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Teitur: The Singer
Singer/songwriter issues otherworldy songs from his own private islandDespite having been recorded on Gotland, the windswept Swedish island that was the final refuge for famously bleak film director Ingmar Bergman, The Singer is not an album carved solely from existential angst. Teitur Lassen shares with the late auteur a gift for penetrating slice-of-life vignettes and meditative landscapes that only reveal their deeper truths after repeated exposure and time in mind. Following Káta Hornið, his third studio album and first totally performed in the language of his native Faroe Islands, Teitur writes songs with clever turns of phrase and quirky metaphors... read more
Found in: Music, ReviewsTowelhead
Screenwriter Alan Ball (American Beauty, Six Feet Under) is no stranger to... read more
Found in: Movies, ReviewsMiou Miou: La La Grand Finale
Elegant chamber pop from the Czech RepublicRomantically inclined East Bohemian quintet Miou Miou writes and sings in French, and the lush, carefully manicured settings of the group’s debut seem Gallic as well, redolent of the band Air’s soundscapes. Citing influences as far-ranging as Serge Gainsbourg and The Modern Lovers, Claudine Longet and My Bloody Valentine, Miou Miou derives much of its disarming personality from Karolina Dytrtova, who sings with such ingénue delicacy that she makes Longet seem like Ethel Merman. But this band is far from twee, as a powerhouse rhythm section brings muscle and mass to the gossamer. The... read more
Found in: Music, ReviewsColin Cotterill
If I have to read one more blood-drenched novel... read more
Found in: Books, ReviewsThe Kin: Rise and Fall
Australian brothers make nervy, theatrical popThere’s something unsettling about the way the voices of these Australian brothers wrap around each other—they’re urgent and insistent, with close, uncanny harmonies and disembodied sounds that conjure chilly moonscapes and nightmarish slumbers. As disturbing as it is artful, the group’s pristine melodies—all executed with architectural precision, beckon listeners to an alien place Pink Floyd only hinted at on A Saucerful of Secrets. But it’s worth the journey because mysteries are revealed, whether it’s in the arcane language of “Photographs” or in vocals that recall a young, pensive Robert Plant on the romantic obsession of... read more
Found in: Music, ReviewsToumani Diabaté: The Mandé Variations
Mali’s reigning musical magician uncorks another genie from his bottleIf the only reason Western pop fans know anything about Malian music or genius-level kora player Toumani Diabaté is because of world-beat hitchhikers such as Blur’s Damon Albarn (whose 2002 Oxfam benefit release Mali Music includes collaborations with Diabaté and several of his master-level countrymen), then shame on us all. The kora is a 21-string harp fashioned from an African bottle gourd, cut in half and then fitted with cow skin to create a resonator. Players at Diabaté’s level of accomplishment are capable of making the instrument sound as much like... read more
Found in: Music, ReviewsKen Stringfellow: A Long Way from Home
It’s 1:30 a.m. in Oslo, Norway, and the official shows at the 2008 by:Larm music festival have all shut down. But as I squeeze into the tiny music room at the back of hole-in-the-wall pub Revolver, the band shows... read more
Found in: Music, FeaturesIda Maria: Out of Control
Despite growing up in Nesna—a tiny Norwegian coastal village with 1,855 people and one gas station—Ida Maria Sivertsen was never at a loss for music in the home. “What we heard on the radio was what we got..." read more
Found in: Music, FeaturesSeun Kuti & Fela’s Egypt 80: Seun Kuti & Fela’s Egypt 80
Son of Afrobeat titan boldly assumes the mantle With the possible exception of Bob Marley, no figure in so-called “world music” looms quite as large as Fela Kuti. With an incendiary and confrontational approach to the ills of then-contemporary Nigerian politics and a frenzied rhythmic urge that closed the circle between James Brown and more traditional African forms, Kuti was a galvanizing social force above and beyond his sonic impact. Rather than flee this inevitable shadow or shake the implications of his name a decade after his father’s death, son Seun has instead chosen to lead his father’s classic band, confidently... read more
Found in: Music, ReviewsDebashish Bhattacharya: Calcutta Chronicles: Indian Slide-Guitar Odyssey
A dip in the River Ganges with an Indian slide-guitar master Anyone looking for a primer on authentic Indian raga—with its bendy, atmospheric slide guitars and gentle tabla beats—would be well served by the latest album from this award-winning master musician. On this, his follow-up to Calcutta Slide-Guitar, Vol. 3, Bhattacharya takes the listener on a tour of his home city, its mornings and its prayers through the sounds of a small slide ukulele, an Indian harp and an ancient one-stringed instrument called the ektara. A casual listener might write off this album as just more background music for meditation and... read more
Found in: Music, Reviews
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