Cerveris - Dog Eared
Better known as the star of such Broadway productions as Tommy and Hedwig and the Angry Inch, Michael Cerveris undoubtedly surprised a few listeners... read more
Chris Whitley - Weeds / War Crime Blues
Enigmatic singer/songwriter Chris Whitley has weighed in with not one but two new albums, both stripped-down solo efforts showcasing him accompanied only by his guitar and a stomp board... read more
Al Stewart - Year of the Cat
With the odd exception here or there, there’s not much room on the airwaves dedicated to adventurous lyrics. But that wasn’t always the case... read more
Kate Jacobs - You Call That Dark
Man, I miss Iris DeMent. Ever since she decided making guest appearances on other artists’ albums proved more satisfying than recording her own... read more
The Cardigans - Long Gone Before Daylight
Listening to The Cardigans’ catalog, one might get the impression the Swedish group has a horrible case of Attention Deficit Disorder... read more
Decasia: The State of Decay (DVD)
With his non-narrative film trilogy, Koyaanisqatsi, Powaqqatsi and Naqoyqatsi, Godfrey Reggio used documentary-style footage to create a metaphoric wake-up call for humanity, portraying a dangerous global imbalance between nature and civilization. The late Stan Brakhage also eschewed formal storytelling, manipulating the physical medium to make movies about film itself. Bill Morrison’s remarkable Decasia falls somewhere between these approaches. Using remnants of decaying film stock culled from archives, Morrison places images from disparate sources together, combining badly damaged cowboy movies with eroding ethnographic footage of whirling dervishes and carpet weavers. But the original context of the images is not as important... read more
3 Women (DVD)
As evidenced by films like M*A*S*H, Nashville, Short Cuts and Gosford Park, Robert Altman has achieved his greatest success with ensemble works that follow intersecting lives around a single event or setting. In 1977 he focused on a more concise character study with 3 Women. The result, perhaps more than any other work, illustrates the filmmaker’s best and worst impulses. On one hand, 3 Women offers memorable characters, an idiosyncratic structure and touches of Altman’s signature style, injecting documentary-style moments into a quirky formal approach. We’re drawn into the story of terminally chatty physical therapist Millie Lammoreoux (Shelley Duvall in... read more
The Testament of Dr. Mabuse (DVD)
Psychologist Stanley Milgram’s landmark study Obedience To Authority suggested human beings are easily led to do horrible things, especially when a domineering figure is calling the shots. Years earlier, director Fritz Lang came to a similar conclusion with his masterful The Testament of Dr. Mabuse (1933), now available in a fine two-DVD set. By the time Lang made Testament he’d been incorporating the figure of evil authority into many of his films. He contributed to script development for The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920) and went on to explore the theme in Dr. Mabuse: The Gambler (1922), Metropolis (1927) and... read more
The Lovers on the Bridge (DVD)
The Lovers on the Bridge, a 1991 movie about two homeless people, is unfortunately more famous for its folly than its quality... read more
Millennium Mambo
Millennium Mambo is the first movie in director Hou Hsiao-hsien’s 25-year career to be distributed theatrically in the U.S., and that’s reason alone to seek it out. It’s the story of Vicky, a modern young woman in Taipei with a little money in the bank and not much to do besides smoke, drink and hang out at clubs with her friends. She bounces between her controlling, on-again-off-again boyfriend Hao-hao and the older, possibly wiser Jack, with occasional detours to a snowy part of Japan. Each of these three locations has a gravitational pull on Vicky, sometimes defying all reason, and... read more
A Slipping-Down Life
In A Slipping-Down Life, adapted from Anne Tyler’s novel of the same name, Lili Taylor plays Evie Decker, a young woman who spends her days dressed as a rabbit... read more
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Common sense dictates that, if your goal is to create a deeply affecting film portrait of latter-day romance, you don’t cast Lloyd Christmas as the male lead... read more
Together
If Bergman was the mid-century Scandinavian voice of conscience—creating dark, powerful films about the human experience in a world where God seems absent... read more
They Might Be Giants - Indestructable Object EP
They might be funny. But they aren't nearly as ironic as everyone seems to think. Just because TMBG sings about historical figures and metaphysical birdhouses doesn't mean it's fishing for a laugh... read more
Angela McCluskey - The Things We Do
While her bio links her to Billie Holiday, a curious (read: inaccurate) comparison, Angela McCluskey has more in common with Stevie Nicks in her 1970s heyday... read more
The Beta Band - Heroes to Zeros
Scotland’s The Beta Band are devout followers of the “more is more” philosophy, and have demonstrated a singular determination to cram as many styles and references into their music as possible. So extreme is their eclecticism, it’s nearly impossible to know how to categorize the band... read more
Fastball - Keep Your Wig On
After 40 years of guitar jangle and sinfully sweet harmonies, you’d think the power-pop genre would be fully played out by now. And you’d be right... read more
Mission of Burma - ONoffON
Though they’ve been gone for 22 years, having broken up in 1983 after guitarist Roger Miller’s tinnitus grew so severe he could no longer wield the six-string responsible for his band’s signature sound... read more
Wilco - A Ghost Is Born
So how do you follow the dense, experimental, critically worshipped Yankee Hotel Foxtrot? The latest version of Wilco answers with an overwhelming, at times postmodern minimalism; quiet, delicate ballads tucked between raw rock ’n’ roll and hypnotic noise... read more
Raul Malo and Friends- The Nashville Acoustic Sessions
Mavericks frontman Raul Malo downshifts here into a subdued batch of acoustic covers recorded with Nashville session pros Pat Flynn, Rob Ickes and Dave Pomeroy... read more
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Download Harper Blynn's "Centrifugal Motion"
Blind Pilot - One Red Thread
B.O.B. - Put Me On
Punch Brothers - Punch Brothers at CMJ
David Bazan - Hard To Be
