It’s been over 7 years now since Mac Miller’s premature death, and while he was only 26 years old, he left behind an incredible hip-hop legacy. That legacy has continued since his passing via posthumous releases, with the 2020 album Circles and the upcoming Balloonerism. The latter is set to drop on January 17 (just before his January 19 birthday), and now the loose and chill track “5 Dollar Pony Rides” has been released today (January 9).
“Many of Malcolm’s fans are aware of Balloonerism, a full-length album that Malcolm created around the time of the release of Faces in 2014. It is a project that was of great importance to Malcolm — to the extent that he commissioned artwork for it and discussions concerning when it should be released were had regularly, though ultimately GO:OD AM and subsequent albums ended up taking precedence.
We believe the project showcases both the breadth of his musical talents and fearlessness as an artist. Given that unofficial versions of the album have circulated online for years and that releasing Balloonerism was something that Malcolm frequently expressed being important to him, we felt it most appropriate to present an official version of the project to the world. With that in mind, we’re happy to announce that Balloonerism will be released on January 17th, 2025.”
Listen to “5 Dollar Pony Rides” above.
Balloonerism is out 11/17 via Warner Records. Find more information here.
Godzilla has been having “a moment” since his 1950s debut, but the nuclear lizard’s ubiquity has (deservedly) gone into overdrive in recent years with Toho’s Oscar-winning Godzilla Minus One, which is streaming on Netflix and has a sequel coming. The “absolute slobberknocker” of last year’s Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire also kept Legendary’s Monsterverse coming in hot, but the small-screen has been bringing the fire, too. Legendary and Apple TV+’s Monarch: Legacy Of Monsters, which began its run by promising Kurt Russell teaming up with Godzilla.
What transpired on Apple TV+ was (to put things mildly) a streaming success, and in April 2024, Legendary and Apple TV+ announced a second-season renewal in addition to “multiple spin-off series.” Let’s piece together what clues have been dropped so far and speculate about whether that “death” was really the end for Russell’s involvement in the series.
Plot
Apple TV+
It’s fair to say that the events of Monarch: Legacy Of Monsters‘ first season were intentionally muddy at times, including the motives of Lee Shaw (portrayed by both Kurt Russell and his IRL son, Wyatt) in this generation-spanning series. That became clearer by season’s end, but a major lingering question in the jump between seasons is whether Lee Shaw survived another portal entry. This ambiguity was probably planned since there was no guarantee on whether Kurt Russell would return for a second season, but also, Shaw has been brought back before, so anything is possible. Also, we saw no body, so death cannot definitively be called either way. Those signs point to his return in the second season, or Shaw could surface in a future movie.
When quizzed on a possible return by The Direct, Kurt Russell reflected to the Monarch org’s history and suggested that the baton could be passed:
“I think that what’s interesting about this show is that when you go back in time, you flashback to how these people got together and where this whole thing started. It’s the human aspect of it that you are focused on. And I think all his life; he’s, you know, there were certain things that he was waiting for, and setting up that sort of mysterious way that you finally begin to understand towards the end. To me, you would carry on with that and understand mysteries work in different ways, with different people, different scenarios. So they’d… have to lean into those scenarios.”
So, no news is good news from Kurt Russell? We will see. What is much more concrete, however, is Legendary’s confirmation that the second season will spend plenty of time on Skull Island, as confirmed by a recent still from Legendary with this message: “Greetings from Skull Island. Monarch: Legacy of Monsters Season 2 is in production.”
Legendary/Apple TV+
In other words, we should be seeing much more of this guy:
Legendary/Apple TV+
Let’s hope that Godzilla isn’t entirely out of this show’s equation. There’s been no discussion on that subject from official parties, and series creator Chris Black told Screenrant (in a group conversation that confirmed the return of cast members Kiersey Clemons, Anna Sawai, Joe Tippet) that he’s essentially bound to secrecy:
“I think our friends from Apple are here, so I’m not sure what I’m allowed to say. But it’s going to be big. It’s going to be great. We’re really excited and just so thrilled to have the opportunity to come back and keep telling this story. I think if you watched the season finale, and you get to the end of the season finale, I think you know what the teaser is.”
In that same discussion, Anna Sawai did express hope that Cate Randa will be “taking a little bit more action” now that she’s learned about her family legacy. Fingers crossed, and there will be no protest from the Shōgun audience on that front.
Cast
Although Apple TV+ hasn’t been straightforward on returning cast members, we can expect to see plenty of returning faces. That could include Kurt Russell and Wyatt Russell or simply the latter or neither of them at all, but stay tuned there.
Anna Sawai figured prominently into the finale as Cate Randa, so those who want more of her after Shōgun know where to find her, and other first-season cast members included Mari Yamamoto, Anders Holm, John Goodman, Kiersey Clemons, Ren Watabe, Joe Tippett, and Elisa Lasowski.
Variety reported thatPrey‘s Amber Midthunder signed on for a recurring second season role as Isabel, “an intelligent and powerful businesswoman.”
