Junkee Staff Picks: New Music, Comforting Old TV, And Shooting Hoops
Here's the best stuff we've been into over the past week.
You know how your favourite filmmakers and artists and showrunners and writers are constantly making new work for you to keep up with that comes along with hot takes less than 12 hours after release? How creative people from all around the world are popping up daily, going viral with some fresh slice of genius for an afternoon, then disappearing into the digital abyss by the time you’ve finished work? You know how you’ve binged every Netflix original series in the past three years but still haven’t made time to see The Godfather or The Sound of Music?
Because we know there’s too much great stuff out there to find and follow in a timely fashion, here’s a no-pressure list of good shit (new and old) that we’ve been into this past week. It’s like that wall of VHS tapes chosen by the staff at Video Ezy you liked as a kid, except for an age where every Video Ezy has been demolished and we’re left to hunt around like Ibises in a giant internet garbage can filled with spoilers, porn and an endless stream of movie deals between Adam Sandler and Netflix.
Enjoy!
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I Had A Dream That You Were Mine – Hamilton Leithauser/Rostam
Picked by: Darren Levin
Hamilton Leithauser is the frontman of The Walkmen, who you may remember as the band with the best song of 2004, ‘The Rat’. Rostam Batmanglij, meanwhile, is the real genius behind Vampire Weekend; the multi-instrumental production whiz whose widescreen vision and baroque touches made Ezra Koenig’s aloof Upper West Side musings somewhat tolerable.
Their first collaborative album is sublime easy listening — but not in a Smooth FM kinda way. Batmanglij’s old-world-meets-new-world production — where doo-wop harmonies sit next to sub-bass synth — creates a comfortable bed for Leithauser’s gravelly crooning to roll around in. It’s beautiful and you should listen to it, preferably on a Sunday when you’re still tasting the dregs of the night before and the weather is nice.
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Downtown Girls Basketball
Picked by: Taryn Stenvei
Today, on the advice of Ben Clement, editor of the exceptional Good Sport, I watched this short video of the NYC-based Downtown Girls Basketball team, and I felt it all over again. The clip, by one of the team’s members, captures that magic of women on the court, the unique beauty of collective female power, the idea that the most important word in ‘team sports’ is ‘team’.
Watch this video, watch it again, and go shoot some hoops with your mates this weekend.
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Fleabag
Picked by: Meg Watson
There’s a moment in the first episode of Fleabag where the titular character (I mean, she doesn’t really have a name other than that) is asked why she split up with her last boyfriend. We cut to a scene of her eating toast and watching a clip of Barack Obama in bed and, as his speech veers into grand yet sombre statements about democracy, she slips her hand down her pants. The laptop starts bouncing around, her eyes fixate with a dull glaze on the screen, then a man pops up from under the blankets and asks what she’s doing. This was the second I knew I would watch every episode of this by the end of the day.
Fleabag is a darkly comic and tightly crafted new show about a sad, callous, but ultimately relatable young woman living in London. She’s a hot mess in the style of Bridget Jones. She has an outward confidence and openness about sex that rivals even Hannah Horvath. She utilises direct narration with a skill on par with Frank Underwood. But what comes from the story itself is so much more rich and nuanced than the sum of those fun, familiar parts.
Through the writing and direction of critically-acclaimed playwright Phoebe Waller-Bridge (who also plays the series’ star), Fleabag is a uniquely artful reflection on trauma, depression, sexuality, and young modern life while also being really fucking funny.
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A Seat At The Table – Solange
Picked by: Sonia Taylor
Eight years ago Solange Knowles was handed a CD with a few tracks by her friend Raphael Saadiq, one of which was “just drums, strings, and bass”. She wrote ‘Cranes In The Sky’ from her hotel room that night.
