If Life on Mars wanted to draw fans from their Lost lead, I think they might have done themselves a disservice by airing this episode out of order. Where is Tyler's gunshot wound? What happened after he answered that phone in the mysterious house, telling him to go in the basement? "Take a Look at the Lawmen" was apparently chosen to lead their time slot because it does a better job of introducing characters, leaving "The Dark Side Of The Mook" and it's continuation of the story from the mid-season finale for next week.
As nice as it was seeing familiar faces in Mad Men's Maggie Siff (Rachel Menken) and The Sopranos' Vince Curatola (Johnny Sac), I just couldn't get excited about an episode that pretty much ignored the two month wait in the story line. I really only raised an eyebrow once, and that was hearing the Al Green-like voice of Darondo laying it down while Tyler was going all Don Draper on Rachel...er... I mean Maria. It was only a few seconds of bliss, but the funk of "Legs" made the most of it. Darondo, AKA William Daron "Get That Dough" Pulliam, was an underground legend in the Bay Area, driving around in his white Rolls Royce with a personalized DARONDO license plate, but the range of his fame was pretty much limited.
Wow... so much goodness to crunch on here, and while there was no music (aside from Composer Michael Giacchino's always excellent score,) I can't help but geek out a bit here, as it was our first episode of season five to enter into the Lost cannon of greatness. But is there really a need for me to 'geek out,' when every one else has already done it before I even had a chance to watch "Jughead." Thanks again to Fisher Communications and Dish Network, I don't have ABC in my household, and thus have my own time warped viewing. Here are some great points brought out across the net from late last night to early this morning.
1. "Jughead" the bomb has historical truth. - "Jughead" was a real cryogenic hydrogen bomb that never detonated after the successful test of the first dry-fuel thermonuclear hydrogen bomb, operation "Castle Bravo," in March of 1954. (Popular Mechanics Blog)
3. Ellie = Eloise? - Following #2, could a certain rifle-toting ingenue be nicknamed "Ellie" as a shortened form of Eloise? Is Ellie a young Eloise, and by extension, Faraday's mother? He did seem to recognize her. The accent is the only wrench in the that theory.
4. And daddy too? - Following #2 and #3 (and the fact that Charles Widmore has been funding Faraday's research), we might as well theorize that Widmore is Faraday's birth father, right? Faraday would then be Penny Widmore's "brother from an Other mother." Also recall the Luke/Leia Star Wars reference from Faraday in "Confirmed Dead" (4.02): "I'm Daniel Faraday. I'm here to rescue you." Widmore makes a nice Darth Vader daddy, don't you think? By the way, they called him "Jones" in episode two, which is the real last name of a certain Archie comic book character.
5. Jughead as Time Lord? - That comic book character is, of course, the Archie comic sidekick Jughead, who, as the great Doc Jensen points out, had his own short-lived spinoff comic book series called Jughead's Time Police. In it we find our hero traveling through time to correct anomalies in time that were erasing family and loved ones in the present. Crazy, huh?
6. The Great Smokey Dragon - Another geektastic tidbit from Jensen concerns physicist John Wheeler, who died less than a year ago. One of Wheeler's theories is that "the universe is built like an enormous feedback loop, a loop in which we contribute to the ongoing [creation] of not just the present and the future but the past as well." This is partially why we see Faraday participating in the excavation of the donkey wheel. Affecting this loop is Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, which allows for a "fatal flaw in any well-ordered plan." Wheeler's nickname for the uncertainty principle? "The Great Smokey Dragon." The smoke monster (which does look like a chinese dragon) seems to come into play when the rules are broken, like when Ben "summons" the supernatural entity in "The Shape of Things to Come."
7. Ceteri narro Latin? - The Others speak Latin? We're not going down a Rosicrucian rabbit hole any time soon, are we?
8. Jacob picks Ben after Widmore - There's been all sorts of mystery surrounding Widmore's obsession with the island, and finding out that he was once an Other narrows it a bit. The theory that I'm drawn to is that Widmore was at one point the leader of the Others, and was usurped by Ben (via Jacob) post-purge, which would explain a lot of the animosity, and lines from previous episodes like, "It's mine, Benjamin, and always was," and "everything you have, you took from me."
