For years, Asher Danziger has been a fixture of the French Quarter busking community, recognizable by his crunchy granola vibe and gentle, hypnotic gaze that can stop passing tourists in their tracks. His new album, Grass Grows Through It, is a thorough expression of his elven life philosophy. He looks on the bright side in “Back To The Beauty,” serenades soil in “The Farmer Song,” and bemoans the robot overlords in “Smart Phone Blues.” Though Danziger is used to going solo, the album is collaborative. There are his New Orleans homies, like multi-instrumentalist Rex Gregory, drummer Jonathan Arceneaux, bassist Kenny Murphy, and his longtime collaborator Adam Keil, whose deft co-producer’s touch ties it all together. But it’s also a family affair. Two of his sisters contribute backup vocals, and his singer-songwriter father sings on the final track, which Danziger wrote in tribute to him—a fitting end to an album that so proudly carries the die-hard American folk guitarist banner through our troubled times. —Holly Devon
Indie garage rockers Hotel Burgundy originate from Mandeville (despite their song “We’re From New York”), cut their teeth in the post-COVID college scene of Baton Rouge, and have now settled down in New Orleans. They’re no stranger to the DIY hustle, evident by their tours through much of the South and East Coast, slowly brute forcing their way past the algorithm and onto local festival bills like Hogs for the Cause and LA Psych Fest (they even helped organize a somewhat self-aggrandizing “Amor Fest” last October at The Rabbit Hole). Sounding like many of the softboi, heartthrob indie rocker bands from the ‘10s and early aughts (like The Backseat Lovers, Wallows, or The Killers), AMOR aims to capture the energy of their live performance. And it does just that, feeling more like a setlist than a tracklist built for physical format—while still retaining standard full-length release recording quality without being overly polished. Josh Rovira has a commanding voice, able to cleanly move from quiet, low moments to full-throated shouting like in “Red’s A Feeling,” a slow, prom dance-like song with the classic quiet-to-loud crescendo formula. The band takes a more stripped-down approach on this song, allowing for Rovira’s voice to stand alone and build. Titanic bass parts refreshingly dominate this record, especially on the more post-punk tracks like “HAÜS” and “We’re From New York.” Heavy distortion and feedback make for textured, well-balanced tracks where guitar accents (Evan Hendry and Jacques du Passage) challenge JJ Hidalgo’s bass all the while stealing back some of the show from Rovira’s bombastic vocals. Although this kind of indie rock harkens back to a largely bland era of “indie sleaze” and “male manipulator music,” Hotel Burgundy executes it with an undeniable fidelity. —Dalton Spangler
Post-rock suffered in its moment for being a pretentious subgenre name, but it was the rare one that was oddly accurate. It presented a vision of what comes after rock and merits more attention than it received at the time because it follows in the footsteps of ‘70s punk, post-punk, and new wave. Punks asked if the world really needed flat minor 13th chords and 9/4 time, while new wave envisioned a new, democratic kind of glamor. Post-rock became a thing in the mid-‘90s at a time when those musical and cultural challenges had largely been absorbed, neutralized, and commodified as alternative rock and grunge. Critic Simon Reynolds coined the term to describe music “using rock instrumentation for non-rock purposes,” and in the case of New Orleans’ Jai Alai—and many of their peers—that meant removing the parts that say “rock song.” There are no choruses on Division, their album—long EP, really—from 2000 recently reissued by Strange Daisy Records, and when bassist Jake Springfield sings, the lyrics and his delivery of them are almost gestural. They’re sounds, not expressions of thoughts and emotions. One of the most enduring post-rock bands is Austin, Texas’ Explosions in the Sky, whose instrumental tracks move from a gentle meander to Götterdämmerung-level drama, and Jai Alai is the opposite of that. Its pieces are charmingly modest, attractive assemblages with a melodic bass part, a guitar part that intertwines with it, and drums that add textures that logically move around inside the bass/drum network. Sometimes there’s a keyboard part, sometimes a hushed, breathy vocal, but there’s rarely any real center, and when there is, it’s a hypnotic sequence of notes. The motion in the songs—to the extent that motion exists—mimics dub in the way different sounds and combinations of instruments move in and out of focus. The challenge of post-rock is that just as it doesn’t speak the rock musical vocabulary, it’s hard to use in the way people use rock music. There’s too much going on for it to be Eno-level ambient, but Division requires a number of listens to be more than environmental music. It’s easy to put on either side of the album and feel like you only heard one song when you reach the run-off groove. That said, side two eventually emerges as the more challenging with “Crawling of Turn” starting with a passage that seems random, as if the bass and guitar are playing in the same key in two different rooms with no way to hear each other. It comes together so that clearly wasn’t the case, and “Christmas in July” has an Explosions in the Sky-like swell, but in Jai Alai style. It doesn’t electrify you as much as it makes you look up from the paper you’re working on to approvingly nod, “Hmmmm.” The Strange Daisy vinyl reissue comes with the 7” “Condorman,” and it’s worth the price. “Condorman” is as close to an actual single as Jai Alai would get. The album begs to be heard as an album, but “Condorman” is a very satisfying, audience-friendly four-minute hit. It reminds you that Jai Alai could have been more poppy, and they weren’t evasive by default. Division represents the choices they made about what they wanted to be. —Alex Rawls
