The third installment in an ongoing monthly series on the cultural things that break through the noise and touch the soul.
APESHIT
VIDEO — The Carters are in the Louvre! The latest from Beyoncé and Jay-Z drops it like its hot. Huge stadiums with adoring fans? Yeah, they got ’em. All those skin tones, stylin.’
Sudan Archives, Sink
EP — From a 24-year-old violinist, these six songs are full of beats that skip alongside captivating vocals, intertwining emotions and grooves. Sink lower and get overcome by the journey into a meandering sound, chopping to and fro, looking for the feeling.
Jorja Smith, Lost & Found
ALBUM — From a 21-year-old English singer, this album is hauntingly beautiful, wandering and honest. An urgent cry out into a troubled world where we’re all looking for what we’ve lost.
A Cultural Vacuum
OPINION — What happens to a life without music, film, art, literature, performance, experimentation? If it doesn’t die, it’s certainly diminished. As Dave Eggers puts in the New York Times; it’s myopic, unlearned, cruel.
What A Day
NEWSLETTER — It’s politics, but hey, what isn’t these days. The delivery and the tone hit just right in our current political moment with humor, grace, wit, and snark. When your government is run by truly awful people, one way to cope is to just laugh at all the absurdity. And then call/write/organize/march/vote!
IDLES, Danny Nedelko
VIDEO — This hit me up side the head in the best way possible. I thought at first this could be punk rock from the 90s. Nah, 2018. It’s so fucking great I love it. Bring on Joy as an Act of Resistance and let’s dance our fucking asses off.
Won’t You Be My Neighbor?
DOCUMENTARY — The answer to the fast-paced, over-stimulated, too-much-to-handle programming for children at the advent of television? Why a turtle, of course! This film about Mr. Rogers was so good, so uplifting, so heartbreaking. See it in the theater and try not to cry, I dare you. At a moment when there is so much anger and resentment, this is an antidote.
We the People
ART — Now on display at the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art in Kansas City, We the People by Nari War is made of shoelaces. It shows that our democracy is composed of many small parts: its citizens.
Hannah Gadsby, Nanette
COMEDY — This stand-up show starts out like something I was expecting and then changes into something very different. It’s so powerful and moving. A comedy about the limits of comedy, the limits of humanity, and the need for complete stories. Beautifully, heartbreakingly real.
