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Continue reading →: Picture yourself set up for good in another life
The thought of Spoon stretching the wings it’s deliberately clipped for more than a decade excited me enough to give Transference more attention than usual; the pseudo-amateurish thrash of “Got Nuffin,” “Trouble Come Running,” and “Written in Reverse” justified it. But so attracted is Britt Daniel to gnomic minimalism that…
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Continue reading →: Ain’t it so
Scott Woods and I continue our Roxy Music/Bryan Ferry chat, this one concerning the creamiest phase of their careers: Manifesto, Flesh + Blood, and Avalon. I’m fonder of this part of our discussion than the others. We share our thoughts on Roxy’s comeback at the height of punk and at…
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Continue reading →: Singles Jukebox 1/25/10
…is back. It gave me great pleasure to let Alicia Keys have it one more time (now go away, Alicia. Please.). Here’s the latest batch, with my score out of ten in parentheses: 8 Vampire Weekend – Cousins (8) 7 Los Campesinos! – Romance is Boring (7) 6 Gil Scott-Heron…
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Continue reading →: No heart
A few grace notes aside — Bad Blake (Jeff Bridges) emptying an orange juice carton of his own urine; the scarily accurate fourth-rate bowling alley updated with an incongruously garish, modern bar; the way Robert Duvall handles a fishing pole; the relief that floods over Bridges when he meets a…
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Continue reading →: Thanks.
I’m very flattered that GQ linked to my Roxy/Ferry conversation with Scott Woods. And, wow, that picture of Ferry…
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Continue reading →: 2009: Best Films
Rather late, but I needed to catch up on a couple more films; in the case of Bright Star, I’m very glad I did. I’m not comfortable with the results, particularly the high showing for Inglorious Basterds, but my ambivalences aside, I can’t shake how well its good sequences play,…
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Continue reading →: A man of letters: Louis Auchincloss R.I.P.
He was so compulsive a writer that after completing the Roosevelt book, he showed up unannounced at the offices of his publisher with a finished text for Calvin Coolidge, only to be told the president’s life had been assigned to someone else. Pace the AP’s obituary on Louis Auchincloss, dead…
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Continue reading →: I tried and finally found a way (cont)
Scott Woods posts more updates to our Roxy-Ferry talk. In this installment: These Foolish Things, Another Time, Another Place, Stranded, Country Life, and Siren.
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Continue reading →: Housecleaning
The last round of Singles Jukebox stand-offs before we start a new year this week: Yeah Yeah Yeahs vs Dirty Projectors and Electrik Red vs DJ Quik and Kurupt.
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Continue reading →: Whew.
I’m so happy Fred Kaplan is listening to me, as I made this argument last week to a couple of students: the health care bill in its current reform reminds me a lot of the 1957 Civil Rights Act. To get the full story of how Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson…
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Continue reading →: Like the future was supposed to be: Vampire Weekend and the state of pop
A quick relisten, then I voted to reaffirm: Vampire Weekend’s eponymous debut “is as good as it’s supposed to be and not one note more.” Contra is what I expect from a damn good second album: it consolidates and clarifies. The musical and conceptual vaporousness of “Oxford Comma” is replaced…
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Humanizing The Vacuum 