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    Duane Eddy, Whose Twang Changed Rock ’n’ Roll, Dies at 86

    A self-taught electric guitar virtuoso, he influenced a generation of musicians. One of them, John Fogerty, called him rock’s first guitar god.Duane Eddy, who broke new ground in pop music in the 1950s with a reverberant, staccato style of guitar playing that became known as twang, died on Tuesday in Franklin, Tenn. He was 86. The cause of his death, in a hospital, was complications of cancer, said his wife, Deed (Abbate) Eddy.Mr. Eddy had tremendous success as a strictly instrumental recording artist in the late 1950s and ’60s, selling millions of records worldwide with growling, echo-laden hits like “Rebel Rouser” and “Forty Miles of Bad Road.” In the process, he played a major role in establishing electric guitar as the predominant musical instrument in rock ’n’ roll.Mr. Eddy influenced a multitude of rock guitarists, including George Harrison, Jimi Hendrix and Bruce Springsteen, whose plunging guitar lines on “Born to Run” pay homage to Mr. Eddy’s muscular fretwork.“Duane Eddy was the front guy, the first rock and roll guitar god,” John Fogerty, the founding lead singer and guitarist of Creedence Clearwater Revival, is quoted as saying on the Rhino Records website.Mr. Eddy, who was self-taught, devised his rhythmic melodicism by playing the lead lines on his recordings on his guitar’s bass strings and by liberally using the vibrato bar. He never learned to read or score music, but he had a strong ear for pop idioms, including country, jazz, and rhythm and blues.Mr. Eddy in a publicity photo from 1958, the year his rollicking “Cannonball” charted in both the United States and Britain.PoPsie Randolph/Michael Ochs Archives, via Getty ImagesHe also had a knack for studio experimentation; at one point he brought a 2,000-gallon water tank to a session and placed a speaker inside to simulate the effects of an echo chamber.“I like exploring different textures on tracks in the studio, and different arrangement ideas,” Mr. Eddy said in a 2013 interview with Guitar Player magazine, which had honored him in 2004 with its Legend Award.“For me,” Mr. Eddy went on, “it’s not just playing the instrument, it’s also making the record. I guess a better way of explaining it is that I don’t write or arrange songs as such. Instead, I think of it as writing or arranging records. My sound is the common denominator that pulls all the threads and knits them together.”Easily recognizable, Mr. Eddy’s signature approach to the guitar accounted for 15 Top 40 pop hits from 1958 to 1963. “Because They’re Young,” a string-sweetened record, appeared on the soundtrack of the 1960 movie of the same name that starred Dick Clark and Tuesday Weld. More characteristic of Mr. Eddy’s gritty playing was “Cannonball,” a rollicking instrumental that reached the pop Top 20 in the U.S. and the Top 10 in Britain in 1958, and “(Dance With the) Guitar Man,” a 1962 hit that featured a female vocal group on the chorus. “The Ballad of Paladin,” a loping instrumental, was used as the theme for the CBS television series “Have Gun — Will Travel.”Most of Mr. Eddy’s albums from the late 1950s and early ’60s incorporated a variation on the word “twang” in their titles. This one, released in 1960, was co-produced by his frequent collaborator Lee Hazlewood.Jamie RecordsMost of Mr. Eddy’s early recordings were made with the producer and songwriter Lee Hazlewood and released on the Philadelphia-based label Jamie Records. The Rebels, his backing band, boasted several members of the celebrated West Coast studio collective known as the Wrecking Crew including the guitarist Al Casey, the saxophonists Jim Horn and Plas Johnson, and the keyboard and bass player Larry Knechtel.Most of Mr. Eddy’s albums from the late 1950s and early ’60s incorporated a version of the word “twang” in their titles.Mr. Eddy was born on April 26, 1938, in Corning, N.Y., a small town in the south central part of the state, and started playing the guitar at the age of 5. His father, Lloyd, drove a bread truck and later managed a Safeway grocery store, and his mother, Alberta Evelyn (Granger) Eddy, managed the home. The family moved to Tucson, Ariz., when Duane was 13, and then to Phoenix, where he met Mr. Hazlewood and they began their musical partnership.He acquired his first custom-made Chet Atkins-model Gretsch guitar when he was 16. He made his first recordings — as half of the duo Jimmy and Duane, with the pianist Jimmy Delbridge (who later recorded under the name Jimmy Dell) — the next year.Mr. Eddy on “American Bandstand” in 1958. A year earlier, he had begun touring with