What else did I miss? You know, lists like this are kind of lazy, but it's always a good Lost when you're numbering theories the next morning. Here's hoping for another one next week.
This week there are two DVD reissues from music documentarian Robert Mugge, focusing on two very different artists in somewhat similar straits. With the documentaries Gospel According to Al Green (1984) and Sonny Rollins: Saxophone Colossus (1986), Mugge finds both artists on the other side of their commercial and (perceived) creative peaks, with both reaching in different directions for new inspiration.
Gospel According to begins with the soulful Al Green solo with guitar, singing about a love deep in his heart. His beaming smiles and squeals of delight spill joy through the screen into our laps. Going in blind, the assumption here is the song is about love for a woman, but when he plays the song again through the credits, what we've seen in the prior 90 minutes confirms that it's more likely about his love for God. Using fiery gospel performances from 1984 as a backdrop, the film intertwines interviews with Green, producer Willie Mitchell and rock critics to piece together his conversion.
Much of the film seems built around getting Green to talk about the infamous "hot grits" incident that most believe (and Green finally admits 30 years later) spurred his conversion. The story goes that Green was seeing 29-year-old Mary Woodson, while seeing other women, and when Green turned down an offer for marriage she became unhinged. While Green took a bath to unwind after a long recording session, the spurned lover Woodson boiled some grits on the stove and proceeded to throw them on a naked Green. He suffered second and third degree burns, and barricaded himself in a room. With her revenge now complete, Woodson located Green's .38 revolver and took her own life. As Green tells the story in the film, it seems to occupy a blind spot in his memory, even earnestly asking Mugge, "Did it really happen?" -- as if he hadn't really been a witness to the incident. Green, in fact, tells of his born-again conversion for the film entirely different, insisting instead that it was a 4 a.m. wake-up call from his Lord in a hotel room in Anaheim back in 1973, predating the incident (and a lot more sleeping around) by more than a year.
Green began moving toward gospel, eventually distancing himself completely from secular music after 1977's The Belle Album. That album features a lyric in its title track that pretty much encapsulates the bridge between gospel and soul that Green had been crossing: "It's you that I want, but it's Him that I need." Green then turned his back on the money and fame and gave himself fully to singing only for the Lord. With Green's recent successful return to secular music (last year's Lay It Down), seeing Green in full gospel mode is even timelier. Green really gets a workout screaming for the Lord, and it's hard for even the hardened to resist his unbridled joy. But is it really all joy, or is part of it just a mask for the past he's repressing?
Meanwhile, if Gospel is fascinating for an incident unseen, Sonny Rollins: Saxophone Colossus actually captures a legendary scene on film. The film is really two short documentaries put together, the first focusing on an outdoor concert in Saugerties, New York, in August of 1986, and the second on the debut of a concerto Rollins wrote, performed in Tokyo with a symphony backing him. Mugge again weaves together interviews with his subject (with his wife Lucille) alongside critics, who, much to Mugge's chagrin, can't find anything negative to say about the legend, other than his recordings often don't live up to his live performances.
The Saugerties concert is legendary, and Rollins' playing helps make his critics' point, as he is on fire through the performance. The concert is captured in the album G-Man, which served as the soundtrack release for the movie. The title track opens the film and features some of Rollins' most daring solos ever captured. Later, during a rendition of "Autumn Nocturne," Rollins moves from song-to-song phrasing before deciding to jump off the rocky stage, breaking his ankle on the fall. He lies there for a minute, assessing his pain, before launching back into his solo, much to the delight of his bandmates and audience alike.
Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for the second half in Tokyo, as his "Concerto for Tenor Sax" seems pedestrian in comparison, and the symphony backing him mostly a distraction from the solos he conjures up on stage. It's no wonder that this is the only recording commercially available.
Both DVDs are kind of grainy in the transfer, as it seems the original reels were not well preserved, but the sound is top-notch. Extra features for Gospel include an uncut 90 minute interview with Green that is placed in like a director's commentary, and both DVDs have video of the director's recollections, with Mugge giving insight into several key scenes for both films. Both are great for fans of the artists, but I'd only really recommend Gospel for the casual fan.
