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"title": "After Sketchy Science, Shark Week Promises to Turn Over a New Fin",
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"content": "\u003cp>It has been called the “Super Bowl of the ocean.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Shark Week is a ratings bonanza for the Discovery Channel with more than 40 million people tuning in last year. Shark Week \u003ca href=\"http://www.discovery.com/tv-shows/shark-week/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">kicked off this weekend\u003c/a> with the most hours of programming ever in its 28-year history But many scientists think the huge audiences — and the hype — have come at the expense of real science.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A generation of shark scientists cut their teeth on Shark Week.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’ve loved sharks since I was a little kid,” says 29-year-old marine biologist Jonathan Davis.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’ve always dreamed of being on Shark Week,” he says. “It was my ultimate goal when I was a kid. I always watched it, and it was extremely informative when I was younger.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So imagine Davis’ joy when Shark Week producers called him two years ago to make a documentary, which they said would be about his research on bull sharks in Louisiana’s Lake Pontchartrain. As a graduate student at the University of New Orleans, Davis was thrilled when they paid for a day of tracking and tagging sharks.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The producers interviewed Davis about his work and at the end, he says, they casually asked if he ever heard of a legendary shark of the bayous called the Rooken.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“And I said, ‘No, of course not. That sounds like a ridiculous fisherman story,’ ” Davis says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>You can guess what happened next. To his horror, Davis found himself \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/2014/08/30/344562317/when-wildlife-documentaries-jump-the-shark\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">featured on a “documentary”\u003c/a> that had little to do with his research.\u003cem> Voodoo Shark\u003c/em> strongly suggested that Davis believed in the Rooken.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There’s no way I could’ve known they were going to portray it like that,” he says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Voodoo Shark\u003c/em> shows Davis and his team doing real research, pulling sharks out of the water and tagging them on the deck. Davis says he did not see any unusual sharks. What was unusual was a producer’s reaction when they hooked a big one.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“One of the guys was like, “Oh, maybe you should just let it bite you, that would be so exciting.’ And I was just thinking to myself, ‘Are you kidding me? You really think I wanna let the shark bite me just for ratings? Are you serious?’ ”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ellen Prager, a marine scientist who has taught at the University of Miami and writes books for children about sharks, says she and her colleagues have a list of things that drive them crazy about Shark Week, such as the emphasis on sharks attacking people and feeding frenzies.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“That’s not what you typically see in nature,” Prager says. “And in fact, some of the shark researchers I know have hardly ever even seen sharks feeding in the wild.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Then there’s the frenzy of factual errors. David Shiffman, who studies sharks at the University of Miami, has spent the past few years calling out Shark Week in public.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Shark Week two years ago did not appreciate it when I recommended an 8-year-old neighbor to fact check the scripts for them,” he says. “Because that 8-year-old knew more about sharks than whoever was writing those scripts did.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>All these scientists agree that Shark Week hit bottom two years ago with an infamous, fictionalized “documentary” about a 100-foot, 80-ton shark they called “the serial killer of the seas.”\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignright\">\nIt was presented in such a way that you could very easily watch it and not know it was fictional.\u003cbr>\n\u003ccite>Scientist David Shiffman on ‘Megalodon’\u003c/cite>\u003cbr>\n\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>That shark, named Megalodon, also happens to be extinct — and has been for more than a million years. But Discovery resurrected Megalodon, with made-up stories of sightings and attacks. The narrator even threw in some exciting Nazi connections.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If the shark that’s in the Nazi U-boat photo is in fact the same shark that’s in the shark iPhoto that was taken just after the boat attack, then that means there’s been a 50-ton monster in these waters for over 70 years,” said one character in the movie.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Megalodon: The Monster Shark Lives\u003c/em> was the highest-rated program in Shark Week history. Even though the network ran a disclaimer saying it was fake, experts like Shiffman were unimpressed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It was presented in such a way that you could very easily watch it and not know it was fictional,” he says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But Discovery says it’s turning over a new leaf — or a new fin — when it comes to Shark week, says Howard Swartz, who recently took over as head of development and production.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This year we’re focusing quite a bit on research and science, more so probably than we have in the past,” Swartz says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Discovery Channel has promised it will produce no more fake documentaries.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’ve toyed with a lot of different types of storytelling over the years,” Swartz says. “And I just think now in a forward-looking direction, I think we wanna focus more on the research angle.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But how do you make anything as sexy as a 50-ton Nazi-affiliated shark? Swartz says you go to Cuba, where there are stories about a monster great white roaming the coasts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Allegedly, a 21-foot, 7,000-pound great white,” Swartz says. “So the question was, you know was that the biggest great white ever caught? And if it was, was there something unique to these Cuban waters that these animals are growing so big or attracting animals so big?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This year, Shark Week sent some of its shows in advance to some critics, including Shiffman. He says sharks need the Discovery Channel to not demonize them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When I say one out of every four species of sharks, skates and rays are threatened with extinction, there are some people that say, ‘Good it should be more of them going extinct. Sharks are bad! Sharks are scary!’ But they’re not!”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Shiffman says sharks are beautiful and wild. He hopes this year Shark Week will make them reality stars. \u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2015 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=After+Sketchy+Science%2C+Shark+Week+Promises+To+Turn+Over+A+New+Fin&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/div>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "Shark Week is here, and scientists are afraid. Not of the toothy swimmers — but of inaccuracies, bad science and the demonization of animals that aren't as ferocious as Discovery Channel has made out.",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>It has been called the “Super Bowl of the ocean.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Shark Week is a ratings bonanza for the Discovery Channel with more than 40 million people tuning in last year. Shark Week \u003ca href=\"http://www.discovery.com/tv-shows/shark-week/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">kicked off this weekend\u003c/a> with the most hours of programming ever in its 28-year history But many scientists think the huge audiences — and the hype — have come at the expense of real science.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A generation of shark scientists cut their teeth on Shark Week.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’ve loved sharks since I was a little kid,” says 29-year-old marine biologist Jonathan Davis.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’ve always dreamed of being on Shark Week,” he says. “It was my ultimate goal when I was a kid. I always watched it, and it was extremely informative when I was younger.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So imagine Davis’ joy when Shark Week producers called him two years ago to make a documentary, which they said would be about his research on bull sharks in Louisiana’s Lake Pontchartrain. As a graduate student at the University of New Orleans, Davis was thrilled when they paid for a day of tracking and tagging sharks.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The producers interviewed Davis about his work and at the end, he says, they casually asked if he ever heard of a legendary shark of the bayous called the Rooken.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“And I said, ‘No, of course not. That sounds like a ridiculous fisherman story,’ ” Davis says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>You can guess what happened next. To his horror, Davis found himself \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/2014/08/30/344562317/when-wildlife-documentaries-jump-the-shark\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">featured on a “documentary”\u003c/a> that had little to do with his research.\u003cem> Voodoo Shark\u003c/em> strongly suggested that Davis believed in the Rooken.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There’s no way I could’ve known they were going to portray it like that,” he says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Voodoo Shark\u003c/em> shows Davis and his team doing real research, pulling sharks out of the water and tagging them on the deck. Davis says he did not see any unusual sharks. What was unusual was a producer’s reaction when they hooked a big one.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“One of the guys was like, “Oh, maybe you should just let it bite you, that would be so exciting.’ And I was just thinking to myself, ‘Are you kidding me? You really think I wanna let the shark bite me just for ratings? Are you serious?’ ”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ellen Prager, a marine scientist who has taught at the University of Miami and writes books for children about sharks, says she and her colleagues have a list of things that drive them crazy about Shark Week, such as the emphasis on sharks attacking people and feeding frenzies.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“That’s not what you typically see in nature,” Prager says. “And in fact, some of the shark researchers I know have hardly ever even seen sharks feeding in the wild.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Then there’s the frenzy of factual errors. David Shiffman, who studies sharks at the University of Miami, has spent the past few years calling out Shark Week in public.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Shark Week two years ago did not appreciate it when I recommended an 8-year-old neighbor to fact check the scripts for them,” he says. “Because that 8-year-old knew more about sharks than whoever was writing those scripts did.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>All these scientists agree that Shark Week hit bottom two years ago with an infamous, fictionalized “documentary” about a 100-foot, 80-ton shark they called “the serial killer of the seas.”\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignright\">\nIt was presented in such a way that you could very easily watch it and not know it was fictional.\u003cbr>\n\u003ccite>Scientist David Shiffman on ‘Megalodon’\u003c/cite>\u003cbr>\n\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>That shark, named Megalodon, also happens to be extinct — and has been for more than a million years. But Discovery resurrected Megalodon, with made-up stories of sightings and attacks. The narrator even threw in some exciting Nazi connections.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If the shark that’s in the Nazi U-boat photo is in fact the same shark that’s in the shark iPhoto that was taken just after the boat attack, then that means there’s been a 50-ton monster in these waters for over 70 years,” said one character in the movie.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Megalodon: The Monster Shark Lives\u003c/em> was the highest-rated program in Shark Week history. Even though the network ran a disclaimer saying it was fake, experts like Shiffman were unimpressed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It was presented in such a way that you could very easily watch it and not know it was fictional,” he says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But Discovery says it’s turning over a new leaf — or a new fin — when it comes to Shark week, says Howard Swartz, who recently took over as head of development and production.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This year we’re focusing quite a bit on research and science, more so probably than we have in the past,” Swartz says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Discovery Channel has promised it will produce no more fake documentaries.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’ve toyed with a lot of different types of storytelling over the years,” Swartz says. “And I just think now in a forward-looking direction, I think we wanna focus more on the research angle.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But how do you make anything as sexy as a 50-ton Nazi-affiliated shark? Swartz says you go to Cuba, where there are stories about a monster great white roaming the coasts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Allegedly, a 21-foot, 7,000-pound great white,” Swartz says. “So the question was, you know was that the biggest great white ever caught? And if it was, was there something unique to these Cuban waters that these animals are growing so big or attracting animals so big?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This year, Shark Week sent some of its shows in advance to some critics, including Shiffman. He says sharks need the Discovery Channel to not demonize them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When I say one out of every four species of sharks, skates and rays are threatened with extinction, there are some people that say, ‘Good it should be more of them going extinct. Sharks are bad! Sharks are scary!’ But they’re not!”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Shiffman says sharks are beautiful and wild. He hopes this year Shark Week will make them reality stars. \u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2015 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=After+Sketchy+Science%2C+Shark+Week+Promises+To+Turn+Over+A+New+Fin&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/div>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "NPR Music's 25 Favorite Albums Of 2015 (So Far)",
"headTitle": "NPR Music’s 25 Favorite Albums Of 2015 (So Far) | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>We’ll call it in the air: 2015 is going to end up being a great year for music. The albums that have impressed us the most over the year’s first six months are a varied lot. There’s enormous ambition on display here, epic works crafted to bust boundaries or reshape at will (check out that three-hour debut album), but also intensity in small gestures: a pair of devastating albums about loss, two more anchored in the sounds of sisterly harmonies. As we reach the year’s mid-point, take a moment to listen with us, ears wide open to a great six months of music. Let’s hope the second half of 2015 lives up to it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Advisory: Some of the songs on this page contain profanity.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>ALABAMA SHAKES\u003cbr>\u003cem>Sound & Color\u003c/em>\u003cbr>\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/alabamashakes_custom-e197e7902b347566d9796f6be89d96b2a9828bb6.jpg\" alt=\"Sound & Color by Alabama Shakes\" width=\"200\" height=\"200\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-10817745\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/alabamashakes_custom-e197e7902b347566d9796f6be89d96b2a9828bb6.jpg 200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/alabamashakes_custom-e197e7902b347566d9796f6be89d96b2a9828bb6-32x32.jpg 32w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/alabamashakes_custom-e197e7902b347566d9796f6be89d96b2a9828bb6-64x64.jpg 64w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/alabamashakes_custom-e197e7902b347566d9796f6be89d96b2a9828bb6-96x96.jpg 96w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/alabamashakes_custom-e197e7902b347566d9796f6be89d96b2a9828bb6-128x128.jpg 128w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/alabamashakes_custom-e197e7902b347566d9796f6be89d96b2a9828bb6-75x75.jpg 75w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On its second album, this Athens, Ala. band — now chart-toppers, late-nite TV veterans, large-font festival draws — sounds less like a historically-accurate pedestal for propping up Brittany Howard’s monumental rock-soul-blues voice than a demolition crew with a work order to knock down some pedestals. Where the Shakes’ debut\u003cem>, Boys & Girls\u003c/em>, bopped along on the energy generated by its musicians locking into perfect step, \u003cem>Sound & Color \u003c/em>sees each band member stretching out. Bassist Zac Cockrell and drummer Steve Johnson might be the album’s\u003cem> \u003c/em>secret weapons, switching tempos and clearing space for the emotive guitar playing of Heath Fogg. Howard coos and sighs as often as she howls, hanging in the background for long stretches, yet still comes across as someone who doesn’t have to tell you twice to step aside. Like its predecessor, you can dance to all the songs on \u003cem>Sound & Color\u003c/em>, but it’s an angrier, druggier, cooler, \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/2015/04/12/398068310/first-listen-alabama-shakes-sound-color\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">freakier\u003c/a> kind of dancing. \u003cem>–Jacob Ganz\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://www.npr.org/player/embed/417426717/418406546\" width=\"100%\" height=\"290\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>BJÖRK\u003cbr>\u003cem>Vulnicura\u003c/em>\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/bjork_custom-98e3030d4db57fbf5884e004814aad2361da05f0.jpg\" alt=\"Vulnicura by Bjork\" width=\"200\" height=\"200\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-10817746\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/bjork_custom-98e3030d4db57fbf5884e004814aad2361da05f0.jpg 200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/bjork_custom-98e3030d4db57fbf5884e004814aad2361da05f0-32x32.jpg 32w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/bjork_custom-98e3030d4db57fbf5884e004814aad2361da05f0-64x64.jpg 64w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/bjork_custom-98e3030d4db57fbf5884e004814aad2361da05f0-96x96.jpg 96w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/bjork_custom-98e3030d4db57fbf5884e004814aad2361da05f0-128x128.jpg 128w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/bjork_custom-98e3030d4db57fbf5884e004814aad2361da05f0-75x75.jpg 75w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There’s nothing easy or joyous about \u003cem>Vulnicura\u003c/em>. \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/artists/15191158/bjork\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Björk\u003c/a>‘s break-up album is full of pain and betrayal. Its electronic beats won’t let you dance, the strings are heavy, there’s not a singable chorus and the words are wounds documenting an almost anthropological timeline of love lost. And with all that, \u003cem>Vulnicura\u003c/em> is worth its weight. It’s a universal album for all of us who have tangled in love. There’s never been a record quite like this; alongside all the hurt, there’s still healing to be had and to be heard. \u003cem>–Bob Boilen\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://www.npr.org/player/embed/417426717/418406485\" width=\"100%\" height=\"290\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>BOMBA ESTEREO\u003cbr>\u003cem>Amanecer \u003c/em>\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/bombaestereo_custom-ef0364272f2bc124ab95ecf3d269af1158f913f0.jpg\" alt=\"Amanecer by Bomba Estereo\" width=\"200\" height=\"200\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-10817747\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/bombaestereo_custom-ef0364272f2bc124ab95ecf3d269af1158f913f0.jpg 200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/bombaestereo_custom-ef0364272f2bc124ab95ecf3d269af1158f913f0-32x32.jpg 32w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/bombaestereo_custom-ef0364272f2bc124ab95ecf3d269af1158f913f0-64x64.jpg 64w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/bombaestereo_custom-ef0364272f2bc124ab95ecf3d269af1158f913f0-96x96.jpg 96w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/bombaestereo_custom-ef0364272f2bc124ab95ecf3d269af1158f913f0-128x128.jpg 128w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/bombaestereo_custom-ef0364272f2bc124ab95ecf3d269af1158f913f0-75x75.jpg 75w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/artists/121272357/bomba-estereo\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Bomba Estereo\u003c/a> has cemented itself as a band that is able to produce fun, danceable music that is also deeply rooted in tradition. The Colombian band’s sound is as much an exploration of Latin America’s indigenous and African roots as it is a stroll through the noisiest neighborhoods of Bogota. With its latest album, the band goes beyond just being incredibly fun and energetic — it dives further into a spiritual, reflective feel. \u003cem>Amanecer\u003c/em> is intimate in a way the previous Bomba Estereo albums are not, like hanging out at an after-party with someone you always suspected you could fall in love with. The crowning gem is the song “Mar (Lo Que Siento),” a reflective, airy piece that feels like drifting away on a beach after a night of dancing. \u003cem>–Jasmine Garsd\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://www.npr.org/player/embed/417426717/418406468\" width=\"100%\" height=\"290\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>BOSTON MODERN ORCHESTRA PROJECT\u003cbr>\u003cem>Play (Andrew Norman) \u003c/em>\u003cbr>\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/bmop_custom-d8ba0bddf010c798d93c5f10a8a688954b60b38a.jpg\" alt=\"Andrew Norman's Play, performed by the Boston Modern Orchestra Project\" width=\"200\" height=\"200\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-10817748\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/bmop_custom-d8ba0bddf010c798d93c5f10a8a688954b60b38a.jpg 200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/bmop_custom-d8ba0bddf010c798d93c5f10a8a688954b60b38a-32x32.jpg 32w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/bmop_custom-d8ba0bddf010c798d93c5f10a8a688954b60b38a-64x64.jpg 64w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/bmop_custom-d8ba0bddf010c798d93c5f10a8a688954b60b38a-96x96.jpg 96w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/bmop_custom-d8ba0bddf010c798d93c5f10a8a688954b60b38a-128x128.jpg 128w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/bmop_custom-d8ba0bddf010c798d93c5f10a8a688954b60b38a-75x75.jpg 75w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Just how good is Andrew Norman’s \u003cem>Play\u003c/em>? It might just be the best piece of large-scale orchestral music so far in the 21st century. Scored for full orchestra plus piano and extra percussion, \u003cem>Play\u003c/em> is a rigorously constructed, wildly rambunctious beast in the spirit of older works like \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/artists/15162965/olivier-messiaen\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Olivier Messiaen\u003c/a>‘s \u003cem>Turangalila\u003c/em> Symphony and new ones like Thomas Adès’ \u003cem>Tevot\u003c/em>. From the opening seconds, Norman, a Californian in his mid-30s, sets up a symphonic thrill ride. Through its three levels (not unlike a video game), \u003cem>Play\u003c/em> unleashes spasms of melody and whiplash transitions, but also unveils landscapes of serene beauty. Late in the piece, he carefully builds an extraordinary crescendo, topped with a sweet oboe line soaring over an orchestra that twitches and roils. \u003cem>Play\u003c/em> is a staggering achievement, built with wit and wonder. Yet for all its flamboyance — made all the more brilliant in a brave, exacting performance from Gil Rose’s Boston Modern Orchestra Project — the piece, like most great art, is a fascinating journey, one you’ll want to take again and again. \u003cem>–Tom Huizenga\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://www.npr.org/player/embed/417426717/418406132\" width=\"100%\" height=\"290\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>BROTHERS OF THE SONIC CLOTH\u003cbr>\u003cem>Brothers of the Sonic Cloth \u003c/em>\u003cbr>\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/brothersofhtesoniccloth_custom-238153439d73904901e859e80605a2235489c2d0.jpg\" alt=\"Brothers of the Sonic Cloth\" width=\"200\" height=\"200\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-10817749\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/brothersofhtesoniccloth_custom-238153439d73904901e859e80605a2235489c2d0.jpg 200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/brothersofhtesoniccloth_custom-238153439d73904901e859e80605a2235489c2d0-32x32.jpg 32w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/brothersofhtesoniccloth_custom-238153439d73904901e859e80605a2235489c2d0-64x64.jpg 64w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/brothersofhtesoniccloth_custom-238153439d73904901e859e80605a2235489c2d0-96x96.jpg 96w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/brothersofhtesoniccloth_custom-238153439d73904901e859e80605a2235489c2d0-128x128.jpg 128w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/brothersofhtesoniccloth_custom-238153439d73904901e859e80605a2235489c2d0-75x75.jpg 75w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Seattle’s Tad Doyle has been at this heavy game coming on three decades now. With bands like TAD and Hog Molly, he could take a bummer riff and make it boil and hum in ways others just couldn’t. Years in the making, Brothers of the Sonic Cloth’s debut is a thoroughly satisfying doom metal LP that is fully awake and teeming with power. \u003cem>–Lars Gotrich\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://www.npr.org/player/embed/417426717/418406021\" width=\"100%\" height=\"290\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>CHRIS STAPLETON\u003cbr>\u003c/strong>\u003cstrong>\u003cem>Traveller \u003c/em>\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/chrisstapleton_custom-2251bd262f3768adc8edff8c3d8809fef2f2251e.jpg\" alt=\"Traveller by Chris Stapleton\" width=\"200\" height=\"200\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-10817750\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/chrisstapleton_custom-2251bd262f3768adc8edff8c3d8809fef2f2251e.jpg 200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/chrisstapleton_custom-2251bd262f3768adc8edff8c3d8809fef2f2251e-32x32.jpg 32w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/chrisstapleton_custom-2251bd262f3768adc8edff8c3d8809fef2f2251e-64x64.jpg 64w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/chrisstapleton_custom-2251bd262f3768adc8edff8c3d8809fef2f2251e-96x96.jpg 96w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/chrisstapleton_custom-2251bd262f3768adc8edff8c3d8809fef2f2251e-128x128.jpg 128w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/chrisstapleton_custom-2251bd262f3768adc8edff8c3d8809fef2f2251e-75x75.jpg 75w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Here’s the truth: Music critics are so buried in new releases that some — including those that rank in a given year’s Top 10 — might only get a few impassioned spins before being retired to make room for a new deluge. But a select few become the soft denim jackets in a music lover’s listening closet, pulled out time after time, lending comfort, suiting every occasion, with treasure stuffed in every pocket. This exquisite debut album by one of Nashville’s great all-around talents is that kind of satisfying. It rocks hard; it doles out heartache; it’s funny and profound; it showcases a stunning voice and celebrates the camaraderie of a fine band. It’s a keeper in the deepest sense.