Author: J T. Ramsay

Take a sec­ond and think about record stores and live music and counter that with the per­cep­tion that the world is abuzz with new music all the time. There’s more prod­uct than ever! But the record stores piece is old hat; what hap­pens when they’re gone is a dif­fer­ent mat­ter. But as the Times points…

Com­ing shortly: Reviews and pho­tos of Dev­as­ta­tions & The Drones A con­sid­er­a­tion of Volk­er Schlöndorff’s ear­ly work, includ­ing Young Törless, The Lost Hon­or of Katha­ri­na Blum, Le Coup de Grâce & The Tin Drum. A review of Chris Nolan’s The Pres­tige And in hon­or of Hal­loween, should­n’t this have received a 6.66?

Bal­ti­more’s Beach House play music that Amer­i­can­izes Broad­cast in much the same way that Pave­ment did the Fall. Not only do they achieve that much sought after soft, kalei­do­scop­ic focus and gauzy feel, they also fash­ion a min­i­mal­is­tic, ele­gant psy­che­delia that empha­sizes the pas­toral rather than the mod­ern. There’s a lot to be said for…

Lis­ten: Dev­as­ta­tions — I Don’t Want to Lose You Tonight The scene: Tele­visión Educa­ti­va. The place: some­where with­in Stephane Miroux’s dream scape, which bears an uncan­ny like­ness to any morn­ing info­tain­ment pro­gram set, replete with musi­cal accom­pa­ni­ment a la Laugh-In, a kitchen island for con­coct­ing potions and demon­stra­tion props galore. This is where Stephane nar­rates…

Some quick notes before the weekend: The Sci­ence of Sleep review is being draft­ed as I type this. The dream type­writer is ful­ly operational. First impres­sion upon hear­ing The Hold Steady’s Boys and Girls in Amer­i­ca is that if they’re real­ly protest­ing the bar band Spring­steen ’75 com­par­i­son, methinks they doth protest too much. Beach House…