Dick Clark’s Caravan of Stars.ABC Photo Archives/Disney General Entertainment Content, via Getty ImagesIn 1957, Mr. Eddy began touring as a guitarist with Dick Clark’s Caravan of Stars, and he began releasing recordings under his own name shortly afterward.Mr. Eddy and Mr. Hazlewood parted ways over a contract dispute in late 1960, though they later reunited to work on projects. Mr. Eddy signed with RCA shortly after.The hit singles had stopped coming by the mid-1960s, but Mr. Eddy continued to release instrumental albums, including “Duane Does Dylan,” a collection of covers of songs written by Bob Dylan.The rockabilly revival of the next decade gave rise to renewed interested in Mr. Eddy’s work. The 1970s also saw Mr. Eddy producing albums by Phil Everly and Waylon Jennings, whose widow, Jessi Colter, was married to Mr. Eddy from 1962 to 1968.Mr. Eddy’s music was introduced to yet another generation of fans in the 1980s, when the British synth-pop group Art of Noise released an avant-disco reworking of his 1960 hit version of Henry Mancini’s “Peter Gunn,” with Mr. Eddy on lead guitar. It won a Grammy Award for best rock instrumental performance in 1987.Mr. Eddy plays guitar at the 2009 Country Music Hall of Fame Medallion Ceremony in Nashville. He was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1994.Ed Rode/Getty ImagesMr. Eddy was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1994, the same year that his original hit recording of “Rebel Rouser” appeared in the movie “Forrest Gump.” “The Trembler,” a track he wrote with Ravi Shankar, was featured in Oliver Stone’s 1994 film, “Natural Born Killers.” He was also inducted into the Musicians Hall of Fame in Nashville in 2008.In addition to his wife, Mr. Eddy is survived by three children, Linda Jones and Chris Eddy, from his first marriage, to Carol Puckett, and Jennifer Eddy Davis, from his marriage to Ms. Colter; a sister, Elaine Scarborough; five grandchildren; and nine great-grandchildren.Unlike many instrumentalists, Mr. Eddy said, he never seriously considered expanding his musical résumé to include vocals.Elaborating on the subject to Guitar Player in 2013, he recalled an interview with Conan O’Brien at which he was asked, “Duane, you’ve been in this business for many years now; what do you consider your greatest contribution to music?” He answered, “Not singing.”“I never felt that I had a good voice for singing,” he went on. “When I was young, this frustrated me a lot, so I took it out on the guitar.” More

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    Kim Noltemy, Orchestra Veteran, Is Tapped to Lead L.A. Philharmonic

    Noltemy, the Dallas Symphony Orchestra’s chief executive, will take the helm of the Philharmonic as it searches for its next music director.The Los Angeles Philharmonic’s history of inventive programming and strong finances have made it the envy of orchestras around the United States.But recently, the ensemble has been going through a period of abrupt change. Chad Smith, the ensemble’s former president and chief executive, left last year to run the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Gustavo Dudamel, its celebrated music and artistic director, will depart for the New York Philharmonic in 2026.On Wednesday, though, the orchestra said it had found a leader who can help put it back on track. Kim Noltemy, a veteran administrator, will become the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s next president and chief executive, starting in July.Noltemy, 55, who has led the Dallas Symphony Orchestra since 2018, said that she hoped to build on the Philharmonic’s legacy of innovation.“The potential for the Los Angeles Philharmonic to grow, thrive and make a huge impact in changing how people think about music and how music affects their lives is enormous,” she said in an interview.Thomas L. Beckmen, the chairman of the Philharmonic’s board of directors, said that Noltemy rose to the top of the list of candidates because of her experience. Before Dallas, she held leadership posts at the Boston Symphony Orchestra.“Of all the people we interviewed, she was the most prepared,” Beckmen said in an interview. “Sometimes, I thought she knew more about us than I knew about us.”Noltemy will face several immediate challenges, including helping to find a successor to Dudamel, one of the world’s most in-demand maestros, who has led the ensemble since 2009 and has been a key force behind its box-office success and expansive music education programs.Beckmen said the search could take “a couple years more, or maybe longer,” but that he was confident the orchestra could find someone who would be a draw like Dudamel.