Is there a greater rags-to-riches story than Charlie Chaplin’s? A real-life tramp, Chaplin grew up dirt poor on the streets of London. The son of…
There is perhaps no bolder album title in all of 20th century music than Ornette Coleman’s The Shape of Jazz to Come. And what’s more,…
For a film whose subject is one of the most famous events in the history of American popular culture, Robert Zemeckis’ I Wanna Hold Your…
On the occasion of Paul McCartney’s 80th birthday, I decided to burden myself with the unforgiving task of writing about the Beatles. After trying out…
Clint Eastwood is perhaps as iconic a figure as there is in the last half-century of Hollywood cinema. Gunslinger machismo, a hard-nosed boomer ethos, and,…
Body/Dilloway/Head is a patient, thrilling deconstruction, a reimagining of what rock music is and what it can be. In the world of noise music and free…
To put Maurice Pialat’s 1980 masterpiece Loulou into words is a deceptively challenging task. The premise seems simple: restless Parisian woman Nelly (Isabelle Huppert) is…
Every time I come back to Pinkerton, I feel the same hesitancy just before hitting play. Have I finally outgrown this record? Will the second-hand…
Few, if any, artists in the history of modern popular music experienced a creative eruption as rich as did Miles Davis did in the years…
Once seen as a tragic fall from grace, today it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise to hear someone sing the praises of the…
Orcutt and Corsano provide an example of what improvisational albums should sound like, even with the production constraints of a pandemic-driven world. One of the…
screen time may be considered only a side project for Thurston Moore, but its cinematic and emotional touchstones make the album an important work in the…
2020 proves that Magik Markers are still able to excite nearly two decades into their career. As young upstarts on the American noise scene of the…
Simply reading about Horse Lords could never do their music justice. Given their unusual tuning systems, 20th-century classical reference points, and their band members’ assorted…
All the Time is both a breezy bit of oddball dance-pop and a rich record that benefits from deeper listening. While Hamilton, Ontario may not seem…
Protomartyr’s main draw has always been frontman Joe Casey. With all due respect to Greg Ahee’s wonderfully oblique guitarwork, Casey’s gruff sneer and erudite lyrics…
Shutting Down Here represents a clear advancement of O’Rourke’s familiar ideas and is one of richest sonic achievements. In a recent interview, Jim O’Rourke called his…
Homegrown is the rare archival release that actually offers substance rather than just ephemera. In an age where exhuming stacks of demos and alternate mixes has…
For a band so insistent on defying any and all principles of behavior, even (or perhaps especially) when it meant sabotaging their own success, it’s…
Brian Eno will always be best known for his invention of ambient music (or at least its coinage) and for his work as the producer…
The first image of Agnes Varda’s 1965 film Le Bonheur (meaning “happiness” in English) is that of a yellow sunflower beaming in the radiant light of…