Evocatively

Summer is almost unofficially actually here (it's hot outside!), so while no big shake-ups took place on Vulture’s Song of the Summer Power Rankings this week, the competition from here on in will surely only get fiercer. Quickly, a reminder on the ground rules: These mark the current mood rather than an attempt at predicting future contenders; brand-new or already overplayed, a song will be ranked based on its proximity to the white-hot center of summer-jam ubiquity. On with it.

Alice Neel is credited with having kept figurative painting alive through decades when it was considered passé, even crude. Her subjects, rendered in plush, pungent color, are haunted, but full of life; her influence can be seen in recent Elizabeth Peyton retrospectives and Billy Sullivan’s current solo show. Two concurrent shows are presenting decades of her work. At Zwirner & Wirth you’ll find Neel’s elegantly provocative paintings and drawings of nudes from the thirties, when it wasn’t proper for a woman to be thinking about nudity, let alone displaying it in the artist’s ruddy, forceful fashion. David Zwirner has her later work: portraits of politicians, artists, family members, and strangers. See 29 of these pieces in our not-exactly-safe-for-work slideshow.

I just got Copeland's new album You Are My Sunshine - only on my second listen-through but I've got high hopes for it. So far, loving the lush instrumentation and of course, Aaron Marsh's beautiful voice. The songs are in the same vein as Eat Sleep Repeat, but I think YAMS might actually top it.

We admit we weren’t expecting anything this exciting from the latest American Apparel e-mail touting “Exciting New Styles,” but how wrong we were to underestimate the sexually charged company. After clicking through images of floral swimwear and men’s bow ties, it all looked like standard hipster protocol. But, suddenly, amid the photos of new merch, we clicked open a JPEG to reveal a thrilling new addition to the American Apparel line: assless tights. The tights appear to be the same pantyhose the store has been selling for a while now, except this special style reveals your bum. Classy! The tights are still in production, so you can’t run out and buy a pair just yet. But we wonder if, come August, all the girls in Williamsburg will take to the streets cheeks out. What’s next, Dov? Crotchless bodysuits? And with that lovely image in our heads, we'll be spending the weekend as proper fashion gals should: breaking out our best nauticals and drinking prosecco. See you guys on Tuesday.

When will we learn? Despite Hollywood's earnest warnings through the years, it's astonishing that there are still so many who don't realize that the inevitable popularity of virtual-reality goggles will eventually lead to a complacent society in which people are killed remotely in unthinkably violent ways by Internet hackers and evil robots from the future. Seems like that should be fairly common knowledge by now. Not that we expect it to do any good, but Bruce Willis's upcoming Surrogates will once again try to deliver the message. In its bleak vision of the future, humans can purchase robotic avatars to live their lives while they watch comfortably from home (apparently this was green-lit back when Second Life was still a thing) — until, of course, they all start dying after someone hacks into the mainframe (presumably). Surrogates certainly doesn't look very good, though it's probably never a bad idea to go over these things again.

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