Archive for April, 2024
Q&A
Singer Midge Ure is best known as the baritone frontman of ‘80s synth rockers Ultravox, the British synth-pop band that had stateside success with hits such as “Dear God” and “If I Was.” Ultravox has just issued a new album and...
Flicks
We fully admit we have yet to see these three critics’ darlings: Amour, Beasts of the Southern Wild and Zero Dark Thirty. But we spent countless hours in darkened theaters sitting through a slew of other movies. Some truly disa...
Q&A
On her most recent album, Castor, the Twin, singer and rapper Dessa revisited songs from her back catalogue and put a chamber pop spin on them, adding strings and things to the mix. Dessa, who is part of the Minneapolis-based h...
Flicks
When Tobe Hooper’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre was released in 1974, it was banned. Now, some 40 years later, it’s the saga that simply won’t die. Texas Chainsaw 3-D, the new film by director John Luessenhop, picks up where the ori...
Movie
We read Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables in French class, saw the musical stage adaptation three times and know most of the words to the non-stop sung dialogue, so we’re no strangers to the story of ex-convict Jean Valjean. Impriso...
Movie
Overly long and excessively violent, Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained isn’t as great of a movie as some critics make it out to be. And yet, Christoph Waltz’s performance is so terrific, it practically redeems a film. A vete...
Movie
We haven’t read the 2005 novel One Shot that’s the source material for Jack Reacher, the new thriller that stars Tom Cruise as Reacher, a renegade private investigator of sorts. But even if we had, we still can’t imagine we’d h...
Movie
Joyce Brewster (Barbra Streisand) is the kind of doting mother who can’t just let things be. And she’s really insecure. She thinks her son Andy (Seth Rogen) moved from their New Jersey home out to Cali just to get away from her...
Album Reviews
We’ve reached the 13th anniversary of the Magnetic Fields‘ landmark release, 69 Love Songs, and – after many recent listenings – it occurs to me this 3-CD set could use a reappraisal. When it initially came out in 1...
CLE
Since forming during an impromptu jam, This Moment in Black History has evolved into one of Cleveland, Ohio’s most durable post-punk bands. Its newest album, Higher Deffer, features plenty of noisy tunes. But it also gets into ...