On his debut album, Ralphie Choo, a former chemical engineering student, toys with genres with radical abandon, manipulating sounds like reagents and catalysts in a lab. Across 14 tracks, fluttering flutes, dembow riddims, and flamenco […]
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Irreversible Entanglements: Protect Your Light
Irreversible Entanglements is a band built on improvisation, five jazz virtuosos—poet/vocalist Camae Ayewa (aka Moor Mother), bassist Luke Stewart, trumpeter Aquiles Navarro, saxophonist Keir Neuringer, and drummer Tcheser Holmes—coalescing around an idea and discovering where […]
Sarah Mary Chadwick: Messages to God
Here’s the annoying thing about creating anything: You have to reckon with a time lag. Pure feeling can never survive the time required to decide to register it, and then jot it down. So you […]
‘Sound of Freedom’ Inspiration Tim Ballard Left His Organization Amid Sexual Misconduct Claims
Tim Ballard, whose purported rescues of sex-trafficking victims were fictionalized in the hit summer movie Sound of Freedom, earlier this year left the advocacy group he founded after an internal investigation of sexual misconduct claims, […]
The Celeb Apology Has Gotten Cringe
As long as there have been celebrities, there’ve been celebrity apologies. It’s a common cycle, one that’s fed the entertainment gossip pipeline for years: a famous person messes up, people are disappointed in them, and […]
A Masseuse Accused Russell Brand of Physical Assault in 2014
A masseuse accused comedian Russell Brand of physical assault in 2014, and a judge sided with the actor-comedian, calling her claims “inconsistent” and accusing the woman of harassing Brand and his then-partner. The bombastic author […]
‘You Do Not Need Glasses’: A Wellness Coach’s Bogus Claim — And Its 100-Year History
“What’s the one thing that your optometrist doesn’t want you to know about?” asks a “human optimization specialist” who goes by the name Samantha Lotus in a recent video on her Instagram account. “The fact […]
Arnold Schwarzenegger Celebrates 40 Years of American Citizenship
Arnold Schwarzenegger celebrated four decades of American citizenship this weekend. In a post on Instagram the bodybuilder-turned-actor-turned-politician commemorated the anniversary of “one of the proudest days of my life” with a series of photographs set […]
The National: Laugh Track
R.E.M. had been a band for 24 years when they released their worst album, 2004’s Around the Sun, a record that magnified that aging act’s growing weaknesses and succumbed to sheer tedium. The National, perhaps […]
Buju Banton: Born for Greatness
Though released to relatively muted fanfare, Born for Greatness, the new studio album from veteran reggae star Buju Banton, still arrives with great expectations attached. Banton was already the first artist to break Bob Marley’s […]
Piotr Kurek: Smartwoods
Piotr Kurek’s Smartwoods comes on gradually, then all at once. An electric guitar plucks out a tentative phrase; a harp responds with unhurried plucks; metallic taps, like steel pans, add shading. Finally, an acoustic bass […]
Subsonic Eye: All Around You
On their third album, Nature of Things, the Singaporean quintet Subsonic Eye pivoted from their usual wide-eyed dream pop to a raw, earthier sound. Nature was frenetic yet loose, mixing the shaggy indie rock of […]