Music

Untitled Document W hen it comes to zeitgeist, timing is all, and the so-called freak-folk scene, with which Noah Georgeson is perhaps unfairly associated, is due for a backlash. Already blogosphere wags are mocking Devendra Banhart’s dirty bare feet, the same feet they were kissing a year ago; how much longer before they sink their […]

Untitled Document Menomena isn’t easily pigeonholed. The Portland, Ore.-based experimental trio doesn’t fit easily into any particular genre; it’s much too complex for that. At first glance, the band’s setup seems simple enough — guitar, drums, piano — but then such instruments as the baritone sax and what sounds like a large set of keys, […]

Untitled Document They may hail from balmy Miami, but the Postmarks certainly have a yen for the changing seasons. Their debut full-length boasts such climatologically perverse song titles as “Summers Never Seem to Last,” “Looks Like Rain,” and “Winter Spring Summer Fall” — concepts that are as far removed from most Floridians’ experience as thermal […]

Untitled Document The Book of Exodus isn’t one of God’s finer moments. From the moment he first appears to Moses in the form of a burning bush, it’s obvious that Mr. I-Am-That-I-Am has a thing for cheap theatrics. When his staff-into-serpent party trick falls flat, he makes with the real razzle-dazzle. Rivers turn to blood. […]

Untitled Document When it comes to death, most sane people would prefer to put it off for as long as possible. As Dylan Thomas famously advised, “Do not go gentle into that good night/Old age should burn and rave at close of day/Rage, rage against the dying of the light.” Guy Blakeslee, whose nom de […]

Untitled Document Maybe you’re thinking that the world doesn’t need another Daniel Johnston tribute album, and maybe you’re right. Regardless of where you stand on the highly vexed outsider-art question (are we laughing with ’em or at ’em?), it’s hard to argue that Johnston, who’s been the quintessential cult hero’s cult hero for more than […]

Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers, and Bastards, Tom Waits’ three-disc, 54-track tour de force, is more than a cleverly titled collection of outtakes, rarities, and oddball covers. It’s more than a grab bag of crap that didn’t make it into the official canon, more than a curated tour through the swollen archives of a three-decade career. Whereas […]

In the booklet accompanying Swan Lake’s debut is the following epigraph: “Beast Moans is a testament to friendship, eternal and otherwise.” The sentiment is sweet but more than a little scary. Sure, friends can inspire one another to new heights of creativity, but they can also goad one another to new depths of idiocy. Friends […]

The cover art for Joanna Newsom’s sophomore album, Ys (pronounced ees) depicts the folk chanteuse as a Renaissance peasant with a sickle in one hand and a portrait of a butterfly in the other. The juxtaposition of strength and fragility is a perfect visual metaphor for Newsom’s music, which manages to incorporate both cold grandeur […]

Hot on the heels of Ballad of the Broken Seas, Isobel Campbell’s album of duets with Mark Lanegan, Milkwhite Sheets finds the Glaswegian cellist/chanteuse all by her lonesome again, with mixed results. Anchored by Lanegan’s saturnine growl, Campbell’s little-girl coo seemed uncharacteristically womanly; the dichotomy served both singers well, evoking the archetypal pairings of Nancy […]

It’s difficult to muster up the nerve to throw stones at a guy like Jay-Z. Ever running the rap game, he released a chain of hits, rarely missing a link and never staying off the charts for long. From his rocketing start with Reasonable Doubt to his graceful bow-out on The Black Album, the Brooklyn-born […]

Death, unlike taxes, is the great equalizer. From the mewling preemie in the neonate ward to former President Gerald Ford, from the lowly fruit fly to the august giant tortoise, from the pope to the Dalai Lama to the highest-ranking officiant in the Church of Satan, we can all look forward to that long dirt […]