Music

The consensus on The Great Destroyer, Low’s seventh full-length and first for Sub Pop, is that it represents a Great Departure. Adjectives that have never before appeared in reviews of the Duluth, Minn.-based trio — “aggressive,” “loud,” “rocking” — have been edging out the usual descriptors (“hushed,” “narcoleptic,” “austere”). If anyone took rock critics halfway […]

Sure, globalization has its drawbacks: McDonald’s in the ruins, Wal-Marts in the rainforest, Guatemalan peasants quoting Dr. Phil. Sometimes, though, it’s pretty great, and Maya Arulpragasam, a Sri Lanka–raised, London-based MC who goes by the tag M.I.A., is all the proof you need that a shrunken, mongrelized, borderless world doesn’t necessarily mean oppression and colonialism […]

Super Furry AnimalsSongbook: The Singles, Vol. 1 (XL) Let’s give it up for Wales. As if Dylan Thomas, Bertrand Russell, and John Cale weren’t enough, the vowel-challenged British principality has seen fit to favor us with the Super Furry Animals, a maverick rock quintet that’s been making brilliantly silly, unexpectedly moving records since 1995. Although […]

Bettie ServeertAttagirl (Minty Fresh) Indie rock, like most cultural enterprises, is not a meritocracy. Consider Bettie Serveert, the Amsterdam-based outfit fronted by Canadian expat Carol van Dyk. Thirteen years ago, the group ruled the college-radio playlists enchanted critics with debut full-length Palomine, and toured with all the major dudes of the day. Thanks in large […]

John LegendGet Lifted Getting Out Our Dreams/Sony As a producer, rapper, and talent scout, Kanye West effected a kind of hip-hop hegemony in 2004, gobbling up all the industry awards and A-list collaborators, cranking out radio hits like the next Neptunes, and generally imposing his will on a public that was all too ready to […]

Marianne Faithfull has led a larger-than-life life, neatly divisible into iconic phases: aristocratic ingenue, folk/pop princess, Stones consort, street junkie, comeback queen. In the beginning she sang like a convent girl, a gorgeous teen with a gorgeous soprano, as sharp and bright as an icicle. In the famous words of Stones impresario Andrew Loog Oldham, […]