These are the words, images, and beers that inspired the GBH Collective this week. Drinking alone just got better, because now you’re drinking with all of us.
READ.// “Pay Your Way in Pain – Daddy’s Home’s lusty, strutting lead single – chronicles a hard-luck downtown wraith: no money, no baby, no home. It is Clark’s blues song for 2021. ‘I was watching the various mechanisms of power crumble, or at least get rocks thrown at them. And it seems like people have to make some Faustian bargain between dignity and survival.’ She laughs, sadly. ‘Everybody just wants to be loved. We want to have a little shelter and a little food. But we’re caught in a system that makes that hard for most people.’” Annie Clark (better known as St. Vincent) has been my favorite artist since her debut album came out in 2007. It’s been three-and-a-half years since her last release, “Masseduction,” and learning that her new album, “Daddy’s Home,” will be out in May—and that it pulls from down-and-out downtown New York in the early 1970s—is the best thing that’s happened to me in a long time. This Guardian profile digs deep into the process that went into making this new record.
LOOK.// I recently discovered Philadelphia-based photographer Ellen Mary Cronin, and her distinctive food photography—hyper-saturated, decadent, yet undeniably gritty—is a dirty dream.
DRINK.// Braybrooke Beer Co.’s Dunkel Lager
I cannot stop talking about this Lager, and I can’t stop drinking it, either. Good thing I’ve got another 12 or so bottles kicking around in my fridge. Made from 100% Munich malt and conditioned for two months, it’s biscuity, toasty, lightly bitter—a total celebration of malt. If only they brewed this all year long, it’d be my go-to house beer.
READ.// “If we can do better by creators, I believe that we will see more ideas carried to the finish.” Paywalls are super frustrating, but what is worse is that some creators can’t even get paid for their work. This piece explores compensation with decentralized finance methods (DeFi) for creators like Andrea Hernández, who runs Snaxshot out of Honduras. It has all the buzzword bingo: Clubhouse, Substack, Bitcoin, and more.
LOOK.// Check out Tobe Nwigwe’s homage to Gil Scott-Heron’s monumental piece for YouTube Originals’ Black Renaissance campaign.
DRINK.// Widowmaker X Brockton Beer’s Soul Maker Double NEIPA
There was a BeerAdvocate post that got a lot of attention for simply stating that less than 1% of breweries in America are Black-owned. Brockton Beer is one of those breweries in Massachusetts, and it recently put out an incredible NEIPA in collaboration with Widowmaker Brewing. It was the perfect accompaniment to one of those false-spring days of February.
READ.// “It’s because of how deeply our society’s violent systems prioritize powerful white men and their intellect that Whedon is still the one who gets credit for bringing more radical topics and storylines to the screen. But ... in reality it has been everyone else who has made these stories possible.” This piece is a razor-sharp, incisive analysis of the myth of the cis white male “creative genius,” and why the entertainment industry needs to stop pandering to abusers and apportion credit fairly.
LOOK.// Rosamund Pike is sparkling-ice-cold brilliant as the charmingly cruel, crisply coiffured con-woman Marla Grayson, whose ruthless, sophisticated operation scamming the elderly in J Blakeson’s “I Care A Lot” is modern capitalism at its most grotesquely raw. A well-deserved Golden Globe.
DRINK.// Blue Owl Brewing's Dapper Devil
I’m now in my fourth Blue Owl Brewing Dapper Devil season, and the release of this delightful kettle-soured, Belgian-style Strong Ale with raspberries has come to herald the start of spring in Austin for me. The delicate body and playfully sweet-tart flavor brimming with bright, fresh raspberry offer not a hint of its sneaky 9% ABV. The weather may change from one minute to the next, but the Dapper Devil goes with everything.
Curated by The GBH Collective
