Table of contents for January 2024 in Rolling Stone

The charismatic Irish snarler who fronted the Pogues died at age 65 on Nov. 30, drawing eulogies from around the world. In a heartfelt tribute, Rolling Stone’s Rob Sheffield quoted MacGowan’s words from the Pogues’ classic ”The Sick Bed of Cúchulainn”: “Then they’ll take you to Cloughprior/And shove you in the ground/But you’ll stick your head back out and shout ‘We’ll have another round!…

JONATHAN GLAZER WAS, by his own admission, a little lost. The writer-director behind Sexy Beast and Under the Skin had been chasing an unformed idea for a movie for years, uncertain of where he would go with the story or what he wanted to say about the subject. All he knew was that it haunted him, and he had to make it. Which is how Glazer found himself in Poland, wandering the site of one of the biggest mass murders of the 20th century. And then he saw the house. “It was the home of the Höss family,” Glazer says. Rudolf Höss was the commandant at Auschwitz; the house was where he, his wife, Hedwig, and their children lived during World War II, some 50 yards away from one…

“WAR. WAR NEVER changes.” It’s a grim warning, which leads the introductory monologue to every mainline game in the Fallout franchise. It’s a real mood-setter, usually accompanied by a summary of the state of society: In an alternative future, the world is living in retro-futurist, atompunk bliss. That is, until the bombs drop. And so, 200 years after the end of everything, the story begins. The first Fallout game launched for home computers in 1997, introducing players to a nuclear hellscape where they take on the role of a Vault Dweller — people who, fortunately or not, have survived generations underground. The game presents a world filled with irradiated monsters, mutated ghouls, and warring factions driven by political or religious zealotry. It’s grown with the times — 2008’s Fallout…

‘WE’VE LIVED THROUGH a pandemic. We’re living in a climate crisis. We’re living through a mental health crisis. We’re living in a day and age when school shootings are the norm,” Keely Magee, a 21-year-old activist from New Jersey says with frustration. It’s a feeling familiar to many of her peers. I am sitting in the dark cool of the Watergate Hotel, listening to Gen Z describe a childhood filled with lockdown drills and existential dread over a heated world. It is the third and final day of a summit hosted by Voters of Tomorrow, a Gen Z-led organization dedicated to turning out the youth vote and advancing its “Gen Z agenda,” policies like abolishing tipped wages and the filibuster in Congress. When I walked into the conference room…

THE REBIRTH OF ‘TRUE DETECTIVE’ The fourth season of HBO’s neo-noir delivers a gripping Arctic Circle mystery thanks to Issa López, Jodie Foster, and Kali Reis True Detective: Night Country NETWORK HBO AIR DATE Jan. 14 STARRING Jodie Foster Kali Reis John Hawkes Finn Bennett Fiona Shaw Christopher Eccleston Isabella Star LaBlanc ALAN SEPINWALL LIZ DANVERS, chief of police in the remote Alaska town of Ennis, and heroine of True Detective: Night Country, is fond of telling other cops they’re asking the wrong questions, prodding them over and over until they ask the right one. With Night Country, there’s only one question: Was it worth resurrecting the long-dormant True Detective franchise — and without its original creator, Nic Pizzolatto? The new season, created, directed, and largely written by Issa…

IN THE WHITNEY MUSEUM’S New York exhibit “Henry Taylor: B Side,” histories are flashes, imprints — brief, bright, imagined moments built into energetic scenes. Sometimes faces aren’t as important as stances: a clenched fist here, a tensed shoulder there. Whether his subject is a famous rapper or a stranger he met on the streets in his hometown of L.A., Taylor, 65, pulls in the viewer. “There’s no other artist that really creates that sense of intimacy,” curator Barbara Haskell says. The show’s title puts Taylor’s work in a musical context — fitting, since music and popular culture often play such a key role in his art. From a portrait of Jay-Z to a mural drawn onsite that includes brushed lyrics of Kendrick Lamar’s “DNA” (Lamar also used Taylor’s paintings…