\u003cem> –Ann Powers\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https://embed.spotify.com/?uri=spotify:track:178OI1A3qjROeFeh8lmNwW\" frameborder=\"0\" allowtransparency=\"true\" width=\"690\" height=\"80\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>COURTNEY BARNETT\u003cbr>\u003c/strong>\u003cem>\u003cstrong>Sometimes I Sit And Think, And Sometimes I Just Sit \u003c/strong>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/courtneybarnett_custom-d0a0483b67bab1f41ad6335e421bdc3c1e72345e.jpg\" alt=\"Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit by Courtney Barnett\" width=\"200\" height=\"200\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-10817751\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/courtneybarnett_custom-d0a0483b67bab1f41ad6335e421bdc3c1e72345e.jpg 200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/courtneybarnett_custom-d0a0483b67bab1f41ad6335e421bdc3c1e72345e-32x32.jpg 32w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/courtneybarnett_custom-d0a0483b67bab1f41ad6335e421bdc3c1e72345e-64x64.jpg 64w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/courtneybarnett_custom-d0a0483b67bab1f41ad6335e421bdc3c1e72345e-96x96.jpg 96w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/courtneybarnett_custom-d0a0483b67bab1f41ad6335e421bdc3c1e72345e-128x128.jpg 128w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/courtneybarnett_custom-d0a0483b67bab1f41ad6335e421bdc3c1e72345e-75x75.jpg 75w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I’ve been wanting this record since I saw \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/artists/239210251/courtney-barnett\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Courtney Barnett\u003c/a> three times in 2013 and heard her two EPs (repackaged together last year). Unlike those EPs, Barnett recorded her debut album with her touring band, and what’s most striking is this Australian trio’s ability to make rock and roll feel vital and not played out. Chalk some of that up to the fact that this band of bass, drums and Courtney on guitar are truly great players, but they also bolster some of the best words rock has ever had. Take this example from “Dead Fox,” a song about the repercussions of industrial agriculture:\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\n\u003cp>Heading down the Highway Hume\u003cbr>Somewhere at the end of June\u003cbr>Taxidermied kangaroos are littered on the shoulders\u003cbr>A possum Jackson Pollock is painted in the tar.\u003cbr>Sometimes I think a single sneeze could be the end of us\u003cbr>My hay-fever is turning up, just swerved into a passing truck\u003cbr>Big business overtaking\u003cbr>Without indicating.\u003cbr>He passes on the right, been driving through the night\u003cbr>To bring us the best price.\u003c/p>\n\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>Barring some bolt of musical lightning before year’s end, this debut album from Courtney Barnett will be my number one record of the year. \u003cem>–Bob Boilen\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://www.npr.org/player/embed/417426717/418405876\" width=\"100%\" height=\"290\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\u003cstrong>D’ANGELO AND THE VANGUARD\u003cbr>\u003c/strong>\u003cem>\u003cstrong>Black Messiah \u003c/strong>\u003c/em>\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/d-angelo_custom-ed724fcecedcbaf33cf409014dc6bd9d467b346a.jpg\" alt=\"Black Messiah by D'Angelo And The Vanguard\" width=\"200\" height=\"200\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-10817752\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/d-angelo_custom-ed724fcecedcbaf33cf409014dc6bd9d467b346a.jpg 200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/d-angelo_custom-ed724fcecedcbaf33cf409014dc6bd9d467b346a-32x32.jpg 32w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/d-angelo_custom-ed724fcecedcbaf33cf409014dc6bd9d467b346a-64x64.jpg 64w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/d-angelo_custom-ed724fcecedcbaf33cf409014dc6bd9d467b346a-96x96.jpg 96w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/d-angelo_custom-ed724fcecedcbaf33cf409014dc6bd9d467b346a-128x128.jpg 128w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/d-angelo_custom-ed724fcecedcbaf33cf409014dc6bd9d467b346a-75x75.jpg 75w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Technically it’s a 2014 album (it dropped without much advance warning mid December) but cut us some slack: \u003cem>Black Messiah\u003c/em>‘s singles really started making waves in 2015 and \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/artists/370926966/dangelo\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">D’Angelo\u003c/a> has been killing it on tour this spring. You shouldn’t hold Mr. Michael Archer to a fixed calendar anyways: After a 14-year hibernation, he pulled a rabbit trick by gifting us a tricky, sexy, modern classic that seemingly synthesizes the entirety of analog-era avant-garde soul — \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/artists/15696782/jimi-hendrix\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Hendrix\u003c/a>, Sly, Clinton, \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/artists/15394157/prince\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Prince\u003c/a>, Shuggie and more. He also brings the gentle bossa-like feel of “Really Love” and those Monk-ish changes on “Sugah Daddy.” Remember the old adage that if you’re late enough you’ll be on time again: The experimental sonics of \u003cem>Black Messiah\u003c/em> — with its barely intelligible lyrics and impressive analog mix by Russ Elevado — somehow manage to capture the muffled anger and simmering agitation that increasingly defines black life in the age of Ferguson, Baltimore and Charleston. The creeping, almost resigned weariness of tunes like “Charade” suggests both the everyday melancholy and profound resilience of people darker than blue facing a violent, supremacist culture. As did Charles Burnett’s \u003cem>Killer of Sheep\u003c/em> or Bill Gunn’s \u003cem>Ganja & Hess\u003c/em> for film in their respective moments, \u003cem>Black Messiah\u003c/em> sublimates some of the feeling of 21st century black life in recorded musical form. It’s inspiration information, indeed. \u003cem>–Jason King\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https://embed.spotify.com/?uri=spotify:track:2RcanAJpudPNDkyIe9DzKS\" frameborder=\"0\" allowtransparency=\"true\" width=\"690\" height=\"80\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\u003cstrong>DJ SOTOFETT\u003cbr>\u003c/strong>\u003cem>\u003cstrong>Drippin’ For A Tripp \u003c/strong>\u003c/em>\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/djsotofett_custom-e3e23f3810bf49a106b4f92c1737d9be15c7ad4c.jpg\" alt=\"Drippin' For A Tripp by DJ Sotofett\" width=\"200\" height=\"200\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-10817753\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/djsotofett_custom-e3e23f3810bf49a106b4f92c1737d9be15c7ad4c.jpg 200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/djsotofett_custom-e3e23f3810bf49a106b4f92c1737d9be15c7ad4c-32x32.jpg 32w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/djsotofett_custom-e3e23f3810bf49a106b4f92c1737d9be15c7ad4c-64x64.jpg 64w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/djsotofett_custom-e3e23f3810bf49a106b4f92c1737d9be15c7ad4c-96x96.jpg 96w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/djsotofett_custom-e3e23f3810bf49a106b4f92c1737d9be15c7ad4c-128x128.jpg 128w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/djsotofett_custom-e3e23f3810bf49a106b4f92c1737d9be15c7ad4c-75x75.jpg 75w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A sprawling, varied LP From the Sex Tags Mania boss DJ Sotofett, \u003cem>Drippin’ For A Tripp\u003c/em> blends sparkling new age with ambient house and West African melodies. The Norwegian DJ’s left-field dance label has a reputation for oddball charm, so it makes sense that his debut LP strikes a chord between warm and weird. Made with six different artists over a two year period, the record’s reggae, batucada and dub influences hang neatly between sinewy synths and flashes of psychedelia. Watch out for “Nondo,” where Maimouna Haugen’s intro vocal lulls the senses before housey drums and trippy pings perk them back up. \u003cem>–Sami Yenigun\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://www.npr.org/player/embed/417426717/418405695\" width=\"100%\" height=\"290\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Drippin’ For A Tripp\u003cem> is only available in physical formats. Buy it from \u003ca href=\"http://www.forcedexposure.com/Artists/DJ.SOTOFETT.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Forced Exposure\u003c/a> or \u003ca href=\"http://honestjons.com/shop/artist/DJ_Sotofett/release/Drippin_For_A_Tripp\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Honest Jon’s\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\u003cstrong>DONNIE TRUMPET & THE SOCIAL EXPERIMENT\u003cbr>\u003c/strong>\u003c/strong>\u003cstrong>\u003cem>Surf\u003c/em>\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/surf_custom-29183b6239c864d5e2db84c2b6b00ce6a4d820b7.jpe\" alt=\"Surf by Donnie Trumpet & The Social Experiment\" width=\"200\" height=\"200\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-10817754\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/surf_custom-29183b6239c864d5e2db84c2b6b00ce6a4d820b7.jpe 200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/surf_custom-29183b6239c864d5e2db84c2b6b00ce6a4d820b7-32x32.jpe 32w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/surf_custom-29183b6239c864d5e2db84c2b6b00ce6a4d820b7-64x64.jpe 64w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/surf_custom-29183b6239c864d5e2db84c2b6b00ce6a4d820b7-96x96.jpe 96w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/surf_custom-29183b6239c864d5e2db84c2b6b00ce6a4d820b7-128x128.jpe 128w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/surf_custom-29183b6239c864d5e2db84c2b6b00ce6a4d820b7-75x75.jpe 75w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For the last time: This is NOT a Chance The Rapper album. Not to say that a Chance album wouldn’t be nice, but \u003cem>Surf\u003c/em> is a welcome digression in the much-hyped Chicago MC’s career. And although Chance is its vocalist, the group is fronted by, as its name suggests, Donnie Trumpet, a.k.a. Nico Segal. On \u003cem>Surf, \u003c/em>the band takes pleasure in sidestepping categorizations, not with a defiant snarl but rather a cheerful smile. It’s a feel good album in the “turn up!” era: an amalgam of jazz, poetry, neo-soul and hip-hop with an effervescent pop appeal that just happens to feature great live instrumentation and unexpected guest shots from artists as disparate as \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/artists/36898288/erykah-badu\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Erykah Badu\u003c/a> and Quavo. Who knew happy didn’t have to be hokey? \u003cem>–Timmhotep Aku\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://www.npr.org/player/embed/417426717/418405179\" width=\"100%\" height=\"290\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>GIRLPOOL\u003cbr>\u003cem>Before The World Was Big \u003c/em>\u003cbr>\u003c/strong>\u003cbr>\n\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/girlpool_custom-610ffd1d67745c8505fdf19b11822282831f37c7.png\" alt=\"Before The World Was Big by Girlpool\" width=\"200\" height=\"200\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-10817755\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/girlpool_custom-610ffd1d67745c8505fdf19b11822282831f37c7.png 200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/girlpool_custom-610ffd1d67745c8505fdf19b11822282831f37c7-32x32.png 32w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/girlpool_custom-610ffd1d67745c8505fdf19b11822282831f37c7-64x64.png 64w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/girlpool_custom-610ffd1d67745c8505fdf19b11822282831f37c7-96x96.png 96w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/girlpool_custom-610ffd1d67745c8505fdf19b11822282831f37c7-128x128.png 128w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/girlpool_custom-610ffd1d67745c8505fdf19b11822282831f37c7-75x75.png 75w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/artists/381937892/girlpool\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Girlpool\u003c/a>, Harmony Trividad and Cleo Tucker have distilled the equipment necessary for a direct link between ear canal and heartstrings down to two members, two instruments, one cassette, one EP and one full-length album. That album, \u003cem>Before The World Was Big\u003c/em>, is a lo-fi collection of punk songs that have a playful spirit but aren’t playing around. Trividad and Tucker specialize in no-frills singing and simple instrumentation that cut through bone and aim for marrow. The title track, in particular, features vocal harmonies that are almost startling in their poignancy and impact, bringing life to lyrics about memory and the loss of things remembered. Girlpool’s lack of polish does nothing to diminish its shine, and its free-spirited approach to punk only adds to the power behind their punch.\u003cem> –Katie Presley\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://www.npr.org/player/embed/417426717/418404861\" width=\"100%\" height=\"290\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>IBEYI\u003cbr>\u003cem>Ibeyi\u003c/em>\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/ibeyi_custom-ca6af2a49db46c525a0d9b523ad0045f982292fb.jpg\" alt=\"Ibeyi by Ibeyi\" width=\"200\" height=\"172\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-10817756\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There are a lot of things to admire about the self-titled debut from \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/artists/338284149/ibeyi\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Ibeyi \u003c/a>— an accomplishment considering that there simply aren’t a lot of things in it. It’s made by a band of twin sisters: One sings and plays piano; the other sings backup and makes beats. The textures are often minimal, the assembly spare. Of course, there’s more behind that, namely two musical parents who raised them in France and Cuba and around Afro-Cuban religious culture. So their foray into the production-and-voice duo model is sung in both English and Yoruba (and a little French), with electronics that employ traditional cajón and batá drums toward hip-hop ideas. It’s very much a summons to the ghosts of their history, whether in direct incantations to Santería deities or in its dedication to their father and elder sister, who both died prematurely. And there’s the way their voices hang, overlap, chant in unison, linger as a chorus; Ibeyi may be only two people, but there are more presences in the room. \u003cem>— Patrick Jarenwattananon\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://www.npr.org/player/embed/417426717/418404599\" width=\"100%\" height=\"290\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>J. COLE\u003cbr>\u003cem>2014 Forest Hills Drive \u003c/em>\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/jcole_custom-fb0e99fdb64545c72fcd22df2a8cec29d468dbf2.jpg\" alt=\"2014 Forest Hills Drive by J. Cole\" width=\"200\" height=\"200\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-10817757\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/jcole_custom-fb0e99fdb64545c72fcd22df2a8cec29d468dbf2.jpg 200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/jcole_custom-fb0e99fdb64545c72fcd22df2a8cec29d468dbf2-32x32.jpg 32w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/jcole_custom-fb0e99fdb64545c72fcd22df2a8cec29d468dbf2-64x64.jpg 64w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/jcole_custom-fb0e99fdb64545c72fcd22df2a8cec29d468dbf2-96x96.jpg 96w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/jcole_custom-fb0e99fdb64545c72fcd22df2a8cec29d468dbf2-128x128.jpg 128w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/jcole_custom-fb0e99fdb64545c72fcd22df2a8cec29d468dbf2-75x75.jpg 75w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Can everyone just give \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/artists/397293070/j-cole\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Jermaine Cole\u003c/a> his props already? With this album, Cole, ever the underdog, has proven that he’s not only come into his own artistically but also that he deserves to be mentioned in the same breath as hip-hop’s current elite. A surprise release in December of last year, \u003cem>2014 Forest Hills Drive\u003c/em> makes our 2015 list because: A) it was released after we published our \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/2014/12/08/368731400/npr-musics-50-favorite-albums-of-2014\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">2014 albums list\u003c/a> and B) although it dropped during the holiday season it stayed in rotation well into the new year. Chalk it up to Cole’s now-perfected formula of breaking up his bravado with moments of introspection and brutal honesty. Musically we heard him explore melody as he never had before, singing from his soul as much as he rapped his little heart out. Largely self-produced and featuring no one but background vocalists, it proves he can carry an album on his own, without the aide of his Roc Nation benefactor \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/artists/16318474/jay-z\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Jay Z\u003c/a> or a big name producer — a feat in itself. So again, can J. Cole finally get his just due? \u003cem>–Timmhotep Aku\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https://embed.spotify.com/?uri=spotify:track:16qYlQ6koFxYVbiJbGHblz\" frameborder=\"0\" allowtransparency=\"true\" width=\"690\" height=\"80\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>JAZMINE SULLIVAN \u003cbr>\u003cem>Reality Show\u003c/em>\u003cbr>\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/jazminesullivan_custom-88d565389bb15ff6c431f0cf1d4f8a28107fdf14.jpg\" alt=\"Reality Show by Jazmine Sullivan\" width=\"200\" height=\"200\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-10817758\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/jazminesullivan_custom-88d565389bb15ff6c431f0cf1d4f8a28107fdf14.jpg 200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/jazminesullivan_custom-88d565389bb15ff6c431f0cf1d4f8a28107fdf14-32x32.jpg 32w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/jazminesullivan_custom-88d565389bb15ff6c431f0cf1d4f8a28107fdf14-64x64.jpg 64w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/jazminesullivan_custom-88d565389bb15ff6c431f0cf1d4f8a28107fdf14-96x96.jpg 96w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/jazminesullivan_custom-88d565389bb15ff6c431f0cf1d4f8a28107fdf14-128x128.jpg 128w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/jazminesullivan_custom-88d565389bb15ff6c431f0cf1d4f8a28107fdf14-75x75.jpg 75w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 2011, as one of R&B’s strongest voices, Jazmine Sullivan announced via Twitter that she was taking a self-imposed hiatus from singing: “i promised myself when it wasn’t fun anymore i wouldn’t do it. and here i am [sic],” she wrote. Fast-forward four years, and she’s finally back — with a hell of a concept in front of her. On \u003cem>Reality Show,\u003c/em> Sullivan interprets the imaginary life of your present-day reality TV star by flirting with just about every approach possible. She never lets us get the least bit comfortable: she effortlessly transitions from flawless a capella runs (“Forever Don’t Last”) to full-fledged visions of sensual clarity (“Veins”). The somewhat unsettling “Mascara” juxtaposes fleshed-out, meaningful production and Sullivan’s fully alive voice with lyrics that grate against everything we believe in: “Most people think I’m shallow ’cause I’m always dressed like I’m going out to the club / But I gotta keep up cause it’s new chicks poppin’ up everyday and they want the same thing.” Whichever direction she flows, Sullivan gently reminds us with each turn that she’s capable of taking anything on — with no problem. \u003cem>–Kiana Fitzgerald\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https://embed.spotify.com/?uri=spotify:track:6KOc6ViZB8NtfCVABmTe66\" frameborder=\"0\" allowtransparency=\"true\" width=\"690\" height=\"80\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>KACEY MUSGRAVES \u003cbr>\u003cem>Pageant Material\u003c/em>\u003cbr>\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/kaceymusgraves_custom-32202915eef7d840060eb250f5ae868de0e9bf51.jpg\" alt=\"Pageant Material by Kacey Musgraves\" width=\"200\" height=\"200\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-10817759\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/kaceymusgraves_custom-32202915eef7d840060eb250f5ae868de0e9bf51.jpg 200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/kaceymusgraves_custom-32202915eef7d840060eb250f5ae868de0e9bf51-32x32.jpg 32w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/kaceymusgraves_custom-32202915eef7d840060eb250f5ae868de0e9bf51-64x64.jpg 64w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/kaceymusgraves_custom-32202915eef7d840060eb250f5ae868de0e9bf51-96x96.jpg 96w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/kaceymusgraves_custom-32202915eef7d840060eb250f5ae868de0e9bf51-128x128.jpg 128w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/kaceymusgraves_custom-32202915eef7d840060eb250f5ae868de0e9bf51-75x75.jpg 75w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/artists/174510165/kacey-musgraves\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Kacey Musgraves\u003c/a>‘ 2013 debut, \u003cem>Same Trailer Different Park,\u003c/em> mixed go-your-own-way anthems with heartbreaking songs about lives set adrift by circumstance, tradition and old habits. For the most part, \u003cem>Pageant Material\u003c/em> doubles down on the anthems at the expense of the heartbreak: It’s largely a collection of mission statements about minding your own business, being yourself despite outside pressures, trusting your family warts and all, and making the most of what we’re given while we’re around to enjoy it. But those mission statements — again written by Musgraves, again with ace assists from a small team that includes Brandy Clark and Shane McAnally — are quotably, often poignantly irresistible. “Dime Store Cowgirl,” for example, may tread familiar thematic ground in the way it paints Musgraves as a country star who’s remained unchanged by the trappings of fame. But the song, like so much of what surrounds it on \u003cem>Pageant Material,\u003c/em> is a gorgeously shimmering, almost impossibly infectious charmer. \u003cem>–Stephen Thompson\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https://embed.spotify.com/?uri=spotify:track:4vHVfwVi2CEc4r7P1Pr9iu\" frameborder=\"0\" allowtransparency=\"true\" width=\"690\" height=\"80\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>KAMASI WASHINGTON\u003cbr>\u003c/strong>\u003cem>\u003cstrong>The Epic\u003c/strong>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/kamasiwashington_custom-98df6b2aef81941ce4f307eee6d90d216edbbb8f.jpg\" alt=\"The Epic by Kamasi Washington\" width=\"200\" height=\"200\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-10817760\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/kamasiwashington_custom-98df6b2aef81941ce4f307eee6d90d216edbbb8f.jpg 200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/kamasiwashington_custom-98df6b2aef81941ce4f307eee6d90d216edbbb8f-32x32.jpg 32w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/kamasiwashington_custom-98df6b2aef81941ce4f307eee6d90d216edbbb8f-64x64.jpg 64w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/kamasiwashington_custom-98df6b2aef81941ce4f307eee6d90d216edbbb8f-96x96.jpg 96w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/kamasiwashington_custom-98df6b2aef81941ce4f307eee6d90d216edbbb8f-128x128.jpg 128w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/kamasiwashington_custom-98df6b2aef81941ce4f307eee6d90d216edbbb8f-75x75.jpg 75w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s not that this record sounds, in any specific regional identity sort of way, like Los Angeles. If anything, it sounds like dislocation and amalgam: like ’70s modal swing, like Donald Byrd’s \u003cem>A New Perspective\u003c/em> meets \u003cem>Charlie Parker With Strings,\u003c/em> like the last half century of black popular music. But L.A. is integral to its existence. It’s where saxophonist and composer Kamasi Washington, now 34, met his bandmates in high school or before. It’s where they found various gigs with pop stars, set up residencies in clubs that would have them, lived in actual houses where they can jam and pooled their money to book a recording studio for a month. The first fruit from that collective undertaking is overkill: 17 songs, nearly three hours, horns, a double rhythm section, strings, vocal chorus. It’s gloriously so, an imposing collection that first overwhelms with volume and energy and ecstatic solos and reveals its depth of color and hummable melodies as you begin to process it. It’s proof that you can both go big and go home. \u003cem>–Patrick Jarenwattananon\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://www.npr.org/player/embed/417426717/418404453\" width=\"100%\" height=\"290\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>KENDRICK LAMAR\u003cbr>\u003c/strong>\u003cstrong>\u003cem>To Pimp A Butterfly\u003c/em>\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/kendricklamar_custom-0f8eee868936faf9f65bb9f422b4bf7e507e0caf.jpg\" alt=\"To Pimp A Butterfly by Kendrick Lamar\" width=\"200\" height=\"200\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-10817761\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/kendricklamar_custom-0f8eee868936faf9f65bb9f422b4bf7e507e0caf.jpg 200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/kendricklamar_custom-0f8eee868936faf9f65bb9f422b4bf7e507e0caf-32x32.jpg 32w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/kendricklamar_custom-0f8eee868936faf9f65bb9f422b4bf7e507e0caf-64x64.jpg 64w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/kendricklamar_custom-0f8eee868936faf9f65bb9f422b4bf7e507e0caf-96x96.jpg 96w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/kendricklamar_custom-0f8eee868936faf9f65bb9f422b4bf7e507e0caf-128x128.jpg 128w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/kendricklamar_custom-0f8eee868936faf9f65bb9f422b4bf7e507e0caf-75x75.jpg 75w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Last year he got labeled a sell-out due to his support for Australian hip-popper Iggy Azalea and for making a seemingly conservative remark about Mike Brown’s shooting in a \u003cem>Billboard\u003c/em> story. This year he made a surprising, possibly jarring, cameo in fan \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/artists/120581188/taylor-swift\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Taylor Swift\u003c/a>‘s “Bad Blood” mega-video. So this we know: \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/artists/166009689/kendrick-lamar\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Kendrick Lamar\u003c/a> isn’t chasing traditional street cred and he may not always be down for the righteous cause. Loving him is complicated. But not unlike social media loose cannon \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/artists/14889532/kanye-west\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Kanye West\u003c/a>, Lamar knows how to filter his manic ideas and channel his range of feeling into a cohesive album as artistic statement. \u003cem>To Pimp a Butterfly\u003c/em>‘s scalding mix of neo-soul, jazz, electronica, sampled soul, sound effects and spoken word interludes — to say nothing of Lamar’s diverse constellation of vocal personas and his wicked ability to warp his own flow on demand — makes this album far more outré, and self-consciously bizarre, than his 2012 throwback cinematic \u003cem>Good Kid M.A.A.D City\u003c/em>. It’s a sprawling, chaotic structure of feeling in the form of 16 album tracks. The list of collaborators here, from George Clinton to \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/artists/15396311/robert-glasper\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Robert Glasper\u003c/a> to Thundercat, and even the faux staged interview with \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/artists/88479205/tupac-shakur\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Tupac\u003c/a>, helps deliver the goods; but it is Lamar’s profound insistence on self-empowerment in the context of his own scars and trauma that really wows. Top tracks include “i,” coasting on its instantly-recognizable \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/artists/15331601/the-isley-brothers\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Isley Brothers\u003c/a>‘ sample, and the marauding black masculinity screed “King Kunta.” There are no easy, simple answers in\u003cem> To Pimp a Butterfly\u003c/em>; in working through its unapologetic mania, maybe you’ll discover your own truths. \u003cem>–Jason King\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https://embed.spotify.com/?uri=spotify:track:0N3W5peJUQtI4eyR6GJT5O\" frameborder=\"0\" allowtransparency=\"true\" width=\"690\" height=\"80\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>LOS HIJOS DE LA MONTAÑA \u003cbr>\u003cem>Los Hijos de la Montaña \u003c/em>\u003cbr>\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/loshijosdelamontana_custom-0c1f3c586e60306e73473ab0bcb719242a197f14.jpe\" alt=\"Los Hijos de la Montaña by Los Hijos de la Montaña\" width=\"200\" height=\"200\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-10817762\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/loshijosdelamontana_custom-0c1f3c586e60306e73473ab0bcb719242a197f14.jpe 200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/loshijosdelamontana_custom-0c1f3c586e60306e73473ab0bcb719242a197f14-32x32.jpe 32w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/loshijosdelamontana_custom-0c1f3c586e60306e73473ab0bcb719242a197f14-64x64.jpe 64w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/loshijosdelamontana_custom-0c1f3c586e60306e73473ab0bcb719242a197f14-96x96.jpe 96w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/loshijosdelamontana_custom-0c1f3c586e60306e73473ab0bcb719242a197f14-128x128.jpe 128w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/loshijosdelamontana_custom-0c1f3c586e60306e73473ab0bcb719242a197f14-75x75.jpe 75w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I’ve been calling it “The Meeting of the Mendozas,” this first-ever collaboration between songwriter Sergio Mendoza and vocalist Luz Elena Mendoza. The two (unrelated) musicians represent two very unique takes on Mexican influences in their music: Luz Elena is the husky-voiced lead singer of Y la Bamba, a group from the Pacific Northwest that I once described as a group of “rugged choir boys”; Sergio has divided his time between Calexico and his own Orkesta