What’s making us happy: A guide to your weekend listening, viewing and reading

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This week: How to kick our holiday parties up a notch, when to put up your Christmas lights, and recipes for sweet treats.

Here’s what the NPR’s Pop Culture Happy Hour crew was paying attention to — and what you should check out this weekend.

Midwest Modern Twitter account

I spent the first 22 years of my life in the Midwest, in the Chicago area, and then in Michigan for college. So, I have a lot of pride in the region. Architecture is my first art love. And one thing that keeps both those appreciations alive is a Twitter account called Midwest Modern. It’s run by Josh Lipnik, @joshlipnik on Twitter. He mostly posts photos of buildings, but he will also post designs of things from all around the Midwest, both in big cities and small towns, of buildings from over the past century and even earlier. I think he has a really great eye, he sees value in just about everything. The account brings the beauty of the Midwest to the Internet. – Danny Hensel

Unclear and Present Danger

I recommend the podcast Unclear and Present Danger. It is hosted by Jamelle Bouie and John Ganz. The initial mission is to talk about ’90s, post-Cold War thrillers. However, they are expanding it in certain ways, including through their Patreon. I find it to be a really nice balance between fun, but also serious and analytical politics. It’s a really smart way to take popular culture and engage with its very specific moment. They also talk about The Firm and The Fugitive. They talk about a lot of films with political content that is a little different from straightforward post-Cold War films like The Hunt for Red October. – Linda Holmes

Recipes from my mom

I don’t know if it’s just because we’ve been talking about The Fabelmans which is in the context of my childhood or if it’s just the season. But I have been thinking about a couple of my mom’s holiday recipes. I am not a baker. I don’t really know how to do it, but I used to love when she would start making things. She would allow me to stick my hands into it and squish the dough together. They were just amazing. There were two things she always made. One of them was bourbon balls, and the other one was shortbread. The shortbread only had three ingredients. It had four cups of flour, a cup and a third of sugar and a pound of salted butter. Obviously good for you.

Mondello’s Mom’s Shortbread
4 cups flour
1 1/3 cups sugar
1 lb (four sticks) butter
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Cut butter into flour and sugar with knife. Crumble mixture with fingers, and pat mixture into Pyrex dish. Bake for 45 minutes (10 mins into baking, poke some holes with fork). Cut shortbread into squares immediately after removing from oven (DO NOT WAIT FOR COOLING) but leave in the Pyrex dish. Remove to platter only when completely cool.

… And then, of course, you pop them in your mouth and they’re so good. The shortbread is really simple. I’ve been finding recipes online that have everything from baking soda to vanilla to salt and all kinds of other things. This recipe has just three ingredients, which I thought was fantastic. – Bob Mondello

Gemini Rights

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I recently discovered Steve Lacy’s album, Gemini Rights and I have been listening to it for the last few weeks. It is for me, a no skips album. I love the song “Bad Habit.” It doesn’t sound like anything else on the radio right now, which I think is partially why it’s been so successful and, for me, such a revelation.

“Bad Habit” is a song about having a crush on someone and thinking that they weren’t into you, but then realizing maybe too late that they actually were. And questioning why you didn’t pursue it. The whole album is great. One of my other favorite songs is “Helmet,” which is kind of like Stevie Wonder meets Sly and the Family Stone in the best way possible. Steve Lacy was a guitarist and producer with The Internet and in his solo career he’s making some really interesting, fun, groovy music. – Aisha Harris

More recommendations from the Pop Culture Happy Hour newsletter

by Aisha Harris

Last week, our friends on the Book Desk launched their annual “Books We Love” guide – a cornucopia of recommendations for the year’s 400-plus(!) best reads. (Which includes our very own Linda Holmes!)

I rarely watch movie trailers, unless I’m already in a theater and forced to sit through previews, or it’s for a franchise where there’s little room for surprise or novelty to begin with. Which is why I’m fully on board with Vox critic Alissa Wilkinson’s argument against viewing trailers as a general rule, because most of them are really bad at conveying what a movie is actually about. Go in cold! You might like some films better if you did.

