re-animator playlist

Here is a Spotify playlist of music referenced in my poetry collection, Re-Animator.

Re-Animator is available to order from Indolent Books. Cover photograph by Michael Galinsky.

epic: elvis presley in concert

My review of Baz Luhrmann's bombastic, fairly dazzling concert doc EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert, here at Film-Forward.

 

jeffery berg's top 10 albums of 2025!

2025 brought forth a slew of tense, fraught records across all genres.

10.

NO VALIDATION / Che Noir & The Other Guys

Mesmerizing flows, jazzy beats and contemplative lyrics from the New York-based rapper and production duo. 

9.

THE SUMMER PORTRAITS / Ludovico Einaudi

Before Summer broke, I planted marigolds to Einaudi's pleasing melodies and orchestrations on this disc of ekphrastic pieces.

8.

LET GOD SORT 'EM OUT / Clipse

Clipse's first album in over 15 years, is plentiful with crisp, Pharrell-produced tracks. Nearly every cut kills.

7.

WEST END GIRL / Lily Allen

Terse and achingly sad, Allen's delivered what could be one of the all-time tell-all's. 

6.

LOTUS / Little Simz

A continuation of Little Simz's grand talents boiled down to a more stripped-down than usual, but still potent, effort.

5.

I QUIT / HAIM

Sunny Californian melodies and breezy idiosyncrasies shine on the sisters's wide-ranging, relentlessly appealing record.

4.

THAT'S SHOWBIZ BABY! / JADE    

The long-awaited full LP release from JADE, whose litany of previous singles were heavyweights since 2024, delivered and then some.

3. 

DON'T TAP THE GLASS / Tyler, the Creator

Another vivacious work from the talented artist (his last record, 2024's Chromakopia, was also extraordinary). This one is in a poppier, vintage R&B vein. Th album was marketed with brilliant anti-marketing marketing. 

2.

EURASEXUA / EURASEXUA AFTERGLOW / FKA twigs

An elegant mishmash of pop and electronica over FKA twigs' gossamer vocals.

1.

PARADISE NOW / Obongjayar

I hadn't really listened to Nigerian, London-based Obongjayar's solo work prior to 2025 (his Little Simz duet, "Point and Kill," a 2021 jewel), his bouncy, deceptively pleasurable sophomore record quickly became a favorite. 

I associate utopia with a destination. We’re constantly searching for a better “elsewhere”, because our current situation never seems good enough. But the ugliness we project onto our environment is just a mental construct, as if we had created the very obstacles we wish to overcome. On that cover, I’m trying to break through a glass ceiling – the one I created myself. -Obongjayar

Obongjayar photo by George Muncey.

A look back at my Top 10 of 2024 when the Pet Shop Boys slayed.

A massive Spotify playlist of all my 2025 favorites here!

liquorice

Hatchie has just announced the release of her new record, Liquorice, due November 7th via Secretly Canadian. 

Per the press release, Hatchie says, “This album feels like the culmination of everything I’ve wanted to do with this project since I first started it. I focused on the finer details of the trajectory of love found and lost, inspired by my favorite tragic romance films. I’ve never felt more aligned with an album and can’t wait to share the experience with everyone.”

Music video for single "Lose It Again" below.

ms. pac man

Sudan Archives murders on new single "MS. PAC MAN."

Album, THE BPM, drops in October.

Video is directed by Aris Chatman.

via Stones Throw 

it's never over, jeff buckley

My review of Amy Berg's thoughtful, affecting documentary on Jeff Buckley is now up here at Film-Forward.

via Magnolia Pictures

gone, gone, gone

Madonna's demo of "Gone, Gone, Gone" gets its first official release!

Veronica Electronica is forthcoming with a July 25th date.

it girl

Okay, here goes another banger from JADE, the industry-skewering "IT girl."

That's 4/4 for her singles so far!

orlando in love

The much-anticipated new album from Japanese Breakfast is scheduled to drop March 21st.

Their new track, "Orlando in Love," per press release is "a riff on John Cheever’s riff on Orlando Innamorato, an unfinished epic made up of 68 ½ cantos by the Renaissance poet Matteo Maria Boiardo—the hero is a well meaning poet who parks his Winnebago by the sea and falls victim to a siren’s call."

sophie

SOPHIE's posthumous album is now streaming. The flows and track transitions are flawless.

Per Range, the final album was assembled through the help of SOPHIE’s family and studio engineer, Benny Long.

SOPHIE was a tremendous talent, lost tragically and so young, but it's lovely to have these sonically brainy and twisted tunes out in the world.  

our time in the sun

Here's the music video for the bluesy, bittersweet single, "Our Time in the Sun," from Jeremie Albino out now on streaming platforms. 

Per Albino, "It’s simple but hard-hitting. It turned out to be my favorite song on the record, just one of those love and heartache songs I’ve always wanted to write. The band really took the song and cooked with it right out of the gate, just grooving and feeling good. It made it so easy to pour my heart into this performance."

"Our Time in the Sun" is the title track from Albino's forthcoming LP due out November 1st from Easy Eye Sound. The album was produced by Dan Auerbach.

disco: soundtrack of a revolution

This Summer, PBS is harnessing a BBC Production of Disco: Soundtrack of a Revolution, directed by Louise Lockwood and Shianne Brown. The docuseries is refreshingly frank about the evolution of disco—its black, brown, and queer roots. For those who know, know, but audiences tuning into PBS, young and old, may be re-introduced to disco’s meanings and origins for the first time, or looking at its history anew, still a bit cloudy and derided in music criticism and within popular culture.

