1973/1977/1990/2000/2004/2005/2006 One of the scariest flicks of all time, “The Exorcist” was more than a box-office blockbuster. It was a touchstone of pop culture. The macabre tale of a sweet-faced 12-year-old girl possessed by the devil signaled a new level of intensity for horror movies and spurred scores of lesser imitators that heaped on […]
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TV on the Radio-Return to Cookie Mountain
Interscope One of the things musicians TV on the Radio do so well on “Return to Cookie Mountain” that they failed to do on “Desperate Youth, Blood Thirsty Babes,” is find a perfect way to present the band’s shambolic mix of poetry, New Wave, electro sampling and guitar by simply not caring. Each track is […]
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Are You Scared
2006 Six teenagers wake up in a grimy, abandoned factory, their every move captured via security cameras, asked by an electronically altered voice to participate in a game where the outcome is literally life-and-death. For instance, a guy has 60 seconds to disarm a bomb using a key surgically implanted in his gut, while […]
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Dirty Pretty Things-Waterloo to Anywhere
Interscope Trying to put the looming legacy of the Libertines’ and former bandmate/rock star cliché Pete Doherty’ behind him, Carl Barat formed Dirty Pretty Things; “Waterloo to Anywhere” is their first release, and it’s proof that Barat was underrated all along. Though indie rock inspired by punk is quickly becoming yesterday’s shtick in Brit-rock, Dirty […]
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Pusher Trilogy
1996/2004/2005 A gutter-level view of the Danish mean streets, director Nicolas Winding Refn’s searing “Pusher” trilogy is hard as slate “? echoing the works of Abel Ferrara, Martin Scorsese and Brian De Palma, Refn’s merciless, artful character studies are a hellish triptych, up close and unavoidable. While Refn’s grungy aesthetic may be too much for […]
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Charlie Hunter Trio-COPPEROPOLIS
Ropeadope Records Fuzzed-out, rock-infested, funk-strewn jazz: That’s what’s on “Copperopolis,” the latest album from Charlie Hunter, who remains one of the few truly innovative-yet-accessible jazz musicians on the scene today. With two familiar cats by his side’ Derrek Phillips on drums and John Ellis lending not only his always killer horn work, but also some […]
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The Meat Purveyors-Someday Soon Things Will Be Much Worse!
Bloodshot Records If Doyle Lawson & Quicksilver were mean drunks, they would be The Meat Purveyors. When last I saw them six years ago in Dallas, Jo Stanli Walston was ripping through roots songs about pain and resentment as if she was confronting the audience for doing her wrong. Though the band has tempered that […]
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Skerik’s Syncopated Taint Septet-Husky
Hyena Records “Husky,” the new studio album from sax man Skerik and his Syncopated Taint Septet, takes a few listens for the traditional jazz fan to adjust to it, but quickly becomes compelling. Skerik is becoming a mainstay on the modern jazz scene, having worked with the likes of Charlie Hunter, Ivan Neville, Stanton […]
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The Omen
2006 Horror remakes aren’t necessarily bad; witness John Carpenter’s “The Thing,” David Cronenberg’s “The Fly” and Zack Synder’s “Dawn of the Dead.” But if you have nothing new to bring to it, why bother? This summer’s redo of the 1976 classic “The Omen” deserves such questioning. Although aping the original’s story of a […]
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Long Distance Runner-The Fire of Cumulative Hours
Existential Sounds Perhaps the best argument for the melding of man and machine since Steve Austin went bionic is “The Fire of Cumulative Hours” EP from Long Distance Runner. Essentially a one-man show starring Portland-based K. Briggs, “Cumulative” marks a masterful DIY debut of breakbeat electronica, both imaginative and playful, like the best of DJ […]