If you love Christmas music but can’t stand the new stuff or are a little over the old standbys, then check out the days-long Spotify playlist “FaLaLaLaLa Sentimental Christmas Shuffle-List.” It’s mostly songs of the easy listening/jazz variety circa the mid-20th Century, and features lesser played versions of familiar songs (Jackie Gleason – yes, from The Honeymooners – singing “I’ve Got My Love to Keep Me Warm”) as well as novelty songs you’ve likely never even heard of (“When Santa Claus Gets Your Letter” by … Captain Kangaroo?).

NPR’s Pilar Galvan adapted the Pop Culture Happy Hour segment “What’s Making Us Happy” into a digital page. If you like these suggestions, consider signing up for our newsletter to get recommendations every week. And listen to Pop Culture Happy Hour on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.



Chloe Southern – Naked: Intimately Confessional Neo-Folk-Pop – Independent Music – New Music

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Taken from her debut EP, Last Man on Earth, Chloe Southern’s indie neo-folk-meets-pop single, Naked, strips emotionally bare. The urgency of the distinctive vocal delivery paired with the intimacy in the confessionalism makes for a powerful listening experience. Anyone that has ever wrestled with entropy to feel viscerally again will be consumed by the conceptual score, which runs through the dim views that get dimmer in the wake of loneliness.

Narrating how she hates coffee because she only makes it for herself and the smell of snow which takes her to places where she finds a lost love’s shadow proves how easily our perceptions of elemental to inane things can change over time and with the absence of the co-creators of our stories before a chapter closes.

Through and through, it is a stunning single from the Brooklyn-based singer-songwriter which deserves to complement the next heartbreakingly cinematic Blockbuster.

Naked is now available to stream on Spotify.

Review by Amelia Vandergast



The 50 best albums of 2022

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The dominating music trends of 2022 could only be summed up by one word: unexpected.

In a year where generational pop divas made long overdue returns to the fray, some outdid expectations (Beyoncé, Bad Bunny, Harry Styles) and others floundered (Rihanna, Drake, Blackpink). The overdue return of Kendrick Lamar was a perplexing affair, just as how no one could have predicted a nearly four-decade-old Kate Bush song to have the year’s most heartwarming reverse-charting narrative. 

BTS went on hiatus. Lizzo proved she could outmaneuver the algorithm. One of the year’s biggest chart-toppers was called “Unholy,” etching a non-binary singer and a trans-pop icon in the record books.

The self-produced lo-fi guitar funk of Steve Lacy went supernova. Everyone has finally stopped talking about Bruno. Taylor Swift proved that she’s more popular than ever. Yet not even Taylor dominated the cultural space like Bad Bunny, unleashing an album that became one of the top-10 most-streamed albums of all time on Spotify only five months after its release.

Underneath the Grammy nominations and platinum certifications was the beating heart of our playlists, featuring great new releases from indie rock strongholds, R&B svengalis, ambient techno gearheads, defining punk bands, and contemporary bossa nova revisionists. 

There’s rarely been an album roundup as sprawling and diverse as this, but we can all agree that this was a year like no other. Presented in no specific order, here are the 50 best albums of 2022.



Berman finds profound, luminous meaning in Silvestrov’s music

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Boris Berman performed music of Valentin Silvestrov Thursday night at the Baryshnikov Arts Center.

Valentin Silvestrov is the most prominent Ukrainian composer of the last 100 years. He is also one of the important voices that came out of classical music in the last years of the Soviet Union, working his way through and past the orthodoxies of both East and West.

Silvestrov met pianist Boris Berman, a decade his junior, in the Soviet Union in the 1960s. It was then that Berman began exploring Silvestrov’s music, a decades-long process that culminated in a sublime concert Tuesday night at the Baryshnikov Arts Center, where the pianist played music from the composer that spanned 60 years.

This was clearly just as much a personal as musical project. Berman spoke about each piece, delivering his own insights as well as passing along Silvestrov’s previous comments and explanations of his work.