“Dudamel is great, and so is the orchestra here in L.A., which is, if not the best, certainly at the top of the field,” he said. “That’s not going away.”Asked whether the ensemble was interested in appointing a woman, Beckmen declined to comment. (Across the United States, women remain considerably underrepresented among music directors at top orchestras.)Noltemy said that “all talented conductors” would be considered, regardless of gender or race. “This orchestra,” she added, “is really so focused on the idea that the L.A. Phil has to represent its community, and its community is incredibly diverse.”Dudamel said in a statement on Wednesday that he looked forward to “welcoming Kim into our L.A. Phil family.”“Our extraordinary musicians and organization have shown the world a powerful new vision for what an orchestra can be, and how it can impact the community around it,” he said. “I am confident we will continue to push ourselves to even greater heights in the years to come.”In Dallas, Noltemy has built a reputation as a community-focused leader. She has expanded music education programs and worked to increase civic pride in the ensemble, including by staging more small-scale performances outside the concert hall.During her tenure, the orchestra has hired more women and people of color as conductors, composers and guest performers. The administrative staff has also grown more diverse; women make up a majority of the senior leadership team.In Los Angeles, Noltemy said, she would work to expand the Youth Orchestra Los Angeles, known as YOLA, which Dudamel helped start, and which is modeled on El Sistema, the Venezuelan social and artistic movement. She is also eager for the Philharmonic to play a prominent role when Los Angeles hosts the Summer Olympics in 2028.The Philharmonic in a relatively strong position compared with other American orchestras. As of March, it was averaging about 89 percent attendance, back to where it was before the pandemic, even as the number of subscribers has fallen to 6,409, from 8,791.Noltemy follows in a line of pathbreaking chief executives. Ernest Fleischmann, who led the orchestra from 1969 to 1998, revitalized its lucrative summer programming at the Hollywood Bowl, fought to build Disney Hall and hired a young Esa-Pekka Salonen to be its music director. Deborah Borda, who led the orchestra from 2000 to 2017, built on those successes, opening the hall, hiring Dudamel, fostering ties with the city and championing new music. Smith, a protégé of Borda’s, helped drive the orchestra’s unconventional approach to programming.Beckmen said that he hoped Noltemy would serve for a decade or longer. She would like to stay until she retires.“The Los Angeles Philharmonic has long been the most amazing and interesting place,” she said. “I see this as the culmination of my career.” More

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    Popcast (Deluxe): Sabrina Carpenter, Chappell Roan + Editing Taylor Swift

    Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music | YouTubeThis week’s episode of Popcast (Deluxe), the weekly culture roundup show on YouTube hosted by Jon Caramanica and Joe Coscarelli, includes segments on:How “The Tortured Poets Department” has aged with the passing of one week since its releaseThe huge commercial success of “The Tortured Poets Department” so farThe contemporary expectations of immediate album reviewsHow Swift’s pandemic albums “folklore” and “evermore” introduced a new generation of hard-core fansJon and Joe’s picks for the best songs from “The Tortured Poets Department”The rise of a pair of pop’s middle-class stars, Chappell Roan and Sabrina CarpenterCarpenter’s emergence into the shadow of Dua LipaThe success of “Espresso”Chappell Roan’s meteoric six-month rise and her relationship to drag cultureRoan’s diaristic and specific songwritingSongs of the week from Tommy Richman, Cash Cobain (featuring Bay Swag and Ice Spice) and ShaboozeySnack of the weekConnect With Popcast. Become a part of the Popcast community: Join the show’s Facebook group and Discord channel. We want to hear from you! Tune in, and tell us what you think at popcast@nytimes.com. Follow our host, Jon Caramanica, on Twitter: @joncaramanica. More

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    The Best Movies and TV Shows Streaming in May