While what we've seen so far of Flight of the Conchords' second season isn't quite up to the brilliance of the first, last night's musical entry, "Sugar Lumps," surely curled a few mouths. After Bret unwittingly bankrupts the band, Jemaine thinks they might make good prostitutes, given that "all the ladies go crazy for my sugar lumps." What follows is a lampoon, both musically and lyrically, of the regrettable "My Humps" from The Black Eyed Peas (a song long overdue for mocking), as is the case with these lyrics:
We see ya girls checkin' out our trunks. We see you girls checkin' out the front of our trunks. We see you girls lookin' at our junk, then checkin' out our rumps, then back to our sugar lumps.
Later, Dave (Arj Barker) gets into the action with an early Beastie Boys homage. As good as it (and the episode) was, it is one of only a few bright spots so far this season. Enjoy:
Singer/songwriter Andrew Bird, over a span of eight albums now, has quietly moved from obscurity into something resembling mainstream. Whether you recognize his work in recent Residence Inn commercials, playing in a Barnes & Noble, or in your iPod, his quirky violin, guitar and whistling melodies find a way to burrow into your head. His latest, Noble Beast -- released last week, finds Bird scaling back some of his eccentricities down to a still challenging piece of work that dares some radio airplay. What hasn't been pared back is his love of words, as witnessed in the song "Tenuousness": "From proto-Sanskrit Minoans to porto-centric Lisboans / Greek Cypriots and Hobishots / Who hang around the ports a lot." Now say it ten times fast -- and again while holding your tongue, just for fun.
Live, the multi-instrumentalist often builds a songs layers using loops, but when he plays "Fitz and Dizzyspells" on Letterman Tuesday night, time restrictions probably won't allow that spectacle. Instead we'll likely witness him move from guitar to violin along with his world champion caliber whistling. Either way, we should expect to hear a well-earned "wow" from David Letterman after the last note fades.
It's been four years since Franz Ferdinand's sophomore album, You Could Have It So Much Better, lived up to it's title and landed with a thud. Since that time, the Glasgow quartet vowed to shake things up, and tomorrow sees the release of the result in Tonight: Franz Ferdinand. It's an album that despite the vow, sounds a lot like the last, albeit with the addition of some more inventive keyboard sounds. I, for one, thought You Could Have It... was better than most gave credit, so that and the fact that they put on a good show is reason enough for me to be tuning in to The Tonight Show with Jay Leno on Thursday night to see them perform "Ulysses" (or possibly "No You Girls Never No").
Finally, the latest season of Austin City Limits has been pretty good so far, and this week's lineup has to be my favorite, pairing the legendary Nick Lowe with the Oscar winning Swell Season (Once's Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova). Lowe's famous sharp wit and ironic lyrics have given away to a more graceful delivery, more in line with his nearly 60-year old voice, but expect to hear plenty of his classics (like "Cruel to be Kind") because the Basher is set to release a new collection of greatest hits called Quiet Please…The New Best of Nick Lowe, in anticipation of Lowe's 60th birthday in March. And so it goes and so it goes and so it goes and so it goes...
Finally got to see Lost (no thanks to Fisher Communications,) and noticed that the two audience proxies, Sawyer and Hurley, each get their own episode, with the premiere ("Because You Left") for the former and the second ("The Lie") for the latter. The first episode brought in more sci-fi/fantasy than you could swallow, but that was offset by things like Sawyer slapping Daniel into giving him an explanation for the time irregularities ("think of it like a record skipping"). And then Lostie fave Neil Frogurt got a flaming arrow through his chest, a further comment on the dichotomy of the show. The ultimate 'red shirt character' finally gets it (not long after giving one of his red shirts to Sawyer).
Back to the skipping record, though. What a great opening, featuring the poly-named Dharma Doc putting on Willie Nelson's Shotgun Willie LP to start the day feeding baby Chang (could this baby be Miles?). The title track plays but eventually begins to skip, repeating the lyric "you can't make a record" over and over. The rest of that line goes You can't make a record if you ain't got nothin' to say / You can't play music if you don't know nothin' to play, which I take to be Cuse and Lindelof reiterating that they have a plan and we're playing it to the end now. One of the only two 'whoah' moments comes shortly after that, when we find Farraday present in 70's Dharma world. The second comes at the end of the second episode, with the return of Ms Hawking, who just might very well be Farraday's mother (double whoah).
