Landmarks: The Year 2007

There have been times when I’ve found it difficult to pick a favorite record for a given year, but 2007 wasn’t one of them. Granted, any time Joe Henry releases a new album, it makes the Album of the Year race fairly tough to call for me, but 2007’s Civilians felt particularly timely and triumphant. [...]

The Top Ten (or so) Films of the Decade: #9 Almost Famous (Crowe, 2000)

I was a very young rock and roll journalist when this movie– about a very young rock and roll journalist– was released, and I saw enough of myself in this picture to become immediately convinced that I’d just seen my favorite film ever– a movie that seemed to reflect my tastes, my experiences, my values [...]

The Swell Season: “Strict Joy”

Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova — who nowadays go by The Swell Season, more or less — are musicians who know the power of small moments. After all, they won fame for their roles in the movie Once, a film that’s about as tiny and intimate as they come, and one of my favorite songs [...]

CT Reviews: Levon Helm; Brian Blade; Madeleine Peyroux

I’ve been a contributing music critic to Christianity Today Magazine for about a year now, and I’ve made an effort to link to some of those CT reviews here when they are posted online. Just today I stumbled across the fact that a handful of my brief, capsule reviews of current releases are available for [...]

Film Break: “A Serious Man”

There’s already been a lot written about the latest Coen Brothers opus, A Serious Man, and I don’t claim the ability or the insight needed to improve on what has been said by my friends Brandon Fibbs, Alissa Wilkinson, and Brett McCracken. I also recommend Roger Ebert’s four-star rave as essential reading on the film.
However, [...]

Lyle Lovett: “Natural Forces”

This is Lyle Lovett’s cross to bear: Twenty years and eleven albums into his career, he’s doomed to be forever derided as a “consistent” artist — as though that’s such a bad thing. So the man makes albums that are all so good, it’s hard to pick which one’s the best; how dare he! I [...]

The Top Ten (or so) Films of the Decade: #10 Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Gondry, 2004)

Ten years, ten movies. I’m not sure how this process works for everyone else, but for me, it starts off very easy, then grows very difficult, and, in the end, becomes very easy again.
When I first started thinking about which films I was going to honor as my favorites of the past decade, I jotted [...]

Weezer: “Raditude”

I love me some Weezer, but even I’m finding it harder and harder to defend Rivers Cuomo. I’m not sure that the man was ever “cool,” exactly, but any hipster cred he may have had he’s been squandering ever since The Green Album. The angsty, scraping proto-emo of Pinkerton now firmly a relic, Cuomo led [...]

Landmarks: The Year 2006

If I my be permitted a bit of revisionist history, I can say with the benefit of hindsight that my favorite record of 2006 is almost certainly Tom Waits‘ Orphans. Talk about an album transcending its modest roots: Originally meant to be a clearing-house for rarities, B-sides, and soundtrack cuts, the album proved such an [...]

Florence and the Machine: “Lungs”

Florence Welch took the simple word Lungs as the title for her debut album with the Machine, and, as big and bloated as the music is, such a spare moniker seems, at first, like a strange irony. But not so fast: Lungs is a fitting banner for this inaugural outing on a couple of levels. [...]