Black Midi’s ‘Cavalcade’ Is Spellbinding and Circuitous
Black Midi’s Cavalcade displays superlative skills, fierce chemistry, and avant-garde vision, offering spellbinding performances while also falling prey to sonic tautologies and circuitousness.
John Amen
John Amen is the author of several collections of poetry, including Illusion of an Overwhelm (NYQ Books, 2017), a finalist for the 2018 Brockman-Campbell Award, and work from which was chosen as a finalist for the Dana Award. His poetry, fiction, and essays have appeared in journals nationally and internationally, and his poetry has been translated into Spanish, French, Hungarian, Korean, and Hebrew. He is a Staff Reviewer for the music magazines and websites No Depression, Beats Per Minute, and PopMatters. He founded and is managing editor of Pedestal Magazine.
Lana Del Rey Revels in Minimal Palette, Finds Freedom From Longstanding Persona on ‘Chemtrails’
Chemtrails uses a more minimal and nuanced palette than earlier albums, Lana Del Rey distancing herself throughout from her familiar persona and stylistics.
Animated Matter Offer a Sublime, Transcendent Debut with ‘Selkie’
Animated Matter's debut Selkie sports alternately lush and minimal, buoyant and chthonic, soundscapes that conjure archetypal themes and evoke complex emotional responses.
Beauty and Horror in George C. Wolfe’s Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom
The characters in Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, distinct as they are, besiege the viewer's mind as metaphors, mythic exemplars of a disturbing legacy America seems unable or unwilling to address.
Jaki Shelton Green Blends Poetry and Protest on Timely ‘The River Speaks of Thirst’
Poet Laureate Jaki Shelton Green's The River Speaks of Thirst is at once a political statement, cultural commentary, and an aesthetic milestone, a skillful commingling of galvanic activism and evocative poetry.
Legacy and Oblivion: 25 Years of Nirvana’s ‘Nevermind’
Nevermind, while containing most of the hits for which Nirvana is celebrated is, of the four primary releases, the least emotionally and aesthetically complex.