Before listening to a single note of Suris’ new album, “Pertinax”, I spent a few minutes just looking at the word. Pertinax. It has the distinct ring of a Stoic philosopher’s last defiant utterance or maybe a type of beetle known for its unusually stubborn shell. What a curious flag to fly for a collection of songs in an age of fleeting distraction. But...

It takes a certain kind of ideological whiplash to shift from navigating corporate property deals to aggressively narrating the downfall of humanity, but at 74, Stephen Wicks introduces his single "The Doomsday Clock" with the blazing clarity of someone watching civilization slip off the edge. https://open.spotify.com/track/70JffY8Y63JRdjn98A1fMB?si=xK17Z-ERQO-o2he9oKPX-g The Hertford-based entrepreneur-turned-songwriter channels his late-in-life reinvention to confront a cocktail of existential horrors: geopolitical collapse, climate crisis, unchecked AI,...