Dean Schlabowske/Searching for the Sound
Mahjongg/Fake IDs
Telefon Tel Aviv: Charles Cooper, Joshua Eustis/Strings Attached
Norm Winer/They Showed Him the Money
1.OUTKAST Speakerboxxx/The Love Below (Arista) The most fascinating record of the year was this matched set of solo albums by Outkast’s Big Boi and Andre 3000. Both are obsessed with love and sex, not necessarily in that order, but all subject matter here is overshadowed by an amazingly polymorphous musicality. Andre 3000’s disc is more […]
Flameshovel: Jesse Woghin, James Kenler/Brilliante: Chris Strong, Ed Menacho, Joe Wigdahl
Diverse/Sales Without the Scene
Ben Fasman, Jessica Hopper/Turntable Time for Girls
JOSH ABRAMS Cipher (Delmark) The quartet on Cipher first got together for a one-off gig at Lula Cafe in early 2000, and bassist Josh Abrams (a founding member of rustic minimalists Town and Country and the jazz trio Sticks and Stones) wisely decided to reconvene the personnel in a semiregular project. Trumpeter Axel Dorner lives […]
John Stirratt/No Shortage of Songs
Sarah Dandelles/Keep Them Covered
Dwayne R. Mason/Gospel Great
Each of the following recently released music books is informative and entertaining by turns, but only the first is an unqualified success. STOMP AND SWERVE: AMERICAN MUSIC GETS HOT, 1843-1924 By David Wondrich (A Cappella) In his appealingly irreverent new book David Wondrich (who writes about cocktails for Esquire) goes looking for the roots of […]
Olivia Block/Supernatural
Punk Primer Though punk as a concept has had a profound impact on popular music, most of its original practitioners have been consigned to the footnotes of rock history. While a handful of bands from both sides of the pond managed to parlay their notoriety into careers–the Ramones, Blondie, Talking Heads, the Clash, and X, […]