Release Date
With Legendary and Apple TV+ providing a “first look” in November 2024, we can guess that a late 2025 release is possible, but don’t be too surprised if this pushes into early 2026.
Trailer
Since Apple TV+ hasn’t released any footage yet, G-Fans can revisit this moment when Lee Shaw realizes that what doesn’t kill Godzilla only makes the nuclear lizard stronger.
Each week our staff of film and television experts surveys the entertainment landscape to select the ten best new/newish shows available for you to stream at home. We put a lot of thought into our selections, and our debates on what to include and what not to include can sometimes get a little heated and feelings may get hurt, but so be it, this is an important service for you, our readers. With that said, here are our selections for this week.
If you enjoy the Harley Quinn show and/or James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad, you’ll love Creature Commandos. The animated series tracks a secret team of incarcerated monsters — including Frankenstein, The Bride of Frankenstein, and G.I. Robot — who are recruited for missions deemed too dangerous for humans. “When all else fails… they’re your last, worst option,” the Max description reads. Every episode was written by Gunn, while the cast includes Indira Varma, Sean Gunn, Alan Tudyk, Zoë Chao, David Harbour, Maria Bakalova, Frank Grillo, and Viola Davis. It’s a fun introduction to the new DCU.
In Black Doves, the always wonderful Keira Knightley plays Helen, an undercover professional spy who has been passing on her politician husband’s secrets to the shadowy organisation she works for: the titular Black Doves. But when her secret lover Jason is assassinated, an old friend (Paddington’s Ben Whishaw!) is tasked with keeping her safe. Together, they set off on a mission to investigate who killed Jason, which, as often happens with these kinds of shows, leads them into a vast conspiracy. Pepe Silvia will be watching.
Carry-On makes a (mostly) single-setting thriller star out of the unsung heroes of the holiday season: TSA agents. Ethan (played by Taron Egerton) is tasked with outsmarting a mysterious traveler (Jason Bateman at his most menacing) who blackmails him into letting a dangerous package slip onto a Christmas Eve flight. Carry-On is directed by Jaume Collet-Serra (Orphan, The Shallows, and Black Adam, but don’t hold that last one against him) with a script from Ratchet & Clank (!) writer TJ Fixman.
Discover what all the fuss over the vaping cardinal is about. Directed by Edward Berger (All Quiet on the Western Front), Conclave is about the messy drama behind selecting a new pope. Per the official synopsis: “Cardinal Lawrence (Ralph Fiennes) is tasked with running this covert process after the unexpected death of the beloved Pope. Once the Catholic Church’s most powerful leaders have gathered from around the world and are locked together in the Vatican halls, Lawrence uncovers a trail of deep secrets left in the dead Pope’s wake, secrets which could shake the foundations of the Church.” Such drama queens.
The Dark Passenger-verse expands with Dexter: Original Sin, a prequel to the original series and Dexter: New Blood. This one is set in 1991 and follows Dexter Morgan (played by Patrick Gibson) as he transitions from student to serial killer with guidance from his father Harry (Christian Slater). Michael C. Hall will reprise his role, sort of, as the voice of young Dexter’s inner monologue. Will there be a treadmill? Find out!
Stephanie Hsu, who really should have won the Oscar over her Everything Everywhere All at Once co-star, is joined by Zosia Mamet in the new series Laid. The “f*cked up rom-com” is about a woman who finds out that her former lovers are dying in unusual ways, and must go back through her “sex timeline” to figure out what the heck is going on.
Juror #2 received such a tiny theatrical release, we wrote an entire post about how to see it. It’s Clint Eastwood’s possibly final film for chrissakes! Thankfully, the film is now on Max, so more people can watch the throwback legal thriller starring Nicholas Hoult as a jury member going through a moral dilemma. It’s the most 1994 movie of 2024 (complimentary).
Netflix’s most-watched show ever is back. Squid Game season 2 sees the return of Gi-hun (played by Lee Jung-jae), a.k.a. Player 456, who has only one goal: to end the horrifying competition for good. This time, Gi-hun finds himself “locked in a tense battle” with the Front Man (Lee Byung-hun), as well as trying to survive against the other competitors. Squid Game is the rare water-cooler show in the “death of the monoculture” era. Keep up if you want to know what your co-workers are talking about.
Colin Firth with white hair? Yes please. Lockerbie: A Search for Truth is inspired by the true story of Pan Am Flight 103, which exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988, killing 259 passengers and crew and 11 more on the ground. It’s up to Dr. Jim Swire (Firth), whose daughter died in the incident, to find out exactly what happened.
6. Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl (Netflix)
netflix
War is, generally speaking, bad… but I would not oppose a second Revolutionary War on the U.K. for getting Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl before the U.S. did. Just saying. Feathers McGraw returns in the new claymation masterpiece from Aardman. This time, the evil penguin aims to enact revenge on our cheese-loving heroes for getting him locked up in prison by reprogramming Wallace’s robotic garden gnome.
