Archive for the ‘Music’ Category

Dear Christian: Sigh No More

As if four vocalists, two drum sets, guitars, organ and piano aren’t enough, Mumford & Sons also employs banjo, dobro, mandolin, and well-crafted lyrics to pierce their listener with sublime melodies. A brand new folk indie-rock band based out of London, Mumford & Sons‘ first album,...
March 1st, 2010 | Art & Literature, Culture, Media, Music | Read More

Integral Ambiguity: Why We Can’t Understand Art

“Is it not strange,” Benedick of Shakespeare’s Much Ado about Nothing muses, “that sheeps’ guts should hale souls out of men’s bodies?” Tell us something we don’t know, says Terry Teachout, writing about yet another study that affirms the mysterious sway...
November 9th, 2009 | Art & Literature, Culture, Music, Science | Read More

Whitewashing Cultural Sepulchers

She’s only three, but our differing taste in music is already a source of conflict. When I turn on Johnny Cash or Regina Spektor, she is adamant: “No.  Songs ’bout Jesus.”  In other words, the local contemporary Christian music station. At first this seemed OK.   Like many...
October 28th, 2009 | Culture, Education, Media, Music, Other, Technology | Read More

Instrumental Expressways: Sufjan Stevens and “The BQE”

Technically, I’ve never seen the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. But while hearing Sufjan Stevens’ new album, an orchestral suite inspired by and named after the ‘BQE’, pictures of the highway instilled in my mind. They look like this: The view from an overpass at night. Cityscape...
October 26th, 2009 | Art & Literature, Culture, Media, Music | Read More

“Dying to Life”: The Mountain Goats’ Mortal Climb

Some people are filled with a loud joy, as if naturally disposed to see the light in life. For others, the road to discovering light is hard-won: they arise to a place of perspective and authenticity–a quiet joy–only through experiencing and witnessing painful descents. John Darnielle, singer/songwriter...
October 12th, 2009 | Art & Literature, Culture, Media, Music | Read More

“Far” Hits Home: Regina Spektor’s Latest Resonation

Mainstream music is now a better place because, with the Warner Brothers June release of her new album Far, Regina Spektor officially has a place within it. Moreover, if “Far” is an accurate indicator, Spektor’s career is headed to a corner office with a view. Some find the growing...
August 13th, 2009 | Art & Literature, Culture, Media, Music, Other | Read More

“I Care that I don’t Care”: Post-postmodernism in ‘Wilco (The Album)’

“Meh. …I wish I didn’t mean that.” Welcome to post-postmodernism, a new reaction to believing in epistemic tragedy: that is, that nothing can be known-for-certain. In the period loosely described as post-modernity, men like Foucault and Nietzsche asserted that timeless, absolute knowledge was...
May 26th, 2009 | Culture, Music, Worldviews | Read More

What are the Essential (Non-Obvious)
Albums of the ’80s?

I hail from Generation X while my fifteen-year-old daughter is a member of Generation Y. Yet while our generations are alphabetically close, there is a vast chasm between us musically. She’s grown up in the American Idol-era of Kelly Clarkson, Chris Daugherty, and Carrie Underwood. To her, N’Sync...
April 29th, 2008 | Music | Read More

Old School Tutorial:
The Gap Band

Since we Gen-Xers have a duty to pass on to the younger generations the best pop culture that was produced during the 1980s, I’ve decided to start an intermittent series that will introduce them to odds-and-ends that they might otherwise overlook. The popularity of the musical genre known as funk...
January 25th, 2008 | Music | Read More

In Review:
Girl Authority Road Trip

Girl Authority’s sophomore release Road Trip may be targeted for tween girls (ages 8 to 12) but the real audience for the recently released CD is nostalgic Gen-X parents. Included on the generous (19 songs!) play list are covers by such ’80s era icons as the Go-Go’s, Joan Jett, Cyndi Lauper,...
April 27th, 2007 | Music | Read More