    “The Idea of You,” “Scrublands,” “The Big Cigar” and “Hacks” are streaming.Every month, streaming services add movies and TV shows to its library. Here are our picks for some of May’s most promising new titles. (Note: Streaming services occasionally change schedules without giving notice. For more recommendations on what to stream, sign up for our Watching newsletter here.)New to Amazon Prime Video‘The Idea of You’Starts streaming: May 2Anne Hathaway plays a middle-age woman on a wild, globe-hopping adventure with a new lover in this romantic dramedy, based on Robinne Lee’s best-selling novel. Hathaway stars as Solène, who accompanies her teenage daughter to Coachella, where she meets and discovers an instant rapport with Hayes Campbell (Nicholas Galitzine), a 24-year-old lead singer of a mega-popular boy band. The movie’s director, Michael Showalter — who also co-wrote the screenplay with Jennifer Westfeldt — has shown a facility with blending low-key humor and realistic relationship angst in his films “The Big Sick” and “Spoiler Alert.” So while “The Idea of You” features fabulous-looking people and catchy songs, it’s mostly about how the two leads’ genuine yearning for each other helps them withstand some uncomfortable public scrutiny.Also arriving:May 9“The GOAT” Season 1“Maxton Hall: The World Between Us”May 16“Outer Range” Season 2May 23“The Blue Angels”“The 1% Club”May 24“Dom”May 31“The Outlaws” Season 3Jay Ryan in “Scrublands.”Sundance NowNew to AMC+‘Scrublands’ Season 1Starts streaming: May 2In the opening sequence of this Sundance Now mystery series, a priest (Jay Ryan) in a run-down Australian Outback town pulls out a rifle after Sunday services and kills five of his congregants. One year later, a burned-out investigative journalist (Luke Arnold) is assigned to write a short article about how the community is recovering from the trauma. But thanks to a helpful local (Bella Heathcote), the reporter quickly realizes that the official story about what happened that Sunday may be wrong. Based on a Chris Hammer novel and directed by Greg McLean (best-known for the Aussie horror classic “Wolf Creek”), the moody and twisty “Scrublands” is about a town with dark secrets and a man who risks his life and career to expose them.Also arriving:May 3“Skeletons in the Closet”May 12“Anne Rice’s Interview With the Vampire” Season 2May 13“Harry Wild” Season 3May 15“In the Kitchen With Harry Hamlin” Season 1May 17“Nightwatch: Demons Are Forever”May 27“The Truth”May 31“Stopmotion”André Holland in “The Big Cigar.”Apple TV+New to Apple TV+‘Dark Matter’Starts streaming: May 8Based on a novel by Blake Crouch (who also serves as the series’ showrunner), this trippy science fiction thriller stars Joel Edgerton as Jason, a physics professor who has a happy life with his wife (Jennifer Connelly) and their teenage son (Oakes Fegley). When Jason is attacked one night by a masked stranger, he finds himself transported to an alternate reality where he has no wife and no son — but where he does have the kind of prestigious reputation that his brilliant scientist brother (Jimmi Simpson) has always enjoyed. Once he shakes off the initial disorientation, Jason faces a choice: to accept that this new version of himself is who he was always meant to be, or to use his knowledge of quantum theory and inter-dimensional travel to embark on a quest through infinite worlds, to find his way back to his family.‘The Big Cigar’Starts streaming: May 17The magnificent actor André Holland plays the Black Panther Party founder Huey P. Newton in “The Big Cigar,” which tells the strange but mostly true tale of his friendship with the politically progressive Hollywood producer Bert Schneider (Alessandro Nivola). When Newton was wanted for murder, Schneider reportedly helped him escape to Cuba, using a fake movie production as a cover. The mini-series recreates the headiness of the early 1970s, when various artistic, social and cultural movements were pushing hard against the establishment. This historical drama is based on a magazine article by the reporter Joshuah Bearman, whose work previously inspired the Oscar-winning movie “Argo,” a similar story about the worlds of showbiz and politics colliding.Also arriving:May 1“Acapulco” Season 3May 8“Hollywood Con Queen”May 22“Trying” Season 4Jim Henson, in “Jim Henson Idea Man,” a documentary.Disney+New to Disney+‘Jim Henson Idea Man’Starts streaming: May 31Jim Henson will always be remembered for creating the Muppets, which have been beloved since they debuted on television in 1955. But Henson was also a filmmaker, a visual artist, and a businessman shrewd enough to use the commercial appeal of his creations to bankroll his more ambitious projects, most of which were made to celebrate to the warmer side of the human spirit. For the documentary “Jim Henson Idea Man,” the director Ron Howard and his team were allowed extensive access to the Henson archives. The film combines archival clips of the Muppets with rare home-movie footage and