Aside from the papers, the exams and your occasional hangover, life at U.Va. is pretty comfortable. In an environment where opportunities are numerous and resources are at our disposal, it is often easy to ignore or overlook the realities of life elsewhere.
The Queen of Soul is back. But this time she's not singing the same songs we all know and love (and still haven't tired of). Thanks to the work of Jerry Wexler, James Austin and Patrick Milligan of Rhino Entertainment Company, we're now able to hear sides of Aretha Franklin that we haven't before in Rare & Unreleased Recordings from the Golden Reign of the Queen of Soul.
It is not easy to write a review about an album that makes your heart swell. Not easy at all. Nearly four days after buying The Weakerthans' newly released album, Reunion Tour, and logging in somewhere around 15 hours of listening time, I am still grappling to lower my oxytocin to a level reasonable enough to write a decently objective article.
Architecture in Helsinki has always been a little on the manic side. The band's new album, Places Like This, arguably slaps this definitive label on all eight of the group's cute little hipster faces, with the exception of guitarist Jamie Mildren's, whose monstrous beard could possibly serve as an Amish-fashioned shield from label-slapping. The experience of the opening track, "Red Turned White," is a zealous case in point.
You really couldn't expect a band that is known for its lyrical nihilism and lack of genre identification to abandon its original style for mainstream approval.
Even if you didn't experience it first hand, you know what the 1960s represented. Maybe you dig the image of bead-clad hippies, head bands and a long-haired version of your Uncle Rick giving the peace sign.
If you're up for a flick with less cinematic integrity than a mid-afternoon segment of C-SPAN, equal in the amounts of fear it invokes from viewers, make sure to check out the newly released "suspense thriller" The Reaping, directed by Stephen Hopkins. You can let the quotations speak for themselves.
