Month: August 2021

With NPR’s Tiny Desk Concert series still working from home, for the time being, the show’s latest guest, Little Simz, takes the theme a bit literally, turning her performance space into a replica of a cozy family living room complete with bookcases, plush leather couches, and even a far-out, retro throw rug to make the space pop. Alongside her band, she performs songs from her upcoming album Sometimes I Might Be Introvert, including the premiere of “Point And Kill,” an Afropop-leaning jam featuring Obongjayar.

The Tiny Desk concert is the culmination of Little Simz’s months-long rollout for Sometimes I Might Be Introvert, which drops this Friday, September 3. Earlier this month, she made her US television debut on The Tonight Show to perform the standout single “Woman,” for which she’d previously released an elegant music video. Another track, “I Love You, I Hate You,” finds her penning an open letter to her father about her conflicted feelings toward him, while “Introvert” kicked everything off back in April.

Sometimes I Might Be Introvert is Simz’s first album since 2019’s Grey Area, although she did release the EP Drop 6 to break up the monotony of quarantine boredom last year. Now that live entertainment has returned, you can catch Simz this weekend at the End Of The Road festival in Dorset, England.

Watch Little Simz perform her cozy NPR Tiny Desk Concert above.

I have long considered Tuesday to be the worst day of week. Monday isn’t as bad as Garfield makes it out to be; Wednesday and Thursday are close enough to the weekend; and Friday, Saturday, and Sunday are the best. But Tuesday? Tuesday has nothing go for it. It’s a drag. It’s usually difficult to find motivation to get through a Tuesday, but not this Tuesday. This Tuesday, I’m channeling the energy of Helen Mirren’s weekend.

The Oscar-winning actress — who also played a fancy car-driving thief in F9 (that’s range) — made an appearance at Dolce & Gabbana’s Alta Moda Show in Venice on Sunday. She arrived on a boat, as one does, and wore a dress that made her feel like “a member of the Contarini Family,” as she wrote on Instagram. “Before me appeared many beautiful goddesses dressed in heavenly clothes, as a rainbow and lightening appeared and thunder rolled, and as the vision disappeared a beautiful rain began to fall.”

Also in attendance at the fashion show: her BFF, Vin Diesel.

“I danced in the rain with VIN DIESEL!” the caption reads. But she wasn’t done dancing:

You know Helen Thee Mirren gets down to “Thot Sh*t.”

Anyway, thank you to Nothing But Respect For My Queen, Vin Diesel, and Megan for helping me get through this Tuesday.

Back in December, the typically affable (when he’s not bouncing up and down on Oprah’s couch like a maniac) Tom Cruise made headlines after delivering a profanity-filled warning to his Mission: Impossible 7 cast and crew about the importance of following COVID-19 protocols to the letter because “We are not shutting this f*cking movie down!” Now, seven shutdowns later, Paramount, the studio behind the Mission: Impossible franchise has lost a lot of money on the film—which isn’t even scheduled to open until May 27, 2022. But as Variety reports, Chubb, the studio’s insurance company, is only willing to shell out $1 million to defray some of the money lost during these stoppages, forcing Paramount to file a lawsuit against their own insurer.

As Variety’s Gene Maddaus writes:

According to the suit, the studio’s insurer, Chubb, has said it will pay only $1 million for COVID-19 losses under its “civil authority” policy. Production was delayed seven times between February 2020 and June 2021, at least six of which were the result of the pandemic.

Paramount had a “cast insurance” policy for the production, with a $100 million coverage limit. Such insurance is intended to cover losses that result when a film’s key personnel — such as star Tom Cruise or director Christopher McQuarrie — is unavailable due to sickness, death or kidnapping.

Paramount maintains that the pandemic-related shutdowns should have triggered that provision of the policy, because the shutdowns were intended to protect the cast from getting sick.

But Chubb is standing firm that these shutdowns only fall under their “civil authority” policy, which covers all government-mandated work stoppages and carries a maximum benefit of $1 million, of which they’re willing to pay the full amount.

Paramount’s suit claims that the original shutdown was due to a key person becoming ill, though it doesn’t note who that person was or whether they were sick with COVID (and Paramount’s not talking, saying that people’s health information is protected information). Chubb paid another $5 million for that particular incident.

