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Books
Is Carl Neville's 'Eminent Domain' Worth the Effort?
In Carl Neville's latest novel, Eminent Domain, he creates complexities and then shatters them into tiny narrative bits arrayed along a non-linear timeline.
29 Oct 2020
Film
Horrors in the Closet: Horrifying Heteronormative Scapegoating
The artificial connection between homosexuality and communism created the popular myth of evil and undetectable gay subversives living inside 1950s American society. Film both reflected and refracted the homophobia.
29 Oct 2020
Music
Johnny Nash Refused to Remember His Place
Johnny Nash, part rock era crooner, part Motown, and part reggae, was too polite for the more militant wing of the Civil Rights movement, but he also suffered at the hands of a racist music industry that wouldn't market him as a Black heartthrob. Through it all he was himself, as he continuously refused to "remember his place".
29 Oct 2020
Music
John Hollenbeck Completes a Trilogy with 'Songs You Like a Lot'
The third (and final?) collaboration between a brilliant jazz composer/arranger, the Frankfurt Radio Big Band, vocalists Kate McGarry and Theo Bleckman, and the post-1950 American pop song. So great that it shivers with joy.
29 Oct 2020
Music
The Return of the Rentals After Six Years Away
The Rentals release a space-themed album, Q36, with one absolute gem of a song.
29 Oct 2020
Music
Matthew Murphy's Post-Wombats Project Sounds a Lot Like the Wombats (And It's a Good Thing)
While UK anxiety-pop auteurs the Wombats are currently hibernating, frontman Matthew "Murph" Murphy goes it alone with a new band, a mess of deprecating new earworms, and revived energy.
29 Oct 2020
Music
The 100 Best Albums of the 2000s: 80-61
In this next segment of PopMatters' look back on the music of the 2000s, we examine works by British electronic pioneers, Americana legends, and Armenian metal provocateurs.
29 Oct 2020
Music
In the Tempest's Eye: An Interview with Surfer Blood
Surfer Blood's 2010 debut put them on the map, but their critical sizzle soon faded. After a 2017 comeback of sorts, the group's new record finds them expanding their sonic by revisiting their hometown with a surprising degree of reverence.
29 Oct 2020
Music
Artemis Is the Latest Jazz Supergroup
A Blue Note supergroup happens to be made up of women, exclusively. Artemis is an inconsistent outing, but it dazzles just often enough.
28 Oct 2020
Books
Horrors in the Closet: A Closet Full of Monsters
A closet full of monsters is a scary place where "straight people" can safely negotiate and articulate their fascination and/or dread of "difference" in sexuality.
28 Oct 2020
Music
'Wildflowers & All the Rest' Is Tom Petty's Masterpiece
Wildflowers is a masterpiece because Tom Petty was a good enough songwriter by that point to communicate exactly what was on his mind in the most devastating way possible.
28 Oct 2020
Music
Jazz Composer Maria Schneider Takes on the "Data Lords" in Song
Grammy-winning jazz composer Maria Schneider released Data Lords partly as a reaction to her outrage that streaming music services are harvesting the data of listeners even as they pay musicians so little that creativity is at risk. She speaks with us about the project.
28 Oct 2020
Music
The 100 Best Albums of the 2000s: 100-81
PopMatters' best albums of the 2000s begin with a series of records that span epic metal, ornate indie folk, and a terrifying work of electronic music.
28 Oct 2020
Books
The Power of Restraint in Sophie Yanow, Paco Roca, and Elisa Macellari's New Graphic Novels
The magical quality that makes or breaks a graphic novel lies somewhere in that liminal space in which art and literature intersect.
27 Oct 2020
Books
'People of the City' Is an Unrelenting Critique of Colonial Ideology and Praxis
Cyprian Ekwensi's People of the City is a vivid tale of class struggle and identity reclamation in the shadows of colonialism's reign.
27 Oct 2020
Music
1979's 'This Heat' Remains a Lodestone for Avant-Rock Adventure
On their self-titled debut, available for the first time on digital formats, This Heat delivered an all-time classic stitched together from several years of experiments.
27 Oct 2020
Film
'The Edge of Democracy' and Parallels of Political Crises
Academy Award-nominated documentary The Edge of Democracy, now streaming on Netflix, lays bare the political parallels of the rise of Bolsonaro's Brazil with Trump's America.
27 Oct 2020
Music
The Pogues' 'The BBC Sessions 1984-1986' Honors Working-Class Heroes
The Pogues' BBC Sessions 1984-1986 is a welcome chapter in the musical story of these working-class heroes, who reminded listeners of the beauty and dignity of the strong, sooty backs upon which our industrialized world was built.
27 Oct 2020
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