Quickies

New Pornographers, Challengers Either they’re losing their enthusiasm for the concept or I am. Most of these masterpieces of filigree beguile after the fourth listen, but in the end I’m left wondering why I bothered. Neko’s Case deepening husk is even more beguiling (her work on the title track is the only keeper); too bad

The politics of feeling good

Kevin Baker’s article on the horrors of a Rudy Giuilani presidency is the best I’ve read in months: pungent, well-researched, and original. He rightly sees the continuity between the Big Business flirtations during the Clinton years and the marginalization of progressive forces in this country. Walter Karp might have agreed with this: The old power

neon bright vs neon white

There’s a Bluffer’s Guide to post-Thriller Michael Jackson waiting to be written; hell, I may write it myself. Much is made of the symbolism of Nirvana’s Nevermind knocking Dangerous off the top of the Billboard album chart in January 1992; but like all symbolic acts it crumbles under closer scrutiny. Dangerous is as paranoid and

I take great pleasure in baiting my friends into thinking I’m a flaming conservative. Credit my natural contrarianism; also an innate distrust of feel-goodism, which even the most humane liberalism can’t keep from curdling into something sinister. I won’t dismiss my Cuban-American upbringing either, or the inherent paradox in the exile community’s traditional embrace of

Alberto Gonzalez, the protagonist in a self-written narrative in which a man of Mexican descent overcomes “adversity” to join the ranks of A. Mitchell Palmer, John Mitchell, and Ed Meese as bullet-headed hacks in thrall to a President who’s less an Executive than a scion, is finally given the blessing by his master to work

Under the spotlight…

STE is right about Rilo Kiley Mach II: Jenny Lewis’ control is as inexorable as Natalie Merchant’s over the 10,000 Maniacs circa Our Time in Eden. I say for the better: on their previous albums (the ones I could listen to all the way without getting up to make a Denver omelet), Blake Sennett made

Under the spotlight…

STE is right about Rilo Kiley Mach II: Jenny Lewis’ control is as inexorable as Natalie Merchant’s over the 10,000 Maniacs circa Our Time in Eden. I say for the better: on their previous albums (the ones I could listen to all the way without getting up to make a Denver omelet), Blake Sennett made

Boys will be boys, pt. II

After seeing Superbad last night, I’m more than convinced that the first point in my last post is correct. It helps that Michael Cera ‘s fey dumbfoundedness is probably the college-age male heterosexual’s most fashionable pose.

Boys will be boys, pt. I

I haven’t seen Superbad yet, but this putatively no-contest John Hughes-vs-Judd-Apatow debate got complicated quickly, and there’s several points to consider: (1) Films about the deceptively placid, ostensibly platonic relationships between men are rare. Seth Rogan and Paul Rudd’s affection in Knocked Up is so powerful and instantaneous that marriage is seen as a necessary

Good night

Some things, nino, some things are like this,That instantly and in themselves they are gayAnd you and I are such things, O most miserable… For a moment they are as gay and are a partOf an element, the exactest element for us,In which we pronounce joy like a word of our own. It is there,

Good night

Some things, nino, some things are like this,That instantly and in themselves they are gayAnd you and I are such things, O most miserable… For a moment they are as gay and are a partOf an element, the exactest element for us,In which we pronounce joy like a word of our own. It is there,

Daryl Hall: "I love the fact that record companies are all going down"

A lively Daryl Hall interview in, of all places, Pitchfork. He tells Clive Davis to go fuck himself, laments the standards-strewn road down which Rod Stewart walks in the autumn of his career, sympathizes with Kelly Clarkson, and talks warmly of his collaboration with Robert Fripp, Sacred Songs. I adore Hall, but he and interviewer