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...

“Mr. Know-It-All is always right/And I think the only way out of this, is somehow they lose all their power,” multimedia artist Seth Bogart muses on the title track of his second solo LP, summing up the album’s underlying theme (and what the culturally and intellectually evolved children of this hell-world have already figured out): the patriarchal systems in which we are all raised are total bullshit! Men on the Verge of Nothing contains 10 fuzzy, post-punky, poppy tracks featuring a girl gang of guests including...

Petrichor is singer/songwriter/violinist (and one-half of folk duo A Hawk and a Hacksaw) Heather Trost’s second solo album. Trost makes good use of these seven tracks, exemplifying her strong sense of journey and dynamic composition. Although written in 2019, the album is prescient of the current collective experience. Breezy, psychedelic opener “Let It In” declares, “Make the space for yourself/For others/We may not have the chance again.” Meanwhile, “Tracks to Nowhere” is dulcet heartache—a single guitar and layers of harmonies build with swinging strings and...

“Blondes make the best victims,” Alfred Hitchcock said in 1977. “They’re like virgin snow that shows up the bloody footprints.” In Hitchcock’s 1963 film The Birds, protagonist Melanie Daniels screams as crows, gulls, and ravens scratch at her until she bleeds. Leading lady Tippi Hedren’s horror was real: filming the scene had a traumatic effect on her, and Hitchcock was well aware of it. Like his iconic thrillers, which are chilling through both violence and psychological torment, the story of Hitchcock and Hedren is, in some...

It’s no secret that the film industry took a major hit in the past year—cinema culture especially so. I spent the past year primarily enjoying older movies, and not really paying attention to new releases as I usually do during non-pandemic times. In reality, that’s quite a loss when considering how many truly idiosyncratic movies have been released online. In particular, the last twelve months have hosted a number of phenomenal films dealing with diverse accounts of contemporary womanhood. Here are ten that should definitely...

When Mary Wilson, founding member of The Supremes, died suddenly on Monday, February 9, 2021, we lost a true legend. Her longtime friend and publicist Jay Schwartz released a statement deeming Wilson “a trendsetter who broke down social, racial, and gender barriers.” Motown Records founder Berry Gordy remembered her as “a trailblazer [and] a diva.” In addition to her multi-decade solo career, Wilson’s name is immortalized in the legacy of The Supremes and Motown Records. Wilson co-founded The Supremes as The Primettes in 1959 along with...

Few things are as cliché as a character standing on the edge of a bridge, contemplating suicide, in the pouring rain, before being rescued at the last moment. But these scenes play out effortlessly in the opening chapters of This Close to Okay by Leesa CrossSmith. The narrative bounces between the voices of Tallie and Emmett (our “we’re not in love” duo), which is a fun way to tell the tale of two secret-keeping soon-to-be lovers. Without wasting any time, Tallie convinces Emmett to get...

A frozen dildo, a ghost cat, and a “fucked witch.” Who knew these could all be ingredients to a cohesive film. Director Azazel Jacobs, from The Lovers and Momma’s Man, blends these outlandish pieces into the puzzle of French Exit, a new dark comedy starring Michelle Pfeiffer and Lucas Hedges, based on Patrick deWitt’s book by the same name. The film follows Frances and Malcolm Price, a mother-son duo, who dip to Paris with their ever present black cat, after learning that the money from...