New Orleans lo-fi pop duo Sans Terre released six singles between July 2024 and September 2025. While the band has not yet released an official album, these singles have been compiled into the EP Singles 24-25 for the Crescent City Sounds collection, the commercial-free music streaming collection created and curated by the New Orleans Public Library [an ANTIGRAVITY advertiser] as a means of archiving and connecting local musicians to the greater New Orleans community. Sans Terre, whose name was taken from the Henry David Thoreau essay “Walking” (“without land or a home”), describe their music as embracing the spiritual and relational, which seems a bit of an understatement—for those of us who left the Catholic Church years ago, the overt influence of Catholicism in each song can be a bit jarring, though the lyrics do lean more toward the liberal side of the faith. With the exception of “Heretic,” which is a darker post-punk number, Sans Terre’s songs have a dreamy, gentle pop sound. There is certainly talent in the band—lead vocalist Jenny H has an ethereal voice and instrumentalist/vocalist Mike I is a skilled musician, and the unabashed embrace of spirituality outside of a traditional religious music scene is an interesting addition to the current New Orleans indie landscape. However, the songs do not delve much beyond the surface of spiritual exploration, relying more heavily on religious imagery and language than on evoking deeper contemplation. This is the age-old question of aesthetics vs. profundity, and Sans Terre has the potential to create more introspective (and, ironically, more spiritual) songs if they are willing to remove their symbolic vestments. —Mary Beth Campbell
Claire Givens (People Museum, Ocean Boyfriend) and Aaron Boudreaux (People Museum, GIVERS) have been collaborators for years. Though perhaps best known for their music with People Museum, Givens has also contributed vocals to Boudreaux’s solo project, MoPodna. Due to the duo’s creative alchemy, it was perhaps inevitable that they would combine forces for another side project. Claire Givens & MoPodna—which was written and recorded when the two artists found themselves working and living between California and Louisiana—is an album about personal and creative growth and the dichotomy between the heartbreak of homesickness and the excitement of embarking on a new adventure. This tension is conveyed not only through the lyrics but also in the album’s arrangement: Side A consists of the songs in their fully realized pop form, Givens’ otherworldly vocals melding seamlessly with Boudreaux’s signature beats, while side B consists of thoughtful, stripped down piano versions of the same songs (plus a couple of their previous collaborations). Claire Givens & MoPodna might not stray too far outside the duo’s usual sound, but there is an extra layer of maturity to these songs that can only come from daring to venture beyond your comfort zone. Standout tracks include “Find It Again,” which manages to crystallize the atmospheres of both New Orleans and Southern California, and the piano version of Givens’ and Boudreaux’s 2024 release “Stay,” though the album is worth listening to in its entirety, as intended. —Mary Beth Campbell
Crooks centers on the Mercurio family—a family of seven—following their lives over five decades. There’s no overarching plot—each character gets their own insular narrative, much closer to a short story collection. The first section focuses on the matriarch and patriarch of the family in the ‘60s, Buddy and Lillian, and their escape from Vegas after Buddy’s dealings with the mafia go sideways. They flee to Oklahoma to start a new life, and from there the story follows each Mercurio child. We follow the pretty boy Jeremy to Los Angeles, then east to Vegas to check in on Ray, the muscle. We’re then transported to Moscow to see the acrobatic thief Tallulah’s narrative, then get to see the exploits of former-criminal-turned-boring-lawyer Alice in New York City. We meet Paul last, who is the youngest and doesn’t remember the hijinks his family used to get up to. All he really wants is his family back together. This isn’t your usual family crime drama where the kids sit around griping about how bad their childhoods were, but instead we see how these upbringings have shaped them. The prose is crisp and carries the reader from one sentence to the next until time melts away and before you know it, the book is done. You get a sample size of various well-depicted settings, and each character is compelling. The chapters are short, and each character’s respective section could be read as a standalone, in the event you fall in love with one in particular and want to read once more about their exploits. If you love crime dramas that center on family dynamics without sacrificing thrills, this is the book for you. —Danny Cherry Jr.