For all the details that Paramount’s lawsuit gives, it doesn’t specify how much the studio is looking for—only that it believes they’re entitled to a hell of a lot more than $1 million. And that the company “sold Paramount a Production Package Policy designed to insure Paramount against losses resulting from delays and interruptions of the production of the motion picture Mission Impossible 7. Recognizing the significant expenses (and concomitant risk) incurred in the production of major motion pictures, Federal agreed to and issued a policy that would pay up to a limit that exceeded $100,000,000 in connection with each single loss.”

You can read the full lawsuit here [PDF]. In the meantime, we’ll eagerly await Cruise’s rant thoughts.

(Via Variety)

After appearing in a Daily Beast feature on how the Mike Richards hosting scandal has tarnished Jeopardy!, 11-time champ Arthur Chu has penned an op-ed on how the beloved quiz show can restore its reputation by getting back to basics.

Writing for the Washington Post, Chu openly admits that this advice might sound strange coming from him. He was known as a Jeopardy! “villain” because of his unorthodox play style, but that was part of the show’s appeal. “The fantasy that you or I or anyone else could be the one in the spotlight. Anyone who’s good enough at trivia, even a schlubby nerd from Ohio, could get their turn to write the story of the show.”

Focusing on the show and the contestants was also the bedrock of Alek Trebek’s approach to hosting the show, but thanks to Richards, that’s no longer the case. “It all started with the loss of Trebek,” Chu wrote. “At my tapings, Trebek told us that if he were ever to retire, his one piece of advice to his successor would be, ‘Stay out of the way, and let the contestants be the stars.’”

Chu goes on to say that the reality show “churn” of cycling through guest hosts and creating drama around who will be Trebek’s new successor is a “stain” on Jeopardy! but he argues that it doesn’t have to be that way. Via Washington Post:

There can still be a place for “Jeopardy!,” so long as it centers on the contestants again, and on its own reliability. It just needs some help getting back there. So let me pass on what one child said to me back when I was playing the villain, a message that might be useful to Richards, or to interloping celebrities, or to anyone else who would steal the spotlight or shake up the show: “Why can’t you just do something else, and leave ‘Jeopardy!’ alone?”

While Chu’s advice makes sense, Sony Pictures Television is continuing to allow Richards to serve as executive producer despite the disastrous hosting selection process. Other former champs have argued that removing Richards would be a step in the right direction, but there’s been no sign that Sony is moving in that direction. Yet.

(Via Washington Post)

Kanye West put on quite the show with his pre-release Donda listening events. That’s especially true of the Chicago show, which featured a life-size re-creation of his childhood house. It turns out, though, that West apparently wanted to move the actual building in which he grew up to Soldier Field for the event.

A report from the Chicago Sun-Times (as Complex notes) says that West was denied permission to move the house. The city’s Buildings Department explained, “Moving a home in Chicago is a very technical process that requires structural engineer reports and multiple city permits. The request to move the house at 7815 S. South Shore Dr. was denied last week because no permit application had been received to excavate and move the vacant property which is also in Demolition Court.”

So, it was this denial that led to a reconstruction of the building being made instead.

West purchased the building last year for about $225,000 and apparently had plans to renovate it, but it’s unclear how the home ended up in demolition court. Of Chicago’s demolition court, Justia notes, “Illinois statute 65 ILCS 5/11-31-1 sets out various options for local governments that wish to abate the problems created by ‘dangerous and unsafe buildings’ and abandoned buildings. Under 5/11-31-1(a), the government may apply to the local circuit court for an order authorizing it to demolish, repair, or board up a building, or requiring the building’s owners to do any of those things, if the owners have not taken sufficient action within 15 days after being sent notice of the problems. The mechanism for taking advantage of this provision in the City of Chicago is bringing an action in a court referred to as the ‘Demolition Court.’ This court is designed to provide an expedited process for hearing cases involving buildings that, in the City’s opinion, require demolition.”

If your name ever appears in the same headline as Rudy Giuliani and Mike Lindell, something has gone terribly wrong. Sidney Powell, the “wacko Trump lawyer” who’s on an exhausting, baseless crusade to overturn the 2020 presidential election (even though she admitted in court that “no reasonable person would conclude” those “were truly statements of fact”), attempted to get a billion-dollar defamation lawsuit filed against her by Dominion Voting Systems thrown out — but a judge ruled that it could move forward. Powell also recently appeared on the Australian Broadcast Company’s two-part series, “Fox and the Big Lie,” where she was asked about the Big Lie.