diary entries — along with behind-the-scenes photos and sketches and new interviews with some of Henson’s collaborators — to tell the story of a visionary who built an empire out of feelings and felt.Also arriving:May 4“Star Wars: Tales of the Empire”May 5“Monsters at Work” Season 2May 8“Let It Be”May 10“Doctor Who” Season 14May 22“Chip ’n’ Dale: Park Life” Season 2May 24“The Beach Boys”Tomoaki Hamatsu, or Nasubi, in “The Contestant.”DisneyNew to Hulu‘The Contestant’Starts streaming: May 2In 1998, an aspiring comedian named Tomoaki Hamatsu — nicknamed Nasubi, the Japanese word for eggplant, because of his long face — won the opportunity to compete on an extreme kind of game show. Locked in a spartan apartment and stripped naked, Nasubi was challenged to survive off whatever he could win from mail-in contests advertised in magazines. Unbeknown to him, his ordeal was broadcast to a rapt nation. Clair Titley’s documentary “The Contestant” looks back at Nasubi’s year of deprivation and isolation, which was framed for the TV audience as a hilarious and heartwarming adventure. The truth, of course, was far more complicated, which Titley covers in a film that examines how fans of reality TV can sometimes forget they’re watching — and judging — real people.Also arriving:May 1“Elvis”“Shardlake” Season 1May 2“Welcome to Wrexham” Season 3May 3“Prom Dates”May 7“Billy & Molly: An Otter Love Story”May 8“In Limbo” Season 1May 9“Black Twitter: A People’s History”May 10“Biosphere”“Eileen”“Past Lies” Season 1May 12“Where the Crawdads Sing”May 14“The Killing Kind” Season 1May 15“Uncle Samsik” Season 1May 17“Birth/Rebirth”“The Sweet East”May 22“Chief Detective 1958” Season 1May 24“Ferrari”Jean Smart in Season 3 of “Hacks.”Hilary Bronwyn Gayle/MaxNew to Max‘Hacks’ Season 3Starts streaming: May 2The first two seasons of the dramedy “Hacks” followed the codependent relationship between a complacent stand-up comic, Deborah Vance (Jean Smart), and the cynical, self-sabotaging comedy writer Ava Daniels (Hannah Einbinder), hired to help add edge to Deborah’s Las Vegas act. Season 2 ended with the ladies parting ways after working together on a hit comedy special; but they reunite in Season 3 as Deborah makes plans to right some old wrongs by landing a gig as a late-night talk show host. “Hacks” is about the sometimes wildly varying values of two different generations of comedians. It’s also about two women who have made a lot of messes in their lives — and have come to rely on each other to help with the cleanup.Also arriving:May 2“Turtles All the Way Down”May 3“Stop Making Sense”May 9“Pretty Little Liars: Summer School”May 10“The Iron Claw”May 11“Nikki Glaser: Someday You’ll Die”May 20“Stax: Soulsville U.S.A.”May 23“Thirst with Shay Mitchell”May 29“MoviePass, Moviecrash”From left: Katja Herbers, Aasif Mandvi and Mike Colter in “Evil.”Elizabeth Fisher/Paramount+New to Paramount+‘Evil’ Season 4Starts streaming: May 23One of TV’s most unusual and entertaining dramas comes to an end with its latest season, which finds its demon-hunting heroes dealing with satanic cults and devil babies. Katja Herbers returns as Dr. Kristen Bouchard, a forensic psychologist who works alongside the Catholic priest David Acosta (Mike Colter) and the tech whiz Ben Shakir (Aasif Mandvi) to investigate paranormal phenomena. The job frequently puts them at odds with the mysterious sociopath and impish mischief-maker Dr. Leland Townsend (Michael Emerson). Created by Michelle and Robert King (the team behind “The Good Fight” and “Elsbeth”), “Evil” is a witty and often genuinely creepy horror procedural, which considers whether the modern world’s wickedness is supernatural in nature or just a case of humans being humans.Also arriving:May 1“Behind the Music” Season 2May 7“Kiss the Future”May 10“The Chi” Season 6, Part 2May 14“Pillowcase Murders”May 17“Mourning in Lod”“RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars” Season 9“RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars: Untucked” Season 9May 21“LOLLA: The Story of Lollapalooza”May 30“Pyramid Game”Harvey Keitel in “The Tattooist of Auschwitz.”Martin Mlaka/Sky UKNew to Peacock‘The Tattooist of Auschwitz’Starts streaming: May 2In this historical drama based on a true story, an older Jew named Lali Sokolov (Harvey Keitel) meets regularly with the aspiring author Heather Morris (Melanie Lynskey) to tell her a story he had previously kept to himself, for almost his entire life: all about how he survived Auschwitz by making himself useful to his jailers. Based on the book that the real-life Morris produced from interviews with Sokolov — a blend of unflinching Holocaust testimony and page-turning fiction — “The Tattooist of Auschwitz” portrays the moral compromises required to endure an atrocity. But it’s also about an unlikely love affair, which develops between Lali (played by Jonah Hauer-King in flashbacks) and Gita (Anna Prochniak), a woman he befriends while he’s tattooing her arm.