Soundgarden’s Kim Thayil Sounds Off
With his memoir A Screaming Life, Soundgarden’s legendary guitar innovator Kim Thayil pulls back the curtain on his tight-lipped band.
Books
Features, reviews, interviews, and lists about books including cultural commentary and history, non-fiction, literature, and more.
Adam Gnade’s ‘Wild Horse Shit’ Encourages Joyful Resistance
Cult novelist Adam Gnade’s latest, Wild Horse Shit, wrestles with the state of the world, encouraging untamed joy in the face of fascism.
Jeff Beck’s Seven Decades of Evolution
Jeff Beck biography Blow by Blow is designed for everyone who loves music and the many genres Beck explored. Gearheads will love it, too.
The Celestial Is Grounded in Dorthe Nors’ ‘Range’
Dorthe Nors’ Range is a story of suspension between two realms, one on a granular day-to-day scale and one whose scale is incomprehensibly vast.
Who and What Pop Music Is for Is ‘Mighty Real’
Barry Walters’ Mighty Real is 30 glorious years of music that can be “read as a metaphor of LGBTQ existence”, regardless of who created it.
Jesse Malin’s Memoir Is the Tale of an Extraordinary Everyman
Jesse Malin’s adventures through NYC take Almost Grown‘s readers through hallowed music landmarks where he is found rubbing shoulders with legends with almost comic frequency.
Anne Hellman’s Novel ‘The Indecipherables’ Is Pure Cinema
The Indecipherables, Anne Hellman’s pastiche of Hitchcock’s, Lynch’s, and Serling’s respective oeuvres, is a successful homage to “pure cinema”.
Robyn Hitchcock’s Tale of Two Obsessions
The beating heart of Robyn Hitchcock’s memoir, Stranded in the Future, is not necessarily his career but two great obsessions that inspired it.
Michael Bracewell’s Pop Fantasy ‘The Smiths: A Novella’ Is a Stunning Evocation
Michael Bracewell’s latest novella is a Proustian, circuitous meditation on the 1980s zeitgeist, shaped by personal recollections of the Smiths.
The Velvet Underground Get a “Sister Ray”-Sized Biography
Among his many discoveries about the Velvet Underground, Richie Unterberger’s description of unheard tapes will have fans salivating.
Gen X Suffers Mainstream Culture Constipation
In today’s overstuffed, mainstream culture of recycled “art”, nothing old moves and nothing new gets through. It’s enough to make a Gen-Xer pretty damn cranky.
Love Story’s Subjection to the State
For all its couture fashion and bio-pic fluff, Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette is radical in how it echoes Laura Kipnis’ polemic, Against Love.