// Category Archive for: Current Faves

Pop Music: The Balkans

By Jim R. Clark

There has been quite a bit of interest in Balkan music lately due to the popularity of such bands as Gogol Bordello and Balkan Beat Box. If you’re one of those music nuts who’s heard everything, then hopefully this article can introduce you to something new. Here is a taste of some of the great musical offerings popular in the Balkans today. Maybe you will get hooked and want to start your own Manele band!
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Brian Wilson: Songwriter 1962-1969

By Christian Lipski

Each new documentary about Brian Wilson or the Beach Boys adds another drop to the ocean of product already available. Many of them are the same old story, with poorly-researched information and no original music. This is most certainly not the case with Brian Wilson: Songwriter 1962-1969. At three hours of interview and analysis spanning two discs, the new release from Sexy Intellectual stands head and shoulders above its peers.
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Echo Revolution, Counterfeit Sunshine

By Less Lee Moore

Counterfeit Sunshine, the new album from San Diego’s Echo Revolution, is anything but what its title implies. These tunes are sincere in their joyfulness; even the sad songs contain some optimism amidst the despair.
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Robert Wyatt/Gilad Atzmon/Ros Stephen, For The Ghosts Within

By John Lane

Say what you will about Robert Wyatt, but he has never done anything for the fast buck.

What’s more, in an age where the music industry is in an odd state of flux, Robert Wyatt seems to be among the rare legacy laborers who remain somehow protected. Or maybe he’s just kept his head down and tried to stay inconspicuous.
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The Greenhornes, “★★★★”

By Adam McIntyre

It doesn’t matter whether or not you’ve heard The Greenhornes before before; a recent hiatus for the Cincinnati trio has only helped their legend grow.

The rhythm section of Jack Lawrence and Patrick Keeler, once great and intimidating, has only become more effective during their time with other bands (The Raconteurs, Dead Weather, and Loretta Lynn, to name a few). Front man Craig Fox, meanwhile, has created such a lean and well-written catalog of garage, pop, psychedelic, and soul numbers over the last few years that “★★★★” sounds much like a brilliant career retrospective. It’s suspiciously good.
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Scrambles of Earth: The Voyager Interstellar Record, Remixed by Extraterrestrials

By Emily Carney

In 1977, two separate US spacecraft, Voyager I and Voyager II, were sent into space to explore the solar system and, ostensibly, any worlds that perhaps existed beyond the one with which we are most familiar.

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The Autumn Defense, Once Around

By Less Lee Moore

Wilco fans have known about The Autumn Defense, a side project featuring Patrick Sansone and John Stirratt, for years. For the rest of us, their latest album Once Around is both a surprise and a pleasure.
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The Rocky Horror Picture Show Blu-Ray, 35th Anniversary Edition

By Christian Lipski

The Rocky Horror Picture Show played in theaters in 1975, and was finally released on VHS here in the US around 20 years ago. The movie had been around for 15 years before there was ever a legitimate copy available. People had been dressing up as the characters and mimicking the movie for FIFTEEN YEARS without a way to practice at home (there were bootleg copies around, but oh so rare).

When the VHS tape came out, it was honestly a kind of letdown. Now anyone could practice their part wherever there was a VCR, without waiting seven days to stand in line and pay your money to watch the bug screen for some nuance you forgot. But the old-old-timers eventually dropped their gripe, just as the guys riding buggies stopped yelling at the guys in cars. Time marches on, and so, too does obsession.
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Sarah Kirkland Snider, Penelope

By Chelsea Spear

Photo © Murat Eyuboglu

Monday morning, 10 a.m. The sixth floor of the UMass Boston Healey Library, overlooking Boston Harbor. I have been working on this goddamned paper about Marc Hirsch and Billy Collins and the role of the audience in poetry for two weeks now. The words on the page have calcified into incoherence, but I still feel the pressure of academia goading me towards a conclusion that wraps my argument into a tidy bow.

My eyes shift from the eyestrain-inducing computer screen to a small rowboat in the Harbor, by the Corita Kent gas tanks. A tiny woman, clad in an elegant grey wool coat with the shiniest brass buttons, stands at the hull of the boat, lifting her arms to the overcast sky in a dramatic gesture. I can hear her voice—a high soprano, rich in tone and trembling with vibrato—perfectly.
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Why Aren’t You Listening To Los Lobos?

By J Howell

Click for larger image
Photo © 2010 David Haggard

Folly Theater, Kansas City MO
October 8, 2010

I wasn’t quite sure exactly what to expect when Los Lobos made a stop in Kansas City, at the beautiful and ancient Folly Theater, other than a vague confidence that whatever was in store would be good.
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