rakemag

Bonnie is a Dutch girl with a problem: She believes her mother is bonkers. The woman suffers from manic depression, with highs so high and lows so low as to send the family into a tailspin. But when Bonnie’s grandmother, both the foundation and rudder of the clan, is killed in a car accident, the … Read more

Jim Denomie seems to have a door in his soul that won’t stay latched. It keeps swinging open to parallel worlds, where everything is more real than in this one. In the hilarious fantasies of his Renegade series, Indian men fly around surreal-colored mesas on rocket-powered horses and chase chickens through the sky with Volkswagen … Read more

From Europe come two politically torqued shows by young women. Carey Young is a London-based artist whose Consideration installation makes plain the degree to which lawyers run our lives. Lene Berg, from Oslo, makes video and text artworks that explore the role of art in war. Young designed her installation with the help of a … Read more

Form, meaning, use—can you make them from clutter and waste? At Altered Esthetics this month, artists from around the world are trying just that. This funky space, near the Northrup King building in Northeast Minneapolis, is stuffed with everything from candy-wrapper ball gowns to more traditional scrap-steel sculptures—more than a hundred works in all. There’s … Read more

David Lefkowitz is painting again. He hadn’t really stopped, but he’s dedicated the last few years mostly to his sculpture and drawings—graphite renderings of monumental cardboard boxes and witty constructions of tree stumps from the same brown materials. This show brings back an earlier style: These “Tangles” are oil-painted hybrids of electric-cord kudzu and tropical … Read more

Pulitzer-winning pianist and composer William Bolcom has an enormous body of work, inspired by everything from Broadway to the classic American songbook. At a recent press event, he even dropped Grandmaster Flash when pressed to cite additional influences. His interpretation of William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Experience won three Grammys last year, and we’ll … Read more

The multilayered, polyrhythmic funk of Fela Kuti is the core inspiration for this Brooklyn-based Afrobeat collective. Like Kuti, they also pair rise-up political lyrics with a disobedient beat that refuses to lie down. As with so many other African bands, the dozen or so members of Antibalas make for an awesome stage presence; the merging … Read more

With his new Son Volt record The Search, front man Jay Farrar diverges from a well-worn path of Neil Young-inspired folk-rock songs to explore more varied sonic influences, such as The Beatles, Bob Dylan, Beck, psychedelia, and swamp rock. The band has even enlisted a soulful horn section. Duly impressed by the album’s diverse sources … Read more

In Boomsday, Buckley’s latest novel, the relentlessly topical humorist (and spawn of conservative doyen William F. Buckley) envisions a future in which bloggers are actually powerful enough to radically influence decisions at the highest level of American politics. Not so far-fetched, you might say, but Buckley’s penchant for taking aim at the broadest possible targets … Read more

A rare opportunity to see one of America’s quietest—or at least lower-profile—literary lions. And judging from the man’s eclectic body of work, distinguished by its broad historical sweep and social criticism, it’s likely that Doctorow will have something of substance to say. Over a career that’s now spanned almost fifty years, Doctorow’s writing has consistently … Read more