Along with Interview with the Vampire, Mayfair Witches is part of Anne Rice’s Immortal Universe on AMC (which has seen a surge in popularity since the shows were added to Netflix). Season 2 of Mayfair continues the journey of Rowan Mayfair (played by Alexandra Daddario) after giving birth to the demon Lasher (Jack Huston). As per AMC: “She is determined to understand what he has become – human or monster? – and to use him to fulfill her purpose as a healer, but when tragedy strikes, she must put aside her own desires and fight to protect her family.” To paraphrase Elton John, the witch is back.
Written and directed by Hirokazu Kore-eda (Shoplifters), Asura is a family drama set in 1979 about about four sisters — Tsunako (Rie Miyazawa), Makiko (Machiko Ono), Takiko (Yu Aoi), and Sakiko (Suzu Hirose) — who discover that their dad is having an affair. It’s being called 2025’s “first great new TV show.”
Black Box Diaries is one of 15 films to make the shortlist for Best Documentary Feature at the 2025 Oscars. It follows Japanese journalist Shiori Itō, who accused a prominent media executive of rape in 2017. She also published a memoir about the case, Black Box, which is “credited with sparking the #MeToo movement in Japan,” according to a synopsis. The documentary is told through video diaries (shot on Itō’s iPhone), audio recordings, and courtroom footage. Black Box Diaries is a tough but essential watch.
Noah Wyle? As a doctor? It’s crazy enough to work. This time, the ER star works in a hospital in Pittsburgh, and the show is “a realistic examination of the challenges facing healthcare workers in today’s America as seen through the lens of the frontline heroes.” The entire 15-episode first season takes place over the course of one 15-hour emergency room shift, not unlike 24.
For a while there, Taylor Kitsch was everywhere. He went from playing hunk with a heart of gold Tim Riggins on Friday Night Lights to starring in two big-budget films, John Carter and Battleship, as well as a prominent role in Oliver Stone’s Savages, all released in 2012. But when all three films underperformed and/or were met with scorn from critics (justice for John Carter!), Kitsch stopped being The Next Best Thing. But now he’s back with his biggest part in years: American Primeval, a gritty, gloomy limited series set in the American frontier during the 1800s. The cast also includes the great Betty Gilpin, Kim Coates, and character actor favorite Shea Whigham.
It has not only become a favorite of social media but of NBA and NFL teams too, and can be heard in arenas and locker rooms all over. The Cavs have adopted it as one of their celebratory songs after a win. While the arena played it after they beat the Hornets to poke some fun at LaMelo Ball, the Cavs locker room has embraced the song earnestly. After their big win on Wednesday night against the Thunder, Darius Garland confirmed to ESPN’s Michael Eaves that he would be putting Gelo on in the locker room when he got in there, and also teased that there’s a new track coming on Friday from the middle Ball brother.
“I got the aux. You know we gonna bump Gelo,” Garland said. “Shout out to my boy Gelo, he got a banger — he got another one comin’ out Friday, I heard. So we gonna be in tune for that one.”
We’ll see if Garland’s sources are correct, but it’d make sense for Gelo to try and capitalize on his moment with another song. He already got a spot at Rolling Loud California to go along with his viral fame and spot on seemingly every locker room playlist, and now he’ll try to back it up with another banger for this weekend.
Pup have been relatively quiet since releasing 2022’s The Unraveling Of PupTheBand, but they’re back with a new song — and hopefully a new album. “Paranoid” isn’t a cover of the Black Sabbath classic (although there is a Sabbath reference in the video), but rather, it’s a punk rager that the band does so well.
“My favorite part of this song is the breakdown 1:45 in,” singer Stefan Babcock said of the track. “It’s the heaviest moment in the song, Zack and Steve are going so hard, I’m yelling about all this sad stuff that’s going on with me, and Nestor is just playing the melody from ‘The Lion Sleeps Tonight’ on the bass. It cracks me up every time I hear it. So f*cking funny. It’s a very Pup moment.”
Music video director Jeremy Schaulin-Rioux added, “What started out as a way to keep the bruising and heartbreaking lyrics to ‘Paranoid’ front and center turned in to a little love letter for rock band merchandise and the unsung heroes who run the merch table. Special thanks to co-director Clem Hoeney and all the real Pup fans who came out and went so hard for a hundred takes!”
You can listen to “Paranoid” above. Also be sure to check out Pup’s Substack where they will “post unreleased songs, discuss writing process, play-through tracks, comics, old photos, live recordings, tour stories, and more.”
Last month, the acclaimed singer-songwriters Julien Baker and Torres performed a show together at Manhattan’s Mercury Lounge, presumably ahead of a still-unannounced collaborative album. They played mostly originals, though they also introduced a few covers, including a modern indie-rock standard: Songs: Ohia’s “Farewell Transmission.”
Baker and Torres are far from alone in performing this song and honoring the man who wrote it — the late, great Jason Molina. Kevin Morby and Waxahatchee have also covered “Farewell Transmission” on record, as have Glen Hansard and My Morning Jacket, and countless more have played it live. But beyond just that one song, Molina’s career has had a fruitful renaissance more than a decade after his death.
