Pop
1. Listen to Everything Now
Sounds of summer.� �
With help on production from Thomas Bangalter of French house titans Daft Punk, this new album nudges Canadian rock-and-roll big fish Arcade Fire’s anthemic, guitar-based sound into disco without losing any of singer Win Butler’s trademark world-beating urgency. —Craig Jenkins
Columbia, July 28.
TV
2. Watch Rick and Morty
Final frontier of bad taste.�
Dan Harmon and Justin Roiland’s agreeably demented riff on Back to the Future — as well as half the science-fiction tales ever told — returns for the rest of its third season, sending its title characters, an alcoholic scientist and his trusting grandson, on misadventures through time and space. —Matt Zoller Seitz
Adult Swim, July 30.
Art
3. See Lyric on a Battlefield
Curator of the future.
Miciah Hussey, Gladstone director of artist relations, put together this group show of newish names, each packed with talent. Don’t miss the embroidered works of the artist known as f.marquespenteado, Louisa Clement’s haunted, smoky photographs, or the extraordinary cervical portrait by soon-to-be-star Kandis Williams. —Jerry Saltz
Gladstone Gallery, through July 28.
Books
4. Read Pages for Her
Writerly return.�
A lot has changed since Pages for You, Sylvia Brownrigg’s novel of teacher-student lesbian romance, was published in 2001 — for the world and for its lovers. Marriage is legal for all in this belated sequel, but by now Flannery and Anne have both been married to men. As sharp as the original if more purplish of prose, Pages for Her is a fascinating bookend that’s sturdy enough to stand on its own. —Boris Kachka
Counterpoint.
Art
5. See Karel Funk
Conceptual balancing act.�
Sometimes the quiet summer season gives us jolting gifts. That’s Karel Funk. The painter drains the gas out of Ingres-style neurotic realism, reprograms it, puts it back in, and gives us visual ghosts. We marvel at these epically bland portraits: They’re so perfect that they’re almost dead. —J.S.
303 Gallery, 555 West 21st Street, through August 18.
Cabaret
6. See Kinky Boots Sings Cyndi Lauper
You say go slow, but buy tickets fast.�
Billy Porter, the current cast of Kinky Boots, and some special favorites come together to sing Cyndi Lauper’s pop hits and new versions of songs from the show. Check out YouTube for belter Bonnie Milligan performing Céline Dion’s “It’s All Coming Back to Me Now” and you won’t be able to resist seeing her take on Cyndi.�
Feinstein’s/54 Below, August 7.
Design
7. See Ettore Sottsass: Design Radical
Form and function.�
The Italian architect and designer infused industrial objects with explosive joy and pulsing color — writers of a certain age will remember the pre-laptop days when they might take their bright-red Valentine typewriter on the road. His designs will look all the more exuberant in the Met’s gray fortress on Madison Avenue. —Justin Davidson
Met Breuer, through October 8.
Movies
8. Go to Jonathan Demme: Heart of Gold
Pay your respects.� �
After the death of the great American director Jonathan Demme in April, a grieving critic could only send you to video. Now, thanks to this series, you can see most of his work on the big screen. Demme worshipper Paul Thomas Anderson kicks things off by introducing Demme’s incomparable screwball thriller, Something Wild (1986), and returns to present the 1980 comic masterpiece Melvin and Howard (August 5) and Demme’s 1977 breakthrough Citizen’s Band (August 6). Don’t miss screenings of Caged Heat, The Silence of the Lambs, Stop Making Sense, and so much more. —David Edelstein
BAM, August 4 through 24.
Pop
9. See Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers
Last dance.�
The 40th anniversary tour of the Heartbreakers’ self-titled debut album — which gave us the national anthem “American Girl” — will also be their last big one, if Tom Petty is to be believed (though he’s been saying that for over a decade). With Peter Wolf of the J. Geils Band.
Forest Hills Stadium, July 26 and 27.
Art
10. Go to Theater of the Resist
Night at the museum.
This performance series looks at the current political moment by highlighting artists working beyond traditional cultural confines. Catch acts like breakout opera singer Davóne Tines and Punjabi-American rapper Heems (July 28) and L.A. singer-songwriter Stew (August 5).
Met Breuer, through August 12.
Books
11. Read Dirt Road
Inner lives in focus.� �
Scottish Booker Prize winner James Kelman’s ninth novel is a slow build specializing in human interiors. Teenage Murdo and his father leave their Scottish island in the wake of the deaths of Murdo’s sister and mother, saying little to each other, in the way of their people, as they travel to America’s Deep South to see relatives. —B.K.
Catapult.
Dance
12. See Paul Taylor Dance Company
Moving movements.�
Take in two Paul Taylor classics for free at Lincoln Center’s Out of Doors festival. The program features Airs, a buoyant piece set to Handel, and Company B, Taylor’s signature WWII commentary with hits of the Andrews Sisters performed live by Duchess.��������������
Damrosch Park, July 28.
