Alt-J’s sophomore effort “This Is All Yours” has been brutally criticized as a tuneless, unimaginative record of unearthly sounds, which is surprising for a band that has been dubbed “the next Radiohead.” Reviews say thae lyrics mean nothing, the music isn’t quite there and none of it really means anything. I say, take another listen. Check out…
In the spirit of Halloween, I found it fitting to discuss one of the greatest horror cult classics of all time: The Rocky Horror Picture Show. If you haven’t already been exposed to this ostentatious parody now is the time. With exceptional music and campy feel, Rocky Horror is the perfect flick for movie-lovers and…
On a weekly basis, Parenthood has to juggle so many characters and stories that individual episodes can feel less like cohesive story units and more like a selection of scenes required to advance each storyline, without regard to how well the scenes fit together. There are so many characters to serve that, even when some…
In what’s become something of a tradition for American Horror Story, Halloween marks a two-part episode delving into the supernatural or superstitious (Coven broke with this tradition, but then, Coven also broke with the tradition of being a good television show). This time it’s Edward Mordrake, a deceased carny with two faces, a la Harry Potter’s…
While this episode is ultimately a step down from last week, by the final scenes, I can confidently say that the Scandal I know and love is finally back for a while. “The Key” is by no means a perfect episode, but whatever missteps it takes, there’s no denying just how exciting its final third…
Boardwalk Empire opens its fifth and final season with a flashback to 1884, wherein a young Nucky is shown swimming, poorly, in an attempt to earn some of the coins that the Commodore tosses into the ocean. He competes, poorly, with several of his peers. It’s a case of the show going back before it…
Boardwalk Empire is exceedingly good at doing finale episodes, and its track record with penultimate episodes is equally great. Season two’s one-two punch of “Under God’s Power She Flourishes” and “To the Lost” is looking primed to go down as the best pair of episodes in the series’ history, and in fact, with its focus…
Jack Antonoff is a busy man. In addition to being the guitarist for the pop band fun., he also wrote songs with Carly Rae Jepsen, Tegan and Sara, Sara Bareilles, Christina Perri, and Taylor Swift (the song "Sweeter than Fiction" was nominated for a Golden Globe). However, he takes a slightly different route with Bleachers. The…
“Everything has chains.” That’s hard-learned wisdom from Brian Fallon, The Gaslight Anthem’s frontman, on “Selected Poems”, a latter-half album cut from the Jersey quartet’s latest album Get Hurt. It’s been a particularly hard year for Fallon, as he divorced from his wife of ten years. But he’s also had to deal with the aftermath of…
In its final season, Mad Men is determined to come back to basics, and indeed, throughout these seven episodes the audience, and our characters, come face to face over and over again with the idea that happiness, however we define it, is inherently unattainable. Happiness is caught up in desire, and no matter what we…
