In the same way nature’s counterpart forewarns of dreariness and thunderous disruption, indie musician Kinji’s newest EP Thunderhead starts as the calm before the storm, only to break open, laid bare to the elements, oozing out luscious, melancholic aural landscapes.
Arts & Entertainment
Posted inBook Reviews
Book Review: ‘Groceries’ by Nora Claire Miller
Groceries by Nora Claire Miller spills into the hybrid terrain to challenge expectations of mixed-genre. It opens a narrative sentence and bulldozes parts of speech to reach its own truest conclusion. It forces its audience to re-learn how to read.
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Book Review: ‘Burnt Mountain’ by Emily Wilson
The most prominent, consistent feature of these poems are the heady — even baroque, indulgent — descriptions of the natural world. (I wrote “descriptive” three separate times in my notes.) In “Heath Obscure” Wilson writes of “sumptuary / crumble underfoot” and “the meanly / spangled mollusk grays.” In another poem, “Attention,” Wilson describes “the butte […]
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Worth a Rewatch: A Black American filmmaker shook up the French New Wave with 1967’s ‘The Story of a Three-Day Pass’
The Story of a Three-Day Pass was awarded the critics’ choice award at the 1967 San Francisco International Film Festival, and all of a sudden Melvin Van Peebles found himself in a position that was almost unbelievable. He was a Hollywood darling. A decade before, when Van Peebles went looking for a job in Hollywood, […]
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This weekend in Iowa: Joseph at the Englert, Jamelle Bouie at Grinnell and more
Established 2001 | Always free! If we had time, today’s Weekender would graph the high number of events against the extreme lows forecast for our reader regions. We would, but we’re too busy finalizing our own pair of events celebrating the kick off to our 25th year in print, happening this Saturday. Come join us […]
Posted inAlbum Reviews
Album Review: Strange News — ‘Liar’s Curse’
Liar's Curse by Strange News It is reasonable in an increasingly unreasonable world to crave nostalgia. As AI and surveillance technologies continue to invade our lives and each day’s news cycle is more absurd than the last, sometimes you have to sit back and pretend it’s 1974, when tech billionaires were mere fantasy and people […]
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Worth a Rewatch: ‘The Thing’ finds normal people resisting a violent invasion of their snowy home
There’s nothing like beginning the year at the end of the world. As Iowa City’s FilmScene prepares for its yearly showing with two screenings, how does John Carpenter’s cult classic, a film infamously received as off-putting during the Reagan era, land on our laps as we face our own rising tide of conservatism and real-world violence? […]
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Book Review: ‘Midwest Futures: Poems & Micro-Stories From Tomorrow’s Heartland’ edited by Randy Brown
Midwest Futures (Middle West Press) is a short, albeit stout collection of poems, short essays and stories that encapsulate the Midwest across time and various corners of our region. The collection ranges from science fiction to fantasy, horror (specifically the “sporror” sub-genre — that is, spore horror) and much more. This collection ultimately left me […]
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This weekend in Iowa: Rebirth Brass Band at the Englert, XOLEX at xBk and more
Established 2001 | Always free! It’s the weekend before “Blue Monday,” the third Monday in January, known as the saddest day of the year. Fight off that looming sense of ennui with the events in today’s Weekender. The award for most on-brand show name goes to Iowa Metal Underground’s Cold Shock 2, which takes place […]
Posted inBook Reviews
Book Review: ‘13 Notes from Napoleon, Iowa: Musings on the Edge of the French Empire’ by Anna Barker
For several years, University of Iowa literature professor Anna Barker has produced a steady blizzard of commentary on classic French literature: Hugo, Stendahl, Dumas, Balzac. In her debut book, 13 Notes from Napoleon, Iowa: Musings of the Edge of the French Empire (Ice Cube Press), Barker follows the trail of arguably the most important individual […]
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With the help of some household objects, ‘Coop’ captures the dark, true story of an Amish conscientious objector from Iowa during WWII
Iowa City playwright Mary Swander’s most recent play began with a chance find at a local store. “Years ago, I took a walk down the road one day from my place, an old Amish one-room schoolhouse, to the country store,” Swander recounts on her Substack. “There, they have a rack of literature … My eyes […]
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Funny page mainstay The Family Circus made its very first appearance in the Des Moines Register — under a different name
Almost everything on the Monday, Feb. 29, 1960 front page of the Des Moines Register made for grim reading: Southern senators plotting to kill a civil rights bill. An armed robbery on School Street. Iowans weary of winter cold. But sandwiched between stories about a brewing Middle East border war and President Eisenhower’s state visit […]
