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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Big Love: The Complete First Season
2006 HBO continues to search for the answer to that nagging question: What will the cable network do once “The Sopranos,” David Chase’s sprawling criminal saga, calls it quits early next year? An array of comedies and dramas are vying to be the savior and while “The Wire” and “Entourage” are leaving their marks, HBO […]
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Sean Lennon-Friendly Fire
Capitol I’d imagine being of Beatles stock is both a blessing and a burden’ on one hand, you’ve got an impeccable pedigree; on the other, there’s not much margin for error, which would explain why John Lennon’s sons have stepped cautiously into creative arenas. Sean Lennon, whose debut record, “Into the Sun,” dropped way […]
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My Chemical Romance-The Black Parade
Reprise Taking a page from the Green Day playbook in a transparent bid for critical and commercial validation, New Jersey-based punk-poppers My Chemical Romance have unleashed the ambitious, somber “The Black Parade.” Overdosed on Pink Floyd and Queen to a spectacular degree, My Chemical Romance spend much of their third full-length album providing a nation […]
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John Legend-Once Again
Sony Urban Soulful vocalist and ubiquitous music-video fixture John Legend follows his acclaimed debut “Get Lifted” with “Once Again,” an equally mellow sophomore album and one which doesn’t alter his proven formula so much as stretch it in subtle new directions. Legend is understandably more visible this time around and his terrific first single, […]
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The Classic Sci-Fi Ultimate Collection
Various/2006 Here’s another collection from Universal, which seems determined to mine its reputation for Thirties to Fifties science fiction and horror for all it’s worth. This set contains five goofy sci-fi flicks from the Fifties, including one gem (“The Incredible Shrinking Man”), one near-miss (“Tarantula”) and three that are so silly, you’ll grin for […]
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Reds: 25th Anniversary Edition
1981/2006 A grand cinematic achievement and one which remains disquietingly relevant, Warren Beatty’s magnum opus “Reds” stands as the last of a now-vanished breed: the intelligent, costly and compelling Hollywood epic “? to think that studios once cranked out films that not only dazzled with lavish locations, but also put words worth considering in actors’ […]
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The War Game/Culloden
1964/1965/2006 A jarring piece of docudrama filmmaking that retains its power to disturb more than 40 years later, Peter Watkins’ searing film about nuclear war and its terrifying aftermath in a typical English city was deemed too intense and violent to broadcast by the BBC in 1965, becoming a theatrical release instead. Deliberately low-budget […]
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John Ellis-By a Thread
Hyena Records This is some solid jazz. When he’s not been collaborating with guitar maestro Charlie Hunter, saxophonist John Ellis has found time to start recording albums with his own quintet, lately for Hyena Records. On “By a Thread,” his second album for the New York label, Ellis and his crew weave elements of […]
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Jay Bennett-The Magnificent Defeat
Rykodisc Jay Bennett is best known as that dude that got kicked out of Wilco in that film about Wilco. One could get booted from worse bands, but the whole debacle has haunted Bennett, who has released three albums that hint at his gifts but mainly underscore why he was an excellent sideman. Perhaps […]