Mendoza, a 1950s-inspired mambo rock band. Together these Mendozas sound nothing like their separate bands: Los Hijos de la Montaña is a captivating sonic soundscape of a mythical Southwest, a land where the border doesn’t exist and the musical flow is bilingual and bi-cultural. It hasn’t caused much of a stir in the crowded world of online music, but this album is worth a second and even third listen six months into this year. There is a well-crafted and expertly-performed world in this music that is very real to many of us who grew up in the Southwest. This collaboration nails the sound in our heads perfectly. \u003cem>–Felix Contreras\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://www.npr.org/player/embed/417426717/418404336\" width=\"100%\" height=\"290\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>MBONGWANA STAR \u003cbr>\u003cem>From Kinshasa\u003c/em>\u003cbr>\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/mbongwanastar_custom-532fee2ae2597bd28978f43709c586fb6bde455b.jpg\" alt=\"From Kinshasa by Mbongwana Star\" width=\"200\" height=\"200\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-10817763\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/mbongwanastar_custom-532fee2ae2597bd28978f43709c586fb6bde455b.jpg 200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/mbongwanastar_custom-532fee2ae2597bd28978f43709c586fb6bde455b-32x32.jpg 32w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/mbongwanastar_custom-532fee2ae2597bd28978f43709c586fb6bde455b-64x64.jpg 64w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/mbongwanastar_custom-532fee2ae2597bd28978f43709c586fb6bde455b-96x96.jpg 96w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/mbongwanastar_custom-532fee2ae2597bd28978f43709c586fb6bde455b-128x128.jpg 128w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/mbongwanastar_custom-532fee2ae2597bd28978f43709c586fb6bde455b-75x75.jpg 75w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The original title for this album was “From Kinshasa to the Moon,” and that sounds just about right — this commingling of Congolese street music and electronic sounds is at once earthy and totally futuristic. Anchored by two veterans of the DRC’s Staff Benda Bilili (Yakala “Coco” Ngambali and Nsituvuidi “Theo” Nzonzawho) who teamed up with Paris-based Irish producer Liam Farrell, Mbongwana Star lives true to its name: “mbongwana” means “transformation” in the Lingala language. From the album’s first single, the hyper-metallic “Malukayi” (featuring Konono Nº1), to the sweat-drenched Congolese rumba of “Shégué” and the dance floor thrust of “Nganshé,” you hear the band’s metamorphic power throttling straight into the fringes of the great beyond. \u003cem>–Anastasia Tsioulcas\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://www.npr.org/player/embed/417426717/418404176\" width=\"100%\" height=\"290\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>RHIANNON GIDDENS \u003cbr>\u003cem>Tomorrow Is My Turn \u003c/em>\u003cbr>\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/rhiannongiddens_custom-5891affac18931df678bde97c406f217cc89458d.jpg\" alt=\"Tomorrow Is My Turn by Rhiannon Giddens\" width=\"200\" height=\"200\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-10817764\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/rhiannongiddens_custom-5891affac18931df678bde97c406f217cc89458d.jpg 200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/rhiannongiddens_custom-5891affac18931df678bde97c406f217cc89458d-32x32.jpg 32w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/rhiannongiddens_custom-5891affac18931df678bde97c406f217cc89458d-64x64.jpg 64w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/rhiannongiddens_custom-5891affac18931df678bde97c406f217cc89458d-96x96.jpg 96w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/rhiannongiddens_custom-5891affac18931df678bde97c406f217cc89458d-128x128.jpg 128w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/rhiannongiddens_custom-5891affac18931df678bde97c406f217cc89458d-75x75.jpg 75w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The first thought that takes over during a listen to \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/artists/384980773/rhiannon-giddens\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Rhiannon Giddens\u003c/a>‘ solo debut is: This woman can sing anything. Country, art song, R&B, old-timey sounds in the style of her old band Carolina Chocolate Drops, the songbooks of Dolly Parton and \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/artists/15396720/nina-simone\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Nina Simone\u003c/a>: check. Stop marveling for a moment and this impeccably constructed, hotly executed collection reveals the brain and soul that feed the extraordinary voice. Giddens and producer \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/artists/15171857/t-bone-burnett\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">T-Bone Burnett\u003c/a> recast the American songbook with women at the center. Giddens’ deeply personal interpretations of songs made famous by \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/artists/15396529/patsy-cline\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Patsy Cline\u003c/a>, the mezzo- soprano Florence Quivar, Elizabeth Cotten, Odetta and others strip away the tired truisms smothering our understanding of musical history. In the hands of this young master, stories that seemed beyond refreshing shine, renewed. \u003cem>–Ann Powers\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://www.npr.org/player/embed/417426717/418403325\" width=\"100%\" height=\"290\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>SEATTLE SYMPHONY \u003cbr>\u003cem>Dvořák, Symphony No. 9; Varèse, Amériques \u003c/em>\u003cbr>\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/seattlesymphony_custom-ab6a30d718c5dd322e6ec9cc313a3e4904ef0f4b.jpg\" alt=\"Dvořák, Symphony No. 9; Varèse, Amériques by Seattle Symphony\" width=\"200\" height=\"200\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-10817765\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/seattlesymphony_custom-ab6a30d718c5dd322e6ec9cc313a3e4904ef0f4b.jpg 200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/seattlesymphony_custom-ab6a30d718c5dd322e6ec9cc313a3e4904ef0f4b-32x32.jpg 32w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/seattlesymphony_custom-ab6a30d718c5dd322e6ec9cc313a3e4904ef0f4b-64x64.jpg 64w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/seattlesymphony_custom-ab6a30d718c5dd322e6ec9cc313a3e4904ef0f4b-96x96.jpg 96w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/seattlesymphony_custom-ab6a30d718c5dd322e6ec9cc313a3e4904ef0f4b-128x128.jpg 128w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/seattlesymphony_custom-ab6a30d718c5dd322e6ec9cc313a3e4904ef0f4b-75x75.jpg 75w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This album is an irresistible musical pairing of two sketches of the United States. The first is \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/artists/15033227/antonin-dvorak\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Dvorak\u003c/a>‘s famous and lush paean to the “new” Native and African-American sounds he heard in America, which has become one of the most popular symphonies ever. The other is Edgard Varèse’s crackling, clangorous \u003cem>Ameriques\u003c/em> — far less well-known, but riveting and necessary. Perhaps even more important than the repertoire are the performances. This recording bursts with terrific playing — listen to that tremendous brass! Those urgent, razor-sharp strings! And it serves as proof of the Seattle Symphony’s triumphant claim, under the leadership of Ludovic Morlot, as one of the truly great American orchestras. Beautifully engineered, too. \u003cem>–Anastasia Tsioulcas\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://www.npr.org/player/embed/417426717/418407642\" width=\"100%\" height=\"290\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>SUFJAN STEVENS \u003cbr>\u003cem>Carrie & Lowell \u003c/em>\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/sufjanstevens_custom-3d159564518f48722b351340d4618f94dc2dc252.jpg\" alt=\"Carrie & Lowell by Sufjan Stevens\" width=\"200\" height=\"200\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-10817766\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/sufjanstevens_custom-3d159564518f48722b351340d4618f94dc2dc252.jpg 200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/sufjanstevens_custom-3d159564518f48722b351340d4618f94dc2dc252-32x32.jpg 32w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/sufjanstevens_custom-3d159564518f48722b351340d4618f94dc2dc252-64x64.jpg 64w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/sufjanstevens_custom-3d159564518f48722b351340d4618f94dc2dc252-96x96.jpg 96w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/sufjanstevens_custom-3d159564518f48722b351340d4618f94dc2dc252-128x128.jpg 128w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/sufjanstevens_custom-3d159564518f48722b351340d4618f94dc2dc252-75x75.jpg 75w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A decade after \u003ca href=\"http://pitchfork.com/features/staff-lists/6222-top-50-albums-of-2005/5/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">his coming-out party\u003c/a> as indie’s gentlest superhero, it was starting to feel reasonable to wonder whether \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/artists/15121560/sufjan-stevens\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Sufjan Stevens\u003c/a>‘ feet might ever touch the ground again. From \u003cem>Illinois \u003c/em>to \u003cem>The Age of Adz \u003c/em>via \u003cem>The BQE,\u003c/em> Stevens built an ornate, dense collection of epic songs that was awe-inspiring but not always welcoming. On \u003cem>Carrie & Lowell,\u003c/em> Stevens dials things back to a whisper to reckon with the 2012 death of his mother. If it sounds like a “classic” Sufjan album on the surface, it conceals its mastery of subtle changes only lightly, all the ambition of his previous albums on the head of a pin. A deep pool of familial regret and pain in “Should Have Known Better” ripples with hope and acceptance. The gentle propulsion of “Drawn To The Blood” gives way to ambient shimmer. The most immediately “Sufjan-like” song on the album, “Eugene,” begins with lines about lemon yogurt and the “hysterical” light in the Oregon town of the title. It sounds like it could be the set-up for a new entry in his long-abandoned 50 States project, but turns despondent: “What’s the point of singing songs if they’ll never even hear you?” Stevens sings before the song abruptly ends. “We’re all gonna die,” he repeats later. And then, “F*** me, I’m falling apart.” By the album’s end, he’s lost and alone, but take a breath and put the album on again and you’ll hear him forgive his mother in the opening song. Healing doesn’t follow a straight line; neither does art. \u003cem>–Jacob Ganz\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://www.npr.org/player/embed/417426717/418403102\" width=\"100%\" height=\"290\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>TORRES \u003cbr>\u003cem>Sprinter\u003c/em>\u003cbr>\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/torres_custom-652d0a4375a8db48ae92774154c903dc34e7735b.jpg\" alt=\"Sprinter by Torres\" width=\"200\" height=\"199\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-10817767\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/torres_custom-652d0a4375a8db48ae92774154c903dc34e7735b.jpg 200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/torres_custom-652d0a4375a8db48ae92774154c903dc34e7735b-32x32.jpg 32w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/torres_custom-652d0a4375a8db48ae92774154c903dc34e7735b-64x64.jpg 64w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/torres_custom-652d0a4375a8db48ae92774154c903dc34e7735b-96x96.jpg 96w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/torres_custom-652d0a4375a8db48ae92774154c903dc34e7735b-128x128.jpg 128w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/torres_custom-652d0a4375a8db48ae92774154c903dc34e7735b-75x75.jpg 75w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Sprinter\u003c/em> is the sound of an artist at the moment her vision snaps into startling focus. Mackenzie Scott had showed promise before; her early work as \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/artists/390468475/tores\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Torres \u003c/a>exuded moody cool and unsettling atmosphere. \u003cem>Sprinter\u003c/em>, though, is something else, and it’s apparent within its opening minute. “Strange Hellos” opens with a strained whisper through clenched teeth, and by the time 60 seconds have passed, the song has accelerated into something approaching a full roar — it’s confident and scary and mysterious and crowd-pleasing all at once. From there, the ideas keep pouring out, as Scott explores crises of faith and identity with equal parts aggression and grace. \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/artists/15405929/pj-harvey\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">PJ Harvey\u003c/a> is as fine a reference point as any, but \u003cem>Sprinter\u003c/em> also plays around with quieter atmospheres in songs that storm, seethe and surprise. \u003cem>–Stephen Thompson\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://www.npr.org/player/embed/417426717/418403057\" width=\"100%\" height=\"290\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>VIJAY IYER TRIO\u003cbr>\u003cem>Break Stuff \u003c/em>\u003cbr>\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/vijayiyer_custom-9883795d16e245f4f5700c4d832a5d1dbedaa58d.jpg\" alt=\"Hood by Vijay Iyer Trio\" width=\"200\" height=\"200\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-10817768\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/vijayiyer_custom-9883795d16e245f4f5700c4d832a5d1dbedaa58d.jpg 200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/vijayiyer_custom-9883795d16e245f4f5700c4d832a5d1dbedaa58d-32x32.jpg 32w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/vijayiyer_custom-9883795d16e245f4f5700c4d832a5d1dbedaa58d-64x64.jpg 64w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/vijayiyer_custom-9883795d16e245f4f5700c4d832a5d1dbedaa58d-96x96.jpg 96w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/vijayiyer_custom-9883795d16e245f4f5700c4d832a5d1dbedaa58d-128x128.jpg 128w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/vijayiyer_custom-9883795d16e245f4f5700c4d832a5d1dbedaa58d-75x75.jpg 75w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To say \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/artists/92749291/vijay-iyer\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Vijay Iyer\u003c/a> has expanded the boundaries of jazz has become old hat. For my money he has accomplished the same kind of innovation and forward thinking that \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/artists/15368370/miles-davis\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Miles Davis\u003c/a> used to brag about. There are some of the usual trappings: a jazz trio; larger big bands full of saxophones and brass; quirky, angular compositions that echo the best of the most challenging jazz. But what Iyer brings to every group context and performance is the kind of wandering spirit that us jazz fans cherish but rarely encounter. Plenty of musicians experiment and even dip into the screech and howl of the avant-garde but so precious few ever master the jazz tradition enough to be able abandon it and carve out a place for their own. \u003cem>Break Stuff\u003c/em> is but another chorus in the continuing song that is the life and music of Vijay Iyer. I have no doubt the next album as will be as good as his last. So for now, I spend time with his current album and marvel at how he does it. \u003cem>–Felix Contreras\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://www.npr.org/player/embed/417426717/418402988\" width=\"100%\" height=\"290\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>WILLIAM BASINSKI \u003cbr>\u003cem>Cascade \u003c/em>\u003cbr>\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/williambasinski_custom-902b71dfaf91310b397ab1ba56a964a270bf8a4b.jpg\" alt=\"Cascade by William Basinski\" width=\"200\" height=\"200\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-10817769\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/williambasinski_custom-902b71dfaf91310b397ab1ba56a964a270bf8a4b.jpg 200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/williambasinski_custom-902b71dfaf91310b397ab1ba56a964a270bf8a4b-32x32.jpg 32w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/williambasinski_custom-902b71dfaf91310b397ab1ba56a964a270bf8a4b-64x64.jpg 64w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/williambasinski_custom-902b71dfaf91310b397ab1ba56a964a270bf8a4b-96x96.jpg 96w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/williambasinski_custom-902b71dfaf91310b397ab1ba56a964a270bf8a4b-128x128.jpg 128w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/williambasinski_custom-902b71dfaf91310b397ab1ba56a964a270bf8a4b-75x75.jpg 75w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A master of tape loop manipulation, composer \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/artists/163552901/william-basinski\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">William Basinski\u003c/a> is known best for his mournful, mysterious, five-hour-long recording \u003cem>The Disintegration Loops.\u003c/em> Fifteen years ago, while digitizing fragile reels of tape, he discovered a transitory beauty as they literally crumbled in the tape deck, but found new life as digital files. Now again, Basinski has rescued old tapes to create \u003cem>Cascade,\u003c/em> another mesmerizing ambient landscape. “I agonized over these and almost threw them in the trash,” he wrote in a promotional email. \u003cem>Cascade\u003c/em> appears to be built from a single fragile piano riff, drenched in reverb, slightly overmodulated and looped for nearly 40 minutes. But as usual with this most subtle composer, there’s much below Cascade’s shimmering surface. Instead of stasis, a slight tug of current floats you down a rippling streamlet. The music emerges from nowhere, shifts almost imperceptibly, then quietly recedes. Why it packs as much emotional punch as it does is a mystery best left unanswered. \u003cem>Cascade,\u003c/em> aside from its dark beauty and quiet power, is a vindication for all packrats — proof that having second thoughts about what to trash and what to save can be a glorious thing. \u003cem>–Tom Huizenga\u003c/em> \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://www.npr.org/player/embed/417426717/418401447\" width=\"100%\" height=\"290\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2015 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=NPR+Music%27s+25+Favorite+Albums+Of+2015+%28So+Far%29&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/div>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "We'll call it in the air: 2015 is going to end up being a great year for music. Here are 25 albums we fell in love with over the year's first six months.",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>We’ll call it in the air: 2015 is going to end up being a great year for music. The albums that have impressed us the most over the year’s first six months are a varied lot. There’s enormous ambition on display here, epic works crafted to bust boundaries or reshape at will (check out that three-hour debut album), but also intensity in small gestures: a pair of devastating albums about loss, two more anchored in the sounds of sisterly harmonies. As we reach the year’s mid-point, take a moment to listen with us, ears wide open to a great six months of music. Let’s hope the second half of 2015 lives up to it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Advisory: Some of the songs on this page contain profanity.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>ALABAMA SHAKES\u003cbr>\u003cem>Sound & Color\u003c/em>\u003cbr>\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/alabamashakes_custom-e197e7902b347566d9796f6be89d96b2a9828bb6.jpg\" alt=\"Sound & Color by Alabama Shakes\" width=\"200\" height=\"200\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-10817745\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/alabamashakes_custom-e197e7902b347566d9796f6be89d96b2a9828bb6.jpg 200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/alabamashakes_custom-e197e7902b347566d9796f6be89d96b2a9828bb6-32x32.jpg 32w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/alabamashakes_custom-e197e7902b347566d9796f6be89d96b2a9828bb6-64x64.jpg 64w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/alabamashakes_custom-e197e7902b347566d9796f6be89d96b2a9828bb6-96x96.jpg 96w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/alabamashakes_custom-e197e7902b347566d9796f6be89d96b2a9828bb6-128x128.jpg 128w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/alabamashakes_custom-e197e7902b347566d9796f6be89d96b2a9828bb6-75x75.jpg 75w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On its second album, this Athens, Ala. band — now chart-toppers, late-nite TV veterans, large-font festival draws — sounds less like a historically-accurate pedestal for propping up Brittany Howard’s monumental rock-soul-blues voice than a demolition crew with a work order to knock down some pedestals. Where the Shakes’ debut\u003cem>, Boys & Girls\u003c/em>, bopped along on the energy generated by its musicians locking into perfect step, \u003cem>Sound & Color \u003c/em>sees each band member stretching out. Bassist Zac Cockrell and drummer Steve Johnson might be the album’s\u003cem> \u003c/em>secret weapons, switching tempos and clearing space for the emotive guitar playing of Heath Fogg. Howard coos and sighs as often as she howls, hanging in the background for long stretches, yet still comes across as someone who doesn’t have to tell you twice to step aside. Like its predecessor, you can dance to all the songs on \u003cem>Sound & Color\u003c/em>, but it’s an angrier, druggier, cooler, \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/2015/04/12/398068310/first-listen-alabama-shakes-sound-color\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">freakier\u003c/a> kind of dancing. \u003cem>–Jacob Ganz\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://www.npr.org/player/embed/417426717/418406546\" width=\"100%\" height=\"290\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>BJÖRK\u003cbr>\u003cem>Vulnicura\u003c/em>\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/bjork_custom-98e3030d4db57fbf5884e004814aad2361da05f0.jpg\" alt=\"Vulnicura by Bjork\" width=\"200\" height=\"200\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-10817746\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/bjork_custom-98e3030d4db57fbf5884e004814aad2361da05f0.jpg 200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/bjork_custom-98e3030d4db57fbf5884e004814aad2361da05f0-32x32.jpg 32w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/bjork_custom-98e3030d4db57fbf5884e004814aad2361da05f0-64x64.jpg 64w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/bjork_custom-98e3030d4db57fbf5884e004814aad2361da05f0-96x96.jpg 96w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/bjork_custom-98e3030d4db57fbf5884e004814aad2361da05f0-128x128.jpg 128w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/bjork_custom-98e3030d4db57fbf5884e004814aad2361da05f0-75x75.jpg 75w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There’s nothing easy or joyous about \u003cem>Vulnicura\u003c/em>. \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/artists/15191158/bjork\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Björk\u003c/a>‘s break-up album is full of pain and betrayal. Its electronic beats won’t let you dance, the strings are heavy, there’s not a singable chorus and the words are wounds documenting an almost anthropological timeline of love lost. And with all that, \u003cem>Vulnicura\u003c/em> is worth its weight. It’s a universal album for all of us who have tangled in love. There’s never been a record quite like this; alongside all the hurt, there’s still healing to be had and to be heard. \u003cem>–Bob Boilen\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://www.npr.org/player/embed/417426717/418406485\" width=\"100%\" height=\"290\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>BOMBA ESTEREO\u003cbr>\u003cem>Amanecer \u003c/em>\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/bombaestereo_custom-ef0364272f2bc124ab95ecf3d269af1158f913f0.jpg\" alt=\"Amanecer by Bomba Estereo\" width=\"200\" height=\"200\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-10817747\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/bombaestereo_custom-ef0364272f2bc124ab95ecf3d269af1158f913f0.jpg 200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/bombaestereo_custom-ef0364272f2bc124ab95ecf3d269af1158f913f0-32x32.jpg 32w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/bombaestereo_custom-ef0364272f2bc124ab95ecf3d269af1158f913f0-64x64.jpg 64w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/bombaestereo_custom-ef0364272f2bc124ab95ecf3d269af1158f913f0-96x96.jpg 96w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/bombaestereo_custom-ef0364272f2bc124ab95ecf3d269af1158f913f0-128x128.jpg 128w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/bombaestereo_custom-ef0364272f2bc124ab95ecf3d269af1158f913f0-75x75.jpg 75w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/artists/121272357/bomba-estereo\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Bomba Estereo\u003c/a> has cemented itself as a band that is able to produce fun, danceable music that is also deeply rooted in tradition. The Colombian band’s sound is as much an exploration of Latin America’s indigenous and African roots as it is a stroll through the noisiest neighborhoods of Bogota. With its latest album, the band goes beyond just being incredibly fun and energetic — it dives further into a spiritual, reflective feel. \u003cem>Amanecer\u003c/em> is intimate in a way the previous Bomba Estereo albums are not, like hanging out at an after-party with someone you always suspected you could fall in love with. The crowning gem is the song “Mar (Lo Que Siento),” a reflective, airy piece that feels like drifting away on a beach after a night of dancing. \u003cem>–Jasmine Garsd\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://www.npr.org/player/embed/417426717/418406468\" width=\"100%\" height=\"290\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>BOSTON MODERN ORCHESTRA PROJECT\u003cbr>\u003cem>Play (Andrew Norman) \u003c/em>\u003cbr>\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/bmop_custom-d8ba0bddf010c798d93c5f10a8a688954b60b38a.jpg\" alt=\"Andrew Norman's Play, performed by the Boston Modern Orchestra Project\" width=\"200\" height=\"200\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-10817748\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/bmop_custom-d8ba0bddf010c798d93c5f10a8a688954b60b38a.jpg 200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/bmop_custom-d8ba0bddf010c798d93c5f10a8a688954b60b38a-32x32.jpg 32w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/bmop_custom-d8ba0bddf010c798d93c5f10a8a688954b60b38a-64x64.jpg 64w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/bmop_custom-d8ba0bddf010c798d93c5f10a8a688954b60b38a-96x96.jpg 96w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/bmop_custom-d8ba0bddf010c798d93c5f10a8a688954b60b38a-128x128.jpg 128w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/bmop_custom-d8ba0bddf010c798d93c5f10a8a688954b60b38a-75x75.jpg 75w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Just how good is Andrew Norman’s \u003cem>Play\u003c/em>? It might just be the best piece of large-scale orchestral music so far in the 21st century. Scored for full orchestra plus piano and extra percussion, \u003cem>Play\u003c/em> is a rigorously constructed, wildly rambunctious beast in the spirit of older works like \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/artists/15162965/olivier-messiaen\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Olivier Messiaen\u003c/a>‘s \u003cem>Turangalila\u003c/em> Symphony and new ones like Thomas Adès’ \u003cem>Tevot\u003c/em>. From the opening seconds, Norman, a Californian in his mid-30s, sets up a symphonic thrill ride. Through its three levels (not unlike a video game), \u003cem>Play\u003c/em> unleashes spasms of melody and whiplash transitions, but also unveils landscapes of serene beauty. Late in the piece, he carefully builds an extraordinary crescendo, topped with a sweet oboe line soaring over an orchestra that twitches and roils. \u003cem>Play\u003c/em> is a staggering achievement, built with wit and wonder. Yet for all its flamboyance — made all the more brilliant in a brave, exacting performance from Gil Rose’s Boston Modern Orchestra Project — the piece, like most great art, is a fascinating journey, one you’ll want to take again and again. \u003cem>–Tom Huizenga\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://www.npr.org/player/embed/417426717/418406132\" width=\"100%\" height=\"290\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>BROTHERS OF THE SONIC CLOTH\u003cbr>\u003cem>Brothers of the Sonic Cloth \u003c/em>\u003cbr>\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/brothersofhtesoniccloth_custom-238153439d73904901e859e80605a2235489c2d0.jpg\" alt=\"Brothers of the Sonic Cloth\" width=\"200\" height=\"200\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-10817749\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/brothersofhtesoniccloth_custom-238153439d73904901e859e80605a2235489c2d0.jpg 200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/brothersofhtesoniccloth_custom-238153439d73904901e859e80605a2235489c2d0-32x32.jpg 32w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/brothersofhtesoniccloth_custom-238153439d73904901e859e80605a2235489c2d0-64x64.jpg 64w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/brothersofhtesoniccloth_custom-238153439d73904901e859e80605a2235489c2d0-96x96.jpg 96w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/brothersofhtesoniccloth_custom-238153439d73904901e859e80605a2235489c2d0-128x128.jpg 128w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/brothersofhtesoniccloth_custom-238153439d73904901e859e80605a2235489c2d0-75x75.jpg 75w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Seattle’s Tad Doyle has been at this heavy game coming on three decades now. With bands like TAD and Hog Molly, he could take a bummer riff and make it boil and hum in ways others just couldn’t. Years in the making, Brothers of the Sonic Cloth’s debut is a thoroughly satisfying doom metal LP that is fully awake and teeming with power. \u003cem>–Lars Gotrich\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://www.npr.org/player/embed/417426717/418406021\" width=\"100%\" height=\"290\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>CHRIS STAPLETON\u003cbr>\u003c/strong>\u003cstrong>\u003cem>Traveller \u003c/em>\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/chrisstapleton_custom-2251bd262f3768adc8edff8c3d8809fef2f2251e.jpg\" alt=\"Traveller by Chris Stapleton\" width=\"200\" height=\"200\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-10817750\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/chrisstapleton_custom-2251bd262f3768adc8edff8c3d8809fef2f2251e.jpg 200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/chrisstapleton_custom-2251bd262f3768adc8edff8c3d8809fef2f2251e-32x32.jpg 32w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/chrisstapleton_custom-2251bd262f3768adc8edff8c3d8809fef2f2251e-64x64.jpg 64w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/chrisstapleton_custom-2251bd262f3768adc8edff8c3d8809fef2f2251e-96x96.jpg 96w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/chrisstapleton_custom-2251bd262f3768adc8edff8c3d8809fef2f2251e-128x128.jpg 128w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/chrisstapleton_custom-2251bd262f3768adc8edff8c3d8809fef2f2251e-75x75.jpg 75w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Here’s the truth: Music critics are so buried in new releases that some — including those that rank in a given year’s Top 10 — might only get a few impassioned spins before being retired to make room for a new deluge. But a select few become the soft denim jackets in a music lover’s listening closet, pulled out time after time, lending comfort, suiting every occasion, with treasure stuffed in every pocket. This exquisite debut album by one of Nashville’s great all-around talents is that kind of satisfying. It rocks hard; it doles out heartache; it’s funny and profound; it showcases a stunning voice and celebrates the camaraderie of a fine band. It’s a keeper in the deepest sense.