It's rare when Lost employs the use of songs in the plot, and it's always with purpose, so it's worth pointing out Cheap Trick's "Dream Police" playing in the gas station, which was perfect following the vision of Dream Police Officer Anna Lucia. And while we're at it, with regards to the 'I (HEART) My Shih Tzu' t-shirt, that dog is the oldest (and smallest) of the Tibetan holy dogs, which I'm sure has some meaning here. But really, I think it's writer's chuckling about Hurley's lion face, since the Shih Tzu is the 'lion faced' dog.
As if to underline last year's down year for releases, this week's crop is already heads and tails above any release week from last year. Less than one month into 2009, and we could already start to formulate a best of the year list. Animal Collective's latest beats all of last year's releases, which is why there's already album of the year talk in January. Besides that, there's new releases from Antony and the Johnsons, Andrew Bird, AC Newman, Anya Marina, Bon Iver, Blackout Beach (Carey Mercer of Frog Eyes/Swan Lake) and that just covers the first two letters of the alphabet. It's as if album releases were pushed back to inauguration day, for a better association. There will be no more releases from the Bush years, folks.
So much digital ink has already been spilled on this release since it leaked earlier a few weeks ago, there's not much else to say except the bar has been set for releases in 2009 (or, for that matter, what we'll lovingly refer to as The Obama Years). With the 2007 releases (specifically, Strawberry Jam and Panda Bear's solo release (Person Pitch,) Animal Collective was inching closer to mainstream while maintaining their artful peculiarities. Merriweather Post Pavillion is the refinement of both those releases, mixing Panda Bear's sunny Pet Sounds fixation with the artsy atmospherics and tribal beats that dominate an Animal Collective joint. While the whole album sparkles, two songs standout as among their best ever: "My Girls" and "Brothersport." Both of those are likely to expand their current fan base, which means that there will be some cries of "sellout." Just drown out those unwarranted complaints by cranking up the controlled chaos of "Daily Routine," and carry on with smile intact.
If it weren't for the brilliance of Merriweather Post Pavillion, folks would be making the all-too-soon argument for The Crying Light as album of the year. As in the past two albums, it's the voice of Antony Hegarty that's front and center, and it's a voice that's become far more familiar since their debut, singing with the likes of Lou Reed, Bjork, Rufus Wainwright and the Hercules and Love Affair project of New York DJ Andy Butler. His pipes have evolved into the go to for soul+sorrow, with a new sense of maturity, which is partly why Hegarty chose an image of the Japanese Butoh dancer Kazuo Ohno, who is now 102 years old. Much like the use of Candy Darling for 2007's I Am a Bird represented art and gender issues, Ohno represents maturing as an artist.
When it became known that Andrew Bird was splitting up his recordings into an album of conventional and leaving the more experimental to an EP I was a bit worried, and with good reason. Since the release of 2006's Armchair Apocrypha, Bird has been inching towards 'Mountain' acceptability, which in the Seattle area means, adult-alternative. My dentist always plays that station in the mornings, and while hearing "Imitosis" while getting your teeth cleaned is soothing, having it followed by a Hootie and the Blowfish song makes you spit before the designated time. Since then that song has also been featured in a series of Residence Inn ads, and The Mountain sponsored his recent performance at the Zoo here as well, so one might assume Anti Records had some, shall we say, expectations with Noble Beast. Refreshingly, the album eases back on the ultra sheen production from Armchair Apocrypha in favor of a more natural sound, and there are lots of classic Bird flourishes throughout. While it's a more even sounding record, much of the spontanaety of past releases is MIA, getting marginalized to the mostly instrumental Useless Creatures EP (available as one deluxe edition). A fusion of the two might be more preferable, but even still, it remains a good-to-nearly-great release.
