Bleached: The Beatles' White Album Effect on the US Alt-rock Explosion of 1988-95

The Beatles' White Album has been credited with a lot of things over its 50-year history, but how about as the single biggest influence on US alternative rock as it burst into the mainstream in the late '80s and early '90s? Well, it's not as crazy as you might think.

Paved with Good Inventions: Norway's Anja Garbarek on Her Journey Back to Music with 'The Road Is Just a Surface'

'Get Shorty' Is the Purest Distillation of Elmore Leonard

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'Unthinkable' Gives Our Brains a Second Thought

Unthinkable is an eminently readable book that includes a wealth of information about how the brain functions.

Books

Paved with Good Inventions: Norway's Anja Garbarek on Her Journey Back to Music with 'The Road Is Just a Surface'

Just beneath Anja Garbarek's deceptively cool and composed music are the raucous emotions of a fevered storyteller, trying desperately to impart an often startling and vicious truth.

Music

The Avett Brothers - "Roses and Sacrifice" (track review)

As fans expect from the Avett Brothers, "Roses and Sacrifice's" jaunty music masks the underlying emotional upheaval.

Music

Spafford Delivers Hot Jams to Help San Francisco Rise Above

Jamrock quartet Spafford rocks the Great American Music Hall to provide the Bay Area with a sonic oasis for escape from dystopian air quality problems in the wake of the latest wildfires.

Music

Amo Amo Wants to Be "Closer to You" (premiere)

Jim James produces this young outfit Amo Amo, and their lead singer Love Femme delivers a remarkably enchanting video with "Closer to You".

Music

New York Punk Band FAITH/VOID Embraces the Spotlight

While not an instant household name except perhaps to its fan base, FAITH/VOID churns out intense yet catchy music that has a broad appeal to people who are even not necessarily fans of punk or emo.

Music

JP Harris Rekindle a Timeless Country Sound on 'Sometimes Dogs Bark at Nothing'

Sometimes Dogs Bark at Nothing avoids imitation and firmly concertizes JP Harris as a palpable country presence.

Music

Aaron Parks Creates a Wide Jazz Universe on 'Little Big'

Jazz pianist Aaron Parks' logical follow-up to his 2008 Blue Note debut recording is deep, cool, joyful, and rhythmically advanced.

Music

'Get Shorty' Is the Purest Distillation of Elmore Leonard

The 1995 Hollywood caper Get Shorty, starring John Travolta, Gene Hackman and Danny DeVito, was billed as Elmore Leonard's revenge on the movie industry, but it has a funny way of showing it.

Film

Tav Falco Salutes 'Girl Group' the Jaynetts With "Sally Go 'Round the Roses" (premiere)

Friend of William S. Burroughs, favorite of David Lynch and onetime collaborator with Alex Chilton, Tav Falco and Panther Burns return with a cover of a 1960s gem that's ahead of its time.

Music

Anthony Ruptak Paints a Self-Portrait in the Vivid "Good Morning" (premiere)

Anthony Ruptak's sun-washed, impassioned single and music video is a personal proclamation that he calls "a tale of love vs self-destruction and the romanticizing of both".

Music

Slouching Toward Redemption: Ernst Lubitsch's 'Heaven Can Wait'

There's a rotten core at the center of Lubitsch's Heaven Can Wait. No matter how engaging I find Haskell and Sariss's enchantment with the film, I cannot accede to their critical adulation of it and of Henry.

Film

Allen Ginsberg's Journals Offer Insight into Poetry, Culture, and Politics During the Cold War

Beginning in Cuba in 1965, Ginsberg recorded his experiences behind the Iron Curtain. Iron Curtain Journals: January-May 1965 brings us with him, via his intimate diary.

Books

Behind Every Superhero Is One of These Clowns: 'The League of Regrettable Sidekicks'

Many of Jon Morris's characters in The League of Regrettable Sidekicks are proven to be a reflection of their times not only culturally but in terms of the evolution of the genre, as well.

Jon Morris

Books

The Coen Brothers' 'The Ballad of Buster Scruggs' Is American Myth in Vignette

In the Coen Brothers' The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, there's something altogether new about having revisionist western ideas filtered through their rich sense of character, black comedy, and their penetrating awareness of humanity's fatal imperfections.

Film

Pop Ten

Bleached: The Beatles' White Album Effect on the US Alt-rock Explosion of 1988-95

Jackie Chan's 10 Best Films

The Coen Brothers' 'The Ballad of Buster Scruggs' Is American Myth in Vignette

Say It Loud! 100 Great Protest Songs: Part 1 - Beethoven to Janis Ian

Paved with Good Inventions: Norway's Anja Garbarek on Her Journey Back to Music with 'The Road Is Just a Surface'

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