As the leader of Songs: Ohia and Magnolia Electric Co., he was respected but hardly a commercial juggernaut. (His sizable catalog has sold about 200,000 copies worldwide.) Since his passing in 2013 from organ failure brought on alcoholism, however, Molina has taken on the stature of sainted “bygone bard” for a new generation that never knew his music when he was alive, similar to what Townes Van Zandt signified for Gen-X singer-songwriters. Particularly in the indie-Americana space, everyone from Big Thief to Wednesday to Wild Pink to the promising Vermont rocker Greg Freeman seems in some way influenced by him, a debt that more often than not has been directly acknowledged. “Learning about Jason Molina was a big deal,” MJ Lenderman told me in 2022 when he reflected on his beginnings as a songwriter in high school, which occurred in the shadow of Molina’s death.
For an artist like Lenderman, whose songs are frequently compared to Neil Young, it’s probably more accurate to suggest that he (and many others) are influenced by Neil via the filter of Jason Molina, a passionate acolyte who instructed his band to study After The Gold Rush before recording one of Songs: Ohia’s greatest albums, 2001’s Didn’t It Rain. The Zoomers that have followed Molina’s lead don’t emulate the sunny Laurel Canyon folkiness of Gold Rush; rather, like Molina, they take Neil’s guitar sound and apply a layer of depressed Middle American grime.
Molina’s vocals are similarly region-specific. An untrained yelper, he made up for his technical limitations by conveying pure feeling the way a glacier presents ice. When Jason Molina sings, you immediately discern the peak of his emotions. But there’s also a vast body of hurt and longing that exists below the surface, only hinted at but always palpable. Like so many Midwestern men, Molina was a master at holding back and letting you know he was holding back, until the weight finally crushed him.
In life, Molina was a complicated, somewhat unknowable character. He was, on one hand, a small-town kid from Ohio who his peers likely viewed as pretentious, the kind of guy who wore a cowboy hat around town at the height of the grunge era. On the other hand, he prided himself for having a work ethic that can be credibly classified as “blue collar.” He woke early in the morning, and applied himself to songwriting like it was a job, which helps to explain his extraordinary creative output.
In the nineties and aughts, Jason Molina was a man out of time. His brushes with mainstream attention seem to have been purely accidental and ran contrary to his anti-trendy nature. In retrospect, he seems even less modern — he died around the time the social media era really took hold, and indie rock became a lot less indie and almost wholly disconnected from rock. Of course, these are the very things that help to explain his contemporary appeal.
MOLINA 101
Jason Molina’s life was cut short, but his catalog is vast beyond his years. Across his various bands, collaborations and solo projects, he put out well over two dozen releases over the course of a 15-year recording career, a testament to his “punch in, punch out” daily songwriting work ethic. But in the public consciousness his output tends to be reduced to just one track, “Farewell Transmission,” from his most popular album, 2003’s The Magnolia Electric Co.
That’s the song that modern-day Molina acolytes are most likely to cover in concert, and it’s not hard to figure out why: “Farewell Transmission” derives from the classic-rock playbook of rousing concert anthems. It’s the “Free Bird” of the DIY basement-show world, an all-time fist-pumper with tragic undertones, a natural encore favorite. But as good of a song that it is, the original recording is an even better performance. In the studio, Molina functioned like Bob Dylan or Neil Young, favoring live takes and no-fuss spontaneity and shunning overdubs and mistake-free perfection. For much of his career, he preferred to rotate musicians in and out of his orbit, resulting in combinations of players that might back him just once and never again. Such was the case with “Farewell Transmission,” which is played with such freewheeling intensity that one might assume it was recorded in the cockpit of a crashing airplane.
The miracle of The Magnolia Electric Co. is that the rest of the record doesn’t feel like a letdown after opening with that deathless classic. At the time, the album represented the most straight-forward “rock” music that Molina had yet made. Though it also felt slightly behind the times, given the strides that Jeff Tweedy — among Molina’s more successful Midwestern peers — had recently made with Wilco beyond the sort of chunky alt-country The Magnolia Electric Co. traffics in. No matter: Even when Molina cranked the amps, he still made the music sound intimate and lonely. On the second track, he offers up his defining lyric: “I’ve been riding with the ghost / I’ve been doing whatever he told me.” Molina actually claimed to see ghosts in real life, and he had a life-long fascination with American history, folklore and nature. But “I’ve Been Riding With The Ghost” also has obvious resonance in light of Molina’s ultimate fate, which was already set in motion around the time that The Magnolia Electric Co. was released.
Born on December 30, 1973 in Oberlin, Ohio, Molina was raised in a trailer park situated in a de-industrialized former steel town a half-hour outside of Cleveland. His father, a middle-school teacher, turned him onto music, and Molina started playing guitar at age 10. His relationship with his mother was more fraught due to her debilitating drinking problem. Molina himself was a teetotaler as a young man, though that started to change in the early aughts when he moved with his wife to Indianapolis. Feeling isolated, he started drinking heavily, usually in private to hide the extent of his intake, a stock “problematic Midwestern drinker” move.