Bon Iver's Justin Vernon famously recorded the critically acclaimed For Emma, Forever Ago while holed up one winter in a Northern Wisconsin forest after a break up, so there's been some buildup as to what he would do in a studio without the heartache and the isolation. While there's nothing here that will make you forget For Emma, the title track is sure easy on the ears. Extra points for referencing his previous album's recording with the song "Woods":
I'm up in the woods I'm down on my mind I'm building a still To slow down the time
Sung using a vocoder, it's even more haunting. It's an ending to a nice appetizer that makes you hungry for whatever full length comes next.
My consolation prize in not being able to watch Lost (damn you Fisher Communications) is that I can take in some Spectacle. It was in the form of a Johnny Cash style 'guitar pull,' with everyone sharing songs and pleasantries. While several guitars were out of tune there was a few nice moments, like Kristofferson's grizzled delivery of a couple of his classics. But his most well known song, "Me and Bobby McGee," got the group treatment, and suffered from meandering and muttering.
Honestly, though, throughout I found myself pausing the episode repeatedly to try and find some way online to watch/download/mainline the Lost premiere. I'm not in the habit of doing it, but it seems last night was a frustrating affair for the usual downloaders. As of midnight, there was still no proper rip of the first episode, and yet, a ridiculous amount of options for downloading the second episode.
If you've shaken your thing in a dance club the last year, the music of LMFAO is surely familiar, be it their self-produced singles like "I'm in Miami, Bitch" and "Lil' Hipster Girl" or remixes for Fergie, Kanye West ("Love Lockdown") and Katy Perry ("Hot n' Cold"). Now signed to Interscope, the Hollywood Hip-Hop duo is finally poised to release an album of their already impressive catalogue of 'hits' (appropriately entitled Party Rock,) to be released next month.
RedFoo and Blu Sky, the stage names of the uncle/nephew combo, aren't waiting around for silly things like release dates to start the party going, though, as they make their network television debut on Carson Daly this Tuesday. Says RedFoo (the uncle) "We want to be seen as much as possible. We want to be so big that we can't even walk down the street." After enough folks see them perform "I'm in Miami, Bitch," there's a decent chance that they'll get their wish.
Elsewhere, Spectacle this week welcomes singer/songwriters Kris Kristofferson, Rosanne Cash, Norah Jones and John Mellencamp for a good old fashioned "guitar pull," where a group of artists sit in a circle and trade songs and stories. Johnny Cash famously held them, with Kristofferson and Cash's daughter Rosanne were often in attendance. Elvis Costello makes an interesting proxy for the man in black, and I guess having Jones and Mellencamp make the affair a little more consumer friendly.
Another casualty of posting early in advance of my vacation was that I missed this Sunday's Pre-Inauguration Celebration to be televised on HBO for free (to those with cable and satellite reception). Featuring performances from Bruce Springsteen ("The Rising",) U2 ("Beautiful Day," one presumes,) Stevie Wonder ("For Once in My Life" is my guess) and Beyonce (singing "At Last," reprising her role as Etta James in Cadillac Records,) it looks like a better party than the real Inaugural Ball.
While most focus this Sunday is on Showtime's The United States of Tara, Secret Diary of a Call Girl returns for its second season, and just might surprise folks more. If season one seemed at times like a prostitute checking her watch, this season seems to have a better idea of how to give the audience what it desires, providing more titillating predicaments for our Belle, while also bringing more of her personal life (Hannah) into focus.
I think the distance we felt from Billie Piper's portrayal in the first season was due to a couple of reasons. Piper has been a star in the UK since she was a child, so taking the role as a call girl was a huge deal and it makes sense that they were cautious with what they did with her character. Meanwhile, the episodes are only 23 minutes and with only eight episodes a season (under four hours,) the season is over by the time most American series are just getting started.
With the second season, Belle no longer works for a Madame and even finds herself taking on the role of one, teaching the young and dense apprentice (Bambi, played by Ashley Madekwe, who's actually older than Piper). Meanwhile Hannah has a love interest in Alex (Dead Like Me's Callum Blue,) making the separation of her personal and her professional life that much more complicated.
In the first four episodes already, there are several inspired moments, like the twisted visual coupling of a baptism and a golden shower or a three-way from leopard-print hell. Musically, the second episode ends with the perfect use of The New Pornographers' "Adventures in Solitude". "We thought we'd lost you... welcome back."
