#spring-album

#spring-album

A new report found that museums and cultural centers founded and led by people of color in the Northeast face severe staffing shortages, with over a third of responding institutions lacking a single full-time employee.

I see you, and it makes me so happy to see you. There is such a disconnect between what we say America is about and what it is right now. True freedom is the freedom to be who we are, and it hurts my heart so much that in some parts of this country, it is unsafe for trans people to do that right now.

Performance artist Jon Darc's movements unfold like nature's hidden gem, the Queen of the Night flower, serving as a powerful metaphor for emergence in inhospitable environments.

Set on the blossom tree-lined fringes of Hyde Park in London, Herbert Wilcox's black-and-white rom-com blows in like a fresh spring breeze. The film charts the will-they-won't-they romance between Richard (Michael Wilding), a wealthy lord masquerading as a butler, and Judy (Anna Neagle), the niece of the family who employs him.

A true wellness gathering is something far more ancient and far more urgent: it's any intentional space where humans are invited to arrive whole, body, mind, spirit, and leave more alive than when they walked in. That's it. That's the whole definition.

Research shows that in the days following the spring transition, there are measurable increases in sleep disruption, impaired alertness, workplace errors, motor vehicle accidents, and even short-term elevations in cardiovascular events and blood sugar variability.

More and more, I am realizing that we need art to survive. The phrase worked in two ways: We need art to survive for our personal enrichment and enjoyment. We need art to survive for its own longevity, so it can be around for us and those who come after us.

Spring ends the winter season like light ends the darkness. The coming of spring reminds us of the peaks and valleys of life. If you are in a valley, know that there is light at the end of the tunnel and a peak will come soon. Just as the seasons change, so too will your life.

In frightening times, it makes a huge difference not to feel alone. Creating art with others in community enhances agency and strengthens self. Creativity requires an open heart; love enhances hope and diminishes fear.

On any given day our writers, editors, and contributors go through an imposing number of new releases, giving recommendations to each other and discovering new favorites along the way. Each Monday, with our Pitchfork Selects playlist, we're sharing what our writers are playing obsessively and highlighting some of the Pitchfork staff's favorite new music.

With Portland sextet Abronia, you sort of have to listen past the spectacle. Forget about the overtly Jodorowsky-Morricone vibes, the tenor sax and the pedal steel guitar, the contralto vocals, the gigantic bass drum, the legend of co-founder Eric Crespo's desert vision. What's really going on here?

R&B in the 21st century has been in a constant state of flux, tugged between safe traditionalism and blurry attempts at progression. For the last decade-plus that "progression" has seen R&B music become more indebted to trap records and the moody atmospherics of alternative bands like Radiohead, Coldplay, or My Bloody Valentine.

Turns out every soul song with a lot of blank space in it just needs to be filled to the brim with Jersey club stomps and squeaks.

There is a specific high that comes with outrunning your own limiting beliefs - a chase that has previously landed me in an Austrian fasting clinic, on a half-marathon start line in Madrid, and sitting ten days of silent meditation in the English countryside. But even I, a glutton for punishingly offbeat wellness trends, would have laughed you out of the juice bar had you told me a year ago that I'd soon be yodelling my way to self-improvement.

Early Life Crisis, the teen rapper's follow-up to Bad Ass F*cking Kid, features YoungBoy Never Broke Again (on "Masked Up") and OsamaSon ("Pain Talk"). Nettspend wrote the album with Keifa Carter, Nathaniel Campos, and more collaborators, enlisting production from CXO, Rok, and others.

The British artist Andy Goldsworthy moved to Penpont, a village in southwest Scotland, in 1986, when he was thirty. The area's initial appeal was twofold. Property was cheap, which meant that Goldsworthy and his wife at the time, Judith Gregson, could acquire an unrenovated stone building that had likely once stored grain. This structure could serve as a workspace and, for a while, as a rough-and-ready home.

Previous research has shown that people feel better in bird-rich environments, but Christoph Randler, from the University of Tubingen, and colleagues wanted to see if that warm fuzzy feeling translated into measurable physiological changes. They rigged up a park with loudspeakers playing the songs of rare birds and measured the blood pressure, heart rate and cortisol levels (a marker of stress) of volunteers before and after taking a 30-minute walk through the park.

Bright lights keep us buzzing late into the night because of our circadian rhythm, which is the body's internal clock. It's instrumental in the normal functioning of body and mind. It's also intrinsically tied to light. Before the widespread availability of electricity, human activity was tightly synced with these natural light cycles, as it was for every other living being on the planet.

I have written before that while women are gloriously surging in academic, social, and career achievement, many young men are flailing. Pop culture pieces as well as academic dissertations are replete with accounts of male aimlessness and resultant disaffection and disengagement. They point out that the growing achievement gap and resultant maturational/responsibility gap between men and women are making young men progressively less and desirable to modern young women.

Times are hard, but don't believe the rumors about the death of the Bay Area art scene. Yes, art institutions and galleries are closing. Yes, the techies have taken over, outpricing artists and polluting culture with their AI inventions. But there's an inherent spirit of rebellion to the region that won't be quashed so easily, and an inspired community that fights for it every day.

Hedera are a band of five tightly knit friends violinist Lulu Austin, violin/viola player Maisie Brett, violinist/double bassist Beth Roberts, accordionist/harpist Tamsin Elliott, and clarinettist Isis Wolf-Light named after the Latin botanical term for ivy. The group's debut album combines influences from Bulgaria to Bali, Ireland to Georgia, and establishes its mood of knotted, hypnotic locked groove from its opening track, Sterretjie (named after an Afrikaans word for the coastal tern bird, which also means little stars).

We've already bemoaned and lamented last year, so let's close the eyes on our rearward Janus face and look forward. Hey, Mr. Grumpy Gills, when life gets you down, you know what you gotta do? Just keep swimming!

Designed by Korean up-and-comer Woojin Yang, Everglow is a handheld mini-keyboard that fits into any bag. The "musical sketchbook" of sorts allows artists to quickly jot down ideas when they're not in front of their instruments or computers. The sleekly-designed device comes with a generative AI-based sound system that allows them to iterate and develop a song on the spot, not just transcribe the initial tune.

Angels exist, I swear! If you were at the sold out Austra show on Monday, you would have witnessed Portland-born, Berlin-based multidisciplinary artist Colin Self descending from the heavens to bless us mere mortals with their angelic vocals and cherub-like presence. If you're looking for something to believe in, believe in music-it's one of the very few things with ability to unite complete strangers in dialog, movement, and tears.