Reviews
Big Red Machine Champions the Spirit of Collaboration on How Long Do You Think It’s Gonna Last?
The National and Bon Iver are two of the biggest names in indie music, and they rose to prominence around the same time. The National cemented themselves as mainstays with their 2007 breakthrough, Boxer, and Bon Iver released their storied debut, For Emma, Forever Ago, just a couple of months later. It only makes sense that their paths would eventually converge, and they did three years ago when The National’s Aaron Dessner and Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon made a collaborative record together under the moniker Big Red Machine. Now, they’ve released their sophomore effort, How Long Do You Think It’s Gonna Last?, and it embraces the ethos of collectivism even more than its predecessor. Although Big Red Machine’s first record was by nature a joint endeavor, How Long… features an even wider g...
American Horror Story: Now With Macauley Culkin, Vampires and Even More Camp!
The Pitch: Paging Dr. King: It’s time for another round of “Let’s Basically Do The Shining!” For the latest installment of Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk’s long-running horror anthology series, we settle in with the Gardners — father Harry (Finn Wittrock), wife Doris (Rabe), and daughter Alma (Ryan Kiera Armstrong) — driving to the sleepy seaside town of Providence, Massachusetts. Harry’s a writer looking to get out of the city and cure his writer’s block; Doris, who’s expecting their second child, plans to renovate their drab vacation house in exchange for free rent. But naturally, a few things are amiss about their new home: the neighboring houses turn on red lights as the sun goes down, creepy albinos with fangs loiter around the local graveyard, and “Tuberculosis Karen” (Sarah ...
In Candyman, Art, Violence and Real-Life Horrors Coalesce: Review
The Pitch: Set in modern day Chicago, Candyman, the “remake” of the iconic 1992 film of the same name, turns out not to be a remake at all. Directed by Nia DaCosta, it’s more of an addition to the series’ original story (which itself is based on a short story from Clive Barker entitled “The Forbidden”), than it is a retelling of Bernard Rose’s cult classic. 1992’s Candyman is widely regarded as a staple in the horror genre. It’s told from the scope of Helen Lyle, a graduate student who travels to Chicago’s storied Cabrini-Green projects in order to co-write a thesis focusing urban legends and folklore. When she goes further into her research, she eventually learns of the city’s most intriguing urban legend, Candyman. As her obsession with the story increases, it forces Lyle on a path of se...
Halsey’s If I Can’t Have Love I Want Power Turns the Pop Artist into a Rock Star
In 2019, Halsey released the fiery “Nightmare,” an urgent, industrial anthem that aptly captured the universal “female rage” amplified by the patriarchal doom of the Trump era. The song, a stark departure from her pop-centric releases in the past, was noticeably left off of their third album Manic. The track, however, was never written off by Halsey; instead, the defiant, standalone single laid the foundation for If I Can’t Have Love I Want Power, the singer’s new concept album that tackles “the joys and horrors of pregnancy and childbirth.” The unwavering hope of parenthood loomed large on Halsey’s last record Manic, as she marked their uphill battle conceiving with a love song to their future child. “When you decide it’s your time to arrive, I’ve loved you for all of my life,” they sang ...
With If I Can’t Have Love, I Want Power, Halsey Crafts Her Own Mythology
When Halsey shared the artwork for her fourth studio album, If I Can’t Have Love, I Want Power, the inspiration was clear: seated on a throne, confidently exposed with a child in her arms, she is the regal image of the Madonna. Halsey (who goes by the pronouns “she/they”) has always seemed fascinated by the stories that make up humanity, from the mythic to the biblical and fantastical. If I Can’t Have Love, I Want Power is the next chapter in her own tale. This marks the fourth studio album for Halsey, who is on the cusp of turning 27 — her debut LP, Badlands, shot the singer into the spotlight when she was just 20 years old. Her bracing honesty and electronic production helped her cultivate a dedicated following of young adults, many of whom have grown with her in the years since that deb...
Lorde Escapes to the Beach on Solar Power
What the fuck are perfect places, anyway? Those were the biting last words, the closing lyrics to Lorde’s Melodrama — an album that magnificently captured the blissful madness of being 20 years old: liquor-soaked limes and parties ‘til dawn; identity crises and cataclysmic breakups. That record, released in 2017, was addictively urgent, a work of social malcontent that furthered the disillusion of “Royals,” her world-beating breakthrough smash. Back in 2013, artists like Dave Grohl were welcoming then-16-year-old Ella Marija Lani Yelich-O’Connor to “the Nirvana aesthetic.” But now the alt-pop superstar has receded to her personal paradise, a serene beach where the singer can lay out, read her horoscope, listen to Celine Dion and be left the hell alone — turns out her perfect place had noth...