“What you’re describing is a massive, countrywide fraud involving the FBI, the DOJ, the Department of Homeland Security, the organizations who certify elections, and on and on, all the way up to the attorney general. And thousand of local elections officials. Are you saying that thousands of Americans participated in a fraud?” reporter Sarah Fergusen asked Powell. She replied, “I’m saying that thousands of Americans had some role in it, knowingly or unknowingly. It was essentially a bloodless coup where they took over the presidency of the United States without a single shot being fired.”

“Do you ever hear yourself and think it sounds ridiculous?” Ferguson asked as a follow-up. “No, I know myself very well, I’ve been in me a long time. I know my reputation, I know my level of integrity,” Powell responded. Even the lawyer’s dog was done with her.

This moment came after Powell threatened to end the interview:

At one point during the interview, Powell responded to a line of questioning by asking Ferguson if she works for Smartmatic and stated that she was confused about why Ferguson came to interview her in Highland Park, Texas. “Because you’ve made a series of very strong allegations against Smartmatic and against Dominion containing many errors of fact,” Ferguson responded.

Shortly after, Powell attempted to stop the interview, saying it was “wholly inappropriate” because of pending litigation.

You can watch the “Fox and the Big Lie” special here.

(Via Insider)

Drake has been teasing Certified Lover Boy over the past year or so, but now he’s locked into album rollout mode. Yesterday, he confirmed that the album is set for release this Friday, September 3. He also shared the cover art, which features a series of pregnant woman emojis, and which (probably by design) caused quite the stir online. Now it looks like he’s teased some of the album’s content with some billboards that have gone up in his Toronto hometown.

The signs show off what appear to be lyrics from the album. The phrases include “I don’t miss… Let alone miss you,” “Should’ve said you loved me today / because tomorrow is a new day,” and “Something other than me has got to give.”

Furthermore, Drake drove around Toronto yesterday handing out CLB merch.

Meanwhile, not long after Drake unveiled the Certified Lover Boy cover art, Lil Nas X came through with a perfect parody, replacing the women’s heads with male heads and claiming it was the album art for his own upcoming album, Montero. Drake also recently had a big assist for a fan in need, as it was reported that he gave a wheelchair-accessible van to the sister of one of his supporters.

For the Galante family, the Sopranos parallels are unavoidable. Jimmy Galante is a Bronx-born garbage magnate with suspected mob ties, who by the early aughts had a business empire worth a reported $100 million. Just like Tony Soprano (played by a different Jim, Gandolfini), the fictional boss of Northern New Jersey whose official business was “waste management,” Galante ruled a fiefdom in the New York City suburbs from his office in Danbury, Connecticut.

Soprano and Galante’s sons even had the same name — AJ. Yet whereas AJ Soprano’s football career was cut short by panic attacks and a love of nü metal, AJ Galante was a hockey player. Or at least he was, until a catastrophic injury his senior year. While he was still hobbling around on crutches, AJ received some exciting news: his father had bought a minor league hockey team, and AJ was going to run it as its general manager.

In, Crime and Penalties, the latest episode of Untold, Netflix’s new sports documentary series, directors Chapman and Maclain Way (previously of Wild Wild Country) tell the story of how AJ Galante, 17-year-old son of an alleged mobster and unapologetic fan of pro wrestling and The Mighty Ducks, turned the Danville Trashers into the bad boys of the UHL. While sporting gold chains, oversized jerseys, and an always lined up fade, Galante fostered an environment in which fighting was not only tolerated, but encouraged. “What I learned is that for most of the enforcers, it was their job. They didn’t really like it,” AJ told me. “We found the guys that liked it.”

Galante’s goal for the Trashers to kick the other teams’ asses, both with their sticks and their fists, drove him to put together a rag-tag team of unlikely scorers and unrepentant goons that included Wayne Gretzky’s brother, Brent, David Beauregard — a former top prospect who washed out of the NHL after losing an eye — two brothers highly reminiscent of the Hanson Brothers from Slapshot, and a rogue’s gallery of bruisers that included Brad “Wingnut” Wingfield and Ruman “The Nigerian Nightmare” Ndur. Many of whom AJ found by browsing websites like hockeyfights.com, and whose services the Trashers were able to afford thanks to some allegedly creative accounting tricks pulled by AJ’s father. Together they built a successful hockey team, but at significant personal cost.

