Despite a global pandemic, musicians were far more active in 2021 and had time to create their finest work. It resulted in some of the best albums in years.
Bob Mould discusses being gay in the 1980s, the far-right threatening LGBTQ rights, his recent political LP Blue Hearts, and how he still has faith.
These Forbidden Fruit sexploitation films by Robert C. Dertano and Lillian Hunt function as snapshots of a moment in baggy-pants comedy and terpsichorean art.
With its devils and aliens, pop music can be a “window on the weird”, sweeping odd material lodged in subcultural pockets into the broader currents of culture.
Our capitalist language of minute gradations and improvised adjustments—of the plasticity of bodies and minds—places drugs in the service of economies of labor, production, and value.
Viet Thanh Nguyen’s The Committed loosens what binds the protagonist in his earlier book, The Sympathizer, and nearly cleaves his protagonist in two.
While we feast on fictionalized (and real) tales of murder and awfulness, we really just want to live our lives in peace and are not interested in preying upon one another. Our essential goodness has become clear during our times of COVID-19.
In Automation and the Future of Work, Aaron Benanav uncovers the structural economic trends that will shape our working lives far into the future. In this excerpt, courtesy of Verso Books, he considers what’s on our minds these days, “What if everyone suddenly had access to enough healthcare, education, and welfare to reach their full potential?”
A classically trained jazz pianist who spent five years with the Miles Davis Quintet, Herbie Hancock is also a practising Buddhist whose ideas about transcending the body are realized in his funky cyborg "Rockit" video.
Kunzru excels in capturing the geist in alt-right circles in his latest work, Red Pill, from the callous philosophy down to the very language.
PopMatters is 20 this year -- until October when we are 21 -- and a 2009 special section celebrates the popular music that defined the year of our birth. Today we kick things off with albums from January through March, highlighted by Eminem's debut and stellar pop from XTC and Blur.
The financial crash of 2008-2010 reemphasized that traumatic economic shifts drive political change, so what might we imagine — or fear — will emerge from the COVID-19 depression?
