GOINGS ON ABOUT TOWN

Boasting Thurston Moore as a record-label honcho and having shared bills with Bikini Kill and Sleater-Kinney, Big Joanie feels like an honorary member of an indie world of yore.

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Yet this chic, politically vibrant U.K. trio's sophomore album, "Back Home," has a contemporary sheen. Despite a host of critical huzzahs, events conspired to keep Big Joanie away from New York stages until this year; the group débuts as headliners in the city at Baby's All Right (July 10) and at Union Pool (July 12).

ART

Kevin Beasley

At the heart of this prodigious show of sculptures by the thirty-eight-year-old artist is "In an effort to keep," an audio installation built inside a small, enclosed room in the gallery. In Beasley's hands, preservation is an act of perception, as full of grace as it is quixotic, even twisted. (I recall the gutting sight of hooded sweatshirts at once memorialized and mummified in resin in "A view of a landscape," his 2018 exhibition at the Whitney Museum.) To create the sixteen-hour soundscape presented here, Beasley invited five performers-among them the choreographer-artist Ralph Lemon and the instrumentalist-composer L'Rain-to spend two days together, then recorded their conversations and the ambient noises of their shared space. One of the work's many feats is how it casts its audience as both silent confidants and interlopers. All thoughts and feelings about what it means to eavesdrop on Black people will depend on who's listening, and on what they think they overhear. Plan to sit and stay awhile.-Jennifer Krasinski (Casey Kaplan; July 28.)

Blaise Cendrars