Naturally, Slapshot plus The Sopranos was extremely my wheelhouse, so I jumped at the chance to speak with AJ Galante. He’s still in Danbury, now running a boxing gym, but didn’t mind reliving the glory days of the Trashers for posterity.

—

The Sopranos was hitting its stride right around the time that you started leading this team. What did you think of it when it first came out?

People don’t believe me when I say this, but I didn’t watch it. I ended up watching it years later. Someone, I don’t know, a Christmas gift or something, gave me a box set DVD. I can’t speak for my father, but I don’t think he watched it before that, either. I heard about it, I knew what it was, but it wasn’t until after I think someone got us a complete box set after the show was over that I actually watched it.

But you didn’t have people coming up to you being like, “Oh, man, you’ve got to see this. His dad’s in the trash business and”–

Yeah, I know. I used to hear it, “he’s named AJ!” and the kid was a little kid douchebag kid, I think. And I was like, “Oh, that’s great. That’s nice.” But no, I mean, I didn’t live under a rock, I understood what the story was and some of the characters, but truthfully, I didn’t watch it until years later.

What did you think of it when you finally saw it?

Great show. And I know what you’re getting at with it. Look, anyone that grows up over here in the Northeast, there wasn’t an Italian-American that I knew around here that didn’t think, “Oh, that could be me,” or, “That could be this one,” or, “That could be that.” So I don’t know, I’ve heard it my whole life, I used to hear that type of stuff. It was a great show though, for sure.

Tell me about Danbury.

Well, Danbury, I’m still here, obviously. We’re about an hour north of New York City. And it’s weird, because this part of Connecticut, it’s like New York will never claim us, because we’re in Connecticut, but Connecticut doesn’t claim us, because we’re so close to New York. There’s two Connecticuts. There’s the New York Connecticut, which is like us. And then, there’s New England Connecticut, like Boston Red Sox fan Connecticut. Danbury, it’s a blue collar town. It’s never really had a major identity, so it’s kind of like everyone I knew who I grew up with, they ended up moving to the city, for more opportunities and stuff. But hey, I stayed here, I’m trying to build stuff over here. I know when my dad started the team, one of his main reasons was, “Hey, I want to bring an identity to the city.” It only lasted two years, but we’re still talking about it to this day.

What was the injury that actually ended your hockey career?

So, I was playing. It was my second game of my senior year, and it was just a fluke thing. There was a little rut in the ice, and my right blade on my skate got stuck. It kind of immobilized my leg, and I went to pivot and turn, and my leg was just there. I just went down. I didn’t feel anything at the time. I don’t know if it was adrenaline, but then I just couldn’t get up. My knee cap was actually on the side of my knee — which I didn’t know at the time, because I had all my gear on. Then when the pain started rushing to my body, I just started pounding on my leg, which sent the knee cap back into place. But in doing that, I tore, I don’t know what the official diagnosis was, but I tore all these ligaments and cartilage, and I had a chip in my kneecap. It was tough. I had three surgeries in six months on it. It was definitely a tough injury, and it was just a fluke thing.

The film goes into a lot of the fights that were going on. What were the craziest ones that maybe didn’t make it into the film or that you remember, but you just didn’t have footage for?

Honestly, I haven’t seen the doc yet, so you know better than me, but I mean, a lot of the footage I think they have is from my home video camera. I used to bring my home video up there and videotape when I knew something was going to happen. A lot of it we tried to set up. The other guys didn’t know that, but we knew that. I mean, there was a lot of stuff, away games were crazy too, because usually, hockey teams, they’re tough at home, but when they go away, they kind of shy away from it. But we kept it very balanced, so a lot of the away games were crazy too. My mom wouldn’t let me go because I had school, but a lot of the away games got crazy — fans throwing stuff, all that. Unfortunately I didn’t get to see a lot of it live. Thankfully. I would have been right in there with them. But my mom said I couldn’t go, so that’s that.

