A few attributes all but guarantee an album is going to be hit or miss. As a general rule, compilations, tributes, live albums, soundtracks and cover albums can aspire to mediocrity at best. When all of these come together in one album, as they do on Leonard Cohen: I’m Your Man– the soundtrack for the… Continue reading Spun: Leonard Cohen
Month: September 2006
Spun: The Thermals
Everyone has to grow up sometime. Applied to music, this statement often isn’t a positive thing. There are too many bands who’ve “matured” into boring acts, but, rarely some maturation will do a band good. The Thermals’ latest album, The Body, the Blood, the Machine fits this rare mold. Up to now, The Thermals were… Continue reading Spun: The Thermals
Spun: India Arie
By Emily Senger
Listening to India Arie’s incredibly upbeat and positive third album, Testimony: Vol. 1, Life & Relationship, is almost enough to make a girl feel bad. Bad about not loving her body enough. Bad about that time she kept her hair long just to please someone else. Bad about holding a grudge against her ex. Bad… Continue reading Spun: India Arie
Spun: The Panic Channel
By Jon Roe
It’s hard to remember a time when Dave Navarro was actually known as a musician. He’s spent the last few years playing reality star on our tubes with his now ex-wife Carmen Electra, and he recently hosted and produced the second go of Rock Star. This is quite a contrast from the early ’90s, when… Continue reading Spun: The Panic Channel
Spun: Paris Hilton
By Ryan Pike
Paris Hilton entered the public eye with a bang in 2004, when a videotape of her having sex circulated throughout the internet. Hilton deftly leveraged her fifteen minutes into, among other things, a music career. If her first effort, Paris, is any indication, it won’t add any more sand to the hourglass. From the get-go,… Continue reading Spun: Paris Hilton
Not so Lucky
Joan Barfoot’s novel Luck begins by saying “There is good luck, and there is bad luck, and then there’s the ambiguous sort of luck that’s a lot of this and some of the other.” You could also say in Luck there are good sections, and there are unnecessary sections, and, well, you get the idea.… Continue reading Not so Lucky
Sitting in the dark
By Ryan Pike
Since the dawn of modern broadcasting in the 1950s, television has provided the earnest viewer with countless reasons to put off studying, parenting and feeding pets. However, merely turning on the idiot box doesn’t guarantee entertainment as each fall the networks always unleash as much maggot-ridden crap upon the world as they do anything worthwhile.… Continue reading Sitting in the dark
Uncommon Psalms
By Paul Jarvey
Straight out of Chicago comes Psalm One, chemist turned rapper, emcee extraordinaire, and now the only woman with a Rhyme Sayers contract. What’s most refreshing is that she’s raged out of the windy city and onto the international scene without relying on backstage producers or enacting nymphomaniac teen-jerkoff fantasies. “It should be about the music,”… Continue reading Uncommon Psalms
Nitrogen not included
By Paul Jarvey
As emcee for much-loved indie hip-hop sensation Atmosphere, Sean “Slug” Daley has spent the past decade on the ride of a lifetime, happily raging through inventive anti-gangsterism and pumping out genre-defining beats. Atmosphere’s latest album, You Can’t Believe How Much Fun We’re Having, arrived in a flurry of popularity, briefly hitting number one as Top… Continue reading Nitrogen not included
Propositioning Guy Pearce
By Kyle Francis
From his show stopping performance in LA Confidential to the mind-blowing Memento to the less awesome Time Machine, Guy Pearce has had one of the most diverse and distinguished careers of any popular young actor. Appearing most recently in John Hillcoat and Nick Cave’s The Proposition as the rugged bushman Charlie Burns, Pearce impressed critics… Continue reading Propositioning Guy Pearce