Theater
13. See A Parallelogram
Let’s do the time warp again.�
Like a mixture of last year’s Arrival and the 2006 Adam Sandler vehicle Click, this comedy features a woman who can move through various parts of her life with the click of a remote button.
Tony Kiser Theater, opens August 2.
Classical
14. Hear Jeremy Denk, Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra
Pianistic majesty. �
If you’re eager to slip into the warmest pool of 19th-century classical repertoire, you could do worse than hearing Denk open Beethoven’s Fourth Piano Concerto with that murmured G-major exhalation, while the orchestra bates its breath. —J.D.
David Geffen Hall, July 28 and 29.
Movies
15. See Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets
With a grain of salt.
Go in expecting a poor script and you won’t be disappointed by this movie based on a beloved series of comic books. You can still marvel at what Luc Besson can do with computer-generated imagery — create spatiotemporal ballets that have more cinematic magic in a single minute than the past four Star Wars movies combined. —D.E.
In theaters now.
Theater Music
16. See Songbook Summit
It’s delightful, it’s delicious, it’s de-lovely.
Will Anderson and Peter Anderson are identical twins who play the saxophone and clarinet. They will perform in a six-piece ensemble throughout August highlighting four great American composers: Cole Porter, Harold Arlen, George Gershwin, and Richard Rodgers. The first week is Porter, so anything goes!
59E59 Theater A, opens August 2.
Pop
17. See Preoccupations
Post-punk, round two.�
After facing booking struggles and charges of appropriation as Viet Cong, this Canadian four-piece rebranded and released a self-titled album in 2016. The music is menacing and moody, with tracks like “Anxiety,” “Degraded,” and “Monotony.” This is what stress sounds like.
Rough Trade NYC, July 29.
Art
18. See Erik Sommer: Volvo 240
It’s worth the trip.
A treat for lovers of unusual art, Volvo 240 is a car layered with cement, intended to be a comment on the chaos and waste of modern technology. Half the fun is venturing to the piece’s site, which is a shipping container in an isolated parking lot near Ikea.
Fastnet, Columbia Street, Brooklyn, through August 20.
Books
19. Read Gather the Daughters
Brutal and hopeful.
This disturbing debut (by Jennie Melamed, a psychiatric nurse who works with traumatized children) drops into a cultural landscape ripe for misogynistic dystopias. Melamed’s postapocalyptic island cult, founded by “ancestors” to institutionalize incest, forced marriage, and even greater atrocities, clearly owes something to The Handmaid’s Tale, but the author’s imagination is as wildly idiosyncratic as the world she conjures. —B.K.
Little, Brown.
Pop
20. Listen to Hitchhiker
Deep cuts.
Neil Young is coy about what magic still lies hidden in his vaults, but the stuff he lets out is never less than stunning. This summer’s gem is this long-lost collection of acoustic solo performances laid to tape on a foggy night in 1976. —C.J.
Reprise, August 4.
Classical
21. Hear Ksenija Sidorova
Squeeze play.
It’s a big moment for the classical accordion at Lincoln Center. The Latvian soloist performs a post-concert late-night program of Mozart, Rachmaninoff, and Piazzolla, part of the Mostly Mozart festival. —J.D.
Stanley H. Kaplan Penthouse, August 5.
Comedy
22. See Dave Chappelle
Laugh track.
Later this year, the lightning-rod comedian will release a third Netflix special, but first he’ll set up shop at this ten-show residency, with special guests including Chance the Rapper, Chris Rock, Trevor Noah, and Ali Wong.
Radio City Music Hall, August 1 through 24.
Classical
23. See Heart of Tones: A Tribute to Pauline Oliveros
En plein air.
The composer and accordionist, who died last year, left a legacy of meditative weirdness: a philosophy of “deep listening” and a body of improvisational music that seeps slowly into the mind. The International Contemporary Ensemble revives her roving spirit in a free concert, part of Lincoln Center Out of Doors. —J.D.
Hearst Plaza, July 28.
Pop
24. Go to Panorama
C’mon feel the noise.�
Coachella’s East Coast sister festival features a stacked lineup, including Frank Ocean, Solange, Belle & Sebastian, A Tribe Called Quest, and the first live show by Nine Inch Nails in three years.
Randall’s Island, July 28–30.
TV
25. Watch The Last Tycoon
Lavish and engrossing.
Matt Bomer stars as rising 1930s studio executive Monroe Stahr, a fictionalized version of whiz kid Irving Thalberg, in this sumptuous adaptation. The story pits Hollywood’s then-new guard against the old (represented by Kelsey Grammer’s studio boss). —M.Z.S.
Amazon, July 28.