Category Archives: The Boston Globe

Indie rock band the New Pornographers have been around a while. So long, in fact, that their own frontman, Carl Newman, described their new album — the band’s eighth — as having a “classic Pornographers sound” in its promo materials. It’s been 19 years since the band released “Mass Romantic,” an intended one-off by a […]

It’s common for thirtysomethings to reminisce about high school — by flipping through yearbooks, maybe, or looking up old friends. Indie pop stalwarts Tegan and Sara have gone many steps further: they’ve written a memoir about their teen years and recorded an album of songs they wrote during that period. [ Click here for more […]

By the time Mountain Goats frontman John Darnielle gave this interview, word had spread that the North Carolina-based band’s new record, “In League With Dragons,” was based on table-top role-playing game Dungeons and Dragons. Darnielle says those rumors are false. “The record began life as an actual rock opera,” he says, about a “besieged” seaside […]

Chris Redd’s laugh is a wonder to behold. It’s a loud, sudden thing, a cackling that sounds as if he’s just realized how funny he is. The laugh happens several times during a phone interview with the longtime stand-up, sketch actor, and “Saturday Night Live” featured player. Even though he’s very busy — he was […]

Michelle Wolf’s career trajectory — with one notable exception — isn’t that different from a lot of comics who are managing successful careers. It starts with an unsatisfying day job, which leads to dabbling in improv, and then to stand-up, where the really good ones might get noticed, land TV writing gigs and earn occasional […]

Rufus Wainwright has been thinking about New York. That’s where the celebrated singer-songwriter composed some of the songs that made their way onto “Poses,” his breakthrough 2001 record that he is currently revisiting with the All of These Poses tour, which stops at Emerson Colonial Theatre Wednesday. Despite the tour’s name, he’s also performing many […]

Speedy Ortiz frontwoman Sadie Dupuis is nursing a sore back. Given her band’s extensive tour — stopping by Royale on June 26 for a sold-out show with Frank Turner and opening for Foo Fighters at Fenway Park on July 22 — and her burgeoning side project, she has a right to be resting. [ Click […]

In 1936, writer James Agee and photographer Walker Evans ventured into the impoverished American South with the aim of recording their experience with its inhabitants. The resulting book, “Let Us Now Praise Famous Men,” was released to acclaim in 1941. Evans wrote years later that Agee was a strong judge of character: “[Agee had] an […]

“A free society,” reads a message on the American Civil Liberties Union website, “is based on the principle that each and every individual has the right to decide what art or entertainment he or she wants — or does not want — to receive or create.” Participants in the “Boston Stands With the ACLU” show, […]

Dan Savage is tired. Not because of his many jobs — nationally syndicated advice columnist, podcaster, LGBT political activist, editorial director for Seattle alt-weekly The Stranger, cofounder of the immensely popular It Gets Better Project for LGBT youth — but because he’s doing a phone interview shortly after sunrise to accommodate the time difference between […]

When comedian, musician, and parodist “Weird Al” Yankovic broke through to the mainstream in the ’80s thanks to hits like “Eat It” and “Fat” (parodies of Michael Jackson’s “Beat It” and “Bad,” respectively), it was something of a coup for nerds. There on MTV, wedged between Madonna and Bruce Springsteen, was a frizzy-haired, four-eyed oddball […]

I grew up in Worcester, so I’m depressed a lot. There was a bleak quality to it. But I have fond memories of Worcester, too. I grew up Jewish, which was depressing, too, but Worcester had a pretty tight Jewish community. You know how they stick together, the Jews. Like kosher glue. [ Click here […]

Patton Oswalt’s new memoir, “Silver Screen Fiend,” describes the stand-up comedian’s five-year, almost-daily habit of watching movies at LA’s New Beverly Cinema in the mid- to late-’90s. The book — his second, after 2011’s essay collection “Zombie Spaceship Wasteland” — details his efforts to overcome the obsession, his growth into adulthood, and the then-burgeoning alt-comedy […]

Talking to Bob Newhart on the phone is strange at first. You half-expect the comedian, whose stand-up act has long featured imaginary phone conversations about bizarre situations, to act like the Empire State Building security guard responding to King Kong’s arrival, or Abraham Lincoln’s press agent giving feedback about the Gettysburg Address. [ Click here […]

It’s hard to hear Alex Bleeker, traveling by van on tour with his raucous bandmates, somewhere between San Francisco and Portland, Ore. “Sorry,” he says sheepishly, “I’m gettin’ ribbed.” Bleeker is the bassist for the popular indie-rock band Real Estate, which just released its third record, “Atlas,” to very positive reviews. The band performs at […]

A typical Hannibal Buress joke is so deceptively simple that you don’t realize its complexity until later, long after it comes together in a weird, hilarious ending. “Whenever people are going through something in life, they get really cliché,” starts one joke. “They say stuff like, ‘I’m takin’ it one day at a time.’ You […]

Comedian Kurt Braunohler has a podcast, excels at self-promotion, and once staged a one-man show. Nothing out of the ordinary for a comedian, right? Not until you consider the particulars: his podcast, “The K Ohle,” includes a regular segment that offers fake boat knowledge; recent self-promotion efforts included skywriting that asked, “How do I land?”; […]

Hurricane Sandy had Lyle Lovett on edge. He was not only concerned for all his friends and fans on the East Coast, but unsure about his shows in New England. “We were talking to our promoters today,” said Lovett, on the phone Monday from Nashville as Sandy raged in Boston, “trying to figure out what […]

The War on Drugs’ music is hard to categorize, but its influences are fun to identify: a little Springsteen here, some Dire Straits there, a pinch of New Order. But “Slave Ambient’’ is no ’80s nostalgia trip. It’s a rock album that mixes 30-year-old influences with the deep, hazy production of indie synth-poppers like M83. […]