The series is split into three, breezy, satisfying bites. Starting with David Mancuso’s (dubbed the “Father of Clubbing”) and his NYC loft gatherings in the early 1970s, mostly made up of people of color partying to “danceable R&B.”  Soon, parties like Mancuso’s started cropping up in cities across America. A 1972 track by Eddie Kendricks, “Girl You Need a Change of Mind,” with its persistent beat, smooth vocal, and deep, trembling piano, fast became an underground hit. Technological advancements of more robust stereo systems filling sound in large rooms accelerated the rise of clubs. Discotheques began to fuse together marginalized groups, some hit hard by the economic crisis, by providing safe spaces and emotional (and physical) outlets.

The beats became stronger, and even more driving, on subsequent records like Manu Dibango’s “Soul Makossa” and Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes’ “The Love I Lost,” both integral to sounds of early disco. The birth of two turntables created a whole new game where a seamless, blended crossover of tunes could keep the party going without stopping all night long and into the morning. This hedonistic, party culture is captured well through the series’ intricate use of archival footage (the deft film editing is by Ed Horne, Damian Leask, and Jonathan Seal).

There is a parallelism between disco and capitalism—one thing after another—excess and growth, over a monotonous, driving beat.  During this era, record companies were now symbiotic with what was playing in the clubs, not just the payola whims of radio. Though disco rapidly started to infiltrate the charts and airwaves, previously mostly of white rock formats, with separate R&B stations.  A humorous story emerges in the second episode of Casablanca Records buying sixteen minutes of airtime on radio stations so they could play Donna Summer’s epic “Love to Love You Baby,” an enduring classic that marries sexual explicitly with the disco sound. The sexual nature of disco, and the rise of queer and fearlessly flamboyant artists like Sylvester, would of course cause backlash with conservatives and religious groups at the time (somehow the Village People with their major key, sing-songy tunes and blatant queer references, eschewed scrutiny). Interestingly, many of the disco divas portrayed here, like Patti LaBelle, began singing in the church; elements of gospel are an undeniable facet in American disco music in particular. And the series invokes the soaring anthems of Candi Staton’s “Young Hearts Run Free” (written after an incident with an abusive partner), Thelma Houston’s “Don’t Leave Me This Way,” and, of course, Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive,” which became an emblematic song at a wearied nation’s decade’s end.

Unlike past disco retrospectives, the titanic Saturday Night Fever, with John Travolta's Tony Manero as the straight, Rocky-type, who made disco relatable to white, straight culture, is less pronounced here. The music, too, those ubiquitous Bee Gees’ tunes, are praised by the doc’s talking heads. Yet, by leading up to this moment in 1977 with so much before, the documentary shows how the Saturday Night Fever phenomenon was directly and indirectly appropriated from black and queer culture.   

These influences permeating the mainstream (including the newscasts on the storied Studio 54), and the disintegration of white rock radio, (not too mention, probably too, the economic strain of the 1970s, including the gas crisis), led in part to the infamous Disco Demolition Night, detailed well here.  

As the party and fun peaks, then quickly winds down, the series gets a bit slack as well. The doc shows how disco never really died, just morphed into new sounds, such as house, and Larry Levan and his inventive garage music. The series features engaging testimonies from the likes of Staton, Ward, Nicky Siano, David Morales, Honey Dijon, and more. Overall, this is a worthwhile trip through history, and looks to disco admirably, and with some complexity, rather than an embarrassment, as treated often in the past. ***

 

Disco: Soundtrack of a Revolution debuts on PBS with Episode 1, “Rock the Boat,” on Tuesday, June 18th at 9 PM ET.

Episode 2, “Ain’t No Stoppin’ Us Now,” premieres Tuesday, June 25th at 9 PM ET.

The third and final episode, Episode 3, “Stayin’ Alive,” lands Tuesday, July 2nd at 9PM ET.

-Jeffery Berg

tunes for late spring

NY Singer / Songwriter Gus Dapperton provides some vibrant vocals and vibes on EP Tunes for Late Spring. Featuring covers of "What You Won't Do for Love," Cher's "Believe," and George Michael and WHAM's "Everything She Wants."

wasting your love

Relishing this tender ditty, "Wasting Your Love," from Minari (my personal Original Score jdb award winner!) and The Last Black Man in San Francisco composer, Emile Mosseri. 

"Wasting Your Love" is a song about marriage," he says. "It's not about the butterfly or honeymoon parts of new love, but the sanctuary, mundanity, and deeply romantic side of long-term love. It is about the gap between who I am and who I want to be—love can be taken for granted, and reciprocity can slip through the cracks. This song is about being invisible to each other and then finding each other again.”

loss of life

While not matching the blissful highs of their first albums, Oracular Spectacular and Congratulations, MGMT are more appropriately disillusioned on their latest effort of baroque alt-pop that oscilates between sprightly, optimistic 80s electro and minor-key introspection.

An earlier single, "Mother Nature," sounds much better in the context of the album.

The record is available now to stream and buy.

capricorn

Perhaps it's the mid-life crisis in me, but Vampire Weekend's "Capricorn" is hitting hard now. + that piano riff.

Their new record, Only God Was Above Us, drops April 5th.

what now

 

Vibing on the vibrant new Brittany Howard record, What Now. 

The awesome "Power to Undo" is so unabashedly Prince, but also her own.

what was i made for?

Billie Eilish releases a pretty little piano-driven ditty from Barbie.

Just something you paid for

barbie dreamhouse mix

New set, Barbie Dreamhouse Mix, unlocked at Mixcloud!

Some mash-ups of mine + everything from Bach to Santigold.

range

Plaintive, meditative new single, "Range," from Texas-based minimalist music outfit Balmorhea from their forthcoming LP Pendant World.

Balmorhea's last record, The Wind, made my Top 10 Albums list for 2021.

Looking forward to hearing more of their new work!