Berman’s playing was deeply dedicated to the music. His touch was light and clear and also had a sense of determination to have the music sound as transparent and beautiful as possible. Berman spoke about the inherent delicacy and gentleness in Silvestrov’s aesthetic, which was merely one part of this performance—there was no concession to the expressive weight of Silvestrov’s composing. (Silvestrov is currently living in Berlin while Ukraine fights off Russia’s invasion.)

That quality was clear in the earliest work, Triad, from 1961-66, through Five Pieces (2021) and Three Pieces, March 2022. No matter the tonality, mood, or structure of the piece, there was a powerful sensation—something Berman brought out that one doesn’t often hear on recordings—of a deep expansiveness that came from an inward contraction. That was not a paradox; Silvestrov’s music has an introverted focus while also being completely open to the listener, he is like a performance art figure going about private tasks while featured in a display window.

The opening Triad switched between a skittering atonality and quizzical tonality, contrasting quickness and stillness. While post-Schoenberg atonality was the orthodoxy in the West, it was avant-garde among Silvestrov’s peers. The composer’s gradual move to tonality (also echoed in various ways by Alfred Schnittke and Arvo Pärt) disappointed them but Silvestrov followed a path that sounded clear in Triads and the following work, Sonata No. 2. The music seemed to explore multiple paths, but consistently teased out luminous, lyrical phrases that centered the expression and the listening experience.

Kitsch Music (1977) was a clear and palpable transition in this concert. Through Berman’s introduction, and especially his playing, one heard Silvestrov exploring both personal and cultural memory—tonality was more than a formal and structural means, it was a way to live inside, and at the forward edge of, history. That meant music with a fundamental simplicity, the goal to state a single idea, but that also kept recalling fragments of Brahms and Chopin.

Berman’s playing, which was already lovely, became special here and completely absorbing in its beauty and focus. This ran through the final two works (and the encore, Postludium), collections in a larger set of bagatelles.

Berman quoted Silvestrov as saying the bagatelles were “full of lofty insignificance,” and no critic could describe them better. The music’s recursive phrases were again fundamentally simple, but the way they came in repeated waves created accumulating, and gripping, sensations. The music insisted that even the smallest thing deserved attention, that the most private experiences were as profound as the most public utterances. This was profound musical art.

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BRELAND and Jason Piperberg flip the script on the status quo

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For the Birds: Channeling Personal Success

BRELAND revealed the full extent of his crazy Eagles fandom last January when he created an unofficial playoff anthem called “For the Birds.” The song went viral on TikTok and earned him an invitation to walk the field with his dad prior to the Eagles-Cowboys game in Week 18. That was an extra special moment considering his midnight green roots.

“I’ve been an Eagles fan my whole life. My childhood room was green,” BRELAND said. “I haven’t missed a game in over 20 years. Me and my dad text every Sunday if we’re not in the same city, and we go to one game together every year.”

The hype song he created for Eagles vs. Titans pays tribute to the heroes of previous eras on the first verse, then jumps forward to what has been an unbelievable 2022 campaign:

Going savage on my Brian Dawkins;

We fly high but they still gonna try and underdog us;

We always finish harder than the way we started;

They don’t talk about us now the way they did in August.

There are timely references to Jalen Hurts and Nick Sirianni, plus an ode to the Liberty Bell:

NFC East can’t compete these days, we the reason the league loses sleep these days;

In the midnight threads or the Kelly green, I be willing to bet we the better team;

Got the Liberty Bell, we gonna let it ring, we don’t need no one else, that’s on everything.

“Hopefully, it gets everybody fired up about a season nobody really anticipated,” BRELAND said. “In my lifetime, the only years I could say the Eagles were definitively the best team in the league were the two Super Bowl years (2004, 2017). Just trying to channel some good karma.”

Good karma for himself and for the Birds. You see, BRELAND has noticed an interesting parallel between his own successes and those of the hometown football team. His debut album “Cross Country” released back on September 9 to rave reviews while peaking at No. 15 on Billboard.