When you say you set it up, obviously, fans love hockey fights, I like watching hockey fights, but it’s not in the rule book. As the team president, how did you sort of foster an environment that would make it happen?

I learned very early on there’s enforcers in hockey, obviously. But what I learned is most of the enforcers, it was their job. They didn’t really like it. We found the guys that liked it. And they’re sick. A lot of guys are like, “Look, this is how I’m going to stay on the team. I do what I got to do,” they throw two punches and then they hug. I was like, “We need to find the guys that like this, that actually care about it.”

It sounds crazy, but we found them. We’d sit literally in the locker room, and if I had my Dad sometimes, he’d be like, “Yeah, number 17 over there, he’s got a real attitude.” So, we would, from the box, sometimes we’d throw up numbers, like number 12, and one of our guys would go to number 12 and try to goad him into a fight. Sometimes it happened, sometimes it didn’t. But in a weird way, it was like playing video games. And it was sick, because a couple of the guys, Wingfield, Murasty, I’d be like, “Number two,” and they’d nod, and they just did it. They were nuts. We were nuts. The whole thing was crazy.

It seems like such a funny combination to me. You guys are kind of like streetwise Italian guys, New York kind of guys, and then, you’ve got these rustic Canadians that are playing hockey, who seem kind of like the opposite thing, but you guys are all just thrown together in this hockey environment.

Yeah. No, hockey guys are the most humble guys. And the enforcers are the best guys off the ice. I was just telling someone, a lot of the enforcers that would fight each other were friends, they were buddies. So, it was a weird dynamic to learn how this stuff works, but no, I mean, like I said, it’s the personalities. We found guys that cherished this role. A lot of those guys they were shunned from other teams, because they were a little nuts. So, when they came here, for them, it was heaven, because we, in so many ways, we wanted that. Hockey, a lot of teams, you have to have that, but a lot of teams don’t want it, they just need it. We wanted and needed it. So a lot of the guys we brought in, they were treated like gods, and they’re very loyal, these hockey guys. They never forgot who would treat them the way we treated them.

On the other side, in terms of scorers, you had this guy Beauregard, the guy with the one eye. Great character. Why did he stop playing in the NHL after he lost the eye?

Well, we’re playing one night, our first year against Port Huron. I think that’s in Michigan or Illinois. And this guy has a full fishbowl visor. In the pros, at the time, everyone either had to a half visor or no visor. And so I’m like, “Who the hell is this guy?” And he ends up scoring four goals against us.

And they’re like, “Oh, that guy, David Beauregard, he’s got one eye.” So, I guess he was a big high-level prospect coming up, and from what I heard, he was on a breakaway once. He had no visor or anything, and he ended up getting hooked from behind, and the stick ended up coming up and taking his eye out. Obviously, I didn’t see that, that was way before the Trashers time. But unfortunately, a lot of NHL teams, foolishly, in my opinion, kind of steered away from him, because he’s got one eye. But I tell you what, he was one of the greatest athletes I ever saw in my life. I think one of the biggest things I ever did is I pursued him our second year. He was just unbelievable, that guy.

He never got any settlement money out of that for losing an eye while playing?

You know what? I don’t know. That’s a good question. But from what he told me, it was an accident. The guy wasn’t swinging a stick at him, it was more or less just kind of a fluke thing. He was getting hooked, and it just came up and caught him.

You had the two brothers on the team. How much was signing those two brothers at the same time influenced by Slapshot?

Again, no one believes me, but I never watched Slapshot the whole way through. And people are like, “Oh, I get it. They modeled their team on Slapshot.” I swear to you. I watched little parts here or there, but I never sat down and watched Slapshot. But yeah, the brothers, we had a mutual friend, and they ended up coming on board. And oh man, those two are fun. I’s amazing, because they could play on the same line together. Sometimes in sports, with siblings, you kind of separate them a little bit, but they just, I mean, they’re not even twins, but they were so in sync with each other, it was incredible.

I read about the equipment manager, that you guys had maybe playing some tricks on the other teams [such as soaking the home jerseys in Crisco so the other team couldn’t grab them]. What were some of the things that he did to try and get an edge?

