Please donate to help save PopMatters. We are moving to WordPress in January out of necessity and need your help.

Popular Culture Is Eating Its History and OMD Are Not Complaining

Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark are the most important and influential group of the late 1970s/early 1980s birth of electropop. OMD's classic, clever, arty synthpop single "Enola Gay" is 40 years old, and Andy McCluskey takes us through their history.

Music

Popular Culture Is Eating Its History and OMD Are Not Complaining

Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark are the most important and influential group of the late 1970s/early 1980s birth of electropop. OMD's classic, clever, arty synthpop single "Enola Gay" is 40 years old, and Andy McCluskey takes us through their history.

BTS Master the Art of Timeless, Universal Songwriting with 'BE'

BE is the album in which BTS's sound crosses over to cement the type of legacy they're building – one that started in youth and is very proudly Korean, but that makes sense for any age or place.

Nicki and Patrick Adams Offer an Engaging Classical/Jazz Hybrid on 'Lynx'

Eclectic siblings Nicki and Patrick Adams draw from a wealth of musical genres and training to produce an album of depth and beauty.

LOG ET3RNAL Is a Dubbed-out Beauty of Soft, Skeletal Ambience

Ulla and Perila, two experimental producers on the vanguard of modern ambient, take their talent to new heights on LOG ET3RNAL, their first collaborative LP under the LOG moniker.

How Leeds Led the Goth Scene

Leeds' the F Club, Ace of Clubs, and the Warehouse are just a few of the clubs that ushered in goth. Ethan Stewart talks with musicians and fans who were there.

Elvis Costello Gets Dark and Brooding on 'Hey Clockface'

Elvis Costello is a complex man of dark humor and flashes of anger as he keeps fighting the good fight armed with a razor wit.

Film

Filmmaker Diane Paragas on 'Yellow Rose' and the Heartbreak Behind Anti-Immigration Policies

Director Diane Paragas asks her audience to not bring their politics into her film, Yellow Rose, but to just let it be, as she hopes to show the heartbreak of broken families lost within the politicisation of immigration issues.

On Finnish Film 'Open Up to Me' and Trans Portrayal in Film

Viewers might temper a recognition of Finnish film Open Up to Me's strong points with an awareness of the complexity of trans portrayal in film.

Is Christian Petzold's 'Undine' Myth or Therapeutic Dialogue?

Christian Petzold's Undine is a deeply romantic work that taps into our fascination with metamorphosis. Only the audience is able to take his intent and open it up to ideas that transcend gender.

Books

Landing Instructions for Derrida

In his book, An Event, Perhaps, Derrida's intellectual development is adroitly unpacked by Peter Salmon without bamboozling the reader or peddling dime-store psychologizing.

'Queer Legacies: Stories from Chicago's LGBTQ Archives'

From the rich archives of Chicago's Gerber Hart Library, John D'Emilio's Queer Legacies offers an inspiring overview of individual perseverance; poignant losses, and stirring collective gains.

Megan Rapinoe's 'One Life' Is Pitch-Perfect

In Megan Rapinoe's memoir One Life, her training, hard work, and competitive spirit are coupled with an impassioned account of her political awakening.

Television

The Mandalorian's Political Allegory: Diversity Is the Way

When the president of Lucasfilm Kathleen Kennedy announced there will be more than 10 Star Wars shows and films coming out, she declared that popular culture is a space of diversity. All stories can and should be told simultaneously and adjacently.

Pretend It's a City Proves Once Again, You Can't Argue with Fran Lebowitz

Fran Lebowitz's ubiquitous little smirk is still going as strong as it ever did because—and this is why she is sexier now than she was 50 years ago—there is really just no way whatsoever to make her feel bad about herself.

Beauty and Horror in George C. Wolfe's Ma Rainey's Black Bottom

The characters in Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, distinct as they are, besiege the viewer's mind as metaphors, mythic exemplars of a disturbing legacy America seems unable or unwilling to address.

Recent
Film

Filmmaker Diane Paragas on 'Yellow Rose' and the Heartbreak Behind Anti-Immigration Policies

Director Diane Paragas asks her audience to not bring their politics into her film, Yellow Rose, but to just let it be, as she hopes to show the heartbreak of broken families lost within the politicisation of immigration issues.

