Fall Out BoyInfinity on High(Island/Fueled by Ramen)“All the boys who the dance floor didn’t love, all the girls whose lips couldn’t move fast enough: sing, until your lungs give out.” It’s a call and response, from the killer single “This Ain’t a Scene, It’s an Arms Race,” you’d love to see live, though you know […]
Tara Thorne
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Ruth Minnikin
Ruth MinnikinMarooned and Blue (independent)Halifax folk darling Minnikin delivers on the promise laid out over five tracks on her 2003 EP with double the songs and quadruple the effect. Recorded in two days, Marooned and Blue sounds full and smooth, packed with French horn, bass clarinet and banjo. But only a few songs can be […]
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Dazed and Confused
Dazed and ConfusedDirected by: Richard Linklater (Criterion)One of the best movies of the 1990s finally gets its rightful treatment. Set on the last day of school in suburban Texas in 1976, Dazed and Confused follows kids within two age ranges—Grade 8 and Grade 11—just before their lives merge in high school. The release of this […]
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Flannel Pajamas
Flannel PajamasDirected by: Jeff Lipsky(WEA)This tiny, intimate, often squicky look into the arc of a relationship is so painfully personal, it’s the kind of thing that makes people wonder why it’s a movie at all. (We don’t like to see ourselves onscreen! Give us pirates! Give us robots! Give us Jigsaw!) Only in the land […]
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Clone High
Clone HighKaboom EntertainmentStamos! From the demented minds still bringing you Scrubs comes one of the most brilliant animated series ever. Like the iconic Daria before it, the ridiculously clever, subversive Clone High began life on MTV in 2003 and ended up on Teletoon, the Canadian network that has released this disc. The premise is best […]
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Ben Kweller
Ben KwellerOn My Way(ATO/RCA)He’s the least talented of The Bens (preceded by Lee and Folds), but he’s not any less interesting. Draped over Kweller’s odd voice (sounding naturally strained from nights in large amphitheatres), On My Way is a catchy throwback to ’70s rock, but without any of the pretension and fuzzy vocals of the […]
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Jenny Lewis with the Watson Twins
Jenny Lewis with the Watson TwinsRabbit Fur Coat(Team Love)Indie goddess Lewis takes a turn back in time with this masterful solo debut, crafting gorgeous country-pop songs about fearing god (the awe-inspiring “Born Secular”), war (the stomper “The Big Guns”) and herself (“You Are What You Love”). Her genuis move was hiring the Watson Twins—who released […]
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Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova
Glen Hansard and Marketa IrglovaOnce OSTSonyBMGThe scene of the year belongs to Hansard and Irglova in the Irish film Once, during which they play a guitar-piano duet and sing “Falling Slowly,” the first and best of nine heart-wrenching, gorgeously sung Hansard compositions that provide the soundtrack to 2007’s most affecting love story. This audio companion […]
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Jenny Lewis with The Watson Twins
Jenny Lewis with The Watson TwinsRabbit Fur Coat(Team Love)By illuminating contemporary lyrics through a bluegrass prism, Sarah Harmer’s masterful I’m a Mountain merges old and new in a genre-busting, demographic-defying way. But where you have to dig through layers of jaunty banjo and foot-tapping fiddle to get to the central theme of Harmer’s record — […]
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Spanglish
Spanglish Directed by: James L. Brooks(Columbia Tri-Star)Writer-director James L. Brooks’ first film since 1997’s double Oscar-winner As Good as it Gets features, as that film did, an inherently unlikable central character. But Tea Leoni is not Jack Nicholson—she doesn’t have decades of caricature to fall back on, no built-in audience affection. And so her Deborah […]
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Maria Taylor
Maria TaylorLynn Teeter Flower(Saddle Creek)Maria Taylor is a lesser-known contributor to the Omaha music consortium that includes Conor Oberst, Mike Mogis and M. Ward. Her 11:11 was a sturdy if unfocused debut, unsure whether it wanted to be folk or the Postal Service. She’s toned down the synth for Lynn Teeter Flower, the just-this-side-of-glorious follow-up. […]
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Smoke break
A Bug and a Bag of Weed, a good-hearted, raucous drugs-and-dudes movie, played to a sold-out audience at the 2006 Atlantic Film Festival. It represented a dream-pursuit move cross-country, five years of form-filling, fundraising and industry navigation, a 15-day shoot and almost $500,000. It was the rarest of rarities—not just a Canadian feature film, but […]
