Music

Losing

[Photo provided to China Daily]

Before founding Bully, guitarist and songwriter Alicia Bognanno interned at Chicago's Electrical Audio Studio for Steve Albini, the alternative rock engineer who worked with such 1990s heavy hitters as Nirvana and the Pixies. That connection is germane because the Nashville band specializes in a rugged, direct rock sound whose buzzing guitars consciously connect back to the grunge era.

After establishing itself with 2015's Feels Like, the band has released the top-flight new Losing on SubPop, a Seattle record label.

Songs like Not the Way pack an immediate and personal punch as Bognanno works herself into righteous rages that are sometimes directed outward and sometimes at herself.

TV

A child prodigy

Spinning off from The Big Bang Theory, one of the most popular US TV shows internationally, Young Sheldon jumps back to 1989 as it follows a pre-pubescent Sheldon Cooper (Iain Armitage), a child prodigy in a small Texas town attending high school at age 9.

Little Sheldon is an easily anxious fellow who tattles and condescends. Like older Sheldon, the boy is surrounded by a winning ensemble: a spitfire sister Missy, an embarrassed older brother Georgie and the overwhelmed but loving parents.

As a comedy, Young Sheldon gets most of its humor from the juxtaposition of its abrasive child genius and a conservative small town with residents who don't understand how to deal with him.

In its review of the series opener, Variety said that Young Sheldon didn't quite gel, but added that "the premise and a few performances are interesting enough to give the show some time to find its way".

Book

The perfect pair

US writers Stephen King and his son, Owen King, team up for this horror novel, Sleeping Beauties, that imagines a world where all women have fallen asleep, transported to a peaceful alternate reality.

It takes place in an Appalachian town as an epidemic occurs where women suddenly enter comas within cocoon-like material, and turn violent if they're wakened. The only person immune to it is Eve Black, a mysterious figure who becomes coveted by different factions in a world filled only with men.

Sleeping Beauties isn't the duo's first collaboration. Owen told the story of being a child talking about GI Joe toys with his dad and coming up with the idea of a GI Joe character who could read minds. They also delved into Stephen's beginnings with 1974's Carrie, his first published novel.

China Daily - Agencies