“SIMO’S IN THIS?” “Pfft. Fuck.” It’s 3 p.m. on a Friday in late July, and it’s 114 degrees outside. I’m 15 minutes off the Las Vegas Strip at South Point Casino, eavesdropping as I follow two twentysomethings up an escalator — I’m here to meet the guy they’re scared of. South Point is what you would call old Vegas. There are no celebrity chefs or pop-star residencies here, the blackjack odds are better than they are on the Strip, the buffet line is long, and the ornate red and gold carpet will make you dizzy if you look at it for longer than a second. Up the escalator, past the seniors choking down cigarettes in the hallway outside of the cavernous bingo hall is the South Point Bowling Plaza,…

ALONG THE RIM of Lake Okeechobee, the seasons aren’t marked by temperature or falling leaves but by the humidity, light, and plumes of ash that blanket this part of Florida come October. Just as the air dries, the wind turns east and sugar-cane farmers set to harvesting stalks of cane across half a million acres in Florida, but before the stalks are cut, growers set their crops on fire. Burning is an easy way to eliminate the outer leaves of sugar cane and reduce costs. Every year from October until May, sometimes until June, the smoke haunts residents. Some claim it’s killing them. Others write it off as a seasonal nuisance. But all of the residents in towns strung along the lake’s southern edge know the resulting ash as…

ST. ANN’S WAREHOUSE in Brooklyn was full of good vibes and a spirit of musical collaboration on Nov. 10, as two pairs of unique talents — Lil Yachty and Tierra Whack, and Jon Batiste and Gucci Mane — took the stage for Rolling Stone’s first-ever Musicians on Musicians live event. First up were Yachty and Tierra, who showed off their bond as close friends and collaborators. They talked about their influences (Yachty chose Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon, while Tierra shouted out Busta Rhymes’ “Gimme Some More”), shared new music, and made some headlines when Yachty criticized the “terrible” state of hip-hop today. Next, Batiste and Gucci revealed their creative secrets and connected over their experiences growing up in the South. “The biggest blessing of recognition…

Madame Web Feb. 14 Sony adds another notch on its Spiderverse belt with this story of a paramedic (Dakota Johnson) who discovers she has clairvoyant powers — and a connection to a trio of potential spider-women. Drive-Away Dolls Feb. 23 Ethan Coen goes solo with this dark comedy about friends (Margaret Qualley, Geraldine Viswanathan) who take off with some stolen loot. Pedro Pascal, Matt Damon, and Beanie Feldstein co-star. Dune: Part 2 March 1 Because he who controls the IP controls the universe! Denis Villeneuve finishes what he started with this second chapter of Frank Herbert’s sci-fi epic, in which Zendaya and Timothée Chalamet save the universe, and a hairless, feral-looking Austin Butler freaks everybody TF out. Mickey 17 March 29 South Korean filmmaker Bong Joon-ho’s follow-up to Parasite…

IT’S NIGHTTIME, and you’re in a forest of tall trees and glowing mushrooms. There are others with you in this particular clearing, which appears to be lit up by fireflies. Before you can get your bearings, the sparks in the air begin to fade, and a giant screen comes into focus overhead. On it is the Australian singer and producer Tones and I kicking off the title track of her album Welcome to the Madhouse. “Welcome to a place you’ve never been/A place you’ve always dreamed of/But here nothing’s as it seems,” the song continues as you and your companions fly to a trippy, haunted-looking mansion with rave lights and impossible staircases like something out of M.C. Escher. The party is on. Oh, and by the way, you’re in…

I SETTLE INTO THE SEAT, check my controls, and lift off. The aircraft lifts off, not takes off. It’s like a helicopter at first, as the propellers start to spin. But unlike a chopper’s long floppy blades, these props look like an airplane’s but point straight up. Out of the windows, monitors show the Marina, California, airfield and the straw meadows and green hills beyond. It’s early September, and I’m among the first journalists to “pilot” a simulated version of Joby Aviation’s eVTOL, pronounced “ee-vee-toll” — that’s aviation geekspeak for electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft — an air taxi that runs on batteries, sometimes labeled a flying car, and a completely new type of civilian aircraft that may soon become a way we get around. The simulator is…