Natalie Bergman sees gospel music as “the true source of rock 'n' roll.” It's also the source of the Chicago-bred, Los Angeles–based singer’s forthcoming solo debut album, Mercy. Today, Feb. 24, marks the release of the record’s second single, “Shine Your Light On Me.” The song’s accompanying video is a nostalgic, black-and-white fever dream, sparkling with vintage Paco Rabanne sequins and largely inspired by a 1967 performance of “Reflections” by Diana Ross & The Supremes. Bergman enlisted her ex-boyfriend, Jean Lebrun (a.k.a. theOGM of hardcore hip-hop...

Marlene van Niekerk’s Agaat is a beautiful, complicated epic of agrarian life in South Africa from 1948 onward, and it explores the evolution of a relationship between two women who take care of one another. Agaat, for whom the book is named, is a nurse, farmhand, and nanny essential to the functioning of the farm, Grootmoedersdrift. The complex relationship between Agaat and the woman who takes her in, farm matron Milla de Wet, is the heart and soul of this book. Over the span of...

“In the 1960s, and until very recently, you could not be beautiful and clever at the same time,” Marianne Faithfull said in a 2020 Vogue interview. “If you were pretty, you were obviously just a bimbo. A dolly bird. A sex object. Blah blah blah. And that was obviously why Mick [Jagger] liked me, at least that’s what they thought. But it wasn’t.” Faithfull’s excellent 1994 autobiography, Faithfull, told her side of the story and, after years in development, her story is coming to the silver...

While acts of rebellion could be described as techno, a closer listen reveals a wide array of styles under the surface. The album was written, performed, and produced by Colombian musician Gabriela Jimeno, who spent a decade playing in a hardcore band before moving to the U.S. to study jazz drumming and synthesizer design at Berklee. Jimeno brings a raw, political punk sensibility to tracks like “el cielo no es de nadie.” The percussion-forward approach makes her upbeat songs highly danceable (“Everyone told us it’s...

Spare and lonesome, Nomadland follows Fern (Frances McDormand) while she navigates her new life after the loss of her husband and her community. Based on the Jessica Bruder book Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century, the film offers a documentary-esque peek into life on the road, deftly handled by director Chloé Zhao. After the twin tragedies of her husband’s death and the erasure of her town, Fern dedicates herself to staying untethered. She packs up her rickety van with a handful of valuables — the plates...

I was supposed to write this article, an interview with Spider-Woman writer Karla Pacheco, almost a year ago. I messed up, but the world is currently kind of on fire, so we're okay. I bring this up to you, dear reader, because the irony of the situation does not go over my head: I messed up writing a story about the amazing Jessica Drew, aka Spider-Woman, who also at times has great intentions but f**ks up. Pacheco's Spider-Woman run has experienced a couple of setbacks because...

She Shreds, founded by Fabi Reyna, has created a safe space for musicians—especially womxn of color—to heal.  In 2017, She Shreds Media, initially a print publication dedicated to women guitarists and bassists, started an online challenge that encourages women and non-binary musicians to commit to playing and posting one riff (a 5-minute jam session) a day for an entire month.  This January was unlike any other month of riffs, as participants met the #1RAD challenge while our social, economic, and political worlds collapsed, to put things lightly....

A former therapist of mine said she used to work as a switchboard operator. Only once, she admitted, did she ever eavesdrop on someone’s conversation: when Lionel Richie was on the line. Technically, I wasn’t eavesdropping on Tig Notaro and Sarah Paulson when I listened to the latest episode of Notaro’s “Don’t Ask Tig” podcast, but thanks to their explosive comic chemistry, it almost felt like I was. The podcast is a new twist on advice columns, where listeners write in with (mostly) serious questions. Notaro—the...

Consummate New Yorker Kyra Sedgwick started off in showbiz in 1982 on the classic soap Another World and quickly became a bonafide movie star in films including Oliver Stone's Born on the Fourth of July, Cameron Crowe's Singles, and 2012’s The Possession. She is perhaps best known for her starring role as Deputy Chief Brenda Leigh Johnson on the TNT crime drama The Closer—for which she won a Golden Globe and an Emmy—and now, she’s lighting up the new ABC sit-com Call Your Mother. On...

When Big Thief’s spring tour was cut short by the coronavirus pandemic, vocalist and guitarist Adrianne Lenker decided to use her unexpected free time to take to the woods and record. The result is a duo of albums, songs and instrumentals, whose uniting principle was Lenker’s attempt to make music she describes as sounding “like the inside of an acoustic guitar.” If that means she wanted to capture the instrument’s warm tones and association with intimate, comfortable spaces, then she’s succeeded. Sparer and quieter than her...