\u003cem> –Ann Powers\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https://embed.spotify.com/?uri=spotify:track:178OI1A3qjROeFeh8lmNwW\" frameborder=\"0\" allowtransparency=\"true\" width=\"690\" height=\"80\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>COURTNEY BARNETT\u003cbr>\u003c/strong>\u003cem>\u003cstrong>Sometimes I Sit And Think, And Sometimes I Just Sit \u003c/strong>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/courtneybarnett_custom-d0a0483b67bab1f41ad6335e421bdc3c1e72345e.jpg\" alt=\"Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit by Courtney Barnett\" width=\"200\" height=\"200\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-10817751\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/courtneybarnett_custom-d0a0483b67bab1f41ad6335e421bdc3c1e72345e.jpg 200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/courtneybarnett_custom-d0a0483b67bab1f41ad6335e421bdc3c1e72345e-32x32.jpg 32w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/courtneybarnett_custom-d0a0483b67bab1f41ad6335e421bdc3c1e72345e-64x64.jpg 64w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/courtneybarnett_custom-d0a0483b67bab1f41ad6335e421bdc3c1e72345e-96x96.jpg 96w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/courtneybarnett_custom-d0a0483b67bab1f41ad6335e421bdc3c1e72345e-128x128.jpg 128w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/courtneybarnett_custom-d0a0483b67bab1f41ad6335e421bdc3c1e72345e-75x75.jpg 75w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I’ve been wanting this record since I saw \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/artists/239210251/courtney-barnett\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Courtney Barnett\u003c/a> three times in 2013 and heard her two EPs (repackaged together last year). Unlike those EPs, Barnett recorded her debut album with her touring band, and what’s most striking is this Australian trio’s ability to make rock and roll feel vital and not played out. Chalk some of that up to the fact that this band of bass, drums and Courtney on guitar are truly great players, but they also bolster some of the best words rock has ever had. Take this example from “Dead Fox,” a song about the repercussions of industrial agriculture:\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\n\u003cp>Heading down the Highway Hume\u003cbr>Somewhere at the end of June\u003cbr>Taxidermied kangaroos are littered on the shoulders\u003cbr>A possum Jackson Pollock is painted in the tar.\u003cbr>Sometimes I think a single sneeze could be the end of us\u003cbr>My hay-fever is turning up, just swerved into a passing truck\u003cbr>Big business overtaking\u003cbr>Without indicating.\u003cbr>He passes on the right, been driving through the night\u003cbr>To bring us the best price.\u003c/p>\n\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>Barring some bolt of musical lightning before year’s end, this debut album from Courtney Barnett will be my number one record of the year. \u003cem>–Bob Boilen\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://www.npr.org/player/embed/417426717/418405876\" width=\"100%\" height=\"290\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\u003cstrong>D’ANGELO AND THE VANGUARD\u003cbr>\u003c/strong>\u003cem>\u003cstrong>Black Messiah \u003c/strong>\u003c/em>\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/d-angelo_custom-ed724fcecedcbaf33cf409014dc6bd9d467b346a.jpg\" alt=\"Black Messiah by D'Angelo And The Vanguard\" width=\"200\" height=\"200\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-10817752\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/d-angelo_custom-ed724fcecedcbaf33cf409014dc6bd9d467b346a.jpg 200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/d-angelo_custom-ed724fcecedcbaf33cf409014dc6bd9d467b346a-32x32.jpg 32w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/d-angelo_custom-ed724fcecedcbaf33cf409014dc6bd9d467b346a-64x64.jpg 64w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/d-angelo_custom-ed724fcecedcbaf33cf409014dc6bd9d467b346a-96x96.jpg 96w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/d-angelo_custom-ed724fcecedcbaf33cf409014dc6bd9d467b346a-128x128.jpg 128w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/d-angelo_custom-ed724fcecedcbaf33cf409014dc6bd9d467b346a-75x75.jpg 75w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Technically it’s a 2014 album (it dropped without much advance warning mid December) but cut us some slack: \u003cem>Black Messiah\u003c/em>‘s singles really started making waves in 2015 and \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/artists/370926966/dangelo\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">D’Angelo\u003c/a> has been killing it on tour this spring. You shouldn’t hold Mr. Michael Archer to a fixed calendar anyways: After a 14-year hibernation, he pulled a rabbit trick by gifting us a tricky, sexy, modern classic that seemingly synthesizes the entirety of analog-era avant-garde soul — \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/artists/15696782/jimi-hendrix\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Hendrix\u003c/a>, Sly, Clinton, \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/artists/15394157/prince\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Prince\u003c/a>, Shuggie and more. He also brings the gentle bossa-like feel of “Really Love” and those Monk-ish changes on “Sugah Daddy.” Remember the old adage that if you’re late enough you’ll be on time again: The experimental sonics of \u003cem>Black Messiah\u003c/em> — with its barely intelligible lyrics and impressive analog mix by Russ Elevado — somehow manage to capture the muffled anger and simmering agitation that increasingly defines black life in the age of Ferguson, Baltimore and Charleston. The creeping, almost resigned weariness of tunes like “Charade” suggests both the everyday melancholy and profound resilience of people darker than blue facing a violent, supremacist culture. As did Charles Burnett’s \u003cem>Killer of Sheep\u003c/em> or Bill Gunn’s \u003cem>Ganja & Hess\u003c/em> for film in their respective moments, \u003cem>Black Messiah\u003c/em> sublimates some of the feeling of 21st century black life in recorded musical form. It’s inspiration information, indeed. \u003cem>–Jason King\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https://embed.spotify.com/?uri=spotify:track:2RcanAJpudPNDkyIe9DzKS\" frameborder=\"0\" allowtransparency=\"true\" width=\"690\" height=\"80\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\u003cstrong>DJ SOTOFETT\u003cbr>\u003c/strong>\u003cem>\u003cstrong>Drippin’ For A Tripp \u003c/strong>\u003c/em>\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/djsotofett_custom-e3e23f3810bf49a106b4f92c1737d9be15c7ad4c.jpg\" alt=\"Drippin' For A Tripp by DJ Sotofett\" width=\"200\" height=\"200\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-10817753\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/djsotofett_custom-e3e23f3810bf49a106b4f92c1737d9be15c7ad4c.jpg 200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/djsotofett_custom-e3e23f3810bf49a106b4f92c1737d9be15c7ad4c-32x32.jpg 32w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/djsotofett_custom-e3e23f3810bf49a106b4f92c1737d9be15c7ad4c-64x64.jpg 64w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/djsotofett_custom-e3e23f3810bf49a106b4f92c1737d9be15c7ad4c-96x96.jpg 96w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/djsotofett_custom-e3e23f3810bf49a106b4f92c1737d9be15c7ad4c-128x128.jpg 128w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/djsotofett_custom-e3e23f3810bf49a106b4f92c1737d9be15c7ad4c-75x75.jpg 75w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A sprawling, varied LP From the Sex Tags Mania boss DJ Sotofett, \u003cem>Drippin’ For A Tripp\u003c/em> blends sparkling new age with ambient house and West African melodies. The Norwegian DJ’s left-field dance label has a reputation for oddball charm, so it makes sense that his debut LP strikes a chord between warm and weird. Made with six different artists over a two year period, the record’s reggae, batucada and dub influences hang neatly between sinewy synths and flashes of psychedelia. Watch out for “Nondo,” where Maimouna Haugen’s intro vocal lulls the senses before housey drums and trippy pings perk them back up. \u003cem>–Sami Yenigun\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://www.npr.org/player/embed/417426717/418405695\" width=\"100%\" height=\"290\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Drippin’ For A Tripp\u003cem> is only available in physical formats. Buy it from \u003ca href=\"http://www.forcedexposure.com/Artists/DJ.SOTOFETT.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Forced Exposure\u003c/a> or \u003ca href=\"http://honestjons.com/shop/artist/DJ_Sotofett/release/Drippin_For_A_Tripp\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Honest Jon’s\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\u003cstrong>DONNIE TRUMPET & THE SOCIAL EXPERIMENT\u003cbr>\u003c/strong>\u003c/strong>\u003cstrong>\u003cem>Surf\u003c/em>\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/surf_custom-29183b6239c864d5e2db84c2b6b00ce6a4d820b7.jpe\" alt=\"Surf by Donnie Trumpet & The Social Experiment\" width=\"200\" height=\"200\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-10817754\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/surf_custom-29183b6239c864d5e2db84c2b6b00ce6a4d820b7.jpe 200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/surf_custom-29183b6239c864d5e2db84c2b6b00ce6a4d820b7-32x32.jpe 32w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/surf_custom-29183b6239c864d5e2db84c2b6b00ce6a4d820b7-64x64.jpe 64w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/surf_custom-29183b6239c864d5e2db84c2b6b00ce6a4d820b7-96x96.jpe 96w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/surf_custom-29183b6239c864d5e2db84c2b6b00ce6a4d820b7-128x128.jpe 128w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/surf_custom-29183b6239c864d5e2db84c2b6b00ce6a4d820b7-75x75.jpe 75w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For the last time: This is NOT a Chance The Rapper album. Not to say that a Chance album wouldn’t be nice, but \u003cem>Surf\u003c/em> is a welcome digression in the much-hyped Chicago MC’s career. And although Chance is its vocalist, the group is fronted by, as its name suggests, Donnie Trumpet, a.k.a. Nico Segal. On \u003cem>Surf, \u003c/em>the band takes pleasure in sidestepping categorizations, not with a defiant snarl but rather a cheerful smile. It’s a feel good album in the “turn up!” era: an amalgam of jazz, poetry, neo-soul and hip-hop with an effervescent pop appeal that just happens to feature great live instrumentation and unexpected guest shots from artists as disparate as \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/artists/36898288/erykah-badu\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Erykah Badu\u003c/a> and Quavo. Who knew happy didn’t have to be hokey? \u003cem>–Timmhotep Aku\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://www.npr.org/player/embed/417426717/418405179\" width=\"100%\" height=\"290\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>GIRLPOOL\u003cbr>\u003cem>Before The World Was Big \u003c/em>\u003cbr>\u003c/strong>\u003cbr>\n\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/girlpool_custom-610ffd1d67745c8505fdf19b11822282831f37c7.png\" alt=\"Before The World Was Big by Girlpool\" width=\"200\" height=\"200\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-10817755\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/girlpool_custom-610ffd1d67745c8505fdf19b11822282831f37c7.png 200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/girlpool_custom-610ffd1d67745c8505fdf19b11822282831f37c7-32x32.png 32w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/girlpool_custom-610ffd1d67745c8505fdf19b11822282831f37c7-64x64.png 64w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/girlpool_custom-610ffd1d67745c8505fdf19b11822282831f37c7-96x96.png 96w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/girlpool_custom-610ffd1d67745c8505fdf19b11822282831f37c7-128x128.png 128w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/girlpool_custom-610ffd1d67745c8505fdf19b11822282831f37c7-75x75.png 75w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/artists/381937892/girlpool\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Girlpool\u003c/a>, Harmony Trividad and Cleo Tucker have distilled the equipment necessary for a direct link between ear canal and heartstrings down to two members, two instruments, one cassette, one EP and one full-length album. That album, \u003cem>Before The World Was Big\u003c/em>, is a lo-fi collection of punk songs that have a playful spirit but aren’t playing around. Trividad and Tucker specialize in no-frills singing and simple instrumentation that cut through bone and aim for marrow. The title track, in particular, features vocal harmonies that are almost startling in their poignancy and impact, bringing life to lyrics about memory and the loss of things remembered. Girlpool’s lack of polish does nothing to diminish its shine, and its free-spirited approach to punk only adds to the power behind their punch.\u003cem> –Katie Presley\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://www.npr.org/player/embed/417426717/418404861\" width=\"100%\" height=\"290\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>IBEYI\u003cbr>\u003cem>Ibeyi\u003c/em>\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/ibeyi_custom-ca6af2a49db46c525a0d9b523ad0045f982292fb.jpg\" alt=\"Ibeyi by Ibeyi\" width=\"200\" height=\"172\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-10817756\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There are a lot of things to admire about the self-titled debut from \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/artists/338284149/ibeyi\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Ibeyi \u003c/a>— an accomplishment considering that there simply aren’t a lot of things in it. It’s made by a band of twin sisters: One sings and plays piano; the other sings backup and makes beats. The textures are often minimal, the assembly spare. Of course, there’s more behind that, namely two musical parents who raised them in France and Cuba and around Afro-Cuban religious culture. So their foray into the production-and-voice duo model is sung in both English and Yoruba (and a little French), with electronics that employ traditional cajón and batá drums toward hip-hop ideas. It’s very much a summons to the ghosts of their history, whether in direct incantations to Santería deities or in its dedication to their father and elder sister, who both died prematurely. And there’s the way their voices hang, overlap, chant in unison, linger as a chorus; Ibeyi may be only two people, but there are more presences in the room. \u003cem>— Patrick Jarenwattananon\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://www.npr.org/player/embed/417426717/418404599\" width=\"100%\" height=\"290\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>J. COLE\u003cbr>\u003cem>2014 Forest Hills Drive \u003c/em>\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/jcole_custom-fb0e99fdb64545c72fcd22df2a8cec29d468dbf2.jpg\" alt=\"2014 Forest Hills Drive by J. Cole\" width=\"200\" height=\"200\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-10817757\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/jcole_custom-fb0e99fdb64545c72fcd22df2a8cec29d468dbf2.jpg 200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/jcole_custom-fb0e99fdb64545c72fcd22df2a8cec29d468dbf2-32x32.jpg 32w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/jcole_custom-fb0e99fdb64545c72fcd22df2a8cec29d468dbf2-64x64.jpg 64w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/jcole_custom-fb0e99fdb64545c72fcd22df2a8cec29d468dbf2-96x96.jpg 96w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/jcole_custom-fb0e99fdb64545c72fcd22df2a8cec29d468dbf2-128x128.jpg 128w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/jcole_custom-fb0e99fdb64545c72fcd22df2a8cec29d468dbf2-75x75.jpg 75w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Can everyone just give \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/artists/397293070/j-cole\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Jermaine Cole\u003c/a> his props already? With this album, Cole, ever the underdog, has proven that he’s not only come into his own artistically but also that he deserves to be mentioned in the same breath as hip-hop’s current elite. A surprise release in December of last year, \u003cem>2014 Forest Hills Drive\u003c/em> makes our 2015 list because: A) it was released after we published our \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/2014/12/08/368731400/npr-musics-50-favorite-albums-of-2014\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">2014 albums list\u003c/a> and B) although it dropped during the holiday season it stayed in rotation well into the new year. Chalk it up to Cole’s now-perfected formula of breaking up his bravado with moments of introspection and brutal honesty. Musically we heard him explore melody as he never had before, singing from his soul as much as he rapped his little heart out. Largely self-produced and featuring no one but background vocalists, it proves he can carry an album on his own, without the aide of his Roc Nation benefactor \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/artists/16318474/jay-z\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Jay Z\u003c/a> or a big name producer — a feat in itself. So again, can J. Cole finally get his just due? \u003cem>–Timmhotep Aku\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https://embed.spotify.com/?uri=spotify:track:16qYlQ6koFxYVbiJbGHblz\" frameborder=\"0\" allowtransparency=\"true\" width=\"690\" height=\"80\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>JAZMINE SULLIVAN \u003cbr>\u003cem>Reality Show\u003c/em>\u003cbr>\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/jazminesullivan_custom-88d565389bb15ff6c431f0cf1d4f8a28107fdf14.jpg\" alt=\"Reality Show by Jazmine Sullivan\" width=\"200\" height=\"200\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-10817758\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/jazminesullivan_custom-88d565389bb15ff6c431f0cf1d4f8a28107fdf14.jpg 200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/jazminesullivan_custom-88d565389bb15ff6c431f0cf1d4f8a28107fdf14-32x32.jpg 32w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/jazminesullivan_custom-88d565389bb15ff6c431f0cf1d4f8a28107fdf14-64x64.jpg 64w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/jazminesullivan_custom-88d565389bb15ff6c431f0cf1d4f8a28107fdf14-96x96.jpg 96w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/jazminesullivan_custom-88d565389bb15ff6c431f0cf1d4f8a28107fdf14-128x128.jpg 128w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/jazminesullivan_custom-88d565389bb15ff6c431f0cf1d4f8a28107fdf14-75x75.jpg 75w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 2011, as one of R&B’s strongest voices, Jazmine Sullivan announced via Twitter that she was taking a self-imposed hiatus from singing: “i promised myself when it wasn’t fun anymore i wouldn’t do it. and here i am [sic],” she wrote. Fast-forward four years, and she’s finally back — with a hell of a concept in front of her. On \u003cem>Reality Show,\u003c/em> Sullivan interprets the imaginary life of your present-day reality TV star by flirting with just about every approach possible. She never lets us get the least bit comfortable: she effortlessly transitions from flawless a capella runs (“Forever Don’t Last”) to full-fledged visions of sensual clarity (“Veins”). The somewhat unsettling “Mascara” juxtaposes fleshed-out, meaningful production and Sullivan’s fully alive voice with lyrics that grate against everything we believe in: “Most people think I’m shallow ’cause I’m always dressed like I’m going out to the club / But I gotta keep up cause it’s new chicks poppin’ up everyday and they want the same thing.” Whichever direction she flows, Sullivan gently reminds us with each turn that she’s capable of taking anything on — with no problem. \u003cem>–Kiana Fitzgerald\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https://embed.spotify.com/?uri=spotify:track:6KOc6ViZB8NtfCVABmTe66\" frameborder=\"0\" allowtransparency=\"true\" width=\"690\" height=\"80\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>KACEY MUSGRAVES \u003cbr>\u003cem>Pageant Material\u003c/em>\u003cbr>\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/kaceymusgraves_custom-32202915eef7d840060eb250f5ae868de0e9bf51.jpg\" alt=\"Pageant Material by Kacey Musgraves\" width=\"200\" height=\"200\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-10817759\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/kaceymusgraves_custom-32202915eef7d840060eb250f5ae868de0e9bf51.jpg 200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/kaceymusgraves_custom-32202915eef7d840060eb250f5ae868de0e9bf51-32x32.jpg 32w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/kaceymusgraves_custom-32202915eef7d840060eb250f5ae868de0e9bf51-64x64.jpg 64w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/kaceymusgraves_custom-32202915eef7d840060eb250f5ae868de0e9bf51-96x96.jpg 96w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/kaceymusgraves_custom-32202915eef7d840060eb250f5ae868de0e9bf51-128x128.jpg 128w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/kaceymusgraves_custom-32202915eef7d840060eb250f5ae868de0e9bf51-75x75.jpg 75w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/artists/174510165/kacey-musgraves\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Kacey Musgraves\u003c/a>‘ 2013 debut, \u003cem>Same Trailer Different Park,\u003c/em> mixed go-your-own-way anthems with heartbreaking songs about lives set adrift by circumstance, tradition and old habits. For the most part, \u003cem>Pageant Material\u003c/em> doubles down on the anthems at the expense of the heartbreak: It’s largely a collection of mission statements about minding your own business, being yourself despite outside pressures, trusting your family warts and all, and making the most of what we’re given while we’re around to enjoy it. But those mission statements — again written by Musgraves, again with ace assists from a small team that includes Brandy Clark and Shane McAnally — are quotably, often poignantly irresistible. “Dime Store Cowgirl,” for example, may tread familiar thematic ground in the way it paints Musgraves as a country star who’s remained unchanged by the trappings of fame. But the song, like so much of what surrounds it on \u003cem>Pageant Material,\u003c/em> is a gorgeously shimmering, almost impossibly infectious charmer. \u003cem>–Stephen Thompson\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https://embed.spotify.com/?uri=spotify:track:4vHVfwVi2CEc4r7P1Pr9iu\" frameborder=\"0\" allowtransparency=\"true\" width=\"690\" height=\"80\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>KAMASI WASHINGTON\u003cbr>\u003c/strong>\u003cem>\u003cstrong>The Epic\u003c/strong>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/kamasiwashington_custom-98df6b2aef81941ce4f307eee6d90d216edbbb8f.jpg\" alt=\"The Epic by Kamasi Washington\" width=\"200\" height=\"200\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-10817760\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/kamasiwashington_custom-98df6b2aef81941ce4f307eee6d90d216edbbb8f.jpg 200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/kamasiwashington_custom-98df6b2aef81941ce4f307eee6d90d216edbbb8f-32x32.jpg 32w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/kamasiwashington_custom-98df6b2aef81941ce4f307eee6d90d216edbbb8f-64x64.jpg 64w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/kamasiwashington_custom-98df6b2aef81941ce4f307eee6d90d216edbbb8f-96x96.jpg 96w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/kamasiwashington_custom-98df6b2aef81941ce4f307eee6d90d216edbbb8f-128x128.jpg 128w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/kamasiwashington_custom-98df6b2aef81941ce4f307eee6d90d216edbbb8f-75x75.jpg 75w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s not that this record sounds, in any specific regional identity sort of way, like Los Angeles. If anything, it sounds like dislocation and amalgam: like ’70s modal swing, like Donald Byrd’s \u003cem>A New Perspective\u003c/em> meets \u003cem>Charlie Parker With Strings,\u003c/em> like the last half century of black popular music. But L.A. is integral to its existence. It’s where saxophonist and composer Kamasi Washington, now 34, met his bandmates in high school or before. It’s where they found various gigs with pop stars, set up residencies in clubs that would have them, lived in actual houses where they can jam and pooled their money to book a recording studio for a month. The first fruit from that collective undertaking is overkill: 17 songs, nearly three hours, horns, a double rhythm section, strings, vocal chorus. It’s gloriously so, an imposing collection that first overwhelms with volume and energy and ecstatic solos and reveals its depth of color and hummable melodies as you begin to process it. It’s proof that you can both go big and go home. \u003cem>–Patrick Jarenwattananon\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://www.npr.org/player/embed/417426717/418404453\" width=\"100%\" height=\"290\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>KENDRICK LAMAR\u003cbr>\u003c/strong>\u003cstrong>\u003cem>To Pimp A Butterfly\u003c/em>\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/kendricklamar_custom-0f8eee868936faf9f65bb9f422b4bf7e507e0caf.jpg\" alt=\"To Pimp A Butterfly by Kendrick Lamar\" width=\"200\" height=\"200\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-10817761\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/kendricklamar_custom-0f8eee868936faf9f65bb9f422b4bf7e507e0caf.jpg 200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/kendricklamar_custom-0f8eee868936faf9f65bb9f422b4bf7e507e0caf-32x32.jpg 32w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/kendricklamar_custom-0f8eee868936faf9f65bb9f422b4bf7e507e0caf-64x64.jpg 64w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/kendricklamar_custom-0f8eee868936faf9f65bb9f422b4bf7e507e0caf-96x96.jpg 96w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/kendricklamar_custom-0f8eee868936faf9f65bb9f422b4bf7e507e0caf-128x128.jpg 128w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/kendricklamar_custom-0f8eee868936faf9f65bb9f422b4bf7e507e0caf-75x75.jpg 75w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Last year he got labeled a sell-out due to his support for Australian hip-popper Iggy Azalea and for making a seemingly conservative remark about Mike Brown’s shooting in a \u003cem>Billboard\u003c/em> story. This year he made a surprising, possibly jarring, cameo in fan \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/artists/120581188/taylor-swift\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Taylor Swift\u003c/a>‘s “Bad Blood” mega-video. So this we know: \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/artists/166009689/kendrick-lamar\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Kendrick Lamar\u003c/a> isn’t chasing traditional street cred and he may not always be down for the righteous cause. Loving him is complicated. But not unlike social media loose cannon \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/artists/14889532/kanye-west\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Kanye West\u003c/a>, Lamar knows how to filter his manic ideas and channel his range of feeling into a cohesive album as artistic statement. \u003cem>To Pimp a Butterfly\u003c/em>‘s scalding mix of neo-soul, jazz, electronica, sampled soul, sound effects and spoken