‘We Are Lady Parts’Starts streaming: May 30One of Peacock’s best foreign TV acquisitions, this British sitcom is the brainchild of the writer-director Nida Manzoor, whose work draws on her love of pop culture and her experiences growing up in a Pakistani Muslim family. Last year she released her debut feature film “Polite Society,” a martial arts comedy; and now Manzoor returns with a second season of the wonderful “We Are Lady Parts,” which stars Anjana Vasan as Amina, a dorky college student and observant Muslim who joins a radical all-female, all-Muslim punk band. In Season 1, this eclectic group of ladies became a cult success. In Season 2, they have an opportunity to record an album and grow their audience but find themselves unsure if that’s what they really want.Also arriving:May 3“The American Society of Magical Negroes”May 7“Eurovision Song Contest 2024”May 9“Love Undercover” Season 1 More

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    Why Are Movies so Bad at Making Civil War Look Scary?

    The filmmaker has made it clear that “Civil War” is a warning. Instead, the ugliness of war comes across as comforting thrills. Early in “Civil War,” the writer-director Alex Garland’s dystopian blockbuster, a plucky young journalist named Jessie recalls an event called the Antifa Massacre. You can picture the eeriness that Garland must have assumed that phrase would conjure: familiar words, filtered through his apocalyptic vision, projecting today’s ideological rancor into the future. His film is an invitation to imagine what might emerge from America’s political divisions if we don’t back away from the fractious disaffection that has characterized most of the 21st century. But it is also vague about what the Antifa Massacre, or any of the war, actually is. Who was massacred? Who did the massacring? What were the stakes? All we know is that America has descended into a chaotic conflict: California and Texas have united to battle an authoritarian Loyalist government, while other states have gathered into various alliances. Beyond that, “Civil War” obscures the war’s political and social contours. One senses that, for Garland, the ideological dimensions are beside the point, a distraction from what he hopes is a searing vision of a future nobody wants. To that end, maybe, he has cast “Civil War” as an antiwar movie in the tradition of Elem Klimov’s “Come and See,” a 1985 fever dream about Nazi Germany’s invasion of Soviet Byelorussia. The power of “Come and See” lies in its images, which depict war’s depravity with the unsparing clarity of prophecy. One 10-minute scene forces us to watch a carnival of violence as German soldiers, who have gathered civilians into a church, set it aflame. Garland intends a similar revelation. In interviews, he and his cast have made it clear that they see “Civil War” as a warning. You can practically hear him whisper through every frame: This could happen here.François Truffaut once said that every film about war ends up being pro-war: Whatever a director points his camera at, even violence, becomes appealing, or at least intriguing. To make an effective antiwar film, a director must find a way to unsettle this relationship between image and titillation. I think often about the 1966 Italian thriller “The Battle of Algiers,” which depicts Algerian resistance to French colonial rule. It is, generally, a triumphalist take on the power of liberatory violence, and it has proved popular among armed insurgents. There’s a mournful, cautionary undercurrent, though, that sometimes overwhelms its heroic story. In one scene, two women smuggle bombs out of a ghetto and into French cafes. One leaves hers beneath a bar, and we wait while the camera cuts from one French face to another: a flirting couple, a sullen baby, a laughing barkeep, a waiter who looks directly at us. In that long wait before the bomb goes off, we are tricked into a moral accounting of political violence’s toll on human life. The movie reminds us that our attraction to violence also threatens to destroy the society we depend on, plunging us into a Hobbesian state of nature.This balancing act depends on depicting the social costs of war on the lives of civilians — something contemporary films about war on American soil have struggled to accomplish. “Civil War” follows Kirsten Dunst as Lee, a war photographer traveling from New