Daily Newsletter, January 31, 2024

If you’re ever driving along the highway outside Marquette, Michigan, you might see a 50-foot metal dinosaur holding a fishing pole. That dinosaur marks the entrance of a very strange place called Lakenenland. A construction worker named Tom Lakenen bought the plot of land that became Lakenenland in 2003, when his local township told him that he couldn’t display his scrap-metal sculptures in his front yard. Those sculptures are wild — monsters, skeletons, wolves, reapers, alligators, all done up in deeply personal outsider-art style. Some of the sculptures involve 9/11; others seem to be about the voices in Lakenen’s head. When I was there about a decade ago, there was a sign that said Lakenen had never been to a real sculpture park but that he imagined this is how one might look. In Marquette, Lakenenland is considered a family-friendly tourist attraction. It’s got a TripAdvisor page and everything.

In this month’s subscriber-exclusive essay, poet and novelist Will Burns argues that skateboarding is close to dancing as he reflects on how the soundtracks of grainy DIY VHS films opened his musical mind

Tommy Ramone kept it beatin’ for all the hoppin’ cretins. And he did a lot more, too, but unless you were inside the inner Ramones circle you probably

It was inevitable that AI-generated music would openly find its place on streaming platforms next to real musicians.

Ray Davies is greatly indebted to 1950s American rock 'n' roll, with there one guitarist he named the master of the "bum note". Read more here.

Featuring outstanding new albums from Ambrose Akinmusire, Joey Alexander, Mary Halvorson, Anaïs Reno and more

A look at the month’s best reviewed books in crime, mystery, and thrillers. * Lea Carpenter, Ilium (Knopf) “While Carpenter knows how to dish out the dread that a spy story needs, what …

From the plot twist reveal in 'Mulholland Drive' to the Lady in the Radiator scene in 'Eraserhead', here are five scenes that prove David Lynch's genius.

Released in 1986 and sampled by Tupac Shakur, the song has become a timeless classic