word interludes — to say nothing of Lamar’s diverse constellation of vocal personas and his wicked ability to warp his own flow on demand — makes this album far more outré, and self-consciously bizarre, than his 2012 throwback cinematic \u003cem>Good Kid M.A.A.D City\u003c/em>. It’s a sprawling, chaotic structure of feeling in the form of 16 album tracks. The list of collaborators here, from George Clinton to \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/artists/15396311/robert-glasper\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Robert Glasper\u003c/a> to Thundercat, and even the faux staged interview with \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/artists/88479205/tupac-shakur\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Tupac\u003c/a>, helps deliver the goods; but it is Lamar’s profound insistence on self-empowerment in the context of his own scars and trauma that really wows. Top tracks include “i,” coasting on its instantly-recognizable \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/artists/15331601/the-isley-brothers\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Isley Brothers\u003c/a>‘ sample, and the marauding black masculinity screed “King Kunta.” There are no easy, simple answers in\u003cem> To Pimp a Butterfly\u003c/em>; in working through its unapologetic mania, maybe you’ll discover your own truths. \u003cem>–Jason King\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https://embed.spotify.com/?uri=spotify:track:0N3W5peJUQtI4eyR6GJT5O\" frameborder=\"0\" allowtransparency=\"true\" width=\"690\" height=\"80\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>LOS HIJOS DE LA MONTAÑA \u003cbr>\u003cem>Los Hijos de la Montaña \u003c/em>\u003cbr>\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/loshijosdelamontana_custom-0c1f3c586e60306e73473ab0bcb719242a197f14.jpe\" alt=\"Los Hijos de la Montaña by Los Hijos de la Montaña\" width=\"200\" height=\"200\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-10817762\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/loshijosdelamontana_custom-0c1f3c586e60306e73473ab0bcb719242a197f14.jpe 200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/loshijosdelamontana_custom-0c1f3c586e60306e73473ab0bcb719242a197f14-32x32.jpe 32w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/loshijosdelamontana_custom-0c1f3c586e60306e73473ab0bcb719242a197f14-64x64.jpe 64w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/loshijosdelamontana_custom-0c1f3c586e60306e73473ab0bcb719242a197f14-96x96.jpe 96w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/loshijosdelamontana_custom-0c1f3c586e60306e73473ab0bcb719242a197f14-128x128.jpe 128w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/loshijosdelamontana_custom-0c1f3c586e60306e73473ab0bcb719242a197f14-75x75.jpe 75w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I’ve been calling it “The Meeting of the Mendozas,” this first-ever collaboration between songwriter Sergio Mendoza and vocalist Luz Elena Mendoza. The two (unrelated) musicians represent two very unique takes on Mexican influences in their music: Luz Elena is the husky-voiced lead singer of Y la Bamba, a group from the Pacific Northwest that I once described as a group of “rugged choir boys”; Sergio has divided his time between Calexico and his own Orkesta Mendoza, a 1950s-inspired mambo rock band. Together these Mendozas sound nothing like their separate bands: Los Hijos de la Montaña is a captivating sonic soundscape of a mythical Southwest, a land where the border doesn’t exist and the musical flow is bilingual and bi-cultural. It hasn’t caused much of a stir in the crowded world of online music, but this album is worth a second and even third listen six months into this year. There is a well-crafted and expertly-performed world in this music that is very real to many of us who grew up in the Southwest. This collaboration nails the sound in our heads perfectly. \u003cem>–Felix Contreras\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://www.npr.org/player/embed/417426717/418404336\" width=\"100%\" height=\"290\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>MBONGWANA STAR \u003cbr>\u003cem>From Kinshasa\u003c/em>\u003cbr>\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/mbongwanastar_custom-532fee2ae2597bd28978f43709c586fb6bde455b.jpg\" alt=\"From Kinshasa by Mbongwana Star\" width=\"200\" height=\"200\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-10817763\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/mbongwanastar_custom-532fee2ae2597bd28978f43709c586fb6bde455b.jpg 200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/mbongwanastar_custom-532fee2ae2597bd28978f43709c586fb6bde455b-32x32.jpg 32w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/mbongwanastar_custom-532fee2ae2597bd28978f43709c586fb6bde455b-64x64.jpg 64w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/mbongwanastar_custom-532fee2ae2597bd28978f43709c586fb6bde455b-96x96.jpg 96w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/mbongwanastar_custom-532fee2ae2597bd28978f43709c586fb6bde455b-128x128.jpg 128w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/mbongwanastar_custom-532fee2ae2597bd28978f43709c586fb6bde455b-75x75.jpg 75w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The original title for this album was “From Kinshasa to the Moon,” and that sounds just about right — this commingling of Congolese street music and electronic sounds is at once earthy and totally futuristic. Anchored by two veterans of the DRC’s Staff Benda Bilili (Yakala “Coco” Ngambali and Nsituvuidi “Theo” Nzonzawho) who teamed up with Paris-based Irish producer Liam Farrell, Mbongwana Star lives true to its name: “mbongwana” means “transformation” in the Lingala language. From the album’s first single, the hyper-metallic “Malukayi” (featuring Konono Nº1), to the sweat-drenched Congolese rumba of “Shégué” and the dance floor thrust of “Nganshé,” you hear the band’s metamorphic power throttling straight into the fringes of the great beyond. \u003cem>–Anastasia Tsioulcas\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://www.npr.org/player/embed/417426717/418404176\" width=\"100%\" height=\"290\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>RHIANNON GIDDENS \u003cbr>\u003cem>Tomorrow Is My Turn \u003c/em>\u003cbr>\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/rhiannongiddens_custom-5891affac18931df678bde97c406f217cc89458d.jpg\" alt=\"Tomorrow Is My Turn by Rhiannon Giddens\" width=\"200\" height=\"200\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-10817764\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/rhiannongiddens_custom-5891affac18931df678bde97c406f217cc89458d.jpg 200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/rhiannongiddens_custom-5891affac18931df678bde97c406f217cc89458d-32x32.jpg 32w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/rhiannongiddens_custom-5891affac18931df678bde97c406f217cc89458d-64x64.jpg 64w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/rhiannongiddens_custom-5891affac18931df678bde97c406f217cc89458d-96x96.jpg 96w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/rhiannongiddens_custom-5891affac18931df678bde97c406f217cc89458d-128x128.jpg 128w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/rhiannongiddens_custom-5891affac18931df678bde97c406f217cc89458d-75x75.jpg 75w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The first thought that takes over during a listen to \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/artists/384980773/rhiannon-giddens\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Rhiannon Giddens\u003c/a>‘ solo debut is: This woman can sing anything. Country, art song, R&B, old-timey sounds in the style of her old band Carolina Chocolate Drops, the songbooks of Dolly Parton and \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/artists/15396720/nina-simone\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Nina Simone\u003c/a>: check. Stop marveling for a moment and this impeccably constructed, hotly executed collection reveals the brain and soul that feed the extraordinary voice. Giddens and producer \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/artists/15171857/t-bone-burnett\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">T-Bone Burnett\u003c/a> recast the American songbook with women at the center. Giddens’ deeply personal interpretations of songs made famous by \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/artists/15396529/patsy-cline\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Patsy Cline\u003c/a>, the mezzo- soprano Florence Quivar, Elizabeth Cotten, Odetta and others strip away the tired truisms smothering our understanding of musical history. In the hands of this young master, stories that seemed beyond refreshing shine, renewed. \u003cem>–Ann Powers\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://www.npr.org/player/embed/417426717/418403325\" width=\"100%\" height=\"290\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>SEATTLE SYMPHONY \u003cbr>\u003cem>Dvořák, Symphony No. 9; Varèse, Amériques \u003c/em>\u003cbr>\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/seattlesymphony_custom-ab6a30d718c5dd322e6ec9cc313a3e4904ef0f4b.jpg\" alt=\"Dvořák, Symphony No. 9; Varèse, Amériques by Seattle Symphony\" width=\"200\" height=\"200\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-10817765\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/seattlesymphony_custom-ab6a30d718c5dd322e6ec9cc313a3e4904ef0f4b.jpg 200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/seattlesymphony_custom-ab6a30d718c5dd322e6ec9cc313a3e4904ef0f4b-32x32.jpg 32w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/seattlesymphony_custom-ab6a30d718c5dd322e6ec9cc313a3e4904ef0f4b-64x64.jpg 64w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/seattlesymphony_custom-ab6a30d718c5dd322e6ec9cc313a3e4904ef0f4b-96x96.jpg 96w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/seattlesymphony_custom-ab6a30d718c5dd322e6ec9cc313a3e4904ef0f4b-128x128.jpg 128w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/seattlesymphony_custom-ab6a30d718c5dd322e6ec9cc313a3e4904ef0f4b-75x75.jpg 75w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This album is an irresistible musical pairing of two sketches of the United States. The first is \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/artists/15033227/antonin-dvorak\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Dvorak\u003c/a>‘s famous and lush paean to the “new” Native and African-American sounds he heard in America, which has become one of the most popular symphonies ever. The other is Edgard Varèse’s crackling, clangorous \u003cem>Ameriques\u003c/em> — far less well-known, but riveting and necessary. Perhaps even more important than the repertoire are the performances. This recording bursts with terrific playing — listen to that tremendous brass! Those urgent, razor-sharp strings! And it serves as proof of the Seattle Symphony’s triumphant claim, under the leadership of Ludovic Morlot, as one of the truly great American orchestras. Beautifully engineered, too. \u003cem>–Anastasia Tsioulcas\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://www.npr.org/player/embed/417426717/418407642\" width=\"100%\" height=\"290\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>SUFJAN STEVENS \u003cbr>\u003cem>Carrie & Lowell \u003c/em>\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/sufjanstevens_custom-3d159564518f48722b351340d4618f94dc2dc252.jpg\" alt=\"Carrie & Lowell by Sufjan Stevens\" width=\"200\" height=\"200\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-10817766\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/sufjanstevens_custom-3d159564518f48722b351340d4618f94dc2dc252.jpg 200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/sufjanstevens_custom-3d159564518f48722b351340d4618f94dc2dc252-32x32.jpg 32w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/sufjanstevens_custom-3d159564518f48722b351340d4618f94dc2dc252-64x64.jpg 64w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/sufjanstevens_custom-3d159564518f48722b351340d4618f94dc2dc252-96x96.jpg 96w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/sufjanstevens_custom-3d159564518f48722b351340d4618f94dc2dc252-128x128.jpg 128w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/sufjanstevens_custom-3d159564518f48722b351340d4618f94dc2dc252-75x75.jpg 75w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A decade after \u003ca href=\"http://pitchfork.com/features/staff-lists/6222-top-50-albums-of-2005/5/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">his coming-out party\u003c/a> as indie’s gentlest superhero, it was starting to feel reasonable to wonder whether \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/artists/15121560/sufjan-stevens\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Sufjan Stevens\u003c/a>‘ feet might ever touch the ground again. From \u003cem>Illinois \u003c/em>to \u003cem>The Age of Adz \u003c/em>via \u003cem>The BQE,\u003c/em> Stevens built an ornate, dense collection of epic songs that was awe-inspiring but not always welcoming. On \u003cem>Carrie & Lowell,\u003c/em> Stevens dials things back to a whisper to reckon with the 2012 death of his mother. If it sounds like a “classic” Sufjan album on the surface, it conceals its mastery of subtle changes only lightly, all the ambition of his previous albums on the head of a pin. A deep pool of familial regret and pain in “Should Have Known Better” ripples with hope and acceptance. The gentle propulsion of “Drawn To The Blood” gives way to ambient shimmer. The most immediately “Sufjan-like” song on the album, “Eugene,” begins with lines about lemon yogurt and the “hysterical” light in the Oregon town of the title. It sounds like it could be the set-up for a new entry in his long-abandoned 50 States project, but turns despondent: “What’s the point of singing songs if they’ll never even hear you?” Stevens sings before the song abruptly ends. “We’re all gonna die,” he repeats later. And then, “F*** me, I’m falling apart.” By the album’s end, he’s lost and alone, but take a breath and put the album on again and you’ll hear him forgive his mother in the opening song. Healing doesn’t follow a straight line; neither does art. \u003cem>–Jacob Ganz\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://www.npr.org/player/embed/417426717/418403102\" width=\"100%\" height=\"290\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>TORRES \u003cbr>\u003cem>Sprinter\u003c/em>\u003cbr>\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/torres_custom-652d0a4375a8db48ae92774154c903dc34e7735b.jpg\" alt=\"Sprinter by Torres\" width=\"200\" height=\"199\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-10817767\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/torres_custom-652d0a4375a8db48ae92774154c903dc34e7735b.jpg 200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/torres_custom-652d0a4375a8db48ae92774154c903dc34e7735b-32x32.jpg 32w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/torres_custom-652d0a4375a8db48ae92774154c903dc34e7735b-64x64.jpg 64w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/torres_custom-652d0a4375a8db48ae92774154c903dc34e7735b-96x96.jpg 96w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/torres_custom-652d0a4375a8db48ae92774154c903dc34e7735b-128x128.jpg 128w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/torres_custom-652d0a4375a8db48ae92774154c903dc34e7735b-75x75.jpg 75w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Sprinter\u003c/em> is the sound of an artist at the moment her vision snaps into startling focus. Mackenzie Scott had showed promise before; her early work as \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/artists/390468475/tores\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Torres \u003c/a>exuded moody cool and unsettling atmosphere. \u003cem>Sprinter\u003c/em>, though, is something else, and it’s apparent within its opening minute. “Strange Hellos” opens with a strained whisper through clenched teeth, and by the time 60 seconds have passed, the song has accelerated into something approaching a full roar — it’s confident and scary and mysterious and crowd-pleasing all at once. From there, the ideas keep pouring out, as Scott explores crises of faith and identity with equal parts aggression and grace. \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/artists/15405929/pj-harvey\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">PJ Harvey\u003c/a> is as fine a reference point as any, but \u003cem>Sprinter\u003c/em> also plays around with quieter atmospheres in songs that storm, seethe and surprise. \u003cem>–Stephen Thompson\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://www.npr.org/player/embed/417426717/418403057\" width=\"100%\" height=\"290\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>VIJAY IYER TRIO\u003cbr>\u003cem>Break Stuff \u003c/em>\u003cbr>\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/vijayiyer_custom-9883795d16e245f4f5700c4d832a5d1dbedaa58d.jpg\" alt=\"Hood by Vijay Iyer Trio\" width=\"200\" height=\"200\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-10817768\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/vijayiyer_custom-9883795d16e245f4f5700c4d832a5d1dbedaa58d.jpg 200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/vijayiyer_custom-9883795d16e245f4f5700c4d832a5d1dbedaa58d-32x32.jpg 32w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/vijayiyer_custom-9883795d16e245f4f5700c4d832a5d1dbedaa58d-64x64.jpg 64w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/vijayiyer_custom-9883795d16e245f4f5700c4d832a5d1dbedaa58d-96x96.jpg 96w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/vijayiyer_custom-9883795d16e245f4f5700c4d832a5d1dbedaa58d-128x128.jpg 128w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/vijayiyer_custom-9883795d16e245f4f5700c4d832a5d1dbedaa58d-75x75.jpg 75w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To say \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/artists/92749291/vijay-iyer\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Vijay Iyer\u003c/a> has expanded the boundaries of jazz has become old hat. For my money he has accomplished the same kind of innovation and forward thinking that \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/artists/15368370/miles-davis\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Miles Davis\u003c/a> used to brag about. There are some of the usual trappings: a jazz trio; larger big bands full of saxophones and brass; quirky, angular compositions that echo the best of the most challenging jazz. But what Iyer brings to every group context and performance is the kind of wandering spirit that us jazz fans cherish but rarely encounter. Plenty of musicians experiment and even dip into the screech and howl of the avant-garde but so precious few ever master the jazz tradition enough to be able abandon it and carve out a place for their own. \u003cem>Break Stuff\u003c/em> is but another chorus in the continuing song that is the life and music of Vijay Iyer. I have no doubt the next album as will be as good as his last. So for now, I spend time with his current album and marvel at how he does it. \u003cem>–Felix Contreras\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://www.npr.org/player/embed/417426717/418402988\" width=\"100%\" height=\"290\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>WILLIAM BASINSKI \u003cbr>\u003cem>Cascade \u003c/em>\u003cbr>\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/williambasinski_custom-902b71dfaf91310b397ab1ba56a964a270bf8a4b.jpg\" alt=\"Cascade by William Basinski\" width=\"200\" height=\"200\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-10817769\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/williambasinski_custom-902b71dfaf91310b397ab1ba56a964a270bf8a4b.jpg 200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/williambasinski_custom-902b71dfaf91310b397ab1ba56a964a270bf8a4b-32x32.jpg 32w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/williambasinski_custom-902b71dfaf91310b397ab1ba56a964a270bf8a4b-64x64.jpg 64w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/williambasinski_custom-902b71dfaf91310b397ab1ba56a964a270bf8a4b-96x96.jpg 96w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/williambasinski_custom-902b71dfaf91310b397ab1ba56a964a270bf8a4b-128x128.jpg 128w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/williambasinski_custom-902b71dfaf91310b397ab1ba56a964a270bf8a4b-75x75.jpg 75w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A master of tape loop manipulation, composer \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/artists/163552901/william-basinski\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">William Basinski\u003c/a> is known best for his mournful, mysterious, five-hour-long recording \u003cem>The Disintegration Loops.\u003c/em> Fifteen years ago, while digitizing fragile reels of tape, he discovered a transitory beauty as they literally crumbled in the tape deck, but found new life as digital files. Now again, Basinski has rescued old tapes to create \u003cem>Cascade,\u003c/em> another mesmerizing ambient landscape. “I agonized over these and almost threw them in the trash,” he wrote in a promotional email. \u003cem>Cascade\u003c/em> appears to be built from a single fragile piano riff, drenched in reverb, slightly overmodulated and looped for nearly 40 minutes. But as usual with this most subtle composer, there’s much below Cascade’s shimmering surface. Instead of stasis, a slight tug of current floats you down a rippling streamlet. The music emerges from nowhere, shifts almost imperceptibly, then quietly recedes. Why it packs as much emotional punch as it does is a mystery best left unanswered. \u003cem>Cascade,\u003c/em> aside from its dark beauty and quiet power, is a vindication for all packrats — proof that having second thoughts about what to trash and what to save can be a glorious thing. \u003cem>–Tom Huizenga\u003c/em> \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cp>Tim Burton’s shadowy tales have taken audiences from a pastel suburban paradise in \u003cem>Edward Scissorhands\u003c/em> to the dark streets of Gotham City in \u003cem>Batman\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Accompanying Burton’s strange worlds are the mysterious and unforgettable scores by composer Danny Elfman. Over the last 30 years, the two have forged an iconic partnership.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There was instant chemistry in terms of what we were into,” Danny Elfman says about the first time he met Tim Burton. “We had a lot of common roots … we both grew up as horror movie kids.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Burton’s latest film, \u003cem>Big Eyes\u003c/em>, marks the duo’s 16th collaboration together.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To celebrate, the Lincoln Center Festival in New York City opens Monday with \u003cem>\u003ca href=\"http://www.lincolncenterfestival.org/2015/danny-elfman-s-music-from-the-films-of-tim-burton\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Danny Elfman’s Music from the Films of Tim Burton\u003c/a> \u003c/em>at Avery Fisher Hall.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The first act features music from \u003cem>Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure\u003c/em> — the first movie the two worked on together. While filming, Burton asked Elfman to score the film.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I had a four-track tape player and I went and recorded a demo,” he says. “Sent them to him on a cassette. That was it.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Burton called back a few weeks later and offered Elfman the job.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“In the beginning and over the years of working together, considering that it’s been 16 films, we’ve talked very little about them,” Elfman says. “Tim doesn’t like to analyze his films. Tim’s never been that way. And so we usually will see a film, he’ll tell me how he feels, a little bit about this character, that character, and we don’t really communicate until I have music to play.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I grew up feeling that I was from another planet,” Elfman says. “And I get the feeling that Tim also grew up similarly … The worlds he created didn’t seem that weird to me, it just seemed like, ‘Okay, yeah.’ ”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Hear the full piece at the audio link below.\u003c/em> \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http://www.npr.org/player/embed/419643892/420097073\" width=\"100%\" height=\"290\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2015 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=For+Danny+Elfman%2C+The+Strange+Worlds+Of+Tim+Burton+Just+Make+Sense&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/div>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cp>Observing the consequences of the Mexican drug trade on both sides of the U.S. border, \u003cem>Cartel Land\u003c/em> toggles between Arizona and the state of Michoacan, about 1,000 miles to the south. Only the latter of the twinned storylines really pays off, but that one is riveting.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Up north, director Matthew Heineman and cinematographer Matt Porwoll follow Tim “Nailer” Foley, a military veteran who decided to secure the Arizona border. In part, this is a personal reclamation project. Nailer became a vigilante after kicking his addiction to booze and drugs and losing his construction job in the 2008 maxi-recession.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Nailer and his ad hoc troops are sincere, it seems, about wanting to protect their neighbors from Mexican thugs. But they’re also instinctively anti-immigrant. (One Arizona vigilante considers any Mexican migrant who already speaks English a major villain, even after a hapless guy explains that he just picked up the lingo while working in a Cancun hotel.) If all illegal drugs stopped crossing the border, Nailer’s men would not consider the battle won.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Further south, Michoacan’s residents don’t have to don night-vision goggles and patrol empty desert to locate narco-gangsters. They’re everywhere in the impoverished state, which under more peaceful circumstances might be best known for its lime and avocado crops.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When the filmmakers arrive, the region is dominated by the Knights Templar, a murderous mob whose name alone indicates the muddled iconography of cartel-dominated territory. They have come to think of themselves as defenders of the faith, even as they expand from drugs to kidnapping and protection rackets.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Against the Knights, local pillars of the community organize the Autodefensas. The group is run by a committee, but one man emerges as its spokesperson: Jose Manuel Mireles Valverde, a white-haired, grandfatherly doctor who doesn’t apply the Hippocratic oath to cartel members. Mireles is articulate and charismatic, but not without weaknesses that can be exploited by the Knights and the Mexican government — and those with a foot in each camp.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The movie, inevitably, focuses on Mireles and several dramatic events that involved him in 2014. But the larger story is the tendency of power to corrupt in a land where violence is the only controlling political authority. As the Autodefensas’ influence grows, so do their transgressions. Michoacan may have traded one savage occupying army for another.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Heineman shot much of the footage himself, clearly at great risk. Impressively, he had the presence of mind to keep filming during tense standoffs and full-blown firefights. He also captured scenes with masked participants — such as a coven of Mexican cooks around a witches’ cauldron of methamphetamine — and ones where the subjects probably thought the camera was off. Occasionally, he points the lens away from the action and settles just for audio of the events.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Although the musical score is sometimes intrusive, everything else in \u003cem>Cartel Land\u003c/em> is skillfully balanced. The film is crisply photographed and tightly edited, both of which are essential to navigating so much narrative chaos and moral anarchy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Heineman was lucky to come out of this project intact. After viewing Michoacan’s mayhem from a more comfortable distance, \u003cem>Cartel Land\u003c/em> viewers may feel similarly fortunate. \u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2015 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=Investigating+The+Drug+Trade+In+%27Cartel+Land%27&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/div>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Observing the consequences of the Mexican drug trade on both sides of the U.S. border, \u003cem>Cartel Land\u003c/em> toggles between Arizona and the state of Michoacan, about 1,000 miles to the south. Only the latter of the twinned storylines really pays off, but that one is riveting.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Up north, director Matthew Heineman and cinematographer Matt Porwoll follow Tim “Nailer” Foley, a military veteran who decided to secure the Arizona border. In part, this is a personal reclamation project. Nailer became a vigilante after kicking his addiction to booze and drugs and losing his construction job in the 2008 maxi-recession.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Nailer and his ad hoc troops are sincere, it seems, about wanting to protect their neighbors from Mexican thugs. But they’re also instinctively anti-immigrant. (One Arizona vigilante considers any Mexican migrant who already speaks English a major villain, even after a hapless guy explains that he just picked up the lingo while working in a Cancun hotel.) If all illegal drugs stopped crossing the border, Nailer’s men would not consider the battle won.