KWUR Week kicks off this Mon., Feb. 20, and will host a series of live shows at the Gargoyle, including the exciting hip-hop of Doujah Raze, the emo rock of Appleseed Cast and the progressive indie-pop music of Of Montreal.
We turn to the resident expert on Reggaeton, Wash. U. student Daniel Pagan, to get some answers about this Latin hip-hop meld.
“Transamerica” is not your typical road-trip movie – at least, it doesn’t appear to be at first.
With its follow-up release to 2002′s highly acclaimed “You Forgot It in People,” the seventeen-person collective that is Broken Social Scene had significant expectations to endure and to accomplish in creating a new album. Although the recently released self-titled album does not quite reach the heights of its predecessor, the slightly different approach to its creation still churns out admirable music.
Much anticipation has gathered around the release of Wes Anderson’s new movie, “The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou,” and the movie has much to live up to after his critically acclaimed release of “The Royal Tenenbaums” in 2001. “The Life Aquatic” has the same signature quirky comedy as all of Anderson’s films, and Bill Murray delivers a hilarious performance as his own drunken, mid-life crisis wearing Captain Ahab in the character of Steve Zissou, who seeks vengeance in killing a shark that ate his friend.
With all the critical acclaim and recent success credited to them, the band Wilco has done what any group or person does that has acquired such cult celebrity status-put out a book. With both a DVD (“I Am Trying to Break Your Heart”) and another book by Greg Kot (“Wilco: Learning How to Die”) already on the shelves, “The Wilco Book” differs by giving a more direct and introspective view of the band, a view the previous works cannot deliver.
“Alfie,” a remake of the 1966 British film starring Michael Caine, misses what the previous film had. Director Charles Shyer, who is familiar with redoing movies (“Parent Trap,” “Father of the Bride”), adapted the screenplay into a present day New York, leaving the London of 1966 and losing much of the social significance and daring that the original movie attained.
The long awaited release of Elliott Smith’s last album, “From a Basement on the Hill,” comes as great joy to die-hard fans of the singer-songwriter, who died only a year ago from stab wounds to the chest that remain shrouded in mystery. The new album, which Smith began to record while touring for his previous album “Figure Eight,” sounds like a natural progression from that album.
The name Che Guevara instantly brings to mind images of the beret-sporting revolutionary on t-shirts, dorm posters and Rage Against the Machine propaganda of the middle school days. However, with all the political fury surrounding Che Guevara, the point of “The Motorcycle Diaries” is not to address the revolutionary side of Che, but rather to depict a significant moment in his life that affected the outcome of what he is so well known as today.
Badly Drawn Boy One Plus One is One Twisted Nerve Records For Fans of: Beck, The Eels, Sparklehorse Grade: B+ Final Word: Relaxing, simple songs without the previous luster of “Have You Fed the Fish?” Download This Song: “Holy Grail” With three albums to his name-each album progressing in complexity of arrangement and production-it seems Damon Gough, a.k.a. Badly Drawn Boy, has gone back to the basics on his new album “One Plus One Is One.”
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