The Killers’ Pressure Machine Is a Chilling Small-Town Portrait
Pressure Machine, The Killers’ audacious new concept album, is so foreboding and grim — how foreboding and grim is it? — that Brandon Flowers may soon receive a cease-and-desist letter from Utah’s department of tourism. The band’s seventh studio LP (and second in 12 months) is a jarring departure from the maximalized arena-rock of 2020’s Imploding The Mirage, instead painting a grayscale portrait of small-town survival, specifically hinging on Flowers’ adolescent home of Nephi, Utah. It’s part country-rock retrospective, part Coen Brothers thriller and part This American Life, as The Killers commissioned an audio engineer — from NPR no less! — to record real-life residents of the northwestern valley town speaking candidly about their melan-bucolic lives. And these narratives, w...
Meet Me @ the Altar Rewrite the Handbook on Easycore and Pop-Punk With Model Citizen EP
Pop-punk is having its time in the sun once again, as different iterations of the genre swim around the Billboard Hot 100 and streaming charts. This time, though, a new class of pop stars and rappers are taking the reins. While the genre itself has never disappeared completely from the mainstream, very few pop-punk groups have held onto their roots and excelled throughout the last ten years. Before the relatively short days of Lil Peep and Juice WRLD’s bursts of emo-inflected rap across radio stations and online publications, pop-punk had, for many, become a symbol of a dying era — it was a genre to be defended to some, and a genre to be forgotten to others. Enter Consequence’s August Artist of the Month Meet Me @ the Altar, a trio who found each other on the internet and bonded over their...
Brooklyn Nine-Nine Tiptoes Around Police Corruption in Its Final Season: Review
The Pitch: The Nine-Nine is back, baby, but the precinct just isn’t the same: The one-two punch of the COVID-19 pandemic and the post-George Floyd reckonings with the utility of American policing have left the gang more dispirited than ever. Rosa Diaz (Stephanie Beatriz) quits the force in disgust at her complicity and becomes a private detective; Hitchcock (Dirk Blocker) retires and mostly just hangs out with Scully (Joel McKinnon Miller) over FaceTime; the strain of being a Black precinct commander has even taken its toll on Capt. Holt’s (Andre Braugher) personal life. But can the gang pull together and do their jobs — and maybe even enact some positive change within the force? Reading the Room: Even for hardcore Brooklyn Nine-Nine fans (of which I consider myself one), th...
All Things Must Pass – Super Deluxe Edition: George Harrison’s Epic is Celebrated 50 Years On
I admit it, I bought three box sets of Beatles bootleg material when I was in Singapore two decades ago. What I liked most in that treasure trove were the Liverpudlian’s takes on the songs that would eventually emerge in George Harrison’s first true solo album. When it appeared as a triple-disc set, All Things Must Pass was heralded as proof that The Quiet Beatle had much more going on than his few songs that John and Paul found room for on the band’s albums. Unpacking the original vinyl release was like exploring a classical box set (Harrison’s Concert for Bangladesh replicated the experience a mere year later). Subsequent reissues of All Things Must Pass have maintained that sense of magnitude, and this 50th anniversary edition is no exception. The color treatment of the packaging ...
With Expected Biopic Cheese, Jennifer Hudson Pays Tribute to the Queen in Respect: Review
The Pitch: A groundbreaking biopic is an inherent contradiction. When a beloved star dies, mourning fans want to relive their magic, not wallow in their darkness. Productions usually must tread lightly on the darkness, anyway, to avoid a lawsuit from a subject’s estate. And in Aretha Franklin’s case, even two and a half hours is not enough time to unpack the ways a Black woman, a victim of sexual assault raised in the Jim Crow era-turned- international superstar, could become a “diva.” How does a dramatic retelling of a human being’s life avoid cliche? The Queen of Soul’s story has been told before — first in a 1999 memoir with David Ritz, then in a more honest biography by the author in 2014, and most recently in a National Geographic docuseries. But her film has been in development for n...
FX’s Reservation Dogs Is a Sweetly Incisive Series About Native American Life: Review
The Pitch: When we first meet the quote-unquote “Reservation Dogs,” a tight-knit gang of four Indigenous teens growing up in northeast Oklahoma, they’re making off with a stolen spicy chip delivery truck. It’s a risky, exciting gamble — they relish the danger of it more than the profit potential, right down to not wearing seatbelts — that should take them closer to their goal: saving up enough money to move away to California. The rez, they posit, killed their close friend Daniel a year ago, and they want to take his spirit with them when they finally escape. But amid the petty crimes and odd jobs they’ll take to scare up the scratch to leave, they’ll navigate the myriad pains everyone feels growing up, with the specific concerns and anxieties of Native American life — generational tr...