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Further south, Michoacan’s residents don’t have to don night-vision goggles and patrol empty desert to locate narco-gangsters. They’re everywhere in the impoverished state, which under more peaceful circumstances might be best known for its lime and avocado crops.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When the filmmakers arrive, the region is dominated by the Knights Templar, a murderous mob whose name alone indicates the muddled iconography of cartel-dominated territory. They have come to think of themselves as defenders of the faith, even as they expand from drugs to kidnapping and protection rackets.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Against the Knights, local pillars of the community organize the Autodefensas. The group is run by a committee, but one man emerges as its spokesperson: Jose Manuel Mireles Valverde, a white-haired, grandfatherly doctor who doesn’t apply the Hippocratic oath to cartel members. Mireles is articulate and charismatic, but not without weaknesses that can be exploited by the Knights and the Mexican government — and those with a foot in each camp.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The movie, inevitably, focuses on Mireles and several dramatic events that involved him in 2014. But the larger story is the tendency of power to corrupt in a land where violence is the only controlling political authority. As the Autodefensas’ influence grows, so do their transgressions. Michoacan may have traded one savage occupying army for another.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Heineman shot much of the footage himself, clearly at great risk. Impressively, he had the presence of mind to keep filming during tense standoffs and full-blown firefights. He also captured scenes with masked participants — such as a coven of Mexican cooks around a witches’ cauldron of methamphetamine — and ones where the subjects probably thought the camera was off. Occasionally, he points the lens away from the action and settles just for audio of the events.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Although the musical score is sometimes intrusive, everything else in \u003cem>Cartel Land\u003c/em> is skillfully balanced. The film is crisply photographed and tightly edited, both of which are essential to navigating so much narrative chaos and moral anarchy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Heineman was lucky to come out of this project intact. After viewing Michoacan’s mayhem from a more comfortable distance, \u003cem>Cartel Land\u003c/em> viewers may feel similarly fortunate. \u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2015 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=Investigating+The+Drug+Trade+In+%27Cartel+Land%27&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/div>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>Booze, drugs, Svengalis galore, rampant co-dependence: The bare bones of a crash-and-burn rocker bio-pic poke through Asif Kapadia’s richly absorbing documentary about the short, sharp life of Amy Winehouse. Here and there \u003cem>Amy\u003c/em> flirts with prurience, but prurience is hard to avoid with a young woman who, willy-nilly, lived her private life in public. And if ever there was an artist whose life and work fed one another for better and worse, it was Winehouse.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Kapadia — whose last film was a 2010 portrait of another compulsive risk-taker, Brazilian Formula One car racer Ayrton Senna — has woven familiar archival footage through a fresh trove of home movies and frank testimony from friends and associates who until now have mostly kept their counsel. Among other things, they offer a fascinating glimpse into Winehouse’s early days, before the beehive, the tattoos and eyeliner wings, the heroin and cocaine. Long before that infamous Belgrade concert where she seized up and unraveled in plain sight, Amy Winehouse was, as one former friend puts it, “like a classic North London Jewish girl with lots of attitude.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That qualifying “like” matters. Winehouse was already being treated for bulimia and depression in her teens, possibly because of her father’s departure to live with another woman. But those early home movies also show a sassy, exuberant girl with a razor-sharp bull detector and a precocious, assessing intelligence that both seduced and unnerved those around her. She never quite lost the sass, but inevitably \u003cem>Amy\u003c/em> soon turns into the story of abundant promise gone to waste.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As Kapadia tells the story, Winehouse was lucky in her childhood friends, notably her first manager, Nick Shymansky, and two girlfriends, who stuck by her until her compulsive self-sabotage sporadically drove them away. She was less lucky in her parents, a loving but passive mother and a domineering father she adored till the end, despite the fact that he repeatedly advised her against going into rehab when she needed it most. She adored her husband, Blake Fielder, seen here as a junkie who did little but bask in her reflected glory and restock her with heroin whenever she managed to get clean. At the height of her success she says, pitifully, “I want to feel like he felt.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>With good reason, \u003cem>Amy\u003c/em> is hard on these two men and on the media who fed off her instability. But Kapadia doesn’t let Amy off the hook either. As every teen learns going into adulthood, attitude is not the same thing as strength, and the film suggests Winehouse never developed the inner resources to weather life’s common hurts and losses. She buckled when her beloved grandmother died, and when Fielder was sent to prison. She stuck with those who preyed on her and alienated those who supported her. There were times when only her bodyguard was left to set limits on her benders. That she rebounded just before the end adds to her tragedy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Yet \u003cem>Amy\u003c/em> also pays warm homage to Winehouse the musician, and not just because of the astonishing voice — the throaty roar of a trained soul singer in full maturity — that poured out of that tiny body. Never a follower of fashion, Winehouse remained wide open to many musical sources. The Goth look, the lyrics that put “rehab” and “no, no, no” together couldn’t fail to win over young audiences. \u003cem>Amy\u003c/em> also makes us see why she enchanted so many across generations, from jazz to garage-band fans to the Tony Bennett demographic who thrilled to the standards the two sang so beautifully together.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Life teaches you how to live it, if you’re lucky enough to live that long,” says Bennett, who brought out the old soul in Winehouse and who comes across in the movie as a true gent who saw that for his young collaborator, time was always running out. “All I’m good for is making tunes,” she tells one interviewer. “So leave me alone to do that.” Her time ran out far too early, but the luck is all ours — we still have the voice. \u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2015 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=Beyond+A+Voice+And+A+Sad+Story%2C+%27Amy%27+Listens+To+A+Life&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/div>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Booze, drugs, Svengalis galore, rampant co-dependence: The bare bones of a crash-and-burn rocker bio-pic poke through Asif Kapadia’s richly absorbing documentary about the short, sharp life of Amy Winehouse. Here and there \u003cem>Amy\u003c/em> flirts with prurience, but prurience is hard to avoid with a young woman who, willy-nilly, lived her private life in public. And if ever there was an artist whose life and work fed one another for better and worse, it was Winehouse.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Kapadia — whose last film was a 2010 portrait of another compulsive risk-taker, Brazilian Formula One car racer Ayrton Senna — has woven familiar archival footage through a fresh trove of home movies and frank testimony from friends and associates who until now have mostly kept their counsel. Among other things, they offer a fascinating glimpse into Winehouse’s early days, before the beehive, the tattoos and eyeliner wings, the heroin and cocaine. Long before that infamous Belgrade concert where she seized up and unraveled in plain sight, Amy Winehouse was, as one former friend puts it, “like a classic North London Jewish girl with lots of attitude.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That qualifying “like” matters. Winehouse was already being treated for bulimia and depression in her teens, possibly because of her father’s departure to live with another woman. But those early home movies also show a sassy, exuberant girl with a razor-sharp bull detector and a precocious, assessing intelligence that both seduced and unnerved those around her. She never quite lost the sass, but inevitably \u003cem>Amy\u003c/em> soon turns into the story of abundant promise gone to waste.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As Kapadia tells the story, Winehouse was lucky in her childhood friends, notably her first manager, Nick Shymansky, and two girlfriends, who stuck by her until her compulsive self-sabotage sporadically drove them away. She was less lucky in her parents, a loving but passive mother and a domineering father she adored till the end, despite the fact that he repeatedly advised her against going into rehab when she needed it most. She adored her husband, Blake Fielder, seen here as a junkie who did little but bask in her reflected glory and restock her with heroin whenever she managed to get clean. At the height of her success she says, pitifully, “I want to feel like he felt.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>With good reason, \u003cem>Amy\u003c/em> is hard on these two men and on the media who fed off her instability. But Kapadia doesn’t let Amy off the hook either. As every teen learns going into adulthood, attitude is not the same thing as strength, and the film suggests Winehouse never developed the inner resources to weather life’s common hurts and losses. She buckled when her beloved grandmother died, and when Fielder was sent to prison. She stuck with those who preyed on her and alienated those who supported her. There were times when only her bodyguard was left to set limits on her benders. That she rebounded just before the end adds to her tragedy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Yet \u003cem>Amy\u003c/em> also pays warm homage to Winehouse the musician, and not just because of the astonishing voice — the throaty roar of a trained soul singer in full maturity — that poured out of that tiny body. Never a follower of fashion, Winehouse remained wide open to many musical sources. The Goth look, the lyrics that put “rehab” and “no, no, no” together couldn’t fail to win over young audiences. \u003cem>Amy\u003c/em> also makes us see why she enchanted so many across generations, from jazz to garage-band fans to the Tony Bennett demographic who thrilled to the standards the two sang so beautifully together.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Life teaches you how to live it, if you’re lucky enough to live that long,” says Bennett, who brought out the old soul in Winehouse and who comes across in the movie as a true gent who saw that for his young collaborator, time was always running out. “All I’m good for is making tunes,” she tells one interviewer. “So leave me alone to do that.” Her time ran out far too early, but the luck is all ours — we still have the voice. \u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2015 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=Beyond+A+Voice+And+A+Sad+Story%2C+%27Amy%27+Listens+To+A+Life&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/div>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>In the early 20th century, the Cherry Sisters — a family of performers from Marion, Iowa — were like a meme.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Simply invoking the name — the Cherry Sisters — was shorthand for anything awful. As Anthony Slide wrote in the \u003cem>Encyclopedia of Vaudeville\u003c/em>, the onstage siblings became “synonymous with any act devoid of talent.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Apparently, they were a cross between early American performance art and age old scapegoatism. Their variety act included original music, bass drum thumping, poetry, mouth harp playing, inspirational recitations, essay reading, fake hypnosis and other artistic expressions. And the audience responded to the whole shebang by hurling vegetables, shouting interjections and behaving rudely.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“People enjoyed tossing tomatoes and whatever at them,” says David Soren, acting curator of the \u003ca href=\"http://speccoll.library.arizona.edu/collections/american-vaudeville-museum-collection\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">American Vaudeville Museum Collection\u003c/a> at the University of Arizona. “The Cherry Sisters were generally regarded as the worst ever.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the Cherry Sisters also signified something else in American comedy history. In the tradition of Tiny Tim, Andy Kaufman and certain other deadpan comics, the questions always hovered around them: Were they sincere? Were they in on the joke? Did they even care what people thought?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Several good researchers,” the 2004 \u003ca href=\"https://books.google.com/books?id=XFnfnKg6BcAC&pg=PA218&dq=%22cherry+sisters%22&hl=en&sa=X&ei=wA2LVbGCA4WaNsu9gYAC&ved=0CDMQ6AEwBA#v=onepage&q=%22cherry%20sisters%22&f=false\">book\u003c/a> \u003cem>Vaudeville Old and New\u003c/em> observes, “have pondered the reasons the Cherry Sisters were willing to put up with the abuse that attended their vaudeville careers. Most observers ranged between two poles of opinion: those who held that the Cherry Sisters knew what they were doing and to some degree were complicit and those who maintain that the sisters were talentless naifs ignorant of how bad they were.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rotten Tomatoes\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Originally, there were five: Addie, Effie, Ella, Lizzie and Jessie. So the story goes — in multiple accounts — they lost their parents early on. In 1893, several of the sisters formed a performance group to finance a trip to the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. One of their first public appearances was at their hometown opera house.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Many chroniclers suggest that the Cherry Sisters mistook the community’s polite support for their debut as validation and victory. But as the story unfolds, it becomes harder and harder to know exactly what motivated and sustained the Cherry Sisters as they appeared night after night to increasingly hostile crowds.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They went to Chicago, where they auditioned for an agent. Seeing the flawed performers in homespun clothes, the agent “must have sensed the potential of novelty,” according to \u003cem>Vaudeville Old and New\u003c/em>. He hired them to tour small Midwestern towns and “along the route, audiences jeered them.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Traveling mostly about Iowa, the Cherry Sisters became the targets of scalding press reviews. The journalistic jabbing, which rivaled some of today’s most caustic comments sections, became part of the strange, interactive audience participation that surrounded the sisters. “They couldn’t sing, speak or act,” the Cedar Rapids \u003cem>Gazette \u003c/em>reported in March of 1893 in one of the earliest critiques. “They were simply awful … At one minute the scene was like the incurable ward in an insane asylum, the next it was like a camp meeting. Cigars, cigarettes, rubbers everything was thrown at them, yet they stood there awkwardly bowing their acknowledgments and singing on.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Soon other towns were clamoring to see just how bad they were. And local reviewers, like crabs in a basket, crawled over one another to write cruel and skewering reviews. The Cherry Sisters were rebuked in Dubuque. The Chicago \u003cem>Daily Tribune\u003c/em> of May 19, 1893, reported that when the women appeared at the Dubuque Grand Opera House, they “were pelted with everything from an onion to a tin boiler and were afterwards badly treated on their way to their hotel.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And they were lambasted in Odebolt. The editor of the local \u003cem>Chronicle\u003c/em> wrote in February of 1898: “Their long skinny arms equipped with talons at the extremities, swung mechanically, and soon were waved frantically at the suffering audience. Their mouths opened like caverns, and sounds like the wailing of damned souls issued therefrom.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This last vicious appraisal was reprinted in the Des Moines \u003cem>Leader \u003c/em>and the Cherry Sisters, who had exhibited litigiousness over the years, sued both newspapers for defamation. In a landmark case, the Iowa Supreme Court eventually \u003ca href=\"http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~iaohms/cherry_lawsuit.html\">ruled in favor\u003c/a> of the newspapers’ right to freely criticize public performances.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In describing the sisters’ act to the court, one of the Cherrys \u003ca href=\"http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~iaohms/cherry_lawsuit.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">testified\u003c/a>: “These entertainments are concerts — literary entertainments. I don’t sing much. The others do. I have recitations and readings; recite and read in costume. In feminine costumes. … Sometimes I have worn men’s clothes. I never dance. I recite essays and events that have happened, I have written up of my own.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Her rambling statements may add credence to the theory that the Cherrys were primitive thespians, without self-awareness.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Unless, of course, the bizarre testimony was all part of the act.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Bright Lights, Mean City\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>National publicity for the Cherry Sisters reached such a fever pitch in the mid-1890s that New York theater mogul Oscar Hammerstein booked them for a well-paying, multiweek vaudeville engagement in 1896 at his Olympia Music Hall.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The \u003cem>New York Times\u003c/em> review was headlined “Four Freaks From Iowa; They Presented a Spectacle More Pitiable than Amusing.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For the Cherry Sisters, this was probably the pinnacle — of recognition and of ridicule.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After taking Manhattan, the Cherrys continued to tour for a few years. Jessie died in 1903 and the Sisters, in various number, performed only intermittently. “None of the sisters married,” according to the \u003cem>Encyclopedia of Vaudeville. \u003c/em>In later years, “Effie was the most active, twice running unsuccessfully for mayor of Cedar Rapids.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The \u003cem>Encyclopedia \u003c/em>cites this 1910 description of the Cherry Sisters — from Robert Grau’s book \u003cem>The Business Man in the Amusement World\u003c/em>: “They were just a quartet of incompetents and they were so indifferent to their reception by the public, that they were in demand for many years at a salary far higher than what would have been accorded them if they had possessed any real ability. There was, though, something approaching cruelty in the spectacle which these poor females presented, night after night, in exhibiting their crudities to howling, insulting audiences.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>The Pendulum And The Pits\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So the question is: Were the Cherry Sisters — in their prime — the worst act ever on the American stage or were they comic geniuses, committed to the bit?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After all, as David Soren points out, there was “a vaudeville tradition of no-talent acts” and people who “were considered just awful and were put on the vaudeville bill last in order to clear out the theater for a fresh and freshly paid audience.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Cherry Sisters, he says, did not think of themselves as a bad act.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’m not sure if the Cherry Sisters started as sincere performers,” M.A. Kibler, author of \u003cem>Rank Ladies: Gender and Cultural Hierarchy in American Vaudeville\u003c/em>, tells NPR, “but I would bet that they quickly learned that being the ‘worst’ was their hook — their novelty. Lots of acts tried to be novel, or exceptional.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As late as 1908, the Sisters were still defending their honor and honesty. In \u003ca href=\"https://archive.org/stream/variety10-1908-04/variety10-1908-04_djvu.txt\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">a letter\u003c/a> to \u003cem>Variety\u003c/em>, in response to one more scathing critique, they wrote: “Although we have the best act in vaudeville and are the best drawing card on the stage, we have no swelled head, as some others have … We have had more knocking since we went into the theatrical business than any act in the history of the world.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Whether the Cherry Sisters were, or were not, the worst act ever, they were American originals. And there was a pathos about them that is undeniable. Night after night of being on the receiving end of rude catcalls and rotten vegetables must have been unnerving. Day after day of picking up the papers and reading the belittling reviews, regardless of any fame and financial gain, must have been defeating.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What an up-and-down roller coaster ride. All the attention; all the humiliation. All the travel; all the travail. All the edginess; all the exhaustion. Withering heights, if you will.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Or, like the name of their act through the years, “Something Good, Something Sad.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mediography\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://www.el-hai.com/blog/2012/6/6/the-cherry-sisters-good-or-bad.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">The Cherry Sisters: Good or bad?\u003c/a> by Jack El-Hai\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://wfmu.org/LCD/Early/cherry.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Cherry Bomb: The Story of the Awful Cherry Sisters\u003c/a> by Irwin Chusid\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://data.desmoinesregister.com/famous-iowans/cherry-sisters\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Cherry Sisters\u003c/a> \u003cem>Des Moines Register\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Follow me \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/NPRHistoryDept\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">@NPRHistoryDept\u003c/a>; lead me by writing \u003ca href=\"mailto:lweeks@npr.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">lweeks@npr.org\u003c/a>\u003c/strong> \u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2015 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=The+Cherry+Sisters%3A+Worst+Act+Ever%3F&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/div>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>In the early 20th century, the Cherry Sisters — a family of performers from Marion, Iowa — were like a meme.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Simply invoking the name — the Cherry Sisters — was shorthand for anything awful. As Anthony Slide wrote in the \u003cem>Encyclopedia of Vaudeville\u003c/em>, the onstage siblings became “synonymous with any act devoid of talent.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Apparently, they were a cross between early American performance art and age old scapegoatism. Their variety act included original music, bass drum thumping, poetry, mouth harp playing, inspirational recitations, essay reading, fake hypnosis and other artistic expressions. And the audience responded to the whole shebang by hurling vegetables, shouting interjections and behaving rudely.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“People enjoyed tossing tomatoes and whatever at them,” says David Soren, acting curator of the \u003ca href=\"http://speccoll.library.arizona.edu/collections/american-vaudeville-museum-collection\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">American Vaudeville Museum Collection\u003c/a> at the University of Arizona. “The Cherry Sisters were generally regarded as the worst ever.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the Cherry Sisters also signified something else in American comedy history. In the tradition of Tiny Tim, Andy Kaufman and certain other deadpan comics, the questions always hovered around them: Were they sincere? Were they in on the joke? Did they even care what people thought?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Several good researchers,” the 2004 \u003ca href=\"https://books.google.com/books?id=XFnfnKg6BcAC&pg=PA218&dq=%22cherry+sisters%22&hl=en&sa=X&ei=wA2LVbGCA4WaNsu9gYAC&ved=0CDMQ6AEwBA#v=onepage&q=%22cherry%20sisters%22&f=false\">book\u003c/a> \u003cem>Vaudeville Old and New\u003c/em> observes, “have pondered the reasons the Cherry Sisters were willing to put up with the abuse that attended their vaudeville careers. Most observers ranged between two poles of opinion: those who held that the Cherry Sisters knew what they were doing and to some degree were complicit and those who maintain that the sisters were talentless naifs ignorant of how bad they were.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rotten Tomatoes\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Originally, there were five: Addie, Effie, Ella, Lizzie and Jessie. So the story goes — in multiple accounts — they lost their parents early on. In 1893, several of the sisters formed a performance group to finance a trip to the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. One of their first public appearances was at their hometown opera house.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Many chroniclers suggest that the Cherry Sisters mistook the community’s polite support for their debut as validation and victory. But as the story unfolds, it becomes harder and harder to know exactly what motivated and sustained the Cherry Sisters as they appeared night after night to increasingly hostile crowds.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They went to Chicago, where they auditioned for an agent. Seeing the flawed performers in homespun clothes, the agent “must have sensed the potential of novelty,” according to \u003cem>Vaudeville Old and New\u003c/em>. He hired them to tour small Midwestern towns and “along the route, audiences jeered them.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Traveling mostly about Iowa, the Cherry Sisters became the targets of scalding press reviews. The journalistic jabbing, which rivaled some of today’s most caustic comments sections, became part of the strange, interactive audience participation that surrounded the sisters. “They couldn’t sing, speak or act,” the Cedar Rapids \u003cem>Gazette \u003c/em>reported in March of 1893 in one of the earliest critiques. “They were simply awful … At one minute the scene was like the incurable ward in an insane asylum, the next it was like a camp meeting. Cigars, cigarettes, rubbers everything was thrown at them, yet they stood there awkwardly bowing their acknowledgments and singing on.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Soon other towns were clamoring to see just how bad they were. And local reviewers, like crabs in a basket, crawled over one another to write cruel and skewering reviews. The Cherry Sisters were rebuked in Dubuque. The Chicago \u003cem>Daily Tribune\u003c/em> of May 19, 1893, reported that when the women appeared at the Dubuque Grand Opera House, they “were pelted with everything from an onion to a tin boiler and were afterwards badly treated on their way to their hotel.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And they were lambasted in Odebolt. The editor of the local \u003cem>Chronicle\u003c/em> wrote in February of 1898: “Their long skinny arms equipped with talons at the extremities, swung mechanically, and soon were waved frantically at the suffering audience. Their mouths opened like caverns, and sounds like the wailing of damned souls issued therefrom.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This last vicious appraisal was reprinted in the Des Moines \u003cem>Leader \u003c/em>and the Cherry Sisters, who had exhibited litigiousness over the years, sued both newspapers for defamation. In a landmark case, the Iowa Supreme Court eventually \u003ca href=\"http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~iaohms/cherry_lawsuit.html\">ruled in favor\u003c/a> of the newspapers’ right to freely criticize public performances.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In describing the sisters’ act to the court, one of the Cherrys \u003ca href=\"http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~iaohms/cherry_lawsuit.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">testified\u003c/a>: “These entertainments are concerts — literary entertainments. I don’t sing much. The others do. I have recitations and readings; recite and read in costume. In feminine costumes. … Sometimes I have worn men’s clothes. I never dance. I recite essays and events that have happened, I have written up of my own.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Her rambling statements may add credence to the theory that the Cherrys were primitive thespians, without self-awareness.