What we’ll be listening to, watching, and reading to sate our pop culture needs.
This article was made possible because of the generous support of DAME members. We urgently need your help to keep publishing. Will you contribute just $5 a month to support our journalism?
We’ll be embracing Nostalgia with new albums from Annie Lennox and Sleater-Kinney, taking our inner slacker to the movies, indulging our book-loving inner child, and saying good-bye to our favorite natty gangsters.
It’s been a dizzying week for Sleater-Kinney fans. Not only did the Pacific Northwestern trio announce they’d be releasing a new album and going on tour after a near-decade hiatus, but they also released Start Together, a vinyl box set featuring all seven of their albums plus a hardcover book—more snarling, angsty riot grrrl rock than most people know what to do with. We, however, can’t get enough.
In Laggies, Keira Knightley plays a drifting 28-year-old whose boyfriend’s proposal propels her into a quarter-life crisis. After running, quite literally, from her commitment-ready relationship she meets Chloe Grace Moretz’s Annika, a 16-year-old whose parents’ somewhat recent divorce has left her feeling similarly unmoored. It’s a female buddy movie–meets–a contemporary twist on The Graduate, according to director Lynn Shelton, and the fact that Sam Rockwell plays Annika’s single dad is icing on the cinematic cake.
We haven’t seen our favorite googly-eyed, sneakered shell, created and voiced by comedian Jenny Slate, since 2011, but this week Marcel was back with not only a new video, but a new book too. Sure Marcel the Shell: The Most Surprised I’ve Ever Been may be geared toward kids. But anyone with a penchant for tiny protagonists, adorable hijinks, and surprisingly touching story lines will appreciate this new installment of Slate’s crustacean creation.
After five seasons following Prohibition’s rise of organized crime, this Sunday Steve Buscemi’s “Nucky” Thompson will be playing his last hand, bringing to a close a role he’s obviously relished. With a Mad Men–esque attention to detail, Boardwalk Empire brought to life Nucky’s rule over Atlantic City life in the ’20s and ’30s, and it’s violence spared no one (RIP Sally Wheet!). No one but Nucky that is. Who will take the final bullet?
As one half of the Eurythmics Annie Lennox stole our early-’80s hearts, with her buzzed shock of orange hair and next-level androgyny. And thanks to her solo career after the synth-heavy duo split, she never gave them back. Now with Nostalgia, Lennox takes on the Great American Songbook, with her exquisite covers of “God Bless This Child,” “Georgia on My Mind,” and “You Belong to Me.”