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Folk/Rock Album Review: The Cowboy Junkies’ “Such Ferocious Beauty” — No Comfortable Retreat

June 3, 2023
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Such Ferocious Beauty ranks among the best of the Cowboy Junkies’ work — you can feel the band challenging itself, thriving in the tumult it generates.

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Book Review: “An Echo in the City” — Youth and Injustice in Hong Kong

June 2, 2023
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Vivid descriptions of the oppression activists fighting for democracy in Hong Kong have faced – and continue to – elevates this novel above the usual YA bromides.

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Jazz Album Review: “Dorothy Ashby – With Strings Attached, 1957 – 1965”

June 2, 2023
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A rare Black female instrumentalist band leader, whose improvisations on the harp were the equal of any horn, Dorothy Ashby deserves a respected place in jazz historiography.

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Film Review: Abel Ferrara’s Elusive “Padre Pio” — A Holy Man?

June 2, 2023
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Wildly imperfect but intriguingly ambiguous, the film’s flaws and contradictions are a virtue because its purported saintly hero is so hard to pin down.

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June Short Fuses — Materia Critica

June 1, 2023
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Each month, our arts critics — music, book, theater, dance, television, film, and visual arts — fire off a few brief reviews.

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Album Review: Minx’s “The Cloistered Order” — A Captivating Blend of Tempos and Dynamics

June 1, 2023
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Like Thin Lizzy, Minx marries metallic thunder with melodic structures and lyrics worth listening to.

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Weekly Feature: Poetry at The Arts Fuse

June 1, 2023
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This week’s poem: Askold Melnyczuk’s “Prayer of Origin.”

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Festival Review: Boston Calling 2023 — Pummeling Pleasure and Popular Sentiment on Sprawling Fields

May 31, 2023
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Boston Calling reached some highs this year, sealed by perfect weather.

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TV Review: “Barry” — An Inevitable Season Four

May 30, 2023
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What made Barry such a hit was that it was deliciously funny; the laughs were a balm for the uneasiness viewers felt as the body count rose from episode to episode.

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Concert Review: Plenty of Boston at L.A. Festivals

May 29, 2023
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So why am I going to write about the Nuggets concert for a New England outlet? Because, totally surprising to me, there was a lot of Boston in the show.

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