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Unless, of course, the bizarre testimony was all part of the act.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Bright Lights, Mean City\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>National publicity for the Cherry Sisters reached such a fever pitch in the mid-1890s that New York theater mogul Oscar Hammerstein booked them for a well-paying, multiweek vaudeville engagement in 1896 at his Olympia Music Hall.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The \u003cem>New York Times\u003c/em> review was headlined “Four Freaks From Iowa; They Presented a Spectacle More Pitiable than Amusing.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For the Cherry Sisters, this was probably the pinnacle — of recognition and of ridicule.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After taking Manhattan, the Cherrys continued to tour for a few years. Jessie died in 1903 and the Sisters, in various number, performed only intermittently. “None of the sisters married,” according to the \u003cem>Encyclopedia of Vaudeville. \u003c/em>In later years, “Effie was the most active, twice running unsuccessfully for mayor of Cedar Rapids.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The \u003cem>Encyclopedia \u003c/em>cites this 1910 description of the Cherry Sisters — from Robert Grau’s book \u003cem>The Business Man in the Amusement World\u003c/em>: “They were just a quartet of incompetents and they were so indifferent to their reception by the public, that they were in demand for many years at a salary far higher than what would have been accorded them if they had possessed any real ability. There was, though, something approaching cruelty in the spectacle which these poor females presented, night after night, in exhibiting their crudities to howling, insulting audiences.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>The Pendulum And The Pits\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So the question is: Were the Cherry Sisters — in their prime — the worst act ever on the American stage or were they comic geniuses, committed to the bit?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After all, as David Soren points out, there was “a vaudeville tradition of no-talent acts” and people who “were considered just awful and were put on the vaudeville bill last in order to clear out the theater for a fresh and freshly paid audience.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Cherry Sisters, he says, did not think of themselves as a bad act.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’m not sure if the Cherry Sisters started as sincere performers,” M.A. Kibler, author of \u003cem>Rank Ladies: Gender and Cultural Hierarchy in American Vaudeville\u003c/em>, tells NPR, “but I would bet that they quickly learned that being the ‘worst’ was their hook — their novelty. Lots of acts tried to be novel, or exceptional.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As late as 1908, the Sisters were still defending their honor and honesty. In \u003ca href=\"https://archive.org/stream/variety10-1908-04/variety10-1908-04_djvu.txt\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">a letter\u003c/a> to \u003cem>Variety\u003c/em>, in response to one more scathing critique, they wrote: “Although we have the best act in vaudeville and are the best drawing card on the stage, we have no swelled head, as some others have … We have had more knocking since we went into the theatrical business than any act in the history of the world.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Whether the Cherry Sisters were, or were not, the worst act ever, they were American originals. And there was a pathos about them that is undeniable. Night after night of being on the receiving end of rude catcalls and rotten vegetables must have been unnerving. Day after day of picking up the papers and reading the belittling reviews, regardless of any fame and financial gain, must have been defeating.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What an up-and-down roller coaster ride. All the attention; all the humiliation. All the travel; all the travail. All the edginess; all the exhaustion. Withering heights, if you will.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Or, like the name of their act through the years, “Something Good, Something Sad.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mediography\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://www.el-hai.com/blog/2012/6/6/the-cherry-sisters-good-or-bad.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">The Cherry Sisters: Good or bad?\u003c/a> by Jack El-Hai\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://wfmu.org/LCD/Early/cherry.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Cherry Bomb: The Story of the Awful Cherry Sisters\u003c/a> by Irwin Chusid\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://data.desmoinesregister.com/famous-iowans/cherry-sisters\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Cherry Sisters\u003c/a> \u003cem>Des Moines Register\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Follow me \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/NPRHistoryDept\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">@NPRHistoryDept\u003c/a>; lead me by writing \u003ca href=\"mailto:lweeks@npr.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">lweeks@npr.org\u003c/a>\u003c/strong> \u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2015 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=The+Cherry+Sisters%3A+Worst+Act+Ever%3F&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/div>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"slug": "what-happened-to-the-9-year-old-smoking-in-mary-ellen-marks-photo",
"title": "What Happened to the 9-Year-Old Smoking in Mary Ellen Mark's Photo?",
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"headTitle": "What Happened to the 9-Year-Old Smoking in Mary Ellen Mark’s Photo? | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cp>A good photograph can speak volumes about its subjects, yet still leave you wanting to know more.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The acclaimed and prolific American photographer Mary Ellen Mark, who \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2015/05/26/409806219/photographer-mary-ellen-mark-dies-at-75\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">died May 25\u003c/a> at the age of 75, was known for her humanist portraits: \u003ca href=\"http://www.maryellenmark.com/text/magazines/life/905W-000-021.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">homeless children\u003c/a> in Seattle, \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2015/05/30/410521364/mary-ellen-mark-and-the-caged-prostitutes-of-mumbai\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">prostitutes\u003c/a> in India, \u003ca href=\"http://www.maryellenmark.com/text/magazines/life/905W-000-031.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">a family\u003c/a> living out of their car. In 1990, she took one of her most memorable shots, titled, “Amanda and her cousin Amy.” The location is listed as Valdese, N.C.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This photograph raises a lot of questions and leaves me with a slightly uneasy feeling,” says Jeff Jacobson, a New York \u003ca href=\"http://www.jeffjacobsonphotography.com/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">photographer\u003c/a> and a friend of Mark’s. “That, I feel, over and over again is the hallmark of her best work.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In light of Mark’s passing, NPR sought to find out more about the two children in the photograph, particularly Amanda: Why was she smoking and wearing makeup and fake nails at age 9? What does she remember of the photo shoot? And what has happened since that sunny afternoon in 1990?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She now goes by Amanda Marie Ellison — her surname was Minton at the time of the photo. She is 34 years old, lives in Lenoir, N.C., and indeed still remembers the photo.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Never forgotten it. Never in my life have I forgotten it,” she says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ellison says Mark formed a bond with her over multiple photo shoots, but after Mark left, Ellison lost track of the photographer’s name and phone number. For 25 years, she says she searched for the photo to no avail. Then last month, after Mark’s death, her cousin posted the picture to Facebook and tagged Ellison.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I cried. I cried. Because … all at once, there it was,” Ellison says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 1990, Mark had been sent to rural North Carolina by \u003cem>Life \u003c/em>magazine to cover a school for “problem children.” Ellison was one of those children. “She’s my favourite,” Mark \u003ca href=\"http://www.maryellenmark.com/text/magazines/vogue%20england/925M-000-003.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">told British Vogue\u003c/a> in 1993. “She was so bad she was wonderful, she had a really vulgar mouth, she was brilliant.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_10805906\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/401p-003-001-small_slide-ab5f240cc00922afecf6c94c82b64fac5c57c351-1180x787.jpg\" alt=\"Photographer Mary Ellen Mark in New York City in 1987. (Courtesy of Mary Ellen Mark Studio and Library)\" width=\"640\" height=\"427\" class=\"size-large wp-image-10805906\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/401p-003-001-small_slide-ab5f240cc00922afecf6c94c82b64fac5c57c351-1180x787.jpg 1180w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/401p-003-001-small_slide-ab5f240cc00922afecf6c94c82b64fac5c57c351-400x267.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/401p-003-001-small_slide-ab5f240cc00922afecf6c94c82b64fac5c57c351-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/401p-003-001-small_slide-ab5f240cc00922afecf6c94c82b64fac5c57c351-960x640.jpg 960w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Photographer Mary Ellen Mark in New York City in 1987.\u003cbr>(Courtesy of Mary Ellen Mark Studio and Library)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Mark added: “I was something of a problem kid. I was emotional, wild, rebellious at school. I’m very touched by kids who don’t have advantages; they are much more interesting than kids who have everything. They have a lot of passion and emotion, such a strong will.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ellison openly concedes she was a “wild” child, but she says she was just emulating the adults in her life, all of whom by her memory were drug-addicted, residing in a low-income housing complex nicknamed “Sin City.” It was around that time that she began to smoke.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If I couldn’t get [cigarettes], if somebody wouldn’t give them to me, yes, I’d steal a pack of cigarettes and be gone,” she says. “I’d sit in the woods and smoke ’til they were gone.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Two years after the photo, at age 11, Ellison says she was taken into foster care and later lived in group homes. She says she developed an addiction for hard drugs when she was 16.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Amy Minton Velasquez, Ellison’s cousin and the other child in “Amanda and her cousin Amy,” corroborates much of her account.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I mean, I had a rough childhood,” Velasquez says. “But I will say this: that youngin’, she was put through things that would probably make the hair stand on your head if you really knew.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ellison says at age 9 she knew there were deep problems with her childhood; she viewed Mark’s photos as not just a fun diversion but as a possible solution.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When she came along and took those photos, I thought, ‘Well, hey, people will see me and this may get me the attention that I want; it may change things for me,’ ” Ellison says. She thought someone would see the images and come rescue her. “I had thought that that might have been the way out. But it wasn’t.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Jacobson, the New York photographer, says Mark was not the type to give her subjects false impressions. But he says, “In any photographic encounter, the one person that always benefits and always is in a more powerful position and always knows more is the photographer.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>By her own admission, Ellison’s adulthood is still tumultuous. She has served time in prison and says she is still “surrounded by crazy people and drugs.” But she says her life has improved, and she wishes she could talk again with “that photographer lady.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If I had to guess,” Ellison says, “I would say she would be, I don’t know, overwhelmed with joy that I have made it this far.” \u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2015 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=What+Happened+To+The+9-Year-Old+Smoking+In+Mary+Ellen+Mark%27s+Photo%3F&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/div>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>A good photograph can speak volumes about its subjects, yet still leave you wanting to know more.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The acclaimed and prolific American photographer Mary Ellen Mark, who \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2015/05/26/409806219/photographer-mary-ellen-mark-dies-at-75\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">died May 25\u003c/a> at the age of 75, was known for her humanist portraits: \u003ca href=\"http://www.maryellenmark.com/text/magazines/life/905W-000-021.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">homeless children\u003c/a> in Seattle, \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2015/05/30/410521364/mary-ellen-mark-and-the-caged-prostitutes-of-mumbai\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">prostitutes\u003c/a> in India, \u003ca href=\"http://www.maryellenmark.com/text/magazines/life/905W-000-031.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">a family\u003c/a> living out of their car. In 1990, she took one of her most memorable shots, titled, “Amanda and her cousin Amy.” The location is listed as Valdese, N.C.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This photograph raises a lot of questions and leaves me with a slightly uneasy feeling,” says Jeff Jacobson, a New York \u003ca href=\"http://www.jeffjacobsonphotography.com/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">photographer\u003c/a> and a friend of Mark’s. “That, I feel, over and over again is the hallmark of her best work.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In light of Mark’s passing, NPR sought to find out more about the two children in the photograph, particularly Amanda: Why was she smoking and wearing makeup and fake nails at age 9? What does she remember of the photo shoot? And what has happened since that sunny afternoon in 1990?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She now goes by Amanda Marie Ellison — her surname was Minton at the time of the photo. She is 34 years old, lives in Lenoir, N.C., and indeed still remembers the photo.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Never forgotten it. Never in my life have I forgotten it,” she says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ellison says Mark formed a bond with her over multiple photo shoots, but after Mark left, Ellison lost track of the photographer’s name and phone number. For 25 years, she says she searched for the photo to no avail. Then last month, after Mark’s death, her cousin posted the picture to Facebook and tagged Ellison.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I cried. I cried. Because … all at once, there it was,” Ellison says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 1990, Mark had been sent to rural North Carolina by \u003cem>Life \u003c/em>magazine to cover a school for “problem children.” Ellison was one of those children. “She’s my favourite,” Mark \u003ca href=\"http://www.maryellenmark.com/text/magazines/vogue%20england/925M-000-003.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">told British Vogue\u003c/a> in 1993. “She was so bad she was wonderful, she had a really vulgar mouth, she was brilliant.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_10805906\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/401p-003-001-small_slide-ab5f240cc00922afecf6c94c82b64fac5c57c351-1180x787.jpg\" alt=\"Photographer Mary Ellen Mark in New York City in 1987. (Courtesy of Mary Ellen Mark Studio and Library)\" width=\"640\" height=\"427\" class=\"size-large wp-image-10805906\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/401p-003-001-small_slide-ab5f240cc00922afecf6c94c82b64fac5c57c351-1180x787.jpg 1180w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/401p-003-001-small_slide-ab5f240cc00922afecf6c94c82b64fac5c57c351-400x267.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/401p-003-001-small_slide-ab5f240cc00922afecf6c94c82b64fac5c57c351-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/401p-003-001-small_slide-ab5f240cc00922afecf6c94c82b64fac5c57c351-960x640.jpg 960w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Photographer Mary Ellen Mark in New York City in 1987.\u003cbr>(Courtesy of Mary Ellen Mark Studio and Library)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Mark added: “I was something of a problem kid. I was emotional, wild, rebellious at school. I’m very touched by kids who don’t have advantages; they are much more interesting than kids who have everything. They have a lot of passion and emotion, such a strong will.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ellison openly concedes she was a “wild” child, but she says she was just emulating the adults in her life, all of whom by her memory were drug-addicted, residing in a low-income housing complex nicknamed “Sin City.” It was around that time that she began to smoke.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If I couldn’t get [cigarettes], if somebody wouldn’t give them to me, yes, I’d steal a pack of cigarettes and be gone,” she says. “I’d sit in the woods and smoke ’til they were gone.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Two years after the photo, at age 11, Ellison says she was taken into foster care and later lived in group homes. She says she developed an addiction for hard drugs when she was 16.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Amy Minton Velasquez, Ellison’s cousin and the other child in “Amanda and her cousin Amy,” corroborates much of her account.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I mean, I had a rough childhood,” Velasquez says. “But I will say this: that youngin’, she was put through things that would probably make the hair stand on your head if you really knew.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ellison says at age 9 she knew there were deep problems with her childhood; she viewed Mark’s photos as not just a fun diversion but as a possible solution.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When she came along and took those photos, I thought, ‘Well, hey, people will see me and this may get me the attention that I want; it may change things for me,’ ” Ellison says. She thought someone would see the images and come rescue her. “I had thought that that might have been the way out. But it wasn’t.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Jacobson, the New York photographer, says Mark was not the type to give her subjects false impressions. But he says, “In any photographic encounter, the one person that always benefits and always is in a more powerful position and always knows more is the photographer.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>By her own admission, Ellison’s adulthood is still tumultuous. She has served time in prison and says she is still “surrounded by crazy people and drugs.” But she says her life has improved, and she wishes she could talk again with “that photographer lady.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If I had to guess,” Ellison says, “I would say she would be, I don’t know, overwhelmed with joy that I have made it this far.” \u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2015 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=What+Happened+To+The+9-Year-Old+Smoking+In+Mary+Ellen+Mark%27s+Photo%3F&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/div>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>Filmmakers can struggle to prevent their swaggering villain from upstaging their innocuous hero. Writer-director Andrea Di Stefano clearly didn’t worry about that when making \u003cem>Escobar: Paradise Lost\u003c/em>. If he did, he wouldn’t have cast Benicio del Toro as the bad guy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Playing Colombian cocaine baron Pablo Escobar, the charismatic del Toro is the most vivid presence in the movie, which was loosely inspired by actual events. The other two principals are amiable and attractive, but bland. Fortunately for the movie’s watchability, the fictional romance of Nick (Josh Hutcherson) and Maria (Claudia Traisac) exists primarily to bring the former into orbit of the eccentric, lethal Pablo.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CSen29S0DLE\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Disheveled yet commanding, del Toro’s Escobar is a pudgy, overgrown kid with a menagerie of African animals. He relishes playing the indulgent \u003cem>patron\u003c/em>, even if he more resembles a \u003cem>campesino\u003c/em>. Like some American rappers who later invoked him, Pablo has an adolescent fixation with gangsters, including the doomed Bonnie and Clyde.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Nico — that’s what Pablo calls him — is well acquainted with the drug lord when the story begins. It’s 1991, and Escobar is about to surrender to the police, as previously negotiated. All that remains before he enters a luxury prison, designed to his specifications, is to call his mother and kneel so they can share a farewell prayer. Pablo is a devout Catholic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Actually, there’s one more thing to be done: hiding Pablo’s fortune in remote sites around the country. Although not a member of the cocaine gang, Nick is “like a son to me” — engaged to Maria, Pablo’s beloved niece. Perhaps that will protect the young Canadian, who came to Colombia to surf, not peddle drugs and death.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The tale is recounted via a web of flashbacks and flash-forwards, beginning chronologically with Nick’s introduction to Maria. She helps her uncle — a self-styled Robin Hood — open a medical clinic in the coastal town where Nick and his brother Dylan (Brady Corbet) have just established a surfing camp. Soon, Pablo is facilitating the operation, discouraging small-time local thugs from bothering Nick and Dylan. Only later will Nick learn that Pablo’s style is to eliminate mosquitoes with a flame-thrower.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Andrea Di Stefano, an Italian actor who makes his directorial debut with \u003cem>Escobar\u003c/em>, doesn’t give Nick and Maria’s romance much heat, either from lust or conflict. Maria nonchalantly accepts that her uncle traffics in cocaine, which she considers a traditional Colombian crop. She doesn’t know, or want to know, that Pablo is a killer. Nick figures out that part, but is foolishly slow to react. Or maybe it’s that he’s just too sitcom-star nice to give anyone a hard time, even a murderer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Hutcherson, who’s best known for being overshadowed by Jennifer Lawrence in the \u003cem>Hunger Games\u003c/em> series, is equally dominated here. But that suits the unequal relationship of guileless Nick and calculating Pablo. In the movie’s complex centerpiece, Nick struggles to accept a murderous task that Pablo’s assigned him, only to gradually recognize that his mission is more diabolical than his worst imagining.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Impressively staged in the Panama countryside, Nick’s attempt to fulfill his duty with a minimum of carnage is taut and suspenseful. The kid may be naive, but that makes him an compelling audience surrogate. It’s easy to identify with a laidback Canadian who’s asked to do not one but all kinds of things that aren’t mentioned in the Lonely Planet guide to drug-cartel tourism.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Can it all end safely for Nick? Well, maybe, since he’s an invented character. But one omen worth noting is that the real Pablo Escobar died in 1993 of a bullet to the head. \u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2015 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=%27Escobar%3A+Paradise+Lost%27+Finds+Young+Love+Overshadowed+By+Violence&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/div>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Filmmakers can struggle to prevent their swaggering villain from upstaging their innocuous hero. Writer-director Andrea Di Stefano clearly didn’t worry about that when making \u003cem>Escobar: Paradise Lost\u003c/em>. If he did, he wouldn’t have cast Benicio del Toro as the bad guy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Playing Colombian cocaine baron Pablo Escobar, the charismatic del Toro is the most vivid presence in the movie, which was loosely inspired by actual events. The other two principals are amiable and attractive, but bland. Fortunately for the movie’s watchability, the fictional romance of Nick (Josh Hutcherson) and Maria (Claudia Traisac) exists primarily to bring the former into orbit of the eccentric, lethal Pablo.\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/CSen29S0DLE'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/CSen29S0DLE'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>Disheveled yet commanding, del Toro’s Escobar is a pudgy, overgrown kid with a menagerie of African animals. He relishes playing the indulgent \u003cem>patron\u003c/em>, even if he more resembles a \u003cem>campesino\u003c/em>. Like some American rappers who later invoked him, Pablo has an adolescent fixation with gangsters, including the doomed Bonnie and Clyde.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Nico — that’s what Pablo calls him — is well acquainted with the drug lord when the story begins. It’s 1991, and Escobar is about to surrender to the police, as previously negotiated. All that remains before he enters a luxury prison, designed to his specifications, is to call his mother and kneel so they can share a farewell prayer. Pablo is a devout Catholic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cp>Villains are staples of stories for kids. Making them bigger, meaner, madder, more impossible to defeat — that’s how you build the ideas of fear and then, inevitably, of courage. A small person faces a giant, or a witch, or a wolf, or Jafar, or Cruella De Vil, or the Buy ‘N’ Large, and by watching that happen, you learn. You learn what it takes to beat the bad guy. You learn that you, too, can beat the bad guy. You learn not to lose heart and not to give up. You use something inside yourself to beat something outside yourself.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There is no villain in Pixar’s new film \u003cem>Inside Out\u003c/em>. That’s not only because the action takes place inside the mind of 11-year-old Riley. It’s also because even in there, where her Joy, Sadness, Anger, Fear and Disgust stand and argue and sometimes fumble at the controls, there is no villain. 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Things blend, things bend, the world gets weirder.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Riley is, in one sense, fighting a battle we know she will lose: the battle for Joy to rule all things forever. But in another sense, her destination — the moment at which the story is aching to arrive — is balance, even if it’s a kind of balanced chaos.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Admittedly, there’s something very lonely about \u003cem>Inside Out\u003c/em> if you compare its external structure and Riley’s journey through her physical world to traditional kids’ movies. There’s no Donkey from \u003cem>Shrek\u003c/em> or Abu from \u003cem>Aladdin \u003c/em>or Timon and Pumbaa from \u003cem>The Lion King \u003c/em>cheering her up with “Hakuna Matata.” This respect for the role of melancholy in the lives of kids is very Pixar, but it’s particularly acute here: There are no other Incredibles, there is no EVE, there is no Dug the dog. 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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Villains are staples of stories for kids. Making them bigger, meaner, madder, more impossible to defeat — that’s how you build the ideas of fear and then, inevitably, of courage. A small person faces a giant, or a witch, or a wolf, or Jafar, or Cruella De Vil, or the Buy ‘N’ Large, and by watching that happen, you learn. You learn what it takes to beat the bad guy. You learn that you, too, can beat the bad guy. You learn not to lose heart and not to give up. You use something inside yourself to beat something outside yourself.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There is no villain in Pixar’s new film \u003cem>Inside Out\u003c/em>. That’s not only because the action takes place inside the mind of 11-year-old Riley. It’s also because even in there, where her Joy, Sadness, Anger, Fear and Disgust stand and argue and sometimes fumble at the controls, there is no villain. Riley isn’t stalked by any invading monster; there’s no hulking, lumbering beast named Insecurity or Hate or Depression who must later be defeated or vanquished in a climactic battle or persuaded to change its nature. Riley begins with a vibrant spirit humming with varied, vivid life, and her great battle — the battle that must be fought by her Joy and her Sadness but is being fought by Riley always, after all — is simply to master the fact that her assembled life is delicate and complex. Each segment affects the others; each decision and experience rattles the pieces and can imperil the whole.