One Thing This Week: July 8
A massive music festival, an unsettling beach read and a strong case for keeping your Blu-ray player.
One UK Concert Experience (from your couch)
Glastonbury 2024
This year’s edition of the world’s best music festival brought together a mix of the hottest new bands, mid-career indie stalwarts, and classic artists who remain relevant in today’s crazy times. And Coldplay.
SZA, The Last Dinner Party, Olivia Dean, Burna Boy and Shania Twain all brought their A-game to 200,000+ attendees over five days in the English countryside.
Visit the BBC’s YouTube page for high-quality videos of all performances from the festival.
One Book
Emma Cline - The Guest
Released last summer and just as relevant for this one, Emma Cline’s smart psychological thriller is the perfect highbrow beach read.
It confidently tests the bounds of the ‘unlikable protagonist’, as it follows 22-year-old escort Alex through a tumultuous summer navigating Long Island’s high society. Urgently divisive by design, it’s one to read with a friend for the memorable and heated conversations it can spawn. And you can create your own party game to predict the casting for the inevitable Hollywood version.
This ‘virtual book club’ from Vulture makes a great companion as you work your way through the story.
Another great (and free) companion read is the John Cheever’s short story “The Swimmer” (1964), which Cline says inspired her to write The Guest.
Order from Massy Books or borrow from the VPL
One Song
Adrianne Lenker - “Sadness as a Gift”
Reference points: Lucinda Williams meets Leonard Cohen
The Big Thief singer-songwriter’s latest solo endeavor searches for moments of optimism in an unpredictable, often disappointing world.
From the New York Times in Adrianne’s own words: “I still like looking at the world around me with softness and an open heart. There are so many opportunities to numb out, and go on autopilot — and that numbness, to me, is the enemy of songwriting.”
One Film to Stream
Brats
For the group of actors who came to define 1980s youth films—including Demi Moore, Andrew McCarthy, Judd Nelson and Rob Lowe—it was a single New York magazine article that forever linked them together in our collective imagination as the “Brat Pack”, for better and for worse.
In this poignant doc, director Andrew McCarthy documents his journey to reconnect with members of the pack and measure the impact of that article on their lives.
Social media before there was social media!
One Album
Arooj Aftab - Night Reign
Reference points: Sun Ra meets Norah Jones meets Jeff Buckley
The fourth album from the highly touted Pakistani-born, Brooklyn-raised singer-composer continues her boundless reinvention of folk and jazz in a film noir-like atmosphere.
The album creates a hypnotic spell that feels like one continuous song cycle.
This video for the album’s standout track “Whiskey” (directed by Tessa Thompson) is a great place to start.
Buy the album from Audiopile Records
See her live at the Hollywood Theatre on January 20, 2025
One Tribute
Martin Mull (1943 - 2024)
On June 27, we said goodbye to super versatile actor-comedian Martin Mull.
See him at his best in FM or Serial, two indelible classics that capture a generation in rapid change, embodying the loopy, aging hippie vibe of the late 1970s—after Woodstock and before the “lunch is for wimps” 1980’s. (Note that neither film is available to stream anywhere: an example of why a Blu-ray player is still a must for every cinephile!)
In the short-lived satirical talk show Fernwood 2 Night, Mull also helped to pioneer the meta-TV format that would later set the stage for The Larry Sanders Show, Curb Your Enthusiasm and more. Fernwood 2 Night and its follow up America 2 Night were never officially released in a home video format, but one kind soul has managed to archive many of them on this YouTube channel.