I heard some things, “allegedly.” We may or may not have planned some of these things, but no, I mean everything from the stupidest pranks. Turning off the heat. The rink in Danbury is cold. I mean, it’s a rink, but excessively cold for some reason. And look, anything to get the mental advantage, the intimidation factor. Stupid, annoying things like the opposing bench may or may not have been welded so they couldn’t open the door. That doesn’t seem like a big deal, but if you’re in the middle of the third period, and your legs are tired and you don’t want to hop over the boards… Those are little stupid things that things would happen. There may have been a fish, a couple of fish planted in the air vents. That’s always a nice smell in the cold. I heard there might’ve been fire alarms pulled at hotels, 2:00, 3:00 in the morning, things like that. The old days when you could do fun stuff like that.

In the movie there were the brothers, there was Beauregard, there was Wingfield, and the Nigerian Nightmare. Were there other guys that you remember fondly that they couldn’t get in the movie?

Oh God, Jon Mirasty. Jon “Nasty” Mirasty. He was about five foot seven with boots on. And he was built like a shit brick house. He was a Native American Indian, from somewhere in Saskatchewan. When I tell you this guy’s head was like… you could hit it with a bat, and he’d just smile. I saw a tape of him once – when Wingfield got hurt, we lost our big enforcer at the time. So, we were looking to replace him. And this guy came to me in a lobby with a book of VHSs, and he said, “I want you to watch. It’s my buddy Jon Mirasty.” He’s in Bakersfield, California at the time. And I went to college on the Monday, and I’m watching the tape of this guy. I was like, “We have to have him. He was this little guy, big balloon head, and he would throw 100 punches a minute. You could hit him with everything, and he’d sit and he’d smile. I just became a fan. We brought him in midway through the first year. He was a favorite. There were so many guys. Mike Rupp, who ended up playing in the NHL. He was with us during the lockout the first year. So many different guys. I mean, too many to name.

If you’re a minor league hockey enforcer, and once you’re too old to play hockey, what are the most of these guys do afterwards?

I was just talking to Brad Wingfield the other day. He actually runs with two other guys a hockey development camp. A lot of these guys turn to coaching, believe it or not. I was looking into them actually a few months back, kind of reaching out, seeing where people are. A lot of them are coaching now, actually. It’s crazy. One of my favorite guys is in the UK, coaching in a big league out there. So many guys, they just stay in the sport one way or the other.

Are you in your boxing gym now?

I’m in my gym now. I got no A/C in here, so it’s like I’m dying, but what are you going to do? You can’t spoil them.

In your boxing gym, are you getting in there and sparring and training with them, or are you just the manager guy?

I put a kid in, 12-years-old, five years ago, when I was pushing 30. I was just messing with him. I didn’t grow up boxing, and this kid is actually now, at 17, the number one ranked super heavyweight in America. And I put him in there, when he was a little fat kid, 11, 12-years-old. He hit me in the face with a shot, and I couldn’t let him know it hurt me, but it was like getting hit with a brick, I’ll never forget it. My eyes watered. And thankfully, it was just us two in the gym at the time. And, number one, I realized I need to keep my ass out of the ring. The second thing I realized was this kid is going to be special. And he’s actually on pace to hopefully represent America in the 2024 Olympics. He’s unbelievable. But no, I don’t get in there. I kind of stay in my little hole here, and I just observe, and kind of do what my dad did with the Trashers, what I grew up watching him do. I kind of just sit back and observe and kind of play chess from here.

‘Untold: Crime And Penalties’ premieres August 31st on Netflix. Vince Mancini is on Twitter. You can access his archive of reviews here.

Every week, I write about new music on this website and yap about it on a podcast. But it’s still a challenge to cover everything I’d like to share, and I’m sure it can be tough for readers and listeners to keep up with all my bloviating. Therefore, I am launching a new column in which I compile all of my recent favorites in a given month.

Welcome to the first installment. Keep in mind that while this list is numbered, it is not ranked. I’m not going to rank any of this until I’m required by music-critic law to do it at the end of the year. In the meantime, please enjoy this musical journal. I hope you find something that you like.