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Within this literally cerebral tale, there are clowns, vacuum hoses, glassy globes, a unicorn, a being that cries candy out of his eyes, and a literal Train Of Thought. But there’s no intruder. Nothing in Riley’s mind is ultimately tagged as not belonging or not wanted, because nothing in her mind can be separated from who she is. She is made up of the same things that cause her sadness, fright and disgust — those little emotions are her and she is them. There’s nothing to defeat; if anything, what Riley is fighting against is the impulse to exile the feelings that embarrass her.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She’s confronted with learning — through the interplay of emotions — how to balance all of the pieces of herself the way she will need to do as she becomes an adult and steps out of the part of her childhood where happiness could reliably be her dominant emotion and other feelings could be treated as temporary, meaningless flashes to be quickly soothed by the right sunny thought or driven off by the right distraction. This is the actual poignancy of adolescence: the arrival of more emotional nuance and more sophisticated understanding is the arrival of more sophisticated pain as well as more meaningful joy. Things blend, things bend, the world gets weirder.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Riley is, in one sense, fighting a battle we know she will lose: the battle for Joy to rule all things forever. But in another sense, her destination — the moment at which the story is aching to arrive — is balance, even if it’s a kind of balanced chaos.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Admittedly, there’s something very lonely about \u003cem>Inside Out\u003c/em> if you compare its external structure and Riley’s journey through her physical world to traditional kids’ movies. There’s no Donkey from \u003cem>Shrek\u003c/em> or Abu from \u003cem>Aladdin \u003c/em>or Timon and Pumbaa from \u003cem>The Lion King \u003c/em>cheering her up with “Hakuna Matata.” This respect for the role of melancholy in the lives of kids is very Pixar, but it’s particularly acute here: There are no other Incredibles, there is no EVE, there is no Dug the dog. Riley’s allies and boosters in this adventure are not made or met along the way; they are summoned. They are \u003cem>hers —\u003c/em> in fact, they are her. Her mom and dad love her, and she needs them, and they can help and they must help. But if you’ve ever known a kid this age, you know that sometimes, trying to help is like trying to grab onto a wet eel. They have to do some of the work themselves, and it’s often the beginning of work they’ll do imperfectly but tirelessly all their lives.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And honestly, some of what Riley is experiencing \u003cem>is \u003c/em>lonely. Isolation is, for so many kids, a fundamental part of the rhythm of those years. At that age — at any age — there are times when it’s just you and your little cartoon feelings, figuring stuff out. It’s one of the reasons kids keep diaries: They turn into tumbling dialogues, whether you’d identify them as such or not, between your Anger and your Fear or your Joy and your Sadness.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But there’s also a sense at the core of the movie that the fights you fight on the inside are integral to the relationships with other people you’re going to have on the outside. Riley is feeling a kind of frightening centripetal force that makes her afraid she’ll fly apart, so she turns and pushes inward. Inward, to where she has to go on her own journey in her own company, the better to turn back again toward her parents and her friends.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The structural decision to do without a villain, and ultimately to do without one of the easiest elements to make entertaining and marketable, means that the process Riley is undergoing — adolescence — is visualized as … normal. Her mind is not a space that’s been invaded by something that must be driven out, but a new environment to be mastered. And if other kids’ stories are there to teach kids how to be brave when they see witches and giants, \u003cem>Inside Out \u003c/em>is there, maybe, to teach them how to be brave when there’s no witch and no giant, but things can feel broken anyway. \u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2015 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=Why+The+Key+Character+In+%27Inside+Out%27+Is+The+One+Who+Isn%27t+There&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/div>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>A movie about high school students dealing with mortality — haven’t we been dipping into that well a lot lately? So the surprise was the laughs when \u003cem>Me and Earl and The Dying Girl\u003c/em> became the surprise smash at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, taking both the Audience Award and the Grand Jury Prize. Here was a film that managed to be at once earnest and flip, capturing teen angst without wallowing in teen drama.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The opening shots introduce us to Greg (Thomas Mann), a dweeby high school senior who’s perfected the wisecrack as a substitute for social interaction. A member of no clique, he’s on friendly terms with everyone from jocks to goths to geeks because he only half-engages, zooming down a hall, hearing a snatch of conversation like, say, “your test was today?” and offering a bit of snark — “ugh, tests, been there” — without breaking stride.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2qfmAllbYC8\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>His one close buddy, Earl (RJ Cyler), he’s known forever. They bonded as kids while watching Greg’s dad’s film collection, and then coming up with punny titles for movie parodies — \u003cem>A Sockwork Orange\u003c/em>, \u003cem>Senior-Citizen Kane\u003c/em> — they make with household detritus and toys.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But being jokey and making videos does not prepare Greg for news his mother gives him about a classmate with leukemia — Rachel (Olivia Cooke), who’d been talking tests in that school hallway. Greg cringes when he realizes what tests she meant.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Worse, his mom insists that he go and spend time with Rachel, though he barely knows her — and social grace is, let’s say, not his strong suit. Rachel lets him hang out, and soon they’re bonding, somewhat. The moviemaker in Greg senses that that’s cool even as the highschooler in him senses that it’s emotionally treacherous.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Partly to protect himself from too much closeness, and too much pain if Rachel’s illness progresses, he brings Earl into their world, and ends up opening himself up more than he intended when Earl mentions their movies, outing him, as it were, as a creative soul in high school.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Director Alfonso Gomez-Rejon — working from a screenplay Jesse Andrews based on his own novel, which was in turn, somewhat autobiographical — has a sure sense of the sort of kid who would use a camera lens as a shield. He also has an engaging way of using camera tricks — weird angles, voice-overs, animation — to get at the hormone-addled inanity that is teenagerdom.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Nowhere more so, perhaps, than when the boys are working on their movies — making their \u003cem>Apocalypse Now\u003c/em> parody, say: \u003cem>A Box-of-Tulips, Wow\u003c/em> with toy soldiers parachuting into a vacant-lot jungle to rescue a box of origami tulips. In their no-budget-goofball way, these minifilma are genius. Sheer genius. This kid, you figure, is gonna grow up to be quite a storyteller. And in a sense, he did.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>A movie about high school students dealing with mortality — haven’t we been dipping into that well a lot lately? So the surprise was the laughs when \u003cem>Me and Earl and The Dying Girl\u003c/em> became the surprise smash at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, taking both the Audience Award and the Grand Jury Prize. Here was a film that managed to be at once earnest and flip, capturing teen angst without wallowing in teen drama.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The opening shots introduce us to Greg (Thomas Mann), a dweeby high school senior who’s perfected the wisecrack as a substitute for social interaction. A member of no clique, he’s on friendly terms with everyone from jocks to goths to geeks because he only half-engages, zooming down a hall, hearing a snatch of conversation like, say, “your test was today?” and offering a bit of snark — “ugh, tests, been there” — without breaking stride.\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/2qfmAllbYC8'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/2qfmAllbYC8'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>His one close buddy, Earl (RJ Cyler), he’s known forever. They bonded as kids while watching Greg’s dad’s film collection, and then coming up with punny titles for movie parodies — \u003cem>A Sockwork Orange\u003c/em>, \u003cem>Senior-Citizen Kane\u003c/em> — they make with household detritus and toys.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But being jokey and making videos does not prepare Greg for news his mother gives him about a classmate with leukemia — Rachel (Olivia Cooke), who’d been talking tests in that school hallway. Greg cringes when he realizes what tests she meant.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cp>HBO’s \u003cem>Silicon Valley \u003c/em>ends its second season Sunday night with a finale I have seen and will warn you is \u003cem>so tense \u003c/em>that I actually skipped forward a little bit at one point. That’s how suspenseful I found it. And remember: it’s a comedy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Created by Mike Judge, John Altschuler and Dave Krinsky, the show follows a startup called Pied Piper, run by monumentally hapless founder Richard Hendricks (Thomas Middleditch). Richard is a basically kind, loyal, anxious, twitchy dude who is very good at compression algorithms and very bad at taking deep breaths at any time. He operates out of an incubator owned by Ehrlich Bachman (T.J. Miller), a strangely charismatic complete idiot who fancies himself a kingmaker. (Okay, not a complete idiot. But mostly an idiot.) Richard also employs programmers Gilfoyle (a perpetually seething Martin Starr) and Dinesh (a perpetually mellow but quizzical Kumail Nanjiani) and CFO Jared (Zach Woods). The team works alongside Monica (Amanda Crews), a representative of the venture capital firm that’s got a huge investment in Pied Piper.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The blessing and the curse of \u003cem>Silicon Valley\u003c/em> is that it’s set in a very specific universe. You will hear a lot about incubators, investors, buyouts, network security, coding, conferences, a giant company called Hooli (essentially this universe’s Google), various versions of software launching — and keep in mind that Richard’s company is in the business of file compression. He started out wanting to make a music app, but now all these people are deeply engaged in perhaps the unsexiest thing they could possibly do with themselves: making files smaller for the purposes of transmission. You might as well be employed full-time packing people’s suitcases tighter.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Of course, file compression is \u003cem>critical\u003c/em> to the functioning of companies like Goo — sorry, Hooli, and that’s why there’s so much money in it. That’s why Hooli founder Gavin Belson (played with waxen flair by Matt Ross) has done countless unscrupulous things trying to get control of Pied Piper or, if he can’t do that, destroy it. It is nevertheless a \u003cem>really really boring \u003c/em>business around which to structure a show if you’re not going to explain how good you have to be to do it well. Without that technical knowledge on the part of the audience, it’s like making a sitcom about a sports team, but the sport is competitively folding pieces of paper into thirds.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the surprise of the show’s second season, which has been stronger than its first was, has increasingly been that in addition to being reliably funny, it somehow feels \u003cem>familiar \u003c/em>as a workplace show, despite being so much a creature of its bro-intensive world in which practically nobody ever goes outside for any purpose other than a meeting he’s dreading and the stakes arise from a business with a purpose as superficially mundane as you can imagine. (It’s no radio station or bar or White House, setting-wise.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Sisyphean nature of Richard’s quest is central: his effort to maintain control of Pied Piper and keep it from dying is threatened by everything from machinations and legal maneuvering by billionaires at the most sophisticated levels to somebody accidentally leaving an object wedged against a keyboard’s “Delete” key. And, of course, he is often his own worst enemy, not for the reasons he anticipates (ineptitude, sabotage) but for the ones he doesn’t (outsmarting himself, primarily). He wants to be as successful as Gavin Belson and, if he’s honest, he probably wants to be as rich as Gavin Belson, but he doesn’t want to \u003cem>be \u003c/em>Gavin Belson. The entire animating question of the show is \u003cem>Can it be different?\u003c/em> And, really, \u003cem>Can I make it different?\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s Richard’s underlying struggle — not against Hooli, and not against Belson, but against despair. It’s a struggle against giving up and just being the same kind of rich, powerful, unscrupulous garbage person he feels like everybody else is, because he’s probably got the chops for it if he wanted to go that route, and it sometimes feels like \u003cem>not \u003c/em>going that route makes him an eternal punching bag for everyone who does.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The battle is not really for Pied Piper; it’s for these guys’ souls, because they’re all up against it in different ways: Richard is a weary idealist with way too much power for his level of management experience, Gilfoyle purports to hate everyone because he doesn’t trust anyone, Dinesh is a very sweet person who needs absolutely everything except programming to be handled by somebody else (and is therefore chum for sharks), and Jared is \u003cem>literally \u003c/em>the most earnest character on television and is therefore the pariah, because even in a house full of socially awkward people, somebody’s always at the bottom, wanting to be liked.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And, of course, surrounding all of this is some profoundly silly comedy, this season including an egg-in-the-nest cam, a critical Post-It, an app called Bro, an energy drink, and a lot of other stuff.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So here, on a show full of guys whose priorities don’t resonate with me at all, I find myself deeply invested in this question of whether they will beat … not really Gavin Belson, but \u003cem>hopelessness\u003c/em>. In a strange way, they really are dreamers, even if a big part of the dream is money. \u003cem>Silicon Valley \u003c/em>engages — around a lot of really good and often very silly comedy — with the question of whether tech guys are, as they’re so often positioned, our new visionaries, or our new robber barons, or both. \u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2015 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=How+%27Silicon+Valley%27+Tells+Broad+Truths+From+An+Insular+World&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/div>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>HBO’s \u003cem>Silicon Valley \u003c/em>ends its second season Sunday night with a finale I have seen and will warn you is \u003cem>so tense \u003c/em>that I actually skipped forward a little bit at one point. That’s how suspenseful I found it. And remember: it’s a comedy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Created by Mike Judge, John Altschuler and Dave Krinsky, the show follows a startup called Pied Piper, run by monumentally hapless founder Richard Hendricks (Thomas Middleditch). Richard is a basically kind, loyal, anxious, twitchy dude who is very good at compression algorithms and very bad at taking deep breaths at any time. He operates out of an incubator owned by Ehrlich Bachman (T.J. Miller), a strangely charismatic complete idiot who fancies himself a kingmaker. (Okay, not a complete idiot. But mostly an idiot.) Richard also employs programmers Gilfoyle (a perpetually seething Martin Starr) and Dinesh (a perpetually mellow but quizzical Kumail Nanjiani) and CFO Jared (Zach Woods). The team works alongside Monica (Amanda Crews), a representative of the venture capital firm that’s got a huge investment in Pied Piper.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The blessing and the curse of \u003cem>Silicon Valley\u003c/em> is that it’s set in a very specific universe. You will hear a lot about incubators, investors, buyouts, network security, coding, conferences, a giant company called Hooli (essentially this universe’s Google), various versions of software launching — and keep in mind that Richard’s company is in the business of file compression. He started out wanting to make a music app, but now all these people are deeply engaged in perhaps the unsexiest thing they could possibly do with themselves: making files smaller for the purposes of transmission. You might as well be employed full-time packing people’s suitcases tighter.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Of course, file compression is \u003cem>critical\u003c/em> to the functioning of companies like Goo — sorry, Hooli, and that’s why there’s so much money in it. That’s why Hooli founder Gavin Belson (played with waxen flair by Matt Ross) has done countless unscrupulous things trying to get control of Pied Piper or, if he can’t do that, destroy it. It is nevertheless a \u003cem>really really boring \u003c/em>business around which to structure a show if you’re not going to explain how good you have to be to do it well. Without that technical knowledge on the part of the audience, it’s like making a sitcom about a sports team, but the sport is competitively folding pieces of paper into thirds.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the surprise of the show’s second season, which has been stronger than its first was, has increasingly been that in addition to being reliably funny, it somehow feels \u003cem>familiar \u003c/em>as a workplace show, despite being so much a creature of its bro-intensive world in which practically nobody ever goes outside for any purpose other than a meeting he’s dreading and the stakes arise from a business with a purpose as superficially mundane as you can imagine. (It’s no radio station or bar or White House, setting-wise.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Sisyphean nature of Richard’s quest is central: his effort to maintain control of Pied Piper and keep it from dying is threatened by everything from machinations and legal maneuvering by billionaires at the most sophisticated levels to somebody accidentally leaving an object wedged against a keyboard’s “Delete” key. And, of course, he is often his own worst enemy, not for the reasons he anticipates (ineptitude, sabotage) but for the ones he doesn’t (outsmarting himself, primarily). He wants to be as successful as Gavin Belson and, if he’s honest, he probably wants to be as rich as Gavin Belson, but he doesn’t want to \u003cem>be \u003c/em>Gavin Belson. The entire animating question of the show is \u003cem>Can it be different?\u003c/em> And, really, \u003cem>Can I make it different?\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s Richard’s underlying struggle — not against Hooli, and not against Belson, but against despair. It’s a struggle against giving up and just being the same kind of rich, powerful, unscrupulous garbage person he feels like everybody else is, because he’s probably got the chops for it if he wanted to go that route, and it sometimes feels like \u003cem>not \u003c/em>going that route makes him an eternal punching bag for everyone who does.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The battle is not really for Pied Piper; it’s for these guys’ souls, because they’re all up against it in different ways: Richard is a weary idealist with way too much power for his level of management experience, Gilfoyle purports to hate everyone because he doesn’t trust anyone, Dinesh is a very sweet person who needs absolutely everything except programming to be handled by somebody else (and is therefore chum for sharks), and Jared is \u003cem>literally \u003c/em>the most earnest character on television and is therefore the pariah, because even in a house full of socially awkward people, somebody’s always at the bottom, wanting to be liked.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And, of course, surrounding all of this is some profoundly silly comedy, this season including an egg-in-the-nest cam, a critical Post-It, an app called Bro, an energy drink, and a lot of other stuff.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So here, on a show full of guys whose priorities don’t resonate with me at all, I find myself deeply invested in this question of whether they will beat … not really Gavin Belson, but \u003cem>hopelessness\u003c/em>. In a strange way, they really are dreamers, even if a big part of the dream is money. \u003cem>Silicon Valley \u003c/em>engages — around a lot of really good and often very silly comedy — with the question of whether tech guys are, as they’re so often positioned, our new visionaries, or our new robber barons, or both. \u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2015 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=How+%27Silicon+Valley%27+Tells+Broad+Truths+From+An+Insular+World&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/div>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"info": "What kind of no sabo word is Hyphenación? For us, it’s about living within a hyphenation. Like being a third-gen Mexican-American from the Texas border now living that Bay Area Chicano life. Like Xorje! Each week we bring together a couple of hyphenated Latinos to talk all about personal life choices: family, careers, relationships, belonging … everything is on the table. ",
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"info": "The Political Mind of Jerry Brown brings listeners the wisdom of the former Governor, Mayor, and presidential candidate. Scott Shafer interviewed Brown for more than 40 hours, covering the former governor's life and half-century in the political game – and Brown has some lessons he'd like to share. ",
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"marketplace": {
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"info": "Our flagship program, helmed by Kai Ryssdal, examines what the day in money delivered, through stories, conversations, newsworthy numbers and more. Updated Monday through Friday at about 3:30 p.m. PT.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 4pm-4:30pm, MON-WED 6:30pm-7pm",
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"masters-of-scale": {
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},
"mindshift": {
"id": "mindshift",
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"info": "The MindShift podcast explores the innovations in education that are shaping how kids learn. Hosts Ki Sung and Katrina Schwartz introduce listeners to educators, researchers, parents and students who are developing effective ways to improve how kids learn. We cover topics like how fed-up administrators are developing surprising tactics to deal with classroom disruptions; how listening to podcasts are helping kids develop reading skills; the consequences of overparenting; and why interdisciplinary learning can engage students on all ends of the traditional achievement spectrum. This podcast is part of the MindShift education site, a division of KQED News. KQED is an NPR/PBS member station based in San Francisco. You can also visit the MindShift website for episodes and supplemental blog posts or tweet us \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/MindShiftKQED\">@MindShiftKQED\u003c/a> or visit us at \u003ca href=\"/mindshift\">MindShift.KQED.org\u003c/a>",
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"order": 12
},
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vS1FJTkM1NzY0NjAwNDI5",
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"morning-edition": {
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"info": "\u003cem>Morning Edition\u003c/em> takes listeners around the country and the world with multi-faceted stories and commentaries every weekday. Hosts Steve Inskeep, David Greene and Rachel Martin bring you the latest breaking news and features to prepare you for the day.",
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"onourwatch": {
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"title": "On Our Watch",
"tagline": "Deeply-reported investigative journalism",
"info": "For decades, the process for how police police themselves has been inconsistent – if not opaque. In some states, like California, these proceedings were completely hidden. After a new police transparency law unsealed scores of internal affairs files, our reporters set out to examine these cases and the shadow world of police discipline. On Our Watch brings listeners into the rooms where officers are questioned and witnesses are interrogated to find out who this system is really protecting. Is it the officers, or the public they've sworn to serve?",
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"order": 11
},
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"on-the-media": {
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"title": "On The Media",
"info": "Our weekly podcast explores how the media 'sausage' is made, casts an incisive eye on fluctuations in the marketplace of ideas, and examines threats to the freedom of information and expression in America and abroad. For one hour a week, the show tries to lift the veil from the process of \"making media,\" especially news media, because it's through that lens that we see the world and the world sees us",
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},
"link": "/radio/program/on-the-media",
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},
"pbs-newshour": {
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"tuneIn": "https://tunein.com/radio/PBS-NewsHour---Full-Show-p425698/",
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},
"perspectives": {
"id": "perspectives",
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"order": 14
},
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"planet-money": {
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"info": "The economy explained. Imagine you could call up a friend and say, Meet me at the bar and tell me what's going on with the economy. Now imagine that's actually a fun evening.",
"airtime": "SUN 3pm-4pm",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/radio/wp-content/uploads/sites/50/2018/04/planetmoney.jpg",
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},
"link": "/radio/program/planet-money",
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/planet-money/id290783428?mt=2",
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},
"politicalbreakdown": {
"id": "politicalbreakdown",
"title": "Political Breakdown",
"tagline": "Politics from a personal perspective",
"info": "Political Breakdown is a new series that explores the political intersection of California and the nation. Each week hosts Scott Shafer and Marisa Lagos are joined with a new special guest to unpack politics -- with personality — and offer an insider’s glimpse at how politics happens.",
"airtime": "THU 6:30pm-7pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Political-Breakdown-2024-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
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"order": 5
},
"link": "/podcasts/politicalbreakdown",
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"amazon": "https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/e0c2d153-ad36-4c8d-901d-f1da6a724824/political-breakdown",
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"possible": {
"id": "possible",
"title": "Possible",
"info": "Possible is hosted by entrepreneur Reid Hoffman and writer Aria Finger. Together in Possible, Hoffman and Finger lead enlightening discussions about building a brighter collective future. The show features interviews with visionary guests like Trevor Noah, Sam Altman and Janette Sadik-Khan. Possible paints an optimistic portrait of the world we can create through science, policy, business, art and our shared humanity. It asks: What if everything goes right for once? How can we get there? Each episode also includes a short fiction story generated by advanced AI GPT-4, serving as a thought-provoking springboard to speculate how humanity could leverage technology for good.",
"airtime": "SUN 2pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Possible-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.possible.fm/",
"meta": {
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"source": "Possible"
},
"link": "/radio/program/possible",
"subscribe": {
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"spotify": "https://open.spotify.com/show/730YpdUSNlMyPQwNnyjp4k"
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},
"pri-the-world": {
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