Jacob Marley’s afterlife really sucks. First he dies. Then he’s assigned the most overzealous tormentor in all of limbo land. Now he has to redeem Ebenezer Scrooge in order to redeem himself?! What a bum deal. Although rewriting vintage tales is nothing new (think Wicked), Jacob Marley’s Christmas Carol is…
When Denver-based documentary director Daniel Junge and producer Henry Ansbacher first contacted newly elected Liberian president Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf (who earned a masters in economics from the University of Colorado at Boulder in 1970, among other degrees), they were told their documentary crew could have two weeks of access. Two weeks…
If your plans for tonight involve playing shuffleboard with Grandma and watching Uncle Ned’s nose hairs grow, then you clearly need a well-deserved break from the yearly family Thanksgiving hell. It’s time to give the good Lord thanks for turntables, for beats, for electronic music, for your own two dancing…
Using liquid nitrogen, chef Ian Kleinman makes magical sorbets at O’s Steak & Seafood (“Mr. Wizard,” October 25). But the magical ice cream served at O’s comes from Peter Arendsen, the owner and only ice cream-maker at Ice Cream Alchemy up in Boulder — a guy who’d done everything from…
I have this dream of going to France. Paris, sure, but also (and mostly) Lyon. In my dream, I have a small, upper-story room in one of those old hotels, and every morning, invisible elves deliver café au lait, piping hot, the Times international edition and magical crepes that cure…
Like major-league closers, modern-rock musicians tend to specialize in the high hard stuff. Still, that doesn’t mean fans of the genre reject any and all softer sounds — and that’s where Kevin Devine comes in. A generation ago, Devine, who’s opening for Annuals, Manchester Orchestra and New Frontiers, wouldn’t have…
Husband-and-wife duo Sean Antanaitis and Katrina Ford have made music together for well over a decade, dabbling in artsy hardcore with Jaks, nearly gothic drama rock in Love Life, and organ-driven Latin lounge in Birdland. In 2005, however, the pair enlisted Love Life drummer David Bergander and emerged as Celebration,…
Remember that two-headed gibberish-speaking muppet? The Lawrence Arms is like that, only they’re intelligible. And instead of a puppeteer with his hand up their furry hinder, Neil Hennessy is in back, pounding away like Animal on the skins. Bassist Brendan Kelly and guitarist Chris McCaughan are so like-minded in their…
Recalling the effervescent lounge of Margo Guryan and the early, breathy songs of Françoise Hardy, Michigan’s Saturday Looks Good to Me has long chased the perfect-pop muse. Spawned in songwriter Fred Thomas’s Ann Arbor basement as a recording project for a label that only released albums by imaginary bands, the…
Load Blown, recently released on the Paw Tracks imprint, is accessible by the standards of Eric Copeland, Bjorn Copeland and Aaron Warren, the Brooklynites who form the three sides of Black Dice — but, of course, they’ve never made radio airplay, commercial success or winning Ryan Seacrest’s love and admiration…
In this country, even the most prominent DJs can walk the streets without attracting attention — and most of them like it that way. But in his native France and much of Europe, David Guetta is on another level entirely. There he’s a mainstream celebrity, thanks to hit singles such…
‘N Sync was so popular around the turn of the millennium that even I — jaded, posturing music critic — bought the band’s second album, No Strings Attached. It sold over a million copies the day it was released in March 2000, and I was swallowing a lot of LSD…
The best way to understand Witchcraft is to listen to “Remembered,” one of the seven meaty tracks on the Swedish group’s latest release, The Alchemist. In just over five minutes, the quartet moves from happy-go-lucky hoedown to sludgy metal to Disraeli Gears-era Cream. While Witchcraft is frequently associated with the…
Ketch Secor is on a Rocky Mountain high of sorts. As his band’s bus rolls into Sante Fe, New Mexico, all the Old Crow Medicine Show singer wants to talk about at the moment is Denver — John Denver. “The power of his songcraft has a lot more influence and…
Babyshambles, Shotter’s Nation (Astralwerks). Pete Doherty isn’t just an on-again, off-again junkie famed for making scenes with spindly ex-girlfriend Kate Moss. He’s also a musician, and Shotter’s Nation, the second Babyshambles album, demonstrates that he can be an effective one when somebody (probably veteran producer Stephen Street) keeps him on…
Chris Fogal is a closet shredder. You wouldn’t guess that, though, if you only knew him from his time fronting the Gamits. But those who’ve had the great fortune of working with him in the studio tell tales of Fogal plugging in their guitars to check for tones and then…
Although In Return is only Torche’s second record, you get the sense that this is one of those rare bands that will never leave you with a feeling of apprehension, wondering if the next record will be as good as the last. It’s almost a forgone conclusion that it will…
American Gangster is considerably better than 2006’s lackluster Kingdom Come, if only because it returns Jay-Z to his criminal comfort zone. However, it still falls short of his finest material. The disc feels more like the sort of Hollywood production that inspired it — a star vehicle assembled by skilled…
On All Over the Moon, Jen Pumo plays it cool. Rather than over-emoting, she layers imagistic lyrics over atmospheric soundscapes well worth ex-ploring. Her performances are unfailingly compelling, even though she seldom raises her voice. The album’s production fuses piano and other traditional instrumentation with synthesized washes and extremely subtle…
The Tarmints’ exhilarating dynamism and hysteria-inducing percussive textures have always been their signature, but this record shows that the brutally intense act doesn’t just exorcise the dark side of the human psyche. If anything, Thirteen Dead Cats bursts with vitality and is perhaps the most musical of the band’s releases…
Back in the day (June 2004, to be specific), I hated Julia Blackbird’s with a rare and fiery passion. I hated it for its knock-off New Mexican cuisine, for its terrible earth-tone decor, for its cheap, up-from-frozen appetizers and the people who ordered them — smiling blissfully as they shoveled…
Maggie and I arrive at Pat’s Philly Steaks and Subs (1624 Market Street) just in time for fifty-cent beers. Except according to the bartender, there’s no such thing. “Fifty-cent beers?” Charlie growls at us. “You think you’re going to find fifty-cent beers anywhere in this town? Shit, man. I get…
