The Master's Sputum: Unfinished Nabokov Novel Now Open to Examination
In 1962, prodded by an interviewer to share a glimpse of a first draft, novelist Vladimir Nabokov replied, “Only ambitious non-entities and hearty mediocrities exhibit their rough drafts. It is like passing around samples of one’s sputum.” Now, more than 30 years after his death, we have an opportunity—against Nabokov’s expressed wishes—to examine such a sample.... read more
Catching Up With... David Rawlings
Although the records are released under Gillian Welch’s name, she and David Rawlings are essentially... read more
Ears We Trust: Robert Earl Keen
In this long-running feature, music-industry tastemakers tell us what they’re listening to and loving. Today’s columnist: Texas singer/songwriter Robert Earl Keen.... read more
Salute Your Shorts: The Golden Age of Television
Salute Your Shorts is a weekly column that looks at short films, music videos, commercials or any other short form visual media that generally gets ignored.The title of the Criterion Collection’s The Golden Age of Television can seem like quite a misnomer. For my money, the greatest age for television is right now, and to anyone who’d dispute this, I’d just send a link to Paste's list of the top 20 shows of the decade. We could’ve easily continued the list to 50 without breaking a sweat. Hell, if you include some more idiosyncratic favorites, there are more than 100 shows... read more
Best of What's Next: Mayer Hawthorne
For Andrew Mayer Cohen, the Motown-influenced tunes were just musical doodles... read more
Go Your Own Way: Norah Jones and The Swell Season Recover From Broken Hearts
Is The Fall a breakup record? “I think in a lot of ways it is, and in a lot of ways it isn’t,” says Norah Jones of the follow-up to 2007’s Not Too Late. Her split that year with longtime boyfriend Lee Alexander made the gossip pages, despite her silence on the subject. She has no intention of sharing her thoughts on the matter today, either, though she’s generous with the fries accompanying her hefty veggie burger at the East Village restaurant where we’ve met. “Will you have some?” she asks. “I won’t eat them all.”... read more
Best of What's Next: fun.
Hometown: New York Album: Aim and Ignite Members: Andrew Dost (keyboards, guitar, vocals), Nate Ruess (vocals), Jack Antonoff (guitar, vocals) For Fans Of: Ben Folds, Queen, The Format Last year, following the dissolution of his first band, ex-Format frontman Nate Ruess made a pilgrimage idealized by young Americans long before Sinatra’s famed salute: Having overstayed his welcome in his Arizona hometown, the songwriter moved to New York to start a new life. “There’s a big difference between comfort and what you’re destined to do,” Ruess says. “I needed a change in every aspect of my life.”... read more
Best of What's Next: Pomegranates
Pomegranates' Everybody, Come Outside! might be the most fitting album title of the year... read more
New Orleans Gets Wired: David Simon Turns His Sights on the Big Easy
On a late spring day in the early 1990s, a Baltimore Sun reporter named David Simon wandered into the now-defunct Funky Butt jazz club on North Rampart Street in New Orleans, where Bo Dollis & the Wild Magnolias were burning through a scorching set of percussive funk. “From the outside, it was like some kind of Tex Avery cartoon,” Simon says, “where the house is dancing and the window shutters are popping out to the beat.”... read more
High Definition: AMC's The Prisoner Escapes From the Ordinary
AMC doesn’t do a tremendous amount of original programming, but when it does, it does it well. After two critically acclaimed series, Mad Men and Breaking Bad, the network is broacasting its second miniseries, a six-episode remake of the 1960s 17-part series The Prisoner, originally broadcast on ITV in the UK.... read more
Best of What's Next: Harper Simon
Harper Simon can't help being caught in the great melodious wake of his father... read more
Listen Up: Marissa Nadler, Where Have I Been All Your Life?
Two Saturday nights ago, the night before my birthday, I'd had two tacos and two margaritas and I was at The Earl in Atlanta with my boyfriend Joe when I decided that I was going to love Marissa Nadler forever... read more
Best of What's Next: Mt. St. Helens Vietnam Band
Mt. St. Helens Vietnam Band's self-titled debut twitches and writhes with capricious tempo shifts... read more
Film Friday: Werner Herzog Goes Nuts Twice (and Other Observations About Crazed Filmmakers)
A new movie called Bronson by filmmaker Nicolas Winding Refn is traveling around the country, three screens per week. It’s about a man (true story) who’s so incorrigible that British authorities had to lock him up in a jail (or rather, a gaol) for 30-odd years. He’s the kind of chap who hauls off and belts people just for being within arms’ reach: school teachers, police officers, you name it. Bald, mustachioed, and hard-knuckled like a carnival strongman, he has no place in a civil society, even though his crimes don’t seem to warrant three decades in solitary confinement, either.... read more
Catching Up With... Pavement's Spiral Stairs
Sure, the recently-announced 2010 Pavement reunion has garnered all the hype... read more
Catching Up With... Augusten Burroughs
Augusten Burroughs overshares. For almost a decade, the ubiquitous author has plundered his personal life to spit out three memoirs and three collections of personal stories, in addition to a novel. But he says he's not doing it for the money. "I love preservation," he tells Paste. "Writing is the preservation of a memory." Burroughs' latest short story collection is You Better Not Cry, a wry, quick-witted handful of essays that revolve around Christmas. Skipping over the peace-and-goodwill part of the holidays, Burroughs paints the Yuletide season as a catalyst for dysfunction to reach its peak. And he would know. The... read more
Salute Your Shorts: Wes Anderson's "Bottle Rocket"
Salute Your Shorts is a weekly column that looks at short films, music videos, commercials or any other short form visual media that generally gets ignored.Whatever else he may be, Wes Anderson has been a large figure in American filmmaking for the past decade. When the AV Club put out its list of 10 Films that Couldn’t Have Happened Without Wes Anderson two years ago, the publication could've kept the list going for ages, and since then the number of films and filmmakers he’s influenced has only grown longer. Especially of late, Anderson tends to have apologetic fans who love... read more
The Best TV Theme Music
The little ditties that open TV shows keep growing littler and dittier, almost disappearing into Lost’s single sustained chord. The assumption may be that we’re just going to fast-forward through them anyway, but part of the charm of shows like Cheers, M*A*S*H and Sanford and Son was the musical intro. Fortunately, not everyone has given up on the theme song. Here are 10 current shows with tunes that make us put down the remote.... read more
The Booky Man: Children’s Accursed Literature
The first book that ever made me cry told the story of an egg-sucking, ringwormy male with one ear chewed off. Did I mention he was yellow? And I was six?... read more
Best of What's Next: The Shaky Hands
At the intersection of The Shins' faux-British Invasion jingle-jangle and The Allman Brothers' raggedy Southern-fried boogie... read more
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