“If the Eagles are winning — maybe it’s placebo or maybe I’m crazy — but if the Eagles win on Sunday, I expect my week, in my personal life, to be a great one,” BRELAND said. “I feel like we’re aligned in that way, if that makes sense. This has been the best year of my life professionally, and the Eagles are off to their best start in franchise history.”

This summer, BRELAND will join legendary songstress Shania Twain for select tour dates all over the United States, including a stop in Camden, New Jersey on June 9. Look for the skinny local kid with the infectious voice tearing up the stage, possibly wearing a No. 20 Eagles jersey. One thing he won’t ever be is definable.

“Some of you may not know that BRELAND is actually my last name,” BRELAND wrote on Twitter. “It was a name we inherited from slavery and each generation in my family has largely struggled since. I wanted the BRELAND name to be associated with greatness.”

From classical to jazz, URI presents holiday concerts, and more – URI News

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KINGSTON, R.I. – Dec. 2, 2022 – ’Tis the season of holiday concerts and the University of Rhode Island is featuring two shows that will ring in the season in their own way.

For those looking for offerings other than holiday tunes, there is also a full slate of semester-ending shows from the University’s Concert Band, Wind Ensemble, Concert Choir, and more. All concerts will be held in the Fine Arts Center Concert Hall, 105 Upper Collage Road, Kingston. Tickets are $15 for the general public; $10 for students and seniors 60 and older.

The always-popular holiday concert featuring the Symphony Orchestra and University Chorus opens the season Saturday, Dec. 3, at 8 p.m. For tickets, go to the event webpage.

The chorus, backed by pianist Nathaniel Baker, will present “Peace and Light,” a concert of traditional spirituals and classical and contemporary pieces by such masters as Mozart and Mendelssohn and contemporary composers Joan Szymko, Elizabeth Alexander, and Susan LaBarr. The chorus will open with Szymko’s “Myr, Zaraz” (Peace Now), which was written in response to the war in Ukraine.

The orchestra will perform Tchaikovsky’s magical Symphony No. 1, movement 1. Nicknamed “Winter Daydreams,” the symphony has the “charm and spirit” of the composer’s famous “Nutcracker” ballet, said orchestra director Sam Hollister. The concert will also feature a suite of piano pieces by Elfrida Andrée, Scandinavia’s first female cathedral organist and Sweden’s first female orchestral conductor. Hollister arranged the Romantic era piano pieces for orchestra.

“Andrée wrote prolifically for the organ and piano, yet her gorgeous works are often unheard in the orchestral world,” he said. “I am honored to bring some of her works to life in an orchestral format so that we may appreciate their warmth, creativity, charm, and ability to capture the holiday spirit.”

The orchestra and chorus will join forces on Mendelssohn’s “Verleih’ uns Frieden” (Grant us Peace). “The message of ‘Verleih’ uns Frieden’ is a beautiful reminder of peace during the holiday season,” said chorus director Elizabeth Woodhouse. “It is one of my favorite pieces and it is especially exciting to be able to perform it with the orchestra.”

‘A Soulful Holiday Celebration’

If you’re looking for a more jazzy, R&B or soulful twist on the holiday season, the Jazz Big Band is teaming up with the Jazz Vocal Ensemble on Saturday, Dec. 10, at 8 p.m. in the Concert Hall for a show of holiday classics and a few musical surprises. For tickets, please go to the event webpage.

Atla DeChamplain, a jazz vocalist who was mentored by the legendary Jon Hendricks, joined URI in August 2021 as an assistant teaching professor in the new amplified voice program. This fall, she launched the Jazz Vocal Ensemble, which performed with the Big Band for the first time earlier this fall.

“I am thrilled for the opportunity to collaborate with the Big Band,” she said. “It’s something I wanted to do at every institution I’ve taught, but URI is the first to pull it off. I’m grateful to be part of URI music because we’re not afraid to try new things, and the students are thriving.”

