Unspooled: the older brother problem

What kind of profile do Neil Finn and co. boast? I fell in love with Crowded House the way Matos did with Marshall Crenshaw’s Field Day. For reasons I don’t know, “Don’t Dream It’s Over” experienced a revival in the fall of 1992. It was all over the radio, its stately gait, unforgettable guitar hook,

Yick.

For a lot of us in South Florida the kidnapping and subsequent murder of Adam Walsh in the summer of 1981 was our first exposure to what we call now “the news cycle”: the drip-drip-drip of coverage that begins with the known facts of the abduction, followed by steady updates culminating in a grisly climax.

Mongrel hearts

James Mercer has the tunes, Danger Mouse has the beats, so you’d think they’d make lots of hooks if not quite lots of money (even in this chart climate). But their Broken Bells collaboration offers plenty of hooks and beats yet no justification for the effort. An abstruse lyricist in the best of times, Mercer

Gone Baby, Don’t Be Long

I’m a sucker for any song that samples Wings’ “Arrow Through Me.” Here’s a track from Erykah Badu’s new album.

Singles 3/25

In descending order. After two months of living with it I’m slightly nauseated by the chimes on “Giving Up The Gun,” but I still adore it, like a beloved roommate who leaves his dirty socks on the kitchen counter. Vampire Weekend – Giving Up the Gun (8) Corinne Bailey Rae – Paris Nights/New York Mornings

Point and shoot

Brothers confirms three things: (1) while Natalie Portman has gotten so gangly-gorgeous that I considered reparative therapy, she recites lines like an assistant director keeps walking out of her line of vision with the cue card; (2) Jake Gyllenhaal, after a series of somnolent do-gooder performances, delivers his best work since Brokeback Mountain, taking his

Remembering ‘Don’t Try This at Home’

Johnny Marr earned so much good will from his work with The Smiths and on Electronic’s eponymous album that his participation on Billy Bragg’s “Sexuality” persuaded me to trust him one more time (I avoided his work on The The’s Mind Bomb). Propelled by a sequencer track and Marr’s foregrounded acoustic strum, the track screams

News flash: Western civilization “a slowly sinking ship”

John Derbyshire, whose crankiness fails to amuse, proves why conservatism has had trouble attracting the young. He also sounds, oddly, like Gore Vidal: It’ll be over soon. We’ll be down in the cold, lightless depths of imperial despotism — in which, after all, the great majority of human beings, throughout history, have always lived. It’s

Too much information

So long as it sticks to its roots as a nasty political comedy with a few thrills instead of a suspense film, The Ghost Writer justifies the accolades heaped on it by critics eager to support Roman Polanski’s art yet willing to scratch their heads at his moral and legal acumen. Most of the cast

“A profane, profound, wisecracking American Music Man”

Ann Powers’ lovely Alex Chilton obituary.

Singles 3/17

Retreating into the introspection of Mama’s Gun and even Baduism if I’m in a cranky mood, Badu scores the biggest triumph. Erykah Badu – Window Seat (8) Chiddy Bang – The Opposite of Adults (6) Jason Derulo – In My Head (5) Avril Lavigne – Alice (4) Iyaz – Solo (3) Diana Vickers – Once

Alex Chilton: RIP.

Like a lot of eighties kids, my first acquaintance with Alex Chilton happened when I fast forwarded around The Bangles’ cover of “September Gurls” on Different Light. A decent cover — sung by (I think) bassist Michael Steele, with the right amount of rue. Most importantly, the album’s multiplatinum sales garnered Chilton maybe the decent