Mar 03, 2010 Music Web Exclusive

Depending on who you talk to, Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon is either a brilliant song cycle from the musical and lyrical genius of Roger Waters, or one of the most bloated examples of classic rock conceptual excess, '70s style. No matter on which side of the debate you fall, no one can argue the album's success in appealing to the masses and continuing to prove an important touchstone of musical youth. More

Mar 02, 2010 Music Issue #30 - Winter 2010 - Vampire Weekend

These New Puritans make songs that are spastic, harsh, and urgent, founded on coats of electronics and repetitive, vague, and half-spoken vocals from frontman Jack Barnett. Hidden, the young British group's sophomore full-length, was made much in the same vein as 2007's Beat Pyramid, but at times it's even less coherent. More

Mar 02, 2010 TV Issue #30 - Winter 2010 - Vampire Weekend

Twenty-one years after the movie and one aborted attempt at a television show in 1991, NBC is giving Parenthood a second try. The 2010 version has infinitely more potential with updated storylines and (major) star power. The genuineness and grit of the original, however, is intact. More

Mar 01, 2010 Comic Books Web Exclusive

Colt Noble and the Megalords is a 64-page, $6 one-shot comic published by Image. At once, it is both paying homage to, and poking fun at, the He-Man line of action figures, and cartoons, that were popular in the 1980s (with a dash of Thundercats and Transformers to boot). More

Mar 01, 2010 Music Web Exclusive

If one wants to understand the difference between merely writing a song and composing a song, listen to 99.9% of contemporary music, and then turn on Clogs. Composed by Padma Newsome during a residency in 2005, The Creatures in the Garden of Lady Walton features some stirring compositions that walk the line between classical and something else entirely. More

Feb 26, 2010 Music Issue #30 - Winter 2010 - Vampire Weekend

On "1999," the opening track of Shout Out Louds' third album, singer/songwriter Adam Olenius sings that he "never felt so alive since 1999." That was two years before Shout Out Louds was formed in Stockholm, Sweden. A decade later, the band found itself in a different place. Literally. More

Feb 25, 2010 Cinema Issue #30 - Winter 2010 - Vampire Weekend

For 19-year-old Malik (Tahar Rahim), part Corsican, part Arab, it's kill or be killed when he enters prison to serve a six-year sentence for the assault of a police officer. César (Niels Arestrup), a Corsican mafia lieutenant and the prison's most powerful inmate, has his thugs torment Malik until he agrees to murder Reyeb (Hichem Yacoubi), an Arab being held until his trial testimony. More

Feb 24, 2010 Comic Books Web Exclusive

The inherent problem with reviewing SuperF*ckers is that my love for it is unqualified and fierce, but, having read cape-and-tights tales for a decades, I'm in on the joke. I'm not sure a casual comics reader would be. More

Feb 24, 2010 Music Web Exclusive

A Joanna Newsom song is impossible to describe. Not Newsom's voice, of course, which conjures up adjectives like "gossamer" and "sprightly," or her harp, which is an instrument she pretty much lays sole claim to in 21st-century pop music, but her songs themselves, the way they bend back on themselves and wander away.  More