Call it a RockMitzvah. This week is the coming-out party for this metal band of 14-year-olds from Oklahoma, with the release of their self-titled debut tomorrow coinciding with a documentary on MTV. If the doc's title, Start a Band, Rock the World, sounds familiar, that's because it's the tagline for the Rock Band video game, which is no coincidence -- that game was the unlikely vehicle for the band's recording debut, with their first song, "Nightmare," getting placement alongside songs by their heroes like Metallica and KISS.
The documentary follows the rapid rise of CX, who have been playing together since they were ages 10 and 11, having failed at fifth grade football. Their first exposure came when they placed second in a nationwide contest on CBS Early Morning Live. That's where they were first noticed by eventual managers Spencer Proffer and Doc McGhee, who helped launch the careers of KISS, Motley Crue, Bon Jovi and others. That led to tours opening up for KISS, Ted Nugent and, in a bit of irony, getting the honor of being the halftime entertainment at the last Dallas Cowboys game ever at Texas Stadium. They found a way to make it on the football field after all (even if the team imploded before the stadium's scheduled date). The whole week culminates with an appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live, which is where I guess we find out if they can play.
Meanwhile, singer/songwriter and musical offspring Rufus Wainwright sits in on Spectacle: Elvis Costello with..., in an episode that also features Wainwright's mother, Kate McGarrigle, joining him on stage for a song. While daddy dearest (Loudon Wainwright III) isn't there, he's brought up in discussion, song (Costello performs "New Paint") and by association with the presence of Bill Frisell, who played on Loudon's Here Come the Choppers! Rufus delves into his somewhat troubled past, even touching upon his recovery from meth addiction. It's Costello's best Spectacle yet as he's far more comfortable in the interviewer's chair now. It helps of course that Wainwright seems more than willing to talk about himself (see Lou Reed).
UPDATE: Fleet Foxes is playing Saturday Night Live this week as well, announced shortly after I filed this (as it usually goes).
It's amazing they fit all those egos on the stage at once.
We already knew about Sting's infamous ego, and Costello has shrunk considerably since marrying the female Harry Connick, Jr, but it still immense, according to sources. But I always thought Stewart Copeland's occasional foray into the ego field was ironic, as he usually comes off as a sort of lovable geek (like during the reunion tour press conferences). But here, he comes off like a blowhard. I'm sure he was both excited and felt comfortable from touring with Costello to give us, perhaps, too much information at too loud a volume.
Not sure why there's two sets of drums and two bassists needed on stage at the end. It did allow Sting to noodle up the neck during "Watching the Detectives," so there's that.
After last year's mid-season finale for Nip/Tuck, one of the most common questions asked was "when is McNamara/Troy going to get some security?" As if to answer that chorus, this mid-season premiere goes back and replays the events of the night to try and explain how Colleen could have gotten to Sean, given that he's a famous TV star and she has a restraining order against her. Apparently, all you need to do is disguise yourself as a patient and no one will think twice.
Giving the scene an extended remix served not only the purpose of showing that they did in fact have security (crackerjack at that) but also gives Music Supervisor PJ Bloom a second opportunity to pick music to back it. Here he sneaks in two (three sort of) songs, first cleverly employing The O'Jay's classic "Backstabbers" to clue us in that the women bypassing security under wraps is indeed our backstabber. Then we get Mark Ronson's "Stop Me Medley," which combines The Smiths' "Stop Me if You Think That You've Heard this One Before" and The Supremes' "You Keep Me Hanging On," both songs fitting in well with Colleen's mini-Misery camp out with Sean.
But, of course, Sean lives... but we knew that right? Didn't we see them all in the future? That was another observation posited after the cliffhanger that Ryan Murphy deemed necessary to address in the episode, when Sean assures Christian that he won't be dying of breast cancer, even if that vision of the future was "just a dream." Hey, Shaft survived tit cancer, so shut your mouth (I'm just talking about the Shaft). With both Doctors handicapped by ailments, they turn their lemons into a lemon-orgy of sorts, using their status to get some sympathy sex, all to the sounds of Donovan's "Barabajagal". "Love is hot truth is molten!"
