In her history of women in punk music, Revenge of the She-Punks, Vivien Goldman hefts the scene's virtues and the vices into one heap and concludes that some of it was necessary, some of it was fun, and some of it was evil.
Jessica Hopper's Night Moves is a dozen thorny roses for the city that keeps blowing its windy-ness beneath her darkly comic wings.
In Go Ahead in the Rain, Hanif Abdurraqib blends his talents as both culture critic and personal essayist for a meditation on perhaps the most influential hip-hop group from the genre's sample-laden boom-bap era, A Tribe Called Quest.
Selling the Movie: The Art of the Film Poster provides a beautiful film history lesson along with the compelling visuals.
Bill Malone presents insights into the musical acts that gave rise to and perpetuated the country music tradition in all of its internal contradictions, negotiations, and accommodations.
A Spy In The House of Loud works best on quiet stages, taking singular trips down clearly paved roads with definite endings.
Sophie Tucker's delivery is both blatant emotion revealed to be pretense and pretension discovered to be deadly serious. Unfortunately, Red Hot Mama provides no real examination of Tucker's artistry.