York to Washington with her gonzo bro colleague Joel, hoping to photograph the president while Joel interviews him. They’re joined by Jessie and Sammy, Lee’s mentor. What unfolds is essentially a road-trip movie that shuttles this quartet from one apocalyptic set piece to another. They are journalists, but they do no reporting on the tragedies they encounter on the way to their big scoop. They don’t meet many people, and when they do, they are rigorously incurious. They arrive at a refugee camp, yet make no attempt to interview any refugees. Why are two soldiers shooting at another amid a Christmas display? Joel makes only a cursory effort to find out. These are war journalists with a strange lack of interest in covering the war’s victims or America’s shredded social fabric. Garland’s vision is almost entirely restricted to destroyed buildings and corpses.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    5 Minutes That Will Make You Love Jazz Bass

    Writers, scholars, radio hosts and musicians, including the bassist Ron Carter, share songs that shine a light on an instrument that lays the foundation of jazz.There’s a clip circulating on social media where Charles Mingus, arguably the most famous jazz bassist of all time, is asked what he’s saying through his instrument on the bandstand. His answer, profane and hilarious, isn’t fit to print here, but it’s fitting for the so-called “Angry Man of Jazz.” I’ve often wondered if Mingus’s attitude was just his way, or if he felt somewhat underrated compared with others from his era. By and large back then, bassists weren’t bandleaders; Mingus was an anomaly. And that had me thinking about jazz bass overall: While it might be the most unheralded of all the instruments, no composition resonates without it.This month’s feature is all about jazz bass, and cornerstone musicians like Mingus, the “Maestro” Ron Carter and Israel Crosby, whose performance is highlighted twice below. They all made significant contributions to the evolution of jazz. Their work paved the way for newer voices to shine through, including some artists who have chosen a song this month. And because we’re talking about an instrument like the bass, whose trajectory through jazz has been a complicated one, it seemed best to have plenty of the experts — jazz bassists — talking about their favorites.Enjoy listening to these songs highlighting the bass. You can find a playlist at the bottom of the article, and be sure to leave your own picks in the comments.◆ ◆ ◆Luke Stewart, bassist, bandleader and composer“El Haris (Anxious)” by Ahmed Abdul-MalikComing in hard like a Just Blaze track, then settling into a simple but effective melody that takes you on an unexpected journey in itself. Abdul-Malik explored the “East Meets West” concept of fusing jazz and the music of the Middle East over the course of a couple of albums. This one, however, “Jazz Sahara,” is his most successful in my view, and the most potent musically. Johnny Griffin is a standout on this record, letting us know once again that he is the Little Giant, with his saxophone sound towering above the band as he creeps in with his own sample of a previous tune. Jamal Muhammad of WPFW 89.3FM in D.C. first introduced me to both the Johnny Griffin album “Change of Pace” and the Abdul-Malik album in question, blessing me with some insight into the musicians and to the not-so-subtle signifying on the song titles.Ahmed Abdul-Malik, himself a sonic giant, commands the bass and the band with the imagination and the vision to create a truly fused collaboration of a typical U.S. jazz ensemble with an Egyptian one. This configuration, and this track in particular, does the best in my view. One of my favorite bass solos is his here on this track. Recorded a year after the classic “Night at the Village Vanguard” from Sonny Rollins, featuring Wilbur Ware’s bass solo on “Softly, as in a Morning Sunrise,” Abdul-Malik’s solo to me has felt like a response. This is where he was able to bring the Vanguard to the Pyramids.Listen on YouTube◆ ◆ ◆Ron Carter, bassist and bandleader“But Not for Me” by the Ahmad Jamal TrioIsrael Crosby’s bass lines on “At the Pershing,” in Chicago, are important not just because he’s on it, but because he made Ahmad play that way. He made the piano player not play. From then on, every bass player had to learn that bass line for the entire song — every Motel 6 player, every Birdland player, had to know it because it was so popular — including yours truly. And he made Ahmad Jamal even more important to the music community.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Jessica Pratt’s Timeless Folk Music Is Evolving. Slowly.