The episode ends, as many Nip/Tuckers do, with a breast exam of the soul. Doctors Christian and Sean looking into their respective mirrors and not liking what they see, all to Beck's rendition of "Everybody's Gotta Learn Sometime" done for Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. And here it's worth linking to the original version, by the new wave band The Korgis.
Getting snowed in and extending myself writing other projects helped contribute to this list's delinquency, but it can also be said that I dreaded this post a bit due to a slight dip in quality this year. In the past, this list would run up over 100 in length, but not this go 'round. I was not as excited by the depth of releases this year -- quite a few releases impressed, but on the whole, I found it to be a down year. Also, 2009 has come earlier than in the past (hello new releases from Animal Collective, Andrew Bird, Antony & the Johnsons, A.C. Newman and Robert Pollard) and since I'm about to head to Mexico for a week, this will be incredibly brief.
The most focused and consistently great album that TVOTR has released yet, which is saying a lot. And it's funky. Dear Science opens like an extension of Cookie Mountain (best album from 2006) and eventually ends with an ode to sex that sounds like it Sufjan Stevens orchestrated the song's final few minutes. Breathtaking.
The first of Sub Pop's near dominance in 2008, and also the first example of how the late 80's/early 90's is coming in style. Even though the LA punk duo is by all estimations still getting it's bearings, Nouns seems to hit a sweet spot that's been missing... sloppy DIY punk delivered via My Bloody Valentine guitar swirls, all encased with a tape-loop hiss that all together sounds far more accessible than you'd think it would.
More love for Sub Pop. Between the reverb and the incredible vocal harmonies, it's hard to not play the Pet Sounds card, but the folky guitar strums send us in the direction of CSN&Y.
Latest relies more on pop conventions than past releases. There's still plenty of noise and artful moments here to be sure, but the swing to convention is concrete to the ears, and the sound is thrilling.
DJ Andrew Butler may be the man behind the beats, but the star here is really Antony Hegarty (Antony and the Johnstons,) who's expressive voice sounds possibly even more at home in this updated disco setting than the band he fronts.
The third album QT has recorded since Amplified (1999) while just the first to get an actual physical release. Welcome back QT, and welcome back A Tribe Called Quest-like grooves.
Craig Finn actually singing more than speaking? Rock riff nods to Led Zep and Thin Lizzy? Relax... it's still Hold Steady at the core of these tales of good kids reaching for something big, falling hard and getting back up again.
Yet more love Sub Pop. Still present is the restless mixtapery of Wild Mountain Nation, but a bit more focus. Lots of 70's pop and rock mishmashed together in a manner that's quite pleasing to the ears (and mind).
Like Q-Tip, the Bristol trip-hop pioneers are another 90's comeback story. But their not content to just return to their sound, instead they push on to new uncharted territories. Dense and sinister, it's an aural onion waiting to be peeled.
A refinement of Grinderman's midlife Christ-kick, Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!! is rock with Cave's wit on full display. "I say prolix! Prolix! Something a pair of scissors can fix."
If Life on Mars wanted to draw fans from their Lost lead, I think they might have done themselves a disservice by airing this episode out of order. Where is Tyler's gunshot wound? What happened after he answered that phone in the mysterious house, telling him to go in the basement? "Take a Look at the Lawmen" was apparently chosen to lead their time slot because it does a better job of introducing characters, leaving "The Dark Side Of The Mook" and it's continuation of the story from the mid-season finale for next week.
As nice as it was seeing familiar faces in Mad Men's Maggie Siff (Rachel Menken) and The Sopranos' Vince Curatola (Johnny Sac), I just couldn't get excited about an episode that pretty much ignored the two month wait in the story line. I really only raised an eyebrow once, and that was hearing the Al Green-like voice of Darondo laying it down while Tyler was going all Don Draper on Rachel...er... I mean Maria. It was only a few seconds of bliss, but the funk of "Legs" made the most of it. Darondo, AKA William Daron "Get That Dough" Pulliam, was an underground legend in the Bay Area, driving around in his white Rolls Royce with a personalized DARONDO license plate, but the range of his fame was pretty much limited. 
