Reviews

The Girls’ Guide to Rocking

10.29.09

I know this is a kids book, or at least a book aimed at kids, girls specifically, but just because we’re a "literary magazine" doesn’t mean we can’t step back and check out something good for the next generation. Because we may as well admit it that we’re all getting older, and as we get older, the saying goes, the ground gets colder. For all of us. Despite the corny cover photos, The Girls’ Guide to Rocking is one of those things; for as easy as it is to be critical and cynical of how-to music books, this one by Jessica Hopper, a music journalist and long-time band member herself, is surprisingly approachable and informative without being preachy or distant.

Arthur Russell Revived: Hold On To Your Dreams

Thom Donovan

10.25.09

We’ve seen a major reexamination, recently, of the work of the late, esteemed, multifaceted musician Arthur Russell, through a biopic film, a record label dedicating to releasing unreleased, rare and reissued material, and a new biography in the bookstores; the poetic brilliance of Arthur Russell is alive and well for a new generation. Thom Donovan looks at the entire scope of the Russell revision on the heals of the biography by Tim Lawrence, Hold On To Your Dreams.

Brief Interviews with Hideous Men

Amy Meyerson

10.21.09

The adverb ‘complexly’ crops up repeatedly in the work of David Foster Wallace to describe among other things: 1) the irreverence of a palely freckled marketing focus group facilitator, 2) the patterns of shadow on trees, grass and shrubbery on a still, green day at the height of spring and 3) the series of hook and eye knobs on a blouse which women can undo easily and men cannot. It’s a fitting word to recurr in his work, often indicating a point at which his impressive descriptive powers had reached their limit, and emblematic of an aesthetic not easily translated to the screen. Amy Meyerson looks at the difficulties of adaption through John Krasinski’s recent film of Brief Interviews with Hideous Men.

The Flaming Lips get Embryonic

Mark Gluth

10.13.09

The Flaming Lips have a new album out today, with a title that harkens either a new beginning or return to roots. You can guess which, but the main figuring problem (if we haven’t already) is do we opt for the $40 furry super rad version, the $13 Itunes or local indie store deluxe cd version, the $8 Best Buy basic version, rip it from a friend, or like one would as a deadhead, just get a tape of one of the live shows. Mark Gluth ponders here in fact why more don’t follow this band in a caravan like those Phishheads do (the Lips have got their own carnivalesque show on, but way, way better). So read up, then listen, it’s a doozy. Here’s Embryonic.

The Informant! Denunciation vs. Deflation as Rhetorical Strategies

Daniel Hamilton

10.12.09

Hollywood has responded to the economic crash with the lightning quick reflexes of a short-selling day trader: swapping glitz and glamour for a hint of class consciousness with recent films like Public Enemies, The International and Sam Raimi’s Drag me to Hell. Stephen Soderbergh, on the other hand, is at least four movies deep in his own immersive and idiosyncratic investigation of the ways economic systems damage both the winners and the losers. Soderbergh refuses to demonize his corporate lackeys and instead de-glamorizes the system in which they participate through his depiction of gold tinted frames, fluorescent lighting and Marvin Hamlisch’s brilliantly kitschy soundtrack.