophical debate about the evolution of Radiohead’s music in the past 15 years. Both are reflected throughout the superl...
Apple TV+’s The Essex Serpent Is Sumptuous, Supernatural Gothic Romance: Review
The Pitch: 1890s England: a time where the rapid rise of scientific knowledge — medicine, technology, archaeology — clashed with Christian superstitions and fairy tales. In the middle is Cora Seaborne (Claire Danes), a woman recently widowed from a wealthy, abusive spouse, who sees the opportunity to find out who she is and what she really wants out of life. A fortuitous report out of Essex gives her the chance: A winged, fanged “serpent” is reportedly snatching people up outside the sleepy port town of Aldwinter. Armed with her wits, her interest in “naturalism,” her curious son Francis, and adventurous maid/companion Martha (Hayley Squires), Cora leaves her comfortable London life to solve the mystery once and for all. But she quickly finds herself at odds with the paranoid, God-fea...
Top Gun: Maverick Review: Tom Cruise Goes Full Throttle In a Sequel That Does the Original Justice
The Pitch: It may have taken 36 years, but even pandemic delays couldn’t keep Tom Cruise away from the danger zone. When viewers are reunited with Captain Pete Mitchell in Top Gun: Maverick, one of the military’s best-ever fighter pilots is still a Navy man, working on experimental aircraft after decades of avoiding promotions that would pull him out of the cockpit. But the brass, personified here by a very cranky Jon Hamm, has a new assignment for the ace: Train up a team of hotshot youths for an incredibly difficult (dare we say… impossible) mission into enemy territory. While a dozen officers are selected as candidates for the task, the most prominent are a very Maverick-esque pilot known as Hangman (Glen Powell) and Rooster (Miles Teller), the grown-up son of Maverick’s tragically dece...
Conversations with Friends Review: Hulu’s New Sally Rooney Romance Gets Intimate and Messy
The Pitch: In 2020, a Hulu adaptation of Sally Rooney’s sophomore novel took the spring by storm. Beloved by critics and audiences alike, Normal People launched Paul Mescal and Daisy Edgar-Jones into immediate stardom territory, and with good reason — the limited series was both tender and excruciatingly heavy; romantic and frustrating; hard to watch and impossible to turn off. It only makes sense that Hulu would want to give it all another go with Rooney’s debut novel, Conversations with Friends. This story follows introverted poet Frances (Alison Oliver) and her ex-girlfriend, best friend, and muse all at once, Bobbi (a luminous Sasha Lane). The two become involved with an older married couple, Melissa (Jemima Kirke) and Nick (Joe Alwyn), and the messy threads that tie them all...
Spoon Make Up for Postponement with Flawless Set in New York City: Photos + Setlist
No matter how careful or vaccinated we are, touring during the pandemic still isn’t easy. Spoon were recently forced to postpone a trio of shows after members of their party tested positive (and their current opener, Margaret Glaspy, had to pull out of a number of other shows for the same reason). When they finally did get back on track, Britt Daniel’s voice started to give out, causing yet more delays. It’s just not easy out there for touring bands right now — which makes shows like Spoon and Glaspy’s Friday, May 6th gig at New York’s Hammerstein Ballroom all the more special. The show was one of those three aforementioned postponements, rescheduled under the mini-tour title “Let’s Try This Again…” Spoon made up for the delay by delivering a ferocious set full of hits and surprises. They ...
Bad Bunny’s Un Verano Sin Ti Is Summer’s Swaggering, Flavorful Soundtrack: Review
After making history with his last album, Bad Bunny is taking a lawn chair to the beach and basking in his success with his new LP, Un Verano Sin Ti (“A Summer Without You”). Across a whopping 23 tracks, the Puerto Rican superstar celebrates the music of the Caribbean with his signature emo flow. In addition to the usual suspects of reggaeton and Latin trap, he explores influences that include merengue, bomba, and dembow music. He continues to push reggaeton forward with alternative acts like The Marías and Bomba Estéreo, adding touches of Afrobeat and house music in mix. With his most fun and colorful album yet, Bad Bunny is ready for the summer season. The rapper released a trio of albums in 2020, culminating in El Último Tour Del Mundo making history as the first all-Spanish language al...