Margaret C. Anderson founded The Little Review in 1914, but the magazine that published writers and artists like Gertrude Stein, William Carlos Williams, Man Ray, and Frank Stella still feels strikingly contemporary. Perhaps that’s why Adam Morgan is the second author to release a biography of Anderson in roughly two years, following Holly A. Baggett in 2023. Morgan makes Anderson’s life feel as vivid as her work, following her from her Indiana childhood to Chicago, California, New York, and Paris, complete with colorful stories of the artistic circles she inevitably joined or formed and romantic partners she had, including co-editor Jane Heap and opera singer Georgette Leblanc. He doesn’t romanticize Anderson’s life, which wasn’t always easy or glamorous. Anderson and Heap were famously prosecuted for publishing an early, serialized version of James Joyce‘s Ulysses, deemed obscene. Their lawyer, a scene-adjacent figure, recorded shockingly sexist and homophobic thoughts about the pair in letters to Ezra Pound, and Anderson and the magazine often struggled, regularly losing backers and facing evictions over obscenity allegations and support for radicals like Emma Goldman. Though Morgan’s style is less formal than Baggett’s academic writing, he includes illustrative selections from Ulysses and other censored Little Review material without disrupting his highly entertaining narrative. His book is a reminder of the struggles behind a magazine that proclaimed itself “making no compromise with the public taste“—and a life seemingly lived by the same motto. —Steven Melendez
The Undead begins as the story of a youngish woman named Maya trying to make it as a filmmaker in Moscow. It’s similar at first to recent U.S. artistic coming-of-age stories like Chelsea Martin‘s novel Tell Me I’m an Artist or Kelly Reichardt‘s film Showing Up, as Maya wrestles with personal ambitions, relationships with friends and family, and the inevitable struggles and compromises of collaborative creation. But Maya lives in contemporary Russia, and while she’s largely uninterested in politics, politics becomes—as the saying goes—interested in her. Government operatives come to view her movie, intended as an innocuous zombie comedy, as an allegory for the Putin regime, rapidly diminishing her options. It’s Russian-born, U.S.-based writer Svetlana Satchkova‘s first English-language novel, fascinating as it illustrates life in today’s Russia and, more broadly, what it means to live life and make art under an authoritarian regime. It’s an engrossing novel that rather brilliantly transforms from an artistic adventure to a grim political thriller, though the reading experience is occasionally jarred by the presence of not-quite-idiomatic English—a newsstand described as “selling press” or a meal of “cheesy squids“—that could have been fixed with a closer line edit. —Steven Melendez
Sought after worldwide, the Jaffa orange is known for its thick peel, sweet flavor, and resilience through the winter months of its native land, Palestine. We’re introduced to the family at the center of All That’s Left of You as they care for their ancestral orange grove. It’s 1948, and the Israeli government is seizing Jaffa, claiming every inch of land. Sharif, the family patriarch, refuses to be displaced, holding his ground after much of the town has fled the violence of the Zionist army. His hold on the land doesn’t last long, but his refusal to give up his humanity carries a weight that rings for decades. Starring the legendary Bakri family, icons of Palestinian cinema, Cherien Dabis’ epic chronicles almost 75 years of Palestinian history, from the Nakba up to 2022, all through the lens of one family. With its time-jumping narrative and ensemble of three generations, All That’s Left of You allows us to witness the evolving realities of living under occupation, while centering the humanity that persists in the midst of attempted erasure. This family doesn’t just survive, they live. We’re blessed with scenes of beauty—father and son reciting poetry, musical revelry at a wedding, husband and wife reminiscing about the first words spoken by their son. When grappling with an impossibly difficult choice near the end of the film, an Imam advises this family on how they should approach the grief of their shared history, saying, “Your humanity is also your resistance.” To that end, with its moments of quiet reflection, gentle humor, and a pervading sense of grace, All That’s Left of You resists through its humanity, shining bright in a time of great pain, like an orange grove thriving in the winter. —Zain Hashmat
