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Sprawling boy band Brockhampton refashion pop music in their own image
Bless Brockhampton for spiking pop’s punch bowl. This sprawling group of rappers, producers, singers, video directors, designers, and a webmaster have ambitions to be America’s next great boy...
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Jeezy is set to take us down trap memory lane on his Cold Summer tour
Let’s be real. Trap music, in all its glitzy mainstream flair, wouldn’t exist today without one of Atlanta’s most storied dope boys, Jeezy.…
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DIY mainstay and accomplished pianist Charles Joseph Smith spins a...
DIY spaces come and go, but people such as Charles Joseph Smith give the city’s nebulous underground scene a sense of cohesion. Smith, who performs under both his own name and that of his...
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Clint Eastwood finds his inner Eric Rohmer with The 15:17 to Paris.
Young men frolic like ponies, then thwart a terror attack, in the action director's latest. I never expected to be reminded of French master Eric Rohmer while watching a film by Clint Eastwood, but...
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Tempesta Market is the house that nduja built
The dazzling Grand Avenue deli is a temple to locally made salumi. There was a time during the early part of this decade when a thing called "meat butter" started popping up in food writer dispatches...
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Morena’s Kitchen is Dominican food for the soul
The pica pollo at this tiny Belmont Cragin storefront gives a reason to get up in the morning T wo years ago a taqueria in Santa Ana, California, filed a trademark infringement lawsuit against KFC...
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Animation gets real in Tehran Taboo and Have a Nice Day
Filmmakers Ali Soozandeh and Liu Jian take viewers deep inside Iran and China. Natural realism has been the holy grail of animation since the 1920s, when Winsor McCay established the art of character...
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Singer-songwriter Kevin Patrick finds folk freedom recording mystifying songs...
Singer-songwriter Kevin Patrick, who makes charming, unvarnished acoustic bedroom songs under the name Field Medic, had an subconscious penchant for folk music long before he ever discovered Dylan and...
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Punishing Texas death-metal band Mammoth Grinder return with Cosmic Crypt,...
Lordy. As if last year’s Power Trip record, Nightmare Logic (Southern Lord), wasn’t enough of a super boon from the Texas-born purveyors of pummeling thrash metal, this January we were blessed with...
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Moth Cock curb their indulgent impulses to make experimentation sound fun
On their latest album, the awkwardly titled 0-100 A the Speed of the Present (Hausu Mountain), this wonderfully squirmy improv-centric duo from Kent, Ohio, continue to collide acoustic and...
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Soulection Radio Tour is the ultimate music connoisseur’s dream
The Soulection Radio Tour is not your average concert. There isn’t some big-name rock band, pop singer, or rapper leading the audience on a transcendental musical ride.…
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The Higher Brothers come stateside in their quest to take their Chinese...
The Higher Brothers found inspiration for their group’s name in air conditioners. Or, rather, the supplier of the air conditioners they know best: Haier, the Chinese consumer-electronics company that...
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All-star chamber trio Emanuel Ax, Leonidas Kavakos, and Yo-Yo Ma tackle...
It’s natural that stellar classical musicians are drawn to one another for collaboration; when virtuosity and sensitivity are common currency, the focus can be solely on playing the shit out of a...
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Amsterdam improvisers John Dikeman and Jasper Stadhouders bring their...
In the fall of 2016, I was in Amsterdam for the October Meeting, a festival of young Europe-based improvisers. As the three-day event ended and a partylike vibe took over, saxophonist John Dikeman—an...
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Minneapolis electronic-pop band Poliça collaborate with Berlin new-music...
Attracting new listeners to contemporary classical music is an ongoing struggle, but in recent years a number of music presenters, including Liquid Music in Minneapolis and Ecstatic Music in New York,...
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Chicago’s Wavy ID revels in sweetly sensual indie pop
While watching New Zealand’s Connan Mockasin play sensual, luxurious psych-pop at the Empty Bottle in 2014, Adam LP—who’s now been making seductive indie-pop songs as Wavy ID for a little over a...
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Denver cornetist Ron Miles is a fervent student of jazz, but his music spills...
Few figures in jazz operate with as much refined comportment, melodic grace, and measured spontaneity as Denver cornetist Ron Miles. He’s quietly but forcefully risen in the global jazz scene due to...
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Nigerian drummer and Afrobeat pioneer Tony Allen collaborates with veteran...
As drummer and musical director of Africa 70, Tony Allen was the rhythmic architect of Fela Kuti’s Afrobeat style. Last year the Nigerian drummer reinforced the malleability of his instantly...
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Patricia Clarkson lays down the law in The Party
Friends gather for dinner, then drama, in Sally Potter's witty drawing room comedy. I fear Patricia Clarkson's judgment. Like many moviegoers, I first took notice of the actress when she played...
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Beguiling New York singer-songwriter Cassandra Jenkins is a little bit...
On Play Till You Win (Cassandra Complex), New York singer-songwriter Cassandra Jenkins recorded a song called “Tennessee Waltz.” It’s an original, rather than the country classic by Pee Wee King made...
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