The Magnolia Electric Co. is commonly regarded as Molina’s artistic breakthrough, but it’s the album that precedes it, 2001’s Didn’t It Rain, that represents his first “mature” work. A bridge between his spare early albums from the nineties and the “band” records he made in the aughts, Didn’t It Rain also put Molina in a broader context than his usual Middle American indie-rock milieu. The album title nods to gospel and blues traditions — not exactly common reference points at the time — and Molina follows through with a record engulfed in timeless, spacious darkness, no matter the timely references to Steve Albini or even himself in “Cross The Road, Molina.” What also sets the album apart, then and now, is Molina’s interest in writing about downbeat, small-town life, which he elevates with poetic language that somehow reads as romantic in spite of the desperate trappings. Like in “Blue Factory Flame,” when he sings:
“When I die, put my bones in an empty street
to remind me of how it used to be
Don’t write my name on a stone
bring a Coleman lantern and a radio
Cleveland game and two fishing poles
and watch with me from the shore.”
The Magnolia Electric Co. might have done even better commercially if it had been presented in a less confusing manner. It is credited as a Songs: Ohia record, even though it is named after his post-Songs: Ohia band. And the lineup on the record isn’t the band that would play those songs with Molina in concert. Perhaps this professional perversity can be regarded as an unfortunate byproduct of his Dylanesque compulsion to follow his gut in lieu of a safer, steadier approach. Or it might just reflect Molina’s ambivalence about mainstream notoriety in general. In retrospect, it’s tempting to theorize that Molina was trying to will himself (successfully, it turns out) to cult hero status.
Another perverse move was making the first Magnolia Electric Co. release a live record. Trials & Errors was captured at a gig in Brussels relatively early on in the tour, before the group had truly gelled. In time, this lineup — anchored by ace guitarist Jason Groth and the innovative steel guitar player Mike Brenner — would evolve into a fierce unit capable of both Crazy Horse-style rampages and delicate country-soul reveries. On Trials & Errors, they mostly just rampage, and sometimes the fluffed notes are plainly audible. But, again, Molina is willing to sacrifice polish for passion, and this ranks with his most visceral music.
Much of Trials & Errors is repeated on the 2005 studio effort What Comes After The Blues, including one of his finest and most definitive songs, “The Dark Don’t Hide It.” (Molina also gives space to bandmate Jennie Bedford’s fine ballad “The Night Shift Lullaby,” a sign of his generous and instinctively collaborative nature.) But one song that only exists in live form is among my personal favorites, “Such Pretty Eyes For A Snake.” Molina describes what is presumably a soul-crushing encounter with a groupie (“I guess if I do come upstairs with you / It wouldn’t be the first time / That I made a mistake in my life”). But what he’s really describing is another hellhound on his trail. Near the end, there’s an extraordinary moment when he suddenly snaps, “You got still something to say about it?” I can never tell if this is part of the song or if Molina is talking to the band or someone in the front row. Sometimes I imagine he is once again addressing a specter only he can see.
By the time Molina readied to make the final Magnolia Electric Co. record, 2009’s Josephine, his alcoholism had advanced considerably. He was also shaken by the recent death of one-time bandmate Evan Farrell, and he would dedicate the record to his memory. In the studio, Molina’s compatriots tried to curb his drinking by taking larger-than-usual pulls from the communal bottle of Wild Turkey, a method that yielded predictably mixed results. Regardless: Josephine contains some of the most beautiful music of his career, even though the relatively mellower sound has caused some partisans to overlook it. Vocally, Molina never sounded more soulful than he does here, and his band plays with corresponding sensitivity and grace. It’s hard to top the reckless energy of “Farewell Transmission” for pure kick-ass power, but to me the single greatest recording of Molina’s career is “Shenandoah,” a gorgeous tear-in-your-beer ballad of heartbreak and regret that Molina sings with sweetly pained restraint. If you can hear him softly hit that high note at the end without getting a lump in your throat, you’re made of sterner stuff than I.
MOLINA ADVANCED STUDIES
If you have gotten this far into your Molina listening, there is no excuse not to read Erin Osmon’s excellent 2017 biography Jason Molina: Riding With The Ghost. Osmon writes with the care of a journalist, the eye of a critic, and the love of a fan, depicting Molina as a contradictory figure — a sad-sack visionary on stage and a hyperactive joker in the tour van, a secretive loner who craved communal artistic experiences from a wide circle of friends and fellow travelers, a man who prided himself on being an “authentic” everyman while also constantly self-mythologizing (or flat out lied lying about) himself. The resulting portrait humanizes a man too often reduced to the sad circumstances of his death.