1. The Killers – Pressure Machine

When I interviewed Brandon Flowers earlier this month, he offhandedly likened the latest Killers album to Achtung Baby. (Both are seventh records in their respective bands’ discographies, by the way.) Flowers has been making outrageously megalomaniacal statements in the press since the heady days of Sam’s Town, but I don’t think he’s off-base in regard to Pressure Machine. Just as Achtung Baby was a reboot for U2, Pressure Machine is a bold reinvention for The Killers, setting Flowers’ most evocative narrative lyrics ever to dusty, downscaled versions of his band’s hybrid of anglophilia and heartland rock. It’s one of 2021’s most surprising, and best, albums.

2. Alien Boy – Don’t Know What I Am

This Portland band has made one of the summer’s most appealing indie guitar pop records in Don’t Know What I Am, which beams with wonderfully jangly guitars and heart-rending lyrics about age-old power-pop topics such as loneliness, desire, and how watching TV always makes perennial sad sacks cry. Imagine if the Gin Blossoms’ New Miserable Experience sounded more like Guided By Voices and you’re in the ballpark. (They also cover Oasis’ “Wonderwall” in concert, as if I needed another reason to love them.)

3. Turnstile – Glow On

Just an insanely fun record that has unwittingly inspired a revival of one of the biggest bummer music conversations: What makes a hardcore band a hardcore band? Specifically, can a band that kind of sounds like 311 and ’80s Rush (seriously!) really be considered hardcore? Admittedly, I am not invested in the meaning of “hardcore” at all, and I suggest ignoring anyone who is. Fortunately, Turnstile themselves don’t seem to care, either. Yes, they play shows with the manic energy of a hardcore gig. But their songs have so many hooks that Glow On ends up being one of 2021’s most inviting and inclusive records.

4. Phish – “Simple” (8/6/21)

There’s a terminology applied to Phish that I really love and want to use for other bands. It numbers the band’s different eras like updated versions of computer software — Phish 1.0 covers the ’90s, 2.0 is their brief reunion in the early aughts, and 3.0 covers the modern era since their full-fledged return in 2009. Some have dubbed the post-Covid era — which is not technically post-Covid after all — 4.0, which launched with a tour that began last month and wraps in early September. Of course, Phish would be among the first bands to wage a major nationwide tour in the shadow of the Delta Variant. What’s amazing is how consistently great these shows have been, in spite of the rust from not playing for a year and a half. If this truly is the 4.0 era, then this version of “Simple” from Noblesville, Indiana gets my vote for the best jam of this young age.

5. Sturgill Simpson – “Sam”/ Lorde – “Big Star”

Sturgill’s The Ballad Of Dood And Juanita is among my favorite albums of August 2021, and Lorde’s Solar Power is among my least favorite. But one shared attribute unites these records — they each include a nice song about a dead dog. I am a sucker for a nice song about a dead dog. Even though I know I’m being manipulated, as thinking about a dead dog is the easiest way to get me emotionally engaged in art. A dead dog is one of the few things in this world that demands to be rightfully sentimentalized. For the record, the best “dead dog” songs of all time are “Cracker Jack” by Dolly Parton at No. 1, followed by “Fluffy” by Ween.

6. Ween at Surly Brewing Company in Minneapolis (8/21/21)

Speaking of Ween, this concert was one of my first live experiences of the year, and I’m pleased to report that Gene and Dean delivered a splendid rock ‘n’ roll show that went on for about three hours. Being a dingbat social media addict, I was tempted to tweet about the show as it was happening, but realized that every single Ween song when stripped of context suddenly becomes extremely cancelable. So Ween indirectly inspired me to use Twitter less, if only temporarily, which is yet another reason why they are one of the great American rock bands.

7. Indigo De Souza – “Real Pain”

I suspect we’ll be hearing a lot from Indigo De Souza as the year unfolds, as the just-released Any Shape You Take is already garnering rave reviews. While broadly classified as indie rock, Any Shape You Take is in fact a clever hybrid of many different styles, including folk, pop, and R&B, in the manner of so much Gen Z music. But De Souza is at her most dazzling when she somehow integrates all of her influences in the space of a single song, like how “Real Pain” starts at Rid Of Me PJ Harvey, then descends into literal screaming, and then miraculously pulls off a rousing power-pop climax.

