Midwest thrillers are few and far between, but every time one crops up it scratches a special itch in my heart. There is something rich and powerful at having scenes from your childhood play out with hints of something absolutely foreign. Mindy Mejia is helping build the Midwest mystery genre with the third installment of her “Iowa Mysteries” series…
Arts & Entertainment
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Review: Sharon Van Etten confirms she’s a witch leaning towards the light at Iowa City’s Infinite Dream fest
Sharon Van Etten wants to look into your eyes.
I know because she looked in mine when she came to Iowa City to play the first show of her US tour earlier this month. Before she took the stage at the Infinite Dream Festival with her band The Attachment Theory, she joined Nightbitch author Rachel Yoder in conversation at the Old Capitol.
Posted inAlbum Reviews
Album Review: Fungal Mass — ‘Psychedelic Poison’
“Fungal Mass,” the first track off Psychedelic Poison and named after the band itself, acts as something of a manifesto. Along with the use of second-person throughout the song, the lyrics further welcome the listener to continue their aural adventure with the group, who describe themselves as “an American Thrash Metal band originating from the small town of Wilton, Iowa.”
Posted inCommunity/News
Des Moines’ new indie bookstores want to help Latino, LGBTQ readers ‘see themselves on the shelf’
Like a book, an independent bookstore can be a spiritual oasis in a chaotic world. It probably says something about our world, then, that three indie bookstores sprouted up in central Iowa over the past 18 months. From pushing back against book bans and COVID-era malaise to capitalizing on online reading trends, Shelf Love DSM, […]
Posted inArts & Entertainment
This weekend in Iowa: Panda Bear in Des Moines, experimental Indiana hip-hop group 81355 in Davenport and more
Established 2001 | Always free! We’re back with another Weekender of events throughout our reader regions. We know where one music super-fan will be this weekend. Jim Reiners, who attended close to 100 concerts last year, will be at the Englert to see A.J. Croce Thursday. Over in Cedar Falls, the third Lost Woods Festival hosts […]
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Fully Booked at DMPL: Tantalizing Time-Benders
The prequel to the TV show Outlander, Outlander: Blood of My Blood, premiered recently, so I must talk about time slip novels. In these novels, the characters accidentally stumble through time, without any knowledge of how they got there. Alone and desperate, they must navigate a world unknown. Will they find love? Will they meet […]
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Fully Booked at ICPL: Into the DC Comics-verse
James Gunn’s Superman, released in theaters this summer, reignited my interest in the DC universe. So I checked out what’s been going on in the comics. Anyone who’s familiar with comics knows that the stories go in cycles. There’s typically a big crossover event that features a bevy of characters, and then a “reset” that’s […]
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Book Review: ‘Dear Marty, We Crapped In Our Nest’ by Art Cullen
Being an Iowan has been difficult for those of us who love our home and are horrified by its policies. Art Cullen, in his new book Dear Marty, We Crapped In Our Nest (Ice Cube Press), lays bare the complicated web of events that made it this way…
Posted inAlbum Reviews
Album Review: Rahlan Kay — ‘An Ode 2 Hip Hop: The Boom Bap Letters’
Rahlan Kay’s An Ode 2 Hip Hop: The Boom Bap Letters plays like grown folks’ music. It’s mature, grounded and built on experience. Across the project, Kay shares wisdom and encouragement in a way that’s direct and easy to take in.
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Review: ‘Cello goblin’ Rushadicus and Iowa City’s Weapon X brought an electric circus to the Close House
The music that is popular, the artists that are famous and the commercial music industry that promotes them, exists in a completely different world from the music Public Space One presents.
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Five questions with Salt Fox’s Andy Fuchtman on the Lost Woods Music Festival, a party turned nonprofit in Cedar Falls
The Lost Woods Music Festival returns to the Cedar Falls area for its third iteration on Saturday. What started as a party in the woods in 2023 has… kept on being a party in the woods, actually. Salt Fox, the band behind the fest, have resisted the scope creep that plagues so many other festival […]
Posted inArts & Entertainment
‘Clarence Darrow’, a play about the storied American lawyer, is coming to five Iowa cities in October
“History repeats itself — that’s one of the things wrong with history,” Clarence Darrow once said. Darrow, who died in 1938 at age 80, understood history, or at least how to make it. The most famous trial lawyer of his era, he mounted eloquent and ingenious defenses for the accused in some of the biggest […]