As a teenager, Molina was drawn to typical small-town hesher fare like Metallica and Motorhead. But as a student at Oberlin College in the mid-nineties, he remade himself as a guitar- and ukulele-playing eccentric nicknamed “Sparky” who claimed that Crazy Horse drummer Ralph Molina was his uncle. (He wasn’t.) He wrote scores of songs and recorded them on cassettes labeled with the prefix “Songs:” along with some allusion that described what they sounded like, such as Songs: George Jones or Songs: Goth. When some friends went to Cleveland to see Will Oldham’s Palace Brothers, Molina asked them to slip the singer-songwriter his Songs: Ohia tape, named after a phonetic-accent pronunciation of his home state. Oldham subsequently suggested that Molina use the name for his project, and it stuck.
For the first three Songs: Ohia albums — 1997’s Songs: Ohia (a.k.a. “The Black Album”), 1998’s Impala, and 1999’s Axxes & Ace — Molina was plagued by constant comparisons to Oldham, proof that even future icons still start off as fodder for cynical record reviewers. The charges were not completely unwarranted: These albums do sound indebted to Oldham, from their spare and raw production to the untrained plainness of Molina’s voice to the occasional flashes of goofy humor. (“Captain Badass,” a touching love song from Axxess & Ace dedicated to his future wife, is hardly a typical Jason Molina song title.)
The best album from this period is 2000’s The Lioness, in which Molina is joined by members of the Scottish slowcore band The Arab Strap. Given the personnel, it’s not surprising that The Lioness sounds unlike any other Molina album. While the early records have more than their share of mid-tempo dirges, the glacial pace of The Lioness is undergirded by flinty post-punk energy, like Joy Division re-imagined as a Rust Belt bar band. (Another Songs: Ohia album from 2000, Ghost Tropic, has a similar feel but conveys it less effectively.) On “The Black Crow,” Molina memorably sings from the perspective of a dying bird, a thoroughly Molina-esque scenario. “And I look down and see the whole world / and it’s fading.”
When Molina wasn’t putting out proper albums, he was releasing EPs, live records, singles and tour-only collections like 2000’s well-regarded Protection Spells. (Frankly, it’s more than I have space to cover here.) Molina saved his most ambitious project for 2007’s Sojourner, a box set composed of three full-length albums, one EP, and a DVD documentary. It resembles one of the sprawling, multi-disc archival releases that Neil Young periodically puts out to clear his vaults of unreleased work. Only Molina did it in real time, not 40 years after the fact. (Perhaps he could already sense that his time was limited.) The packaging was extravagant, particularly for an indie release — the albums were housed in a wooden box along with a star map and a medallion, an allusion to Molina’s own pack-rat habits and fetishization of objects exotic and mundane.
Given the heft of the enterprise, one might expect Sojourner to be padded or plodding. But Molina’s quality-control is impressively on point, and the digressing approaches of producers Steve Albini and David Lowery makes for a sonically dynamic experience. But still: This was a lot of music to present at once. To the chagrin of Molina and his band, their label Secretly Canadian preceded the box set with a 28-minute album, Fading Trails, that cherry-picked nine songs from the Sojourner sessions. But no matter Molina’s dissatisfaction, the bright and approachable country rock of Fading Trails might be an even more accessible entry point for newbies than The Magnolia Electric Co.
PH.D-LEVEL MOLINA
A common complaint leveled against Molina in his lifetime was that his songs cycled through the same set of chords and thematic motifs, making them hard for the casual listener to discern from one another. That’s not an entirely unfair critique, though it doesn’t necessarily apply to 2004’s Pyramid Electric Co. One of four Molina albums issued under his own name, it’s a bleak record even by Molina’s standards, with little in the way of melodies or exhilarating guitar solos. Some of the tracks sound like informal, glacially paced solo jams in which Molina searches for ideas while banging out clanging chords and minor-key guitar lines. Certainly not an easy listen, but anyone looking for a “dark night of the soul” vibe could hardly get any darker than this.
On his records, Molina always insisted that his backing musicians take ownership of their parts and contribute their own unique flavors to the overall stew. That spirit carried over to projects officially billed as collaborations, like Amalgamated Sons Of Rest, whose lone self-titled EP from 2002 amounts to a sort-of indie-rock Traveling Wilburys also featuring Oldham and Scottish folk singer Alasdair Roberts. A more fruitful partnership was forged with the Texas singer-songwriter Will Johnson, whose hybrid of indie rock and hard-luck alt-country influences naturally fit with Molina on 2009’s Molina And Johnson.
A planned support tour for Molina And Johnson was canceled so that he could enter rehab. Sadly, the treatment didn’t take, and Molina’s drinking and health problems worsened. The once prolific artist stopped writing and releasing music. In 2012, he put out a statement on Magnolia Electric Co.’s website, expressing optimism about his treatment and saying that he was working on new music. Five months later, he released a 22-minute EP, Autumn Bird Songs, composed of song sketches he laid down shortly before canceling the Molina And Johnson tour.
