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Associated Press
2 hours ago
- Associated Press
Music Review: 5 Seconds of Summer's Michael Clifford goes solo on ambitious, pop-punk 'SIDEQUEST'
Over a decade ago, the Australian pop-punk boy band 5 Seconds of Summer emerged as charming genre-revivalists. Their 2014 career-making single 'She Looks So Perfect' was all palm-muted power chords and gang vocals, a familiar sound for fans of the Warped Tour scene. In the years since, the quartet evolved into a full-on arena pop-rock act, taking turns at releasing solo material. Next up is lead guitarist Michael Clifford, the edgiest of the bunch, with a spirited solo debut album that feels truer to the band's earliest material than their most recent. But he doesn't just rehash the past. Rather, the colorful-haired musician adds his own twist on 'SIDEQUEST.' Ten energetic, introspective tracks form a tight album that explores self-doubt, fame and romance. The songs are pop-punk in spirit but deviate from the formula with a stadium-sized production: experimental electronics, big synths and versatile vocals. And it is an emotional journey. The lovesick opener 'Kill Me for Always,' featuring Porter Robinson, sets the stage, with its scintillating mix of electronica and bass. The sound of 'Cool,' released as a single, acts as the strongest evidence of Clifford's former boy band roots. It's self-deprecating and self-aware. 'Confidence doesn't come so easily / When you're the guy who caught fire with the colored hair / From the band with the song about underwear,' Clifford sings, referencing the chorus of 'She Looks So Perfect.' In an album stuffed with energetic songs juxtaposed with existential lyrics, the best track arrives at a midpoint high in 'Enough.' 'At 3 a.m. awake again / I can see all of the damage you've done,' Clifford sings through an evocative rasp. 'With friends like you who needs a loaded gun.' 'Remember When' and 'Fashion' maintain the swoony cadence of Clifford's 5 Seconds of Summer work; 'Eclipse' ends the album in a crescendo. 'SIDEQUEST' sets out to prove it's both a culmination of the last decade of Clifford's life and a deviation from it, as he steps into his own sound. Thankfully, for fans, it succeeds. The debut album reflects Clifford's maturation and self-agency, despite the insecurities and doubts that creep in throughout. 'All I've done / Is it ever gonna be enough?' Clifford sings, growing hoarser, in 'Enough.' Then the question changes: 'Am I ever gonna be enough?' On 'SIDEQUEST,' the answer, quite simply, is yes.
Yahoo
5 hours ago
- Yahoo
Why Bindi Irwin Has Been So Honest About Her Endometriosis Journey
Originally appeared on E! Online Bindi Irwin named her daughter Grace Warrior, knowing from personal experience that some of life's challenges may require every last ounce of fighting spirit to overcome. The Australian conservationist, who shares the 4-year-old with husband Chandler Powell, suffered in silence for more than a decade before undergoing surgery in 2023 to treat endometriosis, a condition in which uterine lining tissue grows outside of the uterus. "Doctor after doctor would say, 'Hey, it's just part of being a woman, there's really nothing wrong with you,'" Bindi recalled on a February episode of the A Life of Greatness With Sarah Grynberg podcast. "I was just getting more and more unwell, and it affects so many different parts of your life." She was still nervous about sharing such a personal story with millions of people. But once Bindi, who's celebrating her 27th birthday July 24, detailed her experience, the daughter of late Crocodile Hunter star Steve Irwin didn't regret it. More from E! Online Kelly Clarkson Debuts Chopped Bob Hair Transformation Idaho Murderer Bryan Kohberger Stabbed Xana Kernodle Over 50 Times: Autopsy Sharon Osbourne Reacts to Ozzy Osbourne Tribute After His Death "All I want is to help other people that are in the same position,' Bindi told E! News in May. 'Women have to choose their support system—whether it's your family or your chosen family, your friends—you have to find people that are going to keep lifting you up, because it's a very lonely disease as well." Only her mom Terri Irwin, brother Robert Irwin and her husband knew what she had been going through before she broke her silence in March 2023. And no one guessed that the perpetually beaming Bindi—who even as a child conducted herself with utmost poise after losing her dad—had been hurting so badly. "You can show up and have a big rain cloud sitting over you," she told Sarah Grynberg. "That's not a great way to live. You can choose to show up for yourself and for everybody else in a more positive way." Yet her self-described "glass-half-full" approach only went so far when crippling physical pain was involved. "Behind closed doors," she continued, "I was struggling to do anything and everything. It resulted in a lot of canceled plans. I think people must have thought I was incredibly flaky." When she finally underwent