    The singer and songwriter has a delicate, vintage aesthetic that matches her cautious approach to her work. Her fourth album, “Here in the Pitch,” is out Friday.Jessica Pratt’s new album, “Here in the Pitch,” begins with a vintage drum beat, a gently strummed guitar and a lot of vibey room tone — the kind that recalls a wood-paneled studio from 60 years ago. “The chances of a lifetime might be hiding their tricks up my sleeve,” she sings on “Life Is,” in an enchanting melody that rises and falls with ease. “Time is time is time again.”Pratt is 37, and over three albums since 2012, she has become known for seemingly bending time. “A friend of a friend was stunned to find out that Jessica is a modern artist,” Matt McDermott, Pratt’s partner and collaborator, said over the phone. “He was convinced that she was a lost private press folk artist from the ’60s or ’70s.”“The fact that she’s hung around a lot of record stores and is very into the texture and atmospherics of older music means that her stuff appears somewhat anachronistic,” McDermott added, amused. “There’s that boomer saying, ‘They don’t make songs like they used to,’ but Jessica’s music argues that you actually can.”“If you feel like you’re always fighting against yourself in order to achieve your goals, you are conscious of time passing because everything feels very belabored, artistically,” Pratt said.Sinna Nasseri for The New York TimesOn a rainy March day in New York, Pratt strolled in the Queens Museum and discussed how “Here in the Pitch,” due Friday, has roots in the history lurking beneath another city: Los Angeles, her home since 2013.“If you want to get metaphysical about it, it’s layers of human experience that may still be reverberating,” she said, thinking about the prehistoric ooze that burbles under Wilshire Boulevard. “That is absolutely the lens through which I see my reality every day, as swimming through these unseen layers of history and energy.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    A Brief Tour of Pop Music’s Caffeine Addiction

    Hear songs by Sabrina Carpenter, Squeeze, SZA and more.Sabrina Carpenter’s perky bop “Espresso” is … a bit addictive. (We’re sorry.)Valerie Macon/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesDear listeners,A few weeks ago in our Friday feature the Playlist, I recommended a bubbly new single by the pop artist Sabrina Carpenter and made a bold prediction: “Get ready to hear this one everywhere.” Even more quickly than I imagined, the prophecy has come true. Last week, “Espresso” debuted at No. 7 on the Billboard Hot 100, making it Carpenter’s highest charting hit yet. More important, it has taken over the nation’s psyche. You can hardly go anywhere these days without hearing someone quoting the song’s infectious hook “That’s that me espresso” or wondering aloud, “what is a ‘me espresso?’”That’s a profound philosophical question for another day. Today, we are simply honoring the absurdist joy of “Espresso” with a playlist of songs about caffeinated beverages.Coffee has been a consistently evocative theme throughout pop musical history, so this mix travels from 1940 right up to the present moment. That trusty beverage is often used to describe a sophisticated kind of romance (as it does on Otis Redding’s swooning ballad “Cigarettes and Coffee”) or perhaps the idle hours waiting around for said romance to occur (see Peggy Lee’s sultry take on the 1948 standard “Black Coffee”). Chappell Roan tries to use it as a shield against romance on a track from her 2023 album “The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess,” reasoning with a former flame, “I’ll meet you for coffee, ’cause if we have wine/You’ll say that you want me, I know that’s a lie.”In “Espresso,” Carpenter uses the caffeine metaphor to suggest how restless she makes a guy she has wrapped around her finger: “Say you can’t sleep? Baby, I know.” Also, crucially, she understands that “espresso” rhymes with “I guess so.” That’s poetry.It’s time for the percolator,LindsayListen along while you read.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More