Five months after that, Jason Molina was found dead in his Indianapolis apartment. A modest recording space was set up in the corner. A half-empty bottle of discount vodka was in the freezer. He was 39 years old.
Can you guess Netflix‘s longest-running scripted series?
Nope, it’s not Orange Is The New Black or BoJack Horseman or Stranger Things; that series only feels like it premiered 30 years. The answer: Big Mouth, which is approaching its eighth season. It’s also the animated show’s final season, as there are only so many masturbation jokes left for creators Nick Kroll, Andrew Goldberg, Mark Levin, and Jennifer Flackett to tell.
Here’s everything we know about Big Mouth season 8.
Plot
The final season is far enough away (but not too far, as you’ll see below!) that Netflix hasn’t shared any specific plot details. But co-creator and star Nick Kroll discussed Big Mouth wrapping up in an interview with Cartoon Brew.
“They go to high school,” he said. “It’s crazy. I really think we nailed the landing. We did a live table read of the final episode and everyone was there from the cast. The evolution of the show kids starting at the end of sixth grade and now getting them through high school… I loved making the show.”
Kroll also appreciates that they were allowed to make a realistic (well, semi-realistic) show about the horrors and joys of growing up.
“I think about where when we started, BoJack had come out and we were in the next little round of animation at a time when Netflix itself was just beginning to do original programming. And we had unbelievable freedom to create exactly the show we wanted to make,” he said at the Next on Netflix Animation Preview last year. “Netflix took a real flyer on how crazy it was to be like, ‘We’re going to make a show about kids masturbating. Does that sound good?’ And they were like, ‘That sounds great. Do whatever you want.’ And they really gave us the freedom to do that.”
Also: spinoff series Human Resources, which concluded after two seasons in 2023, will tie into the final season of Big Mouth.
netflix
Cast
The Big Mouth voice cast includes Nick Kroll (Nick, Maury the Hormone Monster, Coach Steve, Rick the Hormone Monster, Lola), John Mulaney (Andrew), Jessi Klein (Jessi), Ayo Edebiri (Missy), Jason Mantzoukas (Jay), Fred Armisen (Nick’s father Elliot), Maya Rudolph (Connie the Hormone Monstress, Nick’s mother Diane), Jordan Peele (the Ghost of Duke Ellington), Andrew Rannells (Matthew), Paula Pell and Richard Kind (Andrew’s mother and father, Barbara and Marty), Joe Wengert (Caleb), Jak Knight (DeVon), Jon Daly as Judd, and June Diane Raphael (Devin).
Season 7 also featured Megan Thee Stallion, Don Cheadle, Padma Lakshmi, Billy Porter, Lupita Nyong’o, Niharika NM, Zazie Beetz, Stephanie Beatriz, and Maitreyi Ramakrishnan, but no guest stars have been revealed yet for season 8. Maybe Scott Aukerman and Paul F. Tompkins will finally get the call.
Release Date
There’s no exact date as of this moment, but Big Mouth season 8 will premiere sometime in 2025. Based on previous seasons, it will likely be in the fall.
Trailer
Name another show where Oscar winner Jordan Peele voices a pitbull named Featuring Ludacris. You simply can’t!
Blackpink shared Born Pink in 2022 and toured in 2023, but since then, the group’s members have been primarily focused on their solo careers. That includes Jennie, but now, she’s excited to see what the group will be like following this period of individual development.
I’ve missed the girls. I’ve missed doing tours with them. I miss our silly moments. I’m excited to see what everyone brings. You know, everyone took their own journey [during] this time, and I’m excited to share that with the girls. I want to say it’s going to be the most powerful [versions] of ourselves that anyone has seen.”
Jennie also spoke about how primarily recording her solo album in Los Angeles was “very intentionally done,” saying, “I just really wanted to throw myself out there to experience it. [In Seoul], I was so comforted in an easy environment that I created a long time ago, and I didn’t enjoy it. I was like, ‘No, if this is your career and if this is your life, explore and learn.’ I kept telling myself that.”
Speaking of recording in Los Angeles: As wildfires rage in Southern California, is was just revealed that Malibu’s Harbor Studios, where Nicki Minaj recorded Pink Friday 2 and where Doja Cat worked on Scarlet, burned down.
Max‘s Sex And The City revival series, And Just Like That…, is gearing up for a third season, which marks the ninth season of the franchise. Two movies exist as well but really do not matter much in the grand scheme of these characters, other than watching Miranda decide that she wanted to stay with Steve (and they have since split) and watching Carrie be left at the altar by Big, who she later married. Samantha has since left the building, other than a cameo, and Charlotte’s marriage to Harry has been going strong throughout, even after she went off the rails a bit the last time the show streamed.
Let’s reopen Carrie’s closet and discuss what mistakes she might make in the third season, along with addressing some curious “Big” wordplay:
Plot
HBO Max
The Peloton in the room cannot be ignored because maybe (just maybe) those involved in this Max show enjoy teasing something that could never happen.
