Mar 22, 2012
Music
Web Exclusive
On the heels of last fall’s Occupy Wall Street protests arrives Bruce Springsteen‘s Wrecking Ball, his most vibrant studio album of original material since 1984’s Born in the U.S.A. This time the characters in the songs direct their ire toward fat-cat bankers and “robber barons…whose crimes have gone unpunished.” If Springsteen’s narrative touch as a songwriter is no longer as sharp as it once was, it remains intact as an album-maker. Wrecking Ball‘s strength exists in its overarching narrative and sequencing—the relationships between the songs and their characters, and the shift in mood as the album progresses toward more spiritual themes.
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Mar 21, 2012
Live
SBTRKT
The 2011-released self-titled debut album from the London-based dubstep producer SBTRKT was in heavy rotation in the Under the Radar offices last year and was #14 on our Top 80 albums of 2011 list. So he was high on my list of artists to see at SXSW 2012.
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NBC, Wednesdays 9/8 Central
Mar 21, 2012
TV
NBC has been sitting on this gem of a sitcom for too long. From the executive producer of Scrubs and Spin City comes the single camera mid-season romantic comedy, Bent. Not an original premise by any stretch, Alex (Amanda Peet) is a recently divorced, tense attorney whose ex-husband is in jail.
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Mar 21, 2012
Music
Tanlines
Brooklyn’s Tanlines seem like a pretty laid-back duo. They’ve put out music at their leisure, play a chilled-out live show, and happily embrace such taboo corners of the pop universe as calypso, tropicália and plastic stadium-pop.
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Mar 21, 2012
Music
Web Exclusive
With an optimistic title and an almost sunny disposition on many of his numbers, Barry Adamson sheds his checkered past of gloomy rock ‘n’ roll music with the likes of Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds and Magazine to put together an album of mostly uptempo songs on his latest effort.
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Mar 21, 2012
Live
Grimes
Kindness
Of Monsters and Men
SXSW 2012
What a difference a day makes. Friday night (after a long day at our final SXSW day party—naturally) the Under the Radar team caught three sets. While two artists I had seen earlier in the week, all three shows were significantly different than expected.
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Mar 20, 2012
Music
Web Exclusive
“If I had a chance to see the friends I’ve loved and lost/And beg for their return,” an insidious line from the orchestrated waltz splendor “Silent Song,” is the key motif to unlocking Daniel
Rossen’s knockout punch of an EP Silent Hour / Golden Mile.
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Studio: Sony Pictures Classics
Joseph Cedar
Mar 20, 2012
Cinema
Web Exclusive
Eliezer and Uriel Shkolnik are father and son scholars; each a well-regarded researcher within the field of Talmudic studies with their own individual idea of what should qualify that distinguishment. This familial rivarly is at the center of director Joseph Cedar’s absorbing and often darkly comic Footnote, Israel’s Academy Award nominee for best foreign picture.
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Vertigo
Written by Paul Cornell; Pencilled & Inked by Ryan Kelly; Lettered by DC Lettering; Colored by Giulia Brusco & Ryan Kelly; Cover Color by Dave Stewart
Mar 20, 2012
Comic Books
Vertigo Comics
The impending exits of Northlanders and Scalped will leave big holes in Vertigo’s publishing line. Saucer Country seems to be a fairly worthy (albeit much less bloody) successor to those titles.
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Mar 20, 2012
Music
Fanfarlo
It’s understandable that some listeners might have initially passed on Fanfarlo as being something of an Arcade Fire lite, with their debut record, Reservoir, which showcased a similar
stock of propulsive, catchy chamber pop.
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