On WE, Arcade Fire Raise the Stakes Higher Than Ever, But to Mixed Results: Review
“It’s an age of doubt/ and I doubt we’ll figure it out,” sings Win Butler on the first line of “Age of Anxiety I,” the opening track of Arcade Fire’s sixth studio album, WE (out Friday, May 6th). From the very start, things are bleak and contradictory; the song essentially describes a full-on panic attack, even though the music beneath it is synth-covered, electrifying dance-rock, and as the track comes to a close, Butler trades repetitions of the phrases “It’s all about you” and “It’s not about you.” The latter contradiction is a crucial one in the context of WE: There is a deep consideration from the band about the all-or-nothing cultural mentality that we find ourselves in in 2022, and the separation of “I” and “We” is what makes up the core of the album. The first half o...
Pusha T’s Patience Pays Off on It’s Almost Dry
A little over two decades into his career and approaching his 45th birthday, Pusha T is a veteran working in an industry constantly searching for new talent, and a genre redefining itself as quickly as it grows in popularity. Despite that, Pusha’s success comes from a discography decidedly contained by the single subgenre of “coke rap,” and featuring a small, consistent set of collaborators. On It’s Almost Dry, his fourth studio album, the Virginia rapper preaches the values, triumphs and losses of patiently walking this narrow path that has made his name synonymous with sinister raps about selling cocaine, and listed it among some of the most iconic artists of the past 10 years. For the first decade of his career, Pusha was half of hip-hop duo Clipse, alongside his brother Malice. The two...
Pearl Jam Mark Return to Road with Joyous Three-Hour Concert in San Diego: Recap + Setlist
“I’m not gonna talk this much at other shows, but this feels like home, and I missed ya,” Eddie Vedder told the San Diego crowd on Tuesday night. The first time I saw Pearl Jam, it was December 1991 and they were the relatively unknown openers for Nirvana and Red Hot Chili Peppers. My friend had bought a Pearl Jam shirt before the concert (even though the “cool” thing was to get Nirvana merch), when suddenly a long-haired Vedder ran up from somewhere and thanked her. More than 30 years later, Vedder is still filled with this kind of enthusiastic gratitude. He showed plenty of tokens of it throughout Pearl Jam’s nearly three-hour set at Viejas Arena in the city he said “feels like home,” the place where he lived before moving to Seattle. Advertisement Related Video This was the first stop i...
Black Star’s No Fear of Time Proves Even 24 Years Is Just a Number for Hip-Hop Greats
Time is crazy, right? It’s the one thing we never have enough of and, sometimes, can’t wait to have in the rearview mirror. Time is on the mind of Black Star, the duo who surprised hip-hip 24 years ago with a debut album still spoken about in hushed tones today. Talib Kweli and Yasiin Bey (f.k.a. Mos Def) capitalized on that success with their own solo careers. Still, fans kept asking — sometimes incessantly — where’s the next Black Star album? After two decades, the day finally arrived as the Brooklyn group released their sophomore album, No Fear of Time (currently only available on Luminary). While mere mortals might quake in their boots simply thinking about the prospect of releasing a new record so many years after a landmark debut and finding a way to match those lofty expectations, K...
Arcade Fire’s We Is a Sign of the Times
Arcade Fire’s We — a project of resolute, zeitgeisty grandeur — is not only an album built for 2022. It reflects this week, this day, this moment. Why? Because it’s deliberate in its thesis that America is fucked beyond repair. There is no space for misinterpretation. And at this deeply troubling juncture in our history — pick a reason why — nuance is no longer a luxury we can afford. If you have something to say, you better say it now — the scroll of horrifying headlines and Met Gala memes will resume momentarily to numb us anew. But even as subtlety is stampeded by the constant demands of our self-imposed digital captivity — such was the crux of Everything Now, Arcade Fire’s polarizing 2017 LP; remember the lyric “infinite content, infinitely content” — this new album’s soapbox approach ...
Jessica Biel Can’t Help Hulu’s Confused Candy Coalesce: Review
The Pitch: The story of Candy Montgomery is almost too gruesome and eerily-timed to feel true: On Friday, the 13th, one June in 1980, a pleasant, well-liked suburban housewife in a bucolic northeastern Texas town went over to her friend and neighbor Betty Gore’s house, and murdered her with an axe. She slashed her 41 times, 40 of them while her heart was still beating. Then, she took a shower in Betty’s home to clean off the blood, and drove back home to continue her day like nothing had happened… with Betty’s newborn infant crying in her dead mother’s home for thirteen hours before the body was found. Even crazier than that? Candy would end up being found not guilty. Naturally, it’s the kind of lurid true-crime story that would spawn not one, but two miniseries in our murde...