8. Rosali – No Medium

This album came out in May, but I didn’t discover it until this month, which was perfect timing as this dreamy, enigmatic folk-rock gem is really great late-summer music. A Philadelphia-based singer-songwriter, Rosali has performed with hometown heroes The War On Drugs — that band’s keyboardist Robbie Bennett also contributes to No Medium — but her key collaborators on this album are members of the excellent Nebraska outfit David Nance Group. The combination of Rosali’s sensitive songs and knowing vocals with DNG’s heavy guitar stomp make No Medium sound like Sandy Denny as backed by Crazy Horse.

9. Steve Gunn – “Protection”

On his past few solo albums, Steve Gunn has tempered the guitar heroics that made 2016’s Eyes On The Lines one of my favorite albums of recent years. Instead, he’s used his guitar as an atmospheric accent for contemplative psych-folk songs, with mixed results. As a singer and lyricist, Gunn isn’t quite as striking as when his guitar hits the sweet spot between the Grateful Dead and Marquee Moon. The best moments on his latest LP, Other You, occur when he’s able to marry the more conventional singer-songwriter moves of his recent work with the exploratory playing of Lines and his great duo with drummer John Truscinski. On my favorite track “Protection,” Gunn weaves watery guitar lines over an insistent motorik beat and dread-inducing synths. I’d love to hear him play it live for at least 15 minutes.

10. Deafheaven – Infinite Granite

Ever since Sunbather, my favorite LP of 2013 and one of the most emotionally overwhelming rock records of the 2010s, each new Deafheaven album has felt like diminished returns, in which the black metal band struggled to extend the innovations of their breakthrough record. For Infinite Granite, they finally excise metal completely from their musical vocabulary, leaning entirely on the impossibly lush dream-pop soundscapes that made Sunbather so captivating. On one hand, this has made Deafheaven a less dynamic act — the ugliness that contrasted with the beauty in their music is now gone. On the other hand, Infinite Granite sounds so damn beautiful and powerful that it mostly doesn’t matter.

11. The Rolling Stones – “Midnight Rambler” from Get Yer Ya-Ya’s Out

Naturally I’ve been jamming on the Stones since the death of Charlie Watts on August 24. A lot of people have written about what made him such a great drummer, though it’s difficult to expound on it without lapsing into the usual platitudes about how he “played only what was needed” and other clichés. Sometimes you have to let the grooves speak for themselves. Put this song on, go to the 3:45 mark, and listen to Charlie lock in with Keith Richards for the next 30 seconds. The knowledge that no one will rock and roll quite this effectively ever again makes me profoundly sad.

Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Well, at least ex-President Trump has the support of MAGA die-hard Scott Baio when it comes to Afghanistan. That’s actually a typical stance of the far-right, though, and no one is really disputing that the Biden-led withdrawal is a catastrophe, but it took Richard Marx to remind Baio that the Afghanistan mess is a multi-administration disaster. Naturally, Trump doesn’t feel that way, so he popped onto Todd Starnes’ syndicated radio show to complain about how his dealmaking for peace was so “great,” and he’s blaming Biden for the deal not being honored by the Taliban in the first place.

“Because Afghanistan is not even something that can be discussed in a rational way,” Trump ranted via Raw Story. “The level of stupidity — and we had a great agreement. And Biden admitted the other day, he made a mistake because they didn’t want him to say that no people have been killed since this agreement was signed.”

Yep, he went there, and there’s no point in parsing what Trump said, because he’s usually filled with lies. However, Biden has admitted that he’s surprised about the “rapid collapse” of the Afghan government once he made the call to pull U.S. troops after 20 years. That will go down on Biden’s record, but Trump was already done with that subject. He moved on to revisit his beef with the press, with whom he was very upset because they covered Hurricane Ida’s ravaging of Louisiana rather than talk about the Trump “deal”:

“And the media, which is fake and crooked and corrupt, they’re the worst people, they’re the most corrupt people. The only thing I don’t understand is why. They’ve got to hate our country. And they are in fact the enemy of the people. But the corrupt media shows the hurricane all night long.”

Never mind that Afghanistan has dominated press coverage for weeks. Trump must have missed how an amped-up Don Jr. couldn’t stop gloating about the Fall of Kabul on Biden’s watch (and receiving comeuppance) before claiming that his dad could swoop in like Batman and save everyone, which won’t happen, even with the supposed Trump fortune at his disposal. You can listen to Trump’s nonsensical rant below.

(Via Raw Story)