surgery in the U.S. two years ago, her medical team found 37 lesions and an ovarian cyst filled with old menstrual blood. "If I hadn't gotten surgery," Bindi said, "the next five years of my life would have been very make-or-break, because I was having real problems internally." But though she certainly felt validated after years of life-interrupting fatigue, nausea and pain, her journey wasn't over, endometriosis having no cure. In May, hours after calling her condition a "lonely disease," in fact, Bindi underwent emergency surgery to have her appendix removed, and doctors found another 14 lesions, as well as repaired a hernia that stemmed from Grace's birth in 2021. Which made Bindi more determined than ever to keep it real in hopes that grinning and bearing it will become a thing of the past. "The reason I share my health journey is because more girls and women desperately need answers to their undiagnosed pain," she wrote on Instagram two weeks after the procedures. "This disease is crippling and can make you feel incredibly isolated." "We need to raise awareness and change the narrative for women's health," she continued. "I see you, your pain is real, and you deserve answers and genuine health care." Whatever the cause, Bindi throws herself into it, her boundless enthusiasm reminiscent of her dad, who died in 2006 when she was only 8. "He was always on the go, he never stopped," Bindi told Los Angeles' KTLA of her father in 2016. "I think I inherited his lack of patience, because if he had something on his mind he just had to do it right now." But it wasn't until her daughter was born that Bindi really went to bat for herself and called B.S. on the whole "this is all just part of being a woman" explanation for her pain. "I went, 'I have to do something,'" she recalled on A Life of Greatness. "This can't just all be in my head." Not to mention, she needed every drop of energy possible to care for the most important two-legged creature in her life. "Once you have a child," she explained, "your whole existence becomes trying to care for them. When I was so sick, it was hard to do. So then I found help and I'm so grateful to be on the other side of surgery." See what other celebrities have had to say about their health challenges: Lupita Nyong'o's Uterine FibroidsSuki Waterhouse's HerniaBrian Austin Green's Perforated AppendixAdam Devine's Long-Term Injury From Childhood AccidentJason Tartick's Back InjuryMatt Kirschenheiter's Heart AttackTracy Morgan's Medical EmergencyChristy Carlson Romano's Eye InjuryAmy Schumer's Cushing SyndromeCasey Fitzgerald's Neck Injury From Hockey Skate BladeHailey Bieber's Blood ClotJustin Bieber's Ramsay Hunt SyndromeJamie Foxx's Brain Bleed & StrokeEmilia Clarke's Brain AneurysmCori Broadus's StrokeShailene Woodley's Health Battle For the latest breaking news updates, click here to download the E! News App Solve the daily Crossword
New York Times
5 hours ago
- New York Times
‘Folktales' Review: A Bracing Education in Arctic Norway
At Pasvik Folk High School, where the curriculum revolves around Nordic traditions and survival skills, cellphones are not verboten, but eventually their lure subsides. What's a tiny screen got, after all, on the aurora borealis and a pack of gallant sled dogs? As the school's principal puts it, with impressive understatement, Pasvik, in the far northern reaches of Norway, offers 'a lot more than a gap year.' Focusing on three students and two dog-sledding instructors, the directors Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady chronicle a year at Pasvik — part of a Norwegian program that began almost two centuries ago — in their lyrical and intimate documentary 'Folktales.' The gifted teachers offer encouragement, wisdom and compassion, but never coddling. Students from around the world learn to hunt and build fires, to care for the Huskies and endure the monthslong polar night, all while navigating that poignant and charged phase on the cusp of adulthood. In interviews with the filmmakers, the students profiled — two from Norway, one from the Netherlands — are exceptionally forthcoming, describing the challenges they hope to overcome: acute social anxiety, difficulty making friends, intense grief. The most dramatic transformation is that of Hege, 19, a self-described 'big overthinker' who can't bring herself to pack fewer than four mascaras for her year in the Arctic, and who gradually stops longing for her 'fancy pillow' back home and embraces the wild beauty around her. Employing eloquent drone shots and macro footage, Ewing and Grady ('Jesus Camp') capture an almost abstract splendor in the setting. They thread a metaphor from Norse mythology through the film, and leave such prosaic matters as tuition costs unmentioned. There is poetry as well as deep affection in their close-ups of people and dogs, and lessons for any age in the way students tumble off their sleds and get right back up. FolktalesNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 46 minutes. In theaters.
