Whatever Happened to That Amazing British Punk Band Buzzcocks?
Steve Diggle’s Buzzcocks autobiography Autonomy is a refreshing take in an era when punk’s political and social consequences tend to be over-analyzed.
Books
Antonia Hylton’s ‘Madness’ Illuminates the Shadows of Racial Injustice
Madness is a scathing indictment of how Black Americans are disproportionately affected by mental health stigmas, inadequate care, and systemic neglect.
Neal Stephenson’s Thriller ‘Polostan’ Is a Wild Ride Through 1930s America
Neal Stephenson’s thrilling and slow-burn historical thriller Polostan presents the 1930s as a calamitous carnival ride building inexorably toward Hiroshima.
Video Games Set in the 19th Century and Their Literary Allusions
It’s fitting that these video games set in 19th century England transform reading into a form of socializing, as reading in the 19th century was communal.
Work Is a Funny Thing in Adelle Waldman’s ‘Help Wanted’
Nickel and Dimed meets a suburban big box store in Adelle Waldman’s unexpectedly humorous, dystopian workplace caper, Help Wanted.
The Journey Motif in ‘The Half-Life of Guilt’ Is No Guilt Trip
There is no guilty pleasure in reading Lynn Stegner’s The Half-Life of Guilt. There is only pleasure.
Jukebox Gallery: A Michael Goldberg Rock Photo Essay
Michael Goldberg shot his first photo of the Doors’ Jim Morrison at the first US rock fest in 1967. Enjoy this photo essay spanning his career as a photographer and critic.
The Complicated Life of Moby Grape’s Skip Spence
This bio about Moby Grape’s Skip Spence dissects and casts a glowing light on his work as a composer of some of the most influential music of San Francisco’s psychedelic scene.
Premee Mohamed’s Sci-Fi ‘We Speak Through the Mountain’ Is a Call for Cooperation
Premee Mohamed’s We Speak Through the Mountain is a school story set in a future that looks startlingly close to our times, sentient fungal infections notwithstanding.
Five Excellent Recent Books Blending Music and Personal Narrative
Music writing often combines the personal, political, and historical in new and inventive ways revealing the interconnectedness of these categories.
Language Is a Virus, and People Could Die
The COVID pandemic seemed to accelerate the spread of new viral media, but viruses mutate, pop culture replicates, and everything’s a cover song.
Ananda Lima’s Mystical and Metafictional Dance with the Devil
Poet and translator Ananda Lima’s debut fiction, Craft, is an absorbing mystical and metafictional dance with the Devil.