10 Songs About Art

Seems like theme playlists have been coming to mind a lot lately. There's something reassuring about finding patterns and links between disparate objects. I think that's essentially the English major's curse. Or maybe the curse of the artist in general. We seek links among varying areas of study. We are philosophers of all things expressive. So, when music is the common link, well, that's a simpler equation. They're...

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Words On Film: Exit Through the Gift Shop

How can we define art? Is art predicated by its creative process, namely struggle combined with innovation? Or can art just happen through emulation and market savvy? Thirdly, perhaps art is a mutable quantity that never really existed in the first place. Maybe art is a Schrödinger's cat scenario. Maybe art only happens because we open that box, looking at the work and ascribing a value. But in so doing, we as art viewers...

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Radiohead - The King of Limbs

The King of Limbs seems to be all about definitions, images, memories, shapes and implications. This is not a traditional Radiohead album. In fact, it's different, save for the principle participants, than just about anything else the band has done. Sure, it offers hints of the cool gasps of Amnesiac, and there's a bit of the spare undertones that decorate In Rainbows, but in The King of Limbs, there's very little put...

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The Dears - Degeneration Street

I've read several reviews of Degeneration Street already. The mix is pretty wide open. Either a reviewer finds virtue in the overloaded way The Dears offer just about any album (this isn't the first case of their music being metaphor heavy and forceful), or the reviewer finds the lack of cohesiveness in style and tone to be a crippling defect. It's just about impossible for me to take an objective look at this new album....

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Words On Film: The King's Speech

By far the most conventional film I have seen in the theater this year, The King's Speech, is also one of the most directly heartfelt. As a historical drama; given that any of us with access to Wikipedia or some background knowledge on the principle subjects, we already know where the plot will go, so it's not a film of twists and turns or any kind of suspense. Instead, The King's Speech remains compelling specifically...

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18 Songs About Hearts, Love and Valentines.

It's that time of year again. A day of tiny cards and nearly inedible candy hearts, brief messages attached to long, longing looks, dreams and romance and just plain appreciation for all the love you give and get. And yeah, Valentine's Day may be a Hallmark holiday. It may be an excuse to do something epically romantic that you could really do any and every day of the year. The dinners are expensive and lovely. The orchestra...

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He Went To Jared: Fennesz - Endless Summer

Welcome back to another He Went To Jared (HWTJ). This time Jared has proposed Christian Fennesz's highly-regarded 2001 album Endless Summer. And as a special treat, Jared, yes the man himself! will be sitting in (via email from his transplant home in San Francisco, CA) to close out the bulk of the review. Experimental electronic music is one of those music apparati that tends to be extremely divisive. As I recall from...

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PJ Harvey - Let England Shake

Good luck pinning PJ Harvey down, if that's your angle. It's not going to happen. Harvey continues to dance around the various musical styles she has employed throughout her career, never settling for more than an album on any specific sound. Whether it was the under-produced clatter of Rid of Me and Dry or the pop-addled delight of Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea, Harvey held her own creating lyric driven...

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Cut Copy - Zonoscope

I latched instantly onto Cut Copy through 2008's In Ghost Colours. That album was a revelation, combining the pop anthem with aggressively charming dance beats, and loaded with memorable track after memorable track. It wasn't until 2009 that I really jumped in, but Cut Copy successfully brought me fully into dance music, or at least, indie pop-dance, breaking my lifelong obsession with songs about heartbreak accompanied...

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He Went To Jared: Parts & Labor - Mapmaker

Today I'm cracking open a new feature idea. It's called, as is evident from today's title, He Went To Jared. But this isn't about diamond shopping, oh no. This space will be used to review albums recommended to me by my dear friend Jared. Some of these albums may qualify, technically for the Underappreciated Music File, but I'll save that floor for stuff I dig up. So, without further ado... Parts & Labor's 2007...

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Mashville - The Brothers of Chico Dusty by Wick-it the Instigator

The virtue and merit in the mash-up is debatable. It begs the question: does the combined and mixed work of two or more artists (canon or contemporary) qualify as new, original art in itself? At one point does rearranging preexisting work jump from mere middling distraction to original expression? Really, the mash-up is like buying two or three puzzles, and then mixing the bits up so you have a wagon full of puppies...

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