As viewers damn well know, And Just Like That… killed off a “big” character as the series began. That would be John James Preston (Chris Noth), known throughout most of his run simply as “Mr. Big.” He died after taking a Peloton ride, which launched a massive PR ruckus for the fitness platform, and then the Peloton reappeared to apparently haunt Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker). A funeral was held for Big, and Carrie had observed him dying, and after departed the show, he was accused of sexual misconduct, which led to a statement of support for the alleged victims from the core cast. There’s about -50% chance of Chris Noth returning as even a Zombified Mr. Big, but the following interview snippets are entertaining.
“It feels really big, really robust and exciting. There are so many interesting stories with additional characters that rightfully find a real home,” she teased. “There is growth with new faces. Carrie has a wonderful storyline. The story takes some big swings and we fold some big ideas into those big swings. Some of the male characters are back, and there are some new men.”
Likewise, executive producer Michael Patrick King spoke with Entertainment Weekly and declared, “[I]t just gets bigger and bigger and bigger.” C’mon.
King was speaking in the context of new love interests for characters including Miranda (the Che Diaz departure announcement was controversial), who has had two “great loves” (King curiously mentioned Skipper and Che to EW but not Steve Brady, but hopefully he will be living his best life in this season).
Another great love, the Carrie Voiceover, will return to the franchise in the third season, and what of Aidan? John Corbett was photographed on set last year after Aidan asked Carrie to wait five years for him, and King told EW that that request has become a major issue:
The five-year element is “a big plot point” for season 3, [King] confirms. “I have no interest in torturing an audience too much. The Carrie-Aidan relationship is dramatic and exciting because it contains two points of view. I think half the fans who do not want Carrie to be in a relationship will be like, ‘Enough!’ The other half will understand that when you love somebody, what comes with them is their family. It’s an interesting thing when you have Carrie Bradshaw in love figuring out how to make this work when, at a certain age, everyone has a past. There are a couple of booby traps in the Carrie-Aidan history that we’re very aware of, as well.”
Godspeed to Carrie and her inexplicably enduring patience for this guy.
Cast
The remaining core three (Sarah Jessica Parker, Cynthia Nixon, and Kristin Davis) will return as Carrie Bradshaw, Miranda Hobbes, and Charlotte York-Goldenblatt, respectively. Sarita Choudhury (as Seema Patel) and Nicole Ari Parker (as Lisa Todd Wesley) shall also return, but do not count on seeing Kim Cattrall return as Samantha again after that phone-call cameo.
As mentioned above, Sara Ramírez has been jettisoned as Che Diaz, and Miranda will have a new love interest, a role picked up by Dolly Wells. Another departure? Karen Pittman departed as Nya Wallace. However, Charlotte’s daughter will continue to be portrayed by Cathy Ang and Alexa Swinton.
Big speculation aside: On the dude side of things, John Corbett will return as Aidan, and we will also see Evan Handler (as Harry Goldenblatt, his second finest character after Californication‘s Charlie Runkle) along with David Eigenberg (as Steve Brady), Christopher Jackson (as Herbert Wexley), and Niall Cunningham (as Brady Hobbs). And thank goodness for Mario Cantone coming back as Anthony, who will have a new love interest portrayed by Sebastiano Pigazzi.
New announced additions include Patti LuPone in an undisclosed role along with Kristen Schaal and Rosemarie DeWitt (back as Kathy, ex-wife to Aidan).
Release Date
Carrie’s ridiculously expensive closet will return to TVs sometime in 2025.
Trailer
No trailer yet. Do you want to rewatch an incredibly lo-quality YouTube upload of Big fighting Aidan, though?
After years apart (and decades of squabbling), Liam and Noel Gallagher are getting the band back together. Oasis‘ much-anticipated reunion tour kicks off in July 2025, and there’s seven studio albums (plus one of the best B-sides compilations ever) for them to build a setlist from.
Liam recently hinted at what concertgoers might hear.
An Oasis fan shared a rumored reunion tour setlist on X and asked Liam if it was official. “It’s not far off,” he replied.
The setlist contains obvious picks like “Supersonic,” “Don’t Look Back In Anger,” and “Champagne Supernova,” although there’s no “Wonderwall.” It would be very funny — and very Oasis — if the Gallaghers refused to play their biggest hit.
Gallagher was also asked which solo song of his he would include in the setlist. His answer: “None.” Sorry, Beady Eye fans!
Here’s the rumored setlist:
1. “Acquiesce”
2. “Some Might Say”
3. “Lyla”
4. “Shakermaker”
5. “The Hindu Times”
6. “Columbia”
7. “Cast No Shadow”
8. “She’s Electric”
9. “Stand By Me”
10. “Stop Crying Your Heart Out”
11. “The Importance Of Being Idle”
12. “Half The World Away”
13. “Whatever”
14. “Slide Away”
15. “Supersonic”
16. “Morning Glory”
17. “Rock’N’Roll Star”
18. “Cigarettes & Alcohol”
19. “Don’t Look Back In Anger”
20. “Live Forever”
21. “Champagne Supernova”
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