The record-breaking debut of the fourth season of Strangers Things racked up millions of views and nationwide applause. Like most fans of the show, I was excited to see what Season 4 had in store after more than 2 years since the release of the third season. I anticipated a groundbreaking performance by Millie Bobbi Brown that would pave the way for more young and powerful protagonists like Eleven. What I didn’t expect was the opening of a massacre that mirrored the tragedy that killed...

Tank and the Bangas say their third studio album is “coming straight for your heart and your neck.” Like the New Orleans-based group themselves, Red Balloon brazenly blossoms into a rambunctious, free-flowing celebration that dives soul first into a heady nu-funk groove. Conceptually tied to Green Balloon, their latest release was intended to be a companion piece to its pensive 2019 predecessor. Post touring hiatus, a joyously colorful jam fest ensued instead, and each track came together in real time. At one with otherness and living-in-the-moment-centric,...

This is a big year for legendary painter, cartoonist, writer, illustrator, playwright, teacher, and MacArthur “genius” fellow Lynda Barry. Drawn & Quarterly is re-releasing three collections of her serialized coming-of-age strip Ernie Pook’s Comeek in 2022—Come Over Come Over (out now), My Perfect Life (June 14), and It’s So Magic (September 20). Centering on the life of tortured junior-high misfit Maybonne Mullen and her little sister Marlys, Barry’s “Comeek” was an underground sensation that was syndicated in over 70 alternative papers between 1979 and 2008. Salty, sweet, and a little offkilter,...

Abbi Jacobson, best known as one of the two broads on Broad City, is co-creating a new TV series,A League of Their Own,, based on the 1990s baseball film of the same name. Amazon Prime released the trailer this week. Spoiler Alert: It’s queer and inclusive!   The original film featuring Geena Davis, Madonna, and Tom Hanks was directed by Penny Marshall and took place in the 1940s when the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (AAGPBL) was established in response to the World War II draft...

Sometimes it takes life-altering events for an artist to reach the pinnacle of their creative identity. This is the heart of Angel Olsen's Big Time. While the singer/songwriter always had a layer of vulnerability in her work, she's exploring its depths like never before. Opener "All the Good Times" is an idyllic entry as Olsen coos with nostalgia, and she continues that emotion with "Dream Thing". Having lost her parents in tandem, she taps into that grief on "This Is How It Works", where her feelings are...

In her 2020 Netflix standup special 3 in the Morning, comedian Sam Jay tells a story about taking ‘shrooms and going to The British Museum. “I walked in and I was, like, ‘Holy shit!’” she says. “Because it was wing, after wing, after wing of stuff and…I was, like, ‘Wow! White people stole all this shit! Stole so much shit! That’s crazy. They stole everything in this motherfucker.’ The audacity! That’s the real word to describe white people. Not racist. Audacious.” Like any comedian worth...

If you’re checking whether or not a piece of media is feminist, the Bechdel Test—coined by writer Alison Bechdel in her 1985 comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For—is a good place to start. It asks just three questions: are two women present in the work? If so, do those women have at least one conversation? And is that conversation about anything but a man? If the answer to all of those questions is yes, the test is passed! Though the Bechdel Test has become widely...

Although worshipping at the altar of Kate Bush is nothing new to us here at BUST, Bush gained a new fanbase this month after her song “Running Up The Hill (A Deal With God)” was featured at a pivotal moment in the new season of Stranger Things. Subsequently, the song has re-entered the public consciousness in a big way, spawning a viral TikTok trend and breaking into the Top 10 on the Official UK Singles Chart. Remarkably, this song's resurgence has put Kate in the #1...

It’s Pride Month, which means New York City will be brimming with LGBTQ+ events and festivities for the foreseeable future. One such event is the Dyke March, an annual protest which the organizers say is open to anyone identifying as a dyke. The march celebrates dykes, while dually protesting against the discrimination targeted at dykes. It begins in Bryant Park, NYC, at 5pm on June 25th, and ends in Washington Square Park at 8PM—but the events don’t stop once the marching does.  Afterparties are a hallmark...

Saul Williams and Anisia Uzeyman’s Neptune Frost is a gorgeous, Afrofuturist musical that tells a story of love, loss, and anti-capitalism. With a script by Williams, an actor/poet/playwright whose work defies easy categorization, Neptune Frost is a cultural experience that is open for interpretation while still conveying a specific message about surpassing the boundaries. Uzeyman, a Rwandan actor/playwright/director and the film’s cinematographer, communicates beauty and pain through vibrant colors and beautiful Black skin lit to perfection, with a dizzying array of influences from Sun Ra...