For 50 years now, Arthur Hardy has provided our city—and the wider world—with the most in-depth and well-researched guide to our most famous celebration. As he enjoys his victory lap before retiring this year, WYES put together a documentary highlighting the impact he and his Mardi Gras Guide have had on Carnival. The program begins by giving us a brief glimpse into Arthur’s childhood, which wasn’t exactly a charmed one. It follows him through his time at Loyola to pursue a music education degree, and on to his teaching career. Then, as now, teachers didn’t make much, so Arthur and his wife Susan had an idea to create a guidebook for local bars to bring in some additional income. They felt sure the Archdiocese credit union wouldn’t extend them a loan for the project though, so the idea morphed into a TV Guide-style book highlighting all the ins and outs of Mardi Gras. Arthur and Susan, along with their business partner John Drury, launched the project with a $5,000 loan. The first issue was created using a borrowed typewriter from Brother Martin, where Arthur worked. It was in black and white with no ads or stories—strictly parade information. That first year they printed 5,000 copies but only sold 1,500. Arthur goes on to share how they adjusted print run based on demand and went from a small black-and-white booklet to a full color magazine with a peak circulation of 130,000 copies in 2001. Arthur was also given a chance to appear on WWL to promote his guide in the early years. He would eventually also have spots on WDSU and Fox 8 as well as making six appearances on The Today Show. Over the years he became something of a local celebrity, and he and Susan continued to dive deep into Carnival research, collecting rare memorabilia, and unearthing hidden stories of krewes from as far back as the 1800s. The documentary features comments from prolific Mardi Gras Guide writer Jimmy Clark and Mardi Gras historian Henri Schindler along with James Henderson Jr. (former NOMTOC president) and Dr. Stephen Hales (King Rex 2017) among others. It also spotlights the guide’s art director David Johnson, who has been creating the beloved covers since 1991. While Arthur is clearly honored to have educated so many young men in the musical arts at Brother Martin (he has a scholarship named in his honor there), we also get a glimpse into his passion for public education. The documentary explores his tireless work to bring his alma mater Warren Easton back after Hurricane Katrina—with an assist from a famous face. As the program comes to a close, we get a peek at all the accolades Arthur has enjoyed as he winds down his storied career. The guide will continue to be published under his name, but he is stepping away from the day-to-day processes. While some of the “dramatizations” in the documentary were definitely AI and had a distinct public TV vibe, it still oozes New Orleans flavor with vintage B-roll of Arthur from decades past. When it comes to the promotion and understanding of Mardi Gras on a national stage, Arthur is referred to here as “the glue that held everything together.” And as someone who didn’t grow up here but whose mother used to bring home every Mardi Gras Guide (with a box of McKenzie’s turtles) when she worked shifts as an agency nurse at Charity in the ‘90s, I have to agree. Arthur’s guides were a huge part of what helped me learn about Carnival and drew me to this city, which has now been my home for nearly 25 years. He has been a champion of our city and our traditions for half a century and we owe him our thanks. —Erin Hall
F.W. Murnau—the German expressionist better known for directing Nosferatu—helmed Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans, which took home the first and only Academy Award for Unique and Artistic Picture at the maiden Oscars ceremony in 1929, a fitting categorization for Murnau’s American debut. It tells a salacious story about a man considering murdering his wife at his lover’s request. Set in a nameless town and city, the characters (also nameless) demonstrate that it’s a story about people—it could be set in any time, with anyone. Elaborate tracking shots, most notably one where the camera goes over a fence and through misty tree branches to reveal two paramours meeting in the forest, move the camera in ways that had never been seen before. Giant sets full of hundreds of extras were built to look simultaneously contemporary and timeless, and Murnau’s seamless use of rear projection, forced perspective, and dissolves make it look modern. Released as sound was revolutionizing the industry, this was the first picture to have a synchronized soundtrack that featured the score and foley effects on the film. This meant that, for the first time, a theater wouldn’t need a live musician. However, it’s playing without synchronized sound at Zeitgeist as part of David Bradley’s Piano Picture Show featuring silent films with live accompaniment on February 1. —Carlos A. Molina
While Uncut Gems was not the Safdie Brothers’ debut film, it is the movie that solidly made a name for the director duo and their frenetic filmmaking style. Uncut Gems, the gambling thriller starring Adam Sandler, gracefully balances drama, action, style, and heart. But as with all good art, imitators aplenty followed. We live in a post-Uncut Gems landscape, where more frequently it seems that filmmakers believe that loud, overlapping dialogue and high-stress scenarios alone equal a well-crafted story—and they are often rewarded for it on the awards circuit despite whatever other narrative failings the movie may possess (see: Anora). Marty Supreme is among these lesser imitations. It follows Marty Mauser (Timothée Chalamet) on his mission to be a world table tennis champion, anyone and anything else be damned. His pursuit of greatness is singular, and his schemes become increasingly desperate with less and less to show for it. It’s a similar model to Uncut Gems, but Marty Supreme, like