James Wan’s ‘Malignant’ Is Perfectly HorrorAble
At first you might think that James Wan’s Malignant is striking the same note as his prior horror films. You would be wrong.
Evan Sawdey
Evan Sawdey started contributing to PopMatters in late 2005, and has also had his work featured in publications such as Entertainment Weekly, SLUG Magazine, YardBarker, The Daily Dot, and many more. He has been a guest on HuffPost Live, RevotTV's "Revolt Live!", and WNYC's Soundcheck (an NPR affiliate), was the Executive Producer for the Good With Words: A Tribute to Benjamin Durdle album ( available for free), and wrote the liner notes for the 2011 re-release of Andre Cymone's hit 1985 album A.C. (Big Break Records), the 2012 re-release of 'Til Tuesday's 1985 debut Voices Carry (Hot Shot Records), among others. He is the co-founder and host of The Chartographers, a podcast for pop music nerds, and previously hosted PopTalk for PopMatters. He currently resides in Chicago, Illinois. You can follow him @SawdEye should you be so inclined.
‘Red Hot + Free’ Is a Perfect Soundtrack for Summer
Filled with sizzling originals and remixes, Red Hot + Free continues the Red Hot Organization’s legacy of giving us great dance music for a good cause.
CFCF’s ‘memoryland’ Is the Love Letter to ’90s Techno We Didn’t Know We Needed
On memoryland, CFCF builds a time machine to take you back to the sounds of ’90s techno, house, and dance-pop.
The 15 Best Hip-Hop Albums of 2020
In a year beset by the most horrid and unusual circumstances, leave it to the hip-hop community to challenge our beliefs and voice our activism. The best records of the year served as rallying cries and made us reconsider the very genre itself.
The 10 Best Ambient Albums of 2020
In a year that felt lonelier than ever, some expected ambient music to be a soothing balm. Yet ambient artists capture the sadness, the bliss, the hurt, and the healing of this wild year better than most.
The 15 Best Pop Albums of 2020
The 15 best pop albums radiate with unstoppable playlist power and much-needed sweet escapism.
Drag Queen Dance-Popster Katya Discusses ‘Vampire Fitness’
Growing up listening to sludge-metal and goth-rock, drag queen Katya rose from complete obscurity to become a multi-hyphenate comedy icon. With the release of an album deeply indebted to industrial metal, guided meditations, and Russian dance-pop, she finds solace in giving us the truly unexpected.
Discover Michigan’s 1990s Space-rock Scene on ‘Southeast of Saturn’
Third Man Records offers a generous overview of Michigan's burgeoning space-rock scene from the 1990s. It covers a wide swath of genres while offering a bunch of largely-unheard rarities.
Fave Five: Tunng’s Favorite Songs About Death
On their morbid new record, London's ever-experimental Tunng explore new sonic contours in their pursuit of all things grief. They mark the occasion by talking about their favorite songs about death.
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.
The 11 Greatest Hits From “Greatest Hits” Compilations
It's one of the strangest pop microcosms in history: singles released exclusively from Greatest Hits compilations. We rounded 'em up and ranked 'em to find out what is truly the greatest Greatest Hit of all.
Fave Five: Roosevelt
German synthpop wunderkid Roosevelt continues to tease out new singles from a potential third album, but this "Five Favorite Synth Sounds in a Song" is an electronic history lesson in and of itself.