Music
The Biggest Weapon in Northern Uganda
By Peter HolslinLucky Bosmic Otim, a popular musician from northern Uganda, is practically impossible to reach by phone. He has one, but it’s always turned off.
Punk, with Occasional Glockenspiel
By Matthew OzgaThe band of the year is Los Campesinos!, a crew of seven enthusiastic Welsh college kids—four guys and three girls, each with a Ramones-esque pseudonym (Harriet Campesinos!, Aleksandra Campesinos!, Ollie Campesinos!, etc.)
Outtakes
By Steve Dalachinsky1. NEW YORK I’m sitting here listening to my favorite Monk LP, Alone in San Francisco, while I write this, rejoicing in the fact that the revelatory and possibly most important and moving jazz chronicle, Three Wishes: An Intimate Look at Jazz Greats, by the Baroness Pannonica De Koenigswarter, an abstract painter and authentic Rothschild, has finally made it to where it belongs: America, and more specifically the New York/New Jersey area, where most of its story takes place.
Chad and Jeremy: State of the Reunion
By Dann BakerI’ve been a fan of Chad and Jeremy’s The Ark for some time. I discovered the album after hearing “Rest in Peace,” from their previous release (1967’s Of Cabbages and Kings), on the radio.
Is New York the New Second City?
By Kurt GottschalkDowntown Chicago is quiet on the weekends, but the three hundred–seat theater in the Cultural Center was comfortably filled on a cold Sunday afternoon in early November, where experimental music fans and curious listeners assembled for a free performance by sound sculptor Olivia Block and instrument maker Hal Rammel.
Brought to You by the Letter G
By Grant MoserIf you somehow haven’t found your way to a Giraffes show, make the time. This Brooklyn band is all about rock ’n’ roll like it should be: loud, unruly, drunk, and heart-attack-inducing (literally). And this new album shows them fully in control of their seamy, riff-laden ways. Prime Motivator is a dirty, down-in-the-gutter record.
Just a Singer in a Rock ’n’ Roll Band: Ryan Adams and the Cardinals: Cardinology (Lost Highway)
By Julie KocsisWith a year of sobriety behind him, Ryan Adams recently released his tenth full-length solo album, Cardinology. Featuring his backing band the Cardinals, the disc once again displays Adams’s easy command of a broad range of musical styles, from alt-country to rock ’n’ roll to acoustic singer-songwriter tunes.
Mass Destruction at the Met: Dr. Atomic at the Metropolitan Opera
By Ellen PearlmanDr. Atomic, the opera composed by that dynamic duo John Adams and Peter Sellars and premiered in 2005 in San Francisco, has been reworked for its premier at the Met. A whopping three hours and twenty-five minutes long, it enacts the creation of the mother of all weapons—the A-bomb, the reason Japan surrendered to the Allies and the world got stuck with plutonium fallout and radiation sickness.