many others who have tried before it, lacks heart or a real cohesion to hold together its chaos and unlikable protagonist. It’s a movie that functions more as episodes of television featuring the same characters—disparate scenes stitched together—rather than a single film trying to complete a single narrative arc. And while some of those scenes are fun or pretty or poignant, taken as a whole they left me mostly bored, too clearly seeing the strings the filmmaker is pulling to evoke a specific emotion from the audience. The entire dog subplot felt like it had an “ANTICS INCREASE” label slapped on top of it. This is the first movie Josh Safdie has directed without his brother, Benny Safdie, following their creative split in early 2024, and what each filmmaker did and did not bring to the table feels laid bare here. —Marisa Clogher
Primate evolves from a long line of animal horror movies (Cujo, Jaws, Anaconda). Ben the chimp, a family pet, contracts rabies and terrorizes a group of college kids trapped at home on break at their Hawaiian cliffside mansion. The premise sounds ridiculous, but the chimpanzee’s human-like similarities (Miguel Torres Umba in an ape suit!) edge it closer to a typical slasher movie. Director Johannes Roberts doesn’t stray too far from his previous work (47 Meters Down, The Strangers: Prey At Night) but teeters closer to B-movie schlock: one-dimensional archetypes (drunk/slutty college kids, busy dad) get subjected to well-executed executions (heads cracked, scalped, faces torn off) that allude to true events (Charla Nash). The special effects are great, from the practical gore to the CGI facial expressions that let our rabid Ben look like a simian Joker. Oscar winner Troy Kotsur gives a solid performance as the aforementioned busy dad, and his deafness helps drive suspense with clever manipulation of diegetic sound effects. Primate proves the classic horror movie formula still works: Young People + Monster + Isolated Location = Success. Think of it like the Drake equation, where the amount of life left at the end depends on how you alter your variables. —Carlos A. Molina
If you don’t want to watch a movie about a woman fighting against a tyrannical government for the rights of women, workers, religious freedom, and more, this might not be the film for you. The Testament of Ann Lee, OR: The Woman Clothed by the Sun With the Moon Under Her Feet (gotta love a good OR: title) tells the story of the founder of the Shakers, a religious sect of Quakers known for shaking and good furniture. Amanda Seyfried plays the title character, showing off her vocal talents in a very different style than Mamma Mia! or Les Miz. She gives what’s being hailed as a “brave” performance, a.k.a. code for a female performance that involves nudity and/or abuse. Director Mona Fastvold uses low-light cinematography to vividly show the horrors which Lee endures, effectively drawing parallels to the battles that still rage. The sound design is incredible: It’s a musical inspired by Shaker hymns that starts and ends with silence, crescendoes with a chaotic electric guitar, and has the appropriate choreography for what the dancing symbolizes both on screen and in the Shaker faith. I hate musicals and I hate religion, but this religious musical demands to exalt its relevance today. —Carlos A. Molina
Léone Julitte is a New Orleans photographer par excellence, a Dionysian devotee who can always be found at the center of the action. Though a remarkable technical proficiency adds gravitas to her glitter-drenched portraits, it’s the intimacy of the work that sets it apart. These photos are an inside job—no Mardi Gras is complete without the sight of Julitte adorned from head to toe in colorful fluttering wings like a butterfly empress, flitting from party to party to capture the freshest looks of the season for posterity. In her recent show, The Slit: Hoetel Moetel (on Vulgar Joy and Obstinate Silliness), her life-of-the-party art enters uncharted terrain with maximalist miniature motels stuffed to the brim with the lewd and the ridiculous. It all began, it would seem, with a tradition she had of exchanging over-the-top nudes with a friend, which reached its zenith in close-up snapshots of feminine genitalia dressed in wigs and googly eyes. Before long, the bit snowballed into a solo art show tucked behind a velvet curtain at the Monsters of the Underworld boutique [an ANTIGRAVITY advertiser], featuring a miniature sex motel with a little room built around every portrait. That Julitte is a veteran costumer is evident in the loving detail with which these adorable dens of iniquity and sin are rendered, and she is happy to regale you with the backstories she created for each of the vaginal divas. This art project is totally bananas, but its perfected execution compels you to engage with hidden conceptual layers. My own sensibilities are comparatively prudish, yet I felt immediately liberated by her full throttle commitment to such a ludicrous idea. By now, the counterculture has been bought, sold, and repackaged so many times it’s hard to even know what it is anymore. This show is a reminder of what that cultural defiance is supposed to look like—fabulous—and what it’s supposed to do—set us free. The hilarity is lagniappe. —Holly Devon
