Gerard Johnstone’s M3GAN is built on a concept that was a chestnut 40 years ago: seemingly benign artificial intelligence turning on its human creators. With a creepy, malicious android little girl as the film’s lead, Johnstone serves up a mélange of Child’s Play, Frankenstein, and Westworld. By playfully reworking the old robots-in-revolt shtick, the horror […]
Gerard Johnstone’s M3GAN is built on a concept that was a chestnut 40 years ago: seemingly benign artificial intelligence turning on its human creators. With a creepy, malicious android little girl as the film’s lead, Johnstone serves up a mélange of Child’s Play, Frankenstein, and Westworld. By playfully reworking the old robots-in-revolt shtick, the horror […]
“A migrant is perpetually unfinished. Instead of a living embodiment of one’s place of origin, a person is a work of art constantly in revision,” says David Cuatlacuatl, one of the artists participating in Aesthetics of Undocumentedness. The two-day symposium and exhibition highlights the kaleidoscope of ways individuals experience and are affected by undocumentedness. Day […]
Illiterate Light is all about subverting expectations. The Virginia-based duo of singer-guitarist Jeff Gorman and drummer Jake Cochran is gearing up to release its most ambitious album yet, Sunburned, a masterful record full of rich keyboard, programmed percussion, and anthemic choruses. The latest single, “Fuck LA,” is a melancholy, homesick song that features a real […]
Singer-songwriter Jordan Tice combines witty, well-crafted songs with deft fingerstyle and flatpicking guitar. When not performing solo, Tice can be found working the guitar for acoustic bluegrass quartet Hawktail, and as a sideman for Dave Rawlings, Andrew Marlin (Mandolin Orange), Yola, Tony Trischka, and actor/comedian Steve Martin. His fifth solo record, Motivational Speakeasy, features stripped-down […]
David Crosby passed away on January 19, 2023. In tribute, we are reposting our interview with him, originally published May 30, 2018. Naming someone a “voice of a generation” may be cliché, but when applied to David Crosby, there’s nothing trite about it. After founding The Byrds with Roger McGuinn in 1964, he left to […]
Minneapolis-based quartet Night Moves returned from the COVID-forced break with unfinished business. The band’s new EP, The Redaction, is a short, melancholic listen packed with big pop hooks and American twang. The EP, which marks an evolution for the band, opens with “Fallacy Actually,” a “dense cosmic romp” full of layered synth, high harmonica, and […]
Botanical Fare’s Drag Bingo is a game night like no other. Come ready to play multiple rounds to win merch, gift cards, and more. Hosts Chicki Parm and Cake Pop! (right) serve realness and keep the party rolling, while the café serves up the vegan eats. Take a break between games to watch a dazzling […]
Mary Alice Hostetter understood the power of words and stories very early on. Her new book, Plain: A Memoir of Mennonite Girlhood, chronicles her journey to define an authentic self amid a rigid religious upbringing in a Mennonite farm family. Over the course of the book, Hostetter leaves behind the fields and fences of her […]
In Sofia Samatar’s latest book, The White Mosque, the author and James Madison University professor weaves stories from her life together with histories of a group of Russian Mennonites who migrated to what is now Uzbekistan. Ak Metchet, which means “white mosque,” is the name of the Uzbek village that was settled by 19th-century Mennonites […]
A man catches a silver trout, which turns into a “glimmering girl with apple blossom in her hair” before fading away. Though he grows old searching for her, he will find where she has gone, pledges the narrator of William Butler Yeats’ ethereal 1897 poem “The Song of Wandering Aengus.” This yearning poem’s lyrics open […]