Ricki Rizzo, a music major in amplified voice and jazz studies, has performed with the Big Band as a member of the ensemble and as a soloist. “Being able to sing with such a talented group of individuals has allowed me to experience what it would be like performing with a professional big band,” she said. “Not only have I had a great time playing with them, but they have provided me feedback that has allowed me to grow as a vocalist.”

The concert will include new gospel compositions from resident artist, composer and pianist Alton Merrell, and a number of instrumental pieces by the Big Band. 

“Doctor Merrell has worked with our jazz students this semester on the relationship between jazz and gospel music,” said Emmett Goods, director of the Big Band. “He’s also taken our students through his own highly complex arrangements. This is a concert not to be missed.”

The rest of the lineup

Along with the holiday concerts, the next few weeks will host performances by other University ensembles:

On Friday, Dec. 9, the Concert Band and Wind Ensemble will present back-to-back concerts starting at 7:30 p.m. in the Concert Hall. Both ensembles are under the direction of Brian Cardany, URI’s director of bands.

The Wind Ensemble will perform works by American composers, including “Chester Overture” by William Schuman, “Fantasia for Band” by Vittorio Giannini, “Variation on a Medieval Tune” by Norman Dello Joio, and “Suite of Old American Dances” by Robert Russell Bennett. The Concert Band’s program will include some of the most popular composers of the medium – James Curnow’s “Fanfare and Flourishes,” David Holsinger’s “Three Tapestries,” Michael Mogensen’s “Evókatah,” and Franco Cesarini’s “Greek Folk Song Suite.”

Tickets can be purchased at the concert webpage.

 On Sunday, Dec. 11, the music of URI student composition majors will be featured starting at 7 p.m. in the Concert Hall. The concert is free and open to the public.

The concert will feature 11 works by 10 student composers, ranging in styles from jazz and popular music to such classical periods as contemporary and baroque. Along with the work of the composers, the show highlights the talents of more than 40 student vocalists and musicians who bring these original compositions to life.

“Having a composers’ concert every semester is an immensely rewarding experience for the composers,” said Eliane Aberdam, music professor and teacher of composition. “Along with helping composers build their portfolios, they get to hear what their music actually sounds like, how the balance between parts work (or not), and see for themselves the level of feasibility in actual performance by humans, as opposed to the playback of a computer. Composing is a lonely experience, so the concerts and rehearsals offer a way to connect with people – performers and the audience.”

On Monday, Dec. 12, the Concert Choir will present an encore performance of its mid-fall concert, “Do Not Leave Your Cares at the Door,” which features new works by Aberdam. The choir, under the direction of Mark Conley, will also perform an additional movement of Aberdam’s “Doors,” along with a piece by Renaissance composer Josquin des Prez and a chant by medieval mystic and composer Hildegard von Bingen. The concert starts at 7:30 p.m. in the Concert Hall. Tickets can be purchased here.

For other Music Department performances – such as convocations, recitals, and smaller ensemble concerts – check out its events webpage.

Britney Spears’ pop songs to feature in Broadway musical

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A stage musical about feminist princesses that uses hit songs by Britney Spears will open on Broadway this summer.

nce Upon A One More Time, featuring Spears’ hits, including Oops!… I Did It Again, Lucky, Stronger and Toxic, will start performances in May at the Marquis Theatre in New York.

The musical has an original story written by Jon Hartmere about classic fairy tale princesses — Cinderella, Snow White and The Little Mermaid among them — who are transformed after reading The Feminine Mystique, a landmark feminist text.

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The musical is another step in the independence of Britney Spears following her conservatorship case (PA)

The musical is another step in the independence of Britney Spears following her conservatorship case (PA)

Once Upon A One More Time first played at the Washington-based Shakespeare Theatre Company, known for its more stately offerings. It will be directed and choreographed by Keone and Mari Madrid. The cast will be announced at a later date.

Using already proven, popular songs to fuel a musical on Broadway has recently led to shows with music from The Temptations, Bob Dylan, The Go Go’s, Tina Turner and Alanis Morissette.

