Staff Picks: A self-aware debut and a tribute to an American Master

By The A.V. Club  |  August 30, 2026 | 2:19pm
Music Features Staff Picks
Staff Picks: A self-aware debut and a tribute to an American Master

Get ready for the week and the end of summer with our latest round of Staff Picks, which see news editor Drew Gillis saying “Sue Me” for jumping on a certain hype train, and editor-in-chief Danette Chavez checking out the latest in a long-running PBS documentary series. 

Drew Gillis: Who’s The Clown? by Audrey Hobert

I recognize that I may seem to be trend chasing with this pick; sleeper hit “Sue Me” finally cracked the Hot 100 in the past couple of weeks, and Pitchfork recently declared that it’s a great time to get into Audrey Hobert. But they’re right, and I am shamelessly aboard the hype train. I first became charmed by Hobert and her genuinely awkward dance moves when she performed “Sue Me” on The Tonight Show last fall, and the track has become a go-to choice in both my karaoke and cardio playlists. Earlier this month, I caught her set at the Hinterland Music Festival in Iowa, which earned the rest of her debut album Who’s The Clown? a place in that rotation. 

There is a tension in Hobert’s music between stream-of-consciousness, confessional awkwardness, and effortful pop music polish that I’m really drawn to. Her lyrics feel off the cuff but not like first drafts. There’s a bluntness that I find really funny and endearing. (In “Sue Me”: “Guess I’ll see you in a Best Buy / You know that I think you’re the best guy.” On the playfully mocking party song “Silver Jubilee”: “I’ma live it up / I’ma take a picture to prove it / I’ll be whipping shots all night / Dance to the music.” In “Sex And The City”: “I’m takin’ thirst traps in the mirror in my room / I think I look bad, so I take a hundred.”) I’ve never been fond of purple prose in songwriting, but there’s always something just a little off about the way Hobert communicates (which is made clearer when the lyrics are actually set to their pop melodies). It’s the sound of someone trying to sound normal and natural, which obviously is going to end up a little weird before looping back around to something wholly recognizable.

This idea extends to her live performances, too. Her Jimmy Fallon “Sue Me” performance (which, for whatever reason, keeps coming and going from YouTube) reminded me of a middle schooler performing at a talent show; when she performs the same song in her shows, she jumps around gracelessly on a trampoline. She took the stage at Hinterland wearing a huge trench coat and standing on a ladder to make her look extremely tall while a prerecorded vocal shouted things like “Audrey, you can’t be a singer, you’re too tall!” It really made me laugh! Similar to the lyrics, these choices highlight how much of her act is performance and how strange and humbling it can be to be performing for other people, whether interpersonally or on a festival stage. Hobert is someone who knows what the cool thing is, and she’s an expert at not quite nailing it. 

Danette Chavez: American Masters, Mary Oliver: Saved By The Beauty Of The World (PBS Passport)

A friend gave me a copy of Mary Oliver’s House Of Light years ago, and I’ve returned to it at various points in my life—I took particular solace in it during the COVID lockdowns, to combat the feeling of being cut off from the rest of the world. But I must confess that, aside from picking up a few more of the Pulitzer Prize winner’s collections for myself, including Dream Work, and also gifting some to friends, I’d never done a proper deep dive into Oliver’s history. PBS just dropped a gift into my lap with Mary Oliver: Saved By The Beauty Of The World, the latest installment in the long-running American Masters program.

Directed by Sasha Waters—whose 2018 documentary, Garry Winogrand: All Things Are Photographable, was part of American Masters season 33—Saved By The Beauty Of The World weaves together archival audio, interviews, photos, notes, and video along with readings by the likes of Stephen Colbert (who chokes up while reciting “The Summer Day”), Steve Buscemi, and more. Oliver began to chart her own path after high school, when she first visited Austerlitz, NY. There, she sought inspiration at the home of a kindred spirit, the late Edna St. Vincent Millay, and ended up befriending Millay’s sister Norma, staying at Steepletop intermittently to help organize her fellow poet’s papers. Oliver gave a couple of colleges (Ohio State University and Vassar) the old college try, but soon found herself resettling in Greenwich Village. A return trip to Steepletop led to another one of the great collaborations in Oliver’s life: It was then that she met Molly Malone Cook, a photographer for The Village Voice, who became her partner and manager. Cook’s love support was key to Oliver’s future success; she was a stabilizing force for the searching young poet.

Waters pays tribute to that pivotal relationship and Oliver’s growth as an artist, filling in a portrait of the Pulitzer winner that still hints at untapped depths. And, this might just be a matter of personal taste, but I was relieved to find it so blessedly free of the heavy-handed reenactments and needless animation that run rampant in other contemporary documentaries. Saved By The Beauty Of The World is the perfect way to observe the fading summer.

 
Join the discussion...
Keep scrolling for more great stories.