The Trump Revolution

“The funny thing is,” Neil Hannon tells Apple Music, “for all my high-minded objectives in lyrics, I'm really just trying to sing in tune most of the time. You'd be surprised how hard it is.” Self-deprecation has been at the heart of The Divine Comedy’s appeal since Hannon emerged in the late 1980s. But 11 often exquisite and always arch indie-pop albums in, the band is a low-key national treasure. Hannon’s 12th Divine Comedy offering is “roughly based around the nonsense that goes on in the workplace”—and the irrepressible rise of machines. “The machines thing is really born out of my frustration with my own inability to communicate with them,” Hannon says. “They literally don’t like me.” Negotiate Office Politics here, with his track-by-track guide.

In a time of reckoning, this year’s National Magazine Awards finalists and winners focus on abuse of power in many forms. Ronan Farrow’s Pulitzer Prize–winning revelation of Harvey Weinstein’s depredations (New Yorker), along with Rebecca Traister’s charged commentary for New York and Laurie Penny’s incisive Longreads columns, speak to the urgency of the #MeToo moment.