Many of Spears’ hits are in &Juliet — a jukebox musical now on Broadway that celebrates one of her writing partners and producers, Max Martin.

The musical is another step in the independence of Spears after her conservatorship case garnered national attention amid her attempts to regain control over her finances and livelihood.

Metro Boomin Drops Sophomore Album, ‘Heroes & Villains’

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The follow-up to his 2018 project, Not All Heroes Wear Capes, Metro Boomin has released his sophomore album Heroes & Villains.

A 15-track effort, Metro calls upon the likes of 21 Savage, Young Nudy, Travis Scott, Chris Brown, Future, John Legend, The Weeknd, Don Toliver, A$AP Rocky, Takeoff, and several others to help throughout. “This is the second out of a trilogy,” Metro says about the album. ” I’m going to see how this flow, because I really want to shoot a lot of videos to this one, and I’ve put a lot of time into this body of work. So I really want to stretch it, and not just throw out the third one.”

Stream Heroes & Villains below.

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Metro Boomin Drops Sophomore Album, ‘Heroes & Villains’ was last modified: December 2nd, 2022 by Meka



Creative Composer Gigi Masin Releases Album ‘Vahine’

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The widely loved Gigi Masin returns with ‘Vahine’ – a mini album of beautiful and distinct music that is unmistakably his, sounding better than ever. 

Gigi always pours his heart into composing, but here it takes on a potent new level of heavy emotion – as it’s a tribute to his late wife, who sadly passed away last year.

“There is a Tahitian dance called ‘Aparima’. It consists of graceful, sinuous and fascinating movements, which tell you stories and legends about love or tradition. The ‘Vahinè’ are now dancing, the Tahitian females, with smiles and gestures that could be symbolic or descriptive but are always gentle, harmonious, charming. I was watching this documentary, it was almost four in the morning, but I couldn’t sleep; I was in front of the television for hours, my wife had passed away the day before, and I was watching hands and arms swaying. I told myself that maybe it’s so, at the end of the road it’s possible to realise dreams, and I’m sure that she is finally able to dance like never before, and is able to move without any impediment, with no suffering, free to make all the movements that she couldn’t make for so long, turning to me with a smile and a wink. So, in the clouds, you will discover and see an extraordinary ‘Vahinè’, because she will move and dance and smile until the end of time.” – Gigi Masin.

A future-retro dreamscape where stripes of early evening sun pour through partially closed venetian blinds; kalimba, piano and steel pans meet on the incredibly evocative ‘Marilene (Somewhere in Texas)’.

The Balearic/Italo house heart of ‘Barumini’ throbs throughout a celestial epiphany, whilst ‘Shadye’ is a sun blinded ambient mirage where angelic voices and electric guitar intertwine, before more heavenly music ensues on the trance-like ‘Malvina’.

A heart-wrenchingly beautiful evocation of transitioning to the other side, ‘Valerie Crossing’ is Gigi’s compelling and inspirational take on death, with a vivid evocation of something spiritual, existential and metaphysical. His exemplary approach shows death not as a cause for despair, but a philosophical and poetic exploration of where souls go, when they leave their earthly bodies.

Gigi closes with ‘Vahinè’ – a twitchy, levitational piece of sublime deep techno, which transmits high strength vibrations of powerful emotions. On both this track, and the album of the same name, there’ s no pseudo intellectual ambient posturing with cod academic angles tagged on; This is music of real substance, coming from a real place. It’s saturated with feelings, but turns mourning into affecting art, and even a beacon of hope.

Washington Post sacks critic – SlippediscSlippedisc

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norman lebrecht

December 02, 2022

The paper, owned by Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, has laid off a dozen employees.

Prominent among them is the dance critic Sarah L. Kaufman, a Pulitzer Prize winner who has kept the flame burning for ballet in DC for half a century. She says: ‘By eliminating the dance critic position and all that dance coverage can be, The Washington Post is narrowing its arts journalism and its scope. I can’t fathom why this institution is shutting itself off to what dancers and choreographers have to say about our lives and the world we live in.’

So true.