Music

BTS Master the Art of Timeless, Universal Songwriting with 'BE'

BE is the album in which BTS's sound crosses over to cement the type of legacy they're building – one that started in youth and is very proudly Korean, but that makes sense for any age or place.

Film

On Finnish Film 'Open Up to Me' and Trans Portrayal in Film

Viewers might temper a recognition of Finnish film Open Up to Me's strong points with an awareness of the complexity of trans portrayal in film.

Music

LOG ET3RNAL Is a Dubbed-out Beauty of Soft, Skeletal Ambience

Ulla and Perila, two experimental producers on the vanguard of modern ambient, take their talent to new heights on LOG ET3RNAL, their first collaborative LP under the LOG moniker.

Music

Nicki and Patrick Adams Offer an Engaging Classical/Jazz Hybrid on 'Lynx'

Eclectic siblings Nicki and Patrick Adams draw from a wealth of musical genres and training to produce an album of depth and beauty.

Books

Landing Instructions for Derrida

In his book, An Event, Perhaps, Derrida's intellectual development is adroitly unpacked by Peter Salmon without bamboozling the reader or peddling dime-store psychologizing.

Music

Popular Culture Is Eating Its History and OMD Are Not Complaining

Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark are the most important and influential group of the late 1970s/early 1980s birth of electropop. OMD's classic, clever, arty synthpop single "Enola Gay" is 40 years old, and Andy McCluskey takes us through their history.

Television

The Mandalorian's Political Allegory: Diversity Is the Way

When the president of Lucasfilm Kathleen Kennedy announced there will be more than 10 Star Wars shows and films coming out, she declared that popular culture is a space of diversity. All stories can and should be told simultaneously and adjacently.

Music

Susan Alcorn's 'Pedernal' Is a Chamber Jazz/Americana Blend

Baltimore's wizard of the pedal steel guitar, Susan Alcorn, offers a creative blend of Americana, jazz, and ethereal improvisation on Pedernal.

Music

Shanghai Restoration Project Offer Innovative Alternate Reality on 'Brave New World Symphony'

Imagination has always been the Shanghai Restoration Project's beating heart, and it has perhaps never been more timely than on Brave New World Symphony.

Music Reviews

Maxwell Stern Gives Us a Warm Car in Frigid Winter with 'Impossible Sum'

Maxwell Stern's debut record, The Impossible Sum, is a relaxed, honest, deeply felt exploration of what it means to be a feeling, caring human in our time of incessant gaslighting and doom scrolling.

Music

Elvis Costello Gets Dark and Brooding on 'Hey Clockface'

Elvis Costello is a complex man of dark humor and flashes of anger as he keeps fighting the good fight armed with a razor wit.

Books

'Queer Legacies: Stories from Chicago's LGBTQ Archives'

From the rich archives of Chicago's Gerber Hart Library, John D'Emilio's Queer Legacies offers an inspiring overview of individual perseverance; poignant losses, and stirring collective gains.

Love in the Time of Coronavirus

COVID-19 and Our Purgatory of Consumerism

Our pandemic quarantine has become the sublime enactment of Baudrillard's theory of consumption – that modern consumption, with its myth of individual liberty and choice, is in fact 'de-socialising'.

Music

Barry Gibb Re-Visits Bee Gees Classics with Superproducer Dave Cobb

Barry Gibb went to Nashville to make a country record of Bee Gees classics with Americana producer Dave Cobb. The result is Greenfields: The Gibb Brothers Songbook, Vol. 1.

Film

Is Christian Petzold's 'Undine' Myth or Therapeutic Dialogue?

Christian Petzold's Undine is a deeply romantic work that taps into our fascination with metamorphosis. Only the audience is able to take his intent and open it up to ideas that transcend gender.

Music

Dave Scanlon's 'Pink in each, bright blue, bright green' Is a Stark, Deeply Elegant Solo Work

Dave Scanlon, the singer and guitarist of Brooklyn's JOBS, offers a stripped-down collection of songs that retains the unique intensity of his more complex work.


PM Picks
Collapse Expand Pm Picks

Pop Ten
Collapse Expand Pop Ten

© 1999-2020 PopMatters.com. All rights reserved.
PopMatters is wholly independent, women-owned and operated.