Two years ago I stumbled across her single ‘Lovers In The Parking Lot’ while drunk off tequila at a friend’s apartment in Mexico City. I’d play it over and over, wondering how I’d missed this fabulous woman with her big hair, long limbs, sweet voice and gentle, arresting power, while trying to learn her dance moves and make a kick-ball-change look anywhere near as good.
Two weeks ago A Seat At The Table, Solange’s first album in eight years, was released. I watched the opening sequence for the video to ‘Cranes In The Sky’ and felt my breath catch in my chest. Over and over I watched like I did that night in Mexico City, but this time I cried instead of danced.
We all have our stories. Whatever form, we’ve all been through pain. And while it’s easy to feel that Solange is touching our own — she is most importantly, powerfully and gracefully, telling the collective story of those often left without a voice. Many of the tracks (with low-key collaborators including Andre-3000, Lil Wayne, Kelela and Sampha) are about coping. Many of the interludes are about racial struggle, identity and empowerment. There are moments of rage, and moments of joy.
Describing ASATT as “a project on identity, empowerment, independence, grief and healing”, Solange brings stories from black history and culture — both collective and deeply personal — that are so often disregarded, to their seat at the table.
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The Good Wife
Picked by: Sinead Stubbins
First of all, I need you to go into this with an open mind. I don’t care that the TV show I am about to recommend doesn’t fit your definition of ‘cool’. It’s not about a bulletproof black superhero, about a bunch of robots who like to wear cowboy hats, or a man who may or may not have committed a grisly crime. This week I started The Good Wife. And I am never looking back.
The Good Wife is about a woman named Alicia Florrick (Julianna Marguiles) who is trying to rebuild her life after State Attorney husband (Chris Noth) is sent to jail for a scandal involving sex and political corruption. Alicia returns to work as a lawyer, where she meets a private investigator named Kalinda (Archie Panjabi) who likes tequila shots and being mean to people and Cary (Matt Czuchry) who likes competing with Alicia and making her look bad. Alicia also makes eyes at her old friend/now-boss, Will (Josh Charles) who is clever and handsome.
My friend recommended this to me as a wind-down-from-work, fun procedural show and frankly, sometimes that’s all I kinda want from TV.
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Dreamland: The True Tale of America’s Opiate Epidemic
Picked by: Katie Cunningham
I recently went on a holiday to the US and while I was there, I picked up a copy of Dreamland: The True Tale of America’s Opiate Epidemic at an airport. One of the quotes on the back cover says it’s “a book all Americans should read”, but I think it’s just as vital reading for anyone interested in everyday lives and how institutions that are meant to protect people often end up totally letting them down.
Dreamland is, as the title says, about drugs. It’s about how the overprescribing of prescription painkillers in the 2000s — namely Oxycontin — produced a new generation of opiate addicts across middle America and how the problem went virtually ignored until the death of Phillip Seymour Hoffman in 2014. Evil pharmaceutical companies, black tar heroin dealers from Mexico, America’s flawed healthcare system and the invisibility of small towns all play a role in how the problem got so big and went on for so long.
It’s heartbreaking and absorbing stuff, the sort of beautifully woven narrative nonfiction that doesn’t come around enough.
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Luke Cage
Picked by: Osman Faruqi
Jessica Jones was easily the best show of last year. Its focus on proper character development and interesting stories made it the perfect antidote to the CGI-packed, superhero snooze fest that is The Avengers franchise, despite both hailing from the same Marvel stable.
Netflix’s latest superhero series, Luke Cage, takes what made Jessica Jones great and turns it into something even more polished and stylish. It isn’t just a nod to diversity or black culture; it’s a full-on embodiment of it. We’re immersed in Harlem, we experience the lives of ordinary people, workers, police and politicians, all through the lens of a bulletproof black man in a hoodie. It’s fun, it’s powerful, the pacing is perfect, and the soundtrack is brilliant.
I’m totally addicted and I’m trying to drag it out for as long as I can, but I’m already getting sad about running out of episodes. If you’re not convinced yet, check out our full review.
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