Posts by author
Max Gray
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Song of the Day: “God Only Knows”
Marvin Gaye was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame posthumously in 1987. Its biography of him names a little-known doo-wop song called “God Only Knows” as “critical to his musical awakening.” The Capris, though they had a string of…
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Weekend Rumpus Roundup
First, Brandon Hicks finds the essence of military conflict in his comic, “War.” Then, Arielle Bernstein talks to self-proclaimed “anti-racist feminist” Tamara Winfrey-Harris in the Saturday Interview. Winfrey-Harris’s blog, What Tami Said, provides some of the material for an essay collection…
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Song of the Day: “Bored In The USA”
Father John Misty is the stage moniker of Joshua Tillman, the erstwhile drummer for indie sensations, Fleet Foxes. The laugh tracks on Father John Misty’s slyly catchy ballad, “Bored In The USA,” begin to appear about halfway through the song.…
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Weekend Rumpus Roundup
Happy Memorial Day! In this weekend’s Saturday Essay, Amanda Parrish Morgan returns to a favorite film of her childhood, Dead Poets Society, as a high school English teacher with a more critical eye. Parrish Morgan ties the sad “martyrdom” of the…
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Song of the Day: “John My Beloved”
After the heartbreakingly gentle song, “John My Beloved,” ends, Sufjan Stevens takes a single audible breath. The breath, like many of Stevens’s choices on his revelatory new album, Carrie & Lowell, beckons the listener in by virtue of its strangeness. The…
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Song of the Day: “Soul Deep”
Soul staple Clarence Carter is most famous for his 1968 ballad, “Slip Away,” in which he urges his love to keep their relationship quiet. However, his baritone is anything but quiet on his powerful cover of “Soul Deep,” a song originally…
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Weekend Rumpus Roundup
First, the topic of artificial intelligence is the focus of drama in the Saturday Review of Ex Machina. Joe Sacksteder describes the “murky moral terrain” of the film, which follows an unwitting participant in a modern-day mad scientist’s experimentations. Then, in the…
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Song of the Day: “Grief”
The rapper and elusive lyricist Earl Sweatshirt projects a certain underdog quality. His debut album, Earl, came out in 2010, when he was 16. It garnered him widespread attention, which only multiplied when word spread that his mother had packed him…
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Weekend Rumpus Roundup
First, the wonderful “My Poem,” by Grant Snider, personifies the act of creative writing. And Brandon Hicks’s latest comic, “The Drunk,” offers a whimsical look at the road to political success in America. Then, the Saturday Essay picks up where Hicks left off. Kurt…
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Song of the Day: “‘Cause I’m a Man”
The diversely talented Perth, Australia-based recording artist Kevin Parker is known more widely by his stage name, Tame Impala. Often described as a psychedelic musician for the 21st century, Parker forges albums with traces of electronic and lo-fi, as well as influences from…
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Weekend Rumpus Roundup
For National Poetry Month Days 25 & 26, Christian Anton Gerard and Ada Limon provide us with poems of love and luck. Then, Sean Donovan has good things to say in his Saturday Review of the film It Follows, a “clever”…
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Song of the Day: “For the Longest Time”
Billy Joel’s long career has garnered him perhaps more accolades than are possible to enumerate. In 2013, he received a Kennedy Center Honor—the equivalent of the French Legion of Honor or the English Knighthood—after a reception dinner hosted by President Obama…