Patrick Tape Fleming, Devin Frank, Joe Terry, and Don Ephraim, the four permanent members of the Poison Control Center, are spread across four cities in three states in two time zones. But listening to their upcoming album Sad Sour Future, you’d never know it. The band recorded this lush new record – which is to [...]

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Charles S. McVey’s new album Animal is a confrontational concept album that unabashedly addresses a God that the singer simply cannot respect. The record is a piano-driven rock album with songs that sound, at first, like traditional pop compositions: strong melodies supported by driving rhythms and organized into verses, bridges and choruses. But the pop [...]

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The George W. Bush that we know today is an irrelevant figurehead, a leader leading no one, a placeholder with a highly anticipated expiration date. He has less-than-zero influence in the international community, he is thoroughly disapproved of in his own country, and his own political party pays little attention to his pronouncements and makes [...]

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Midwest Dilemma is an Omaha band ranging from one to twenty-two people. In the past year, since I met Justin Lamoureux – the central figure and songwriter for Midwest Dilemma – on a blizzardy night in Des Moines that kept everyone from our show except the musicians, I have been able to see many different [...]

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After buying some overpriced, imported soap on the ped mall and joining an anti-war march I’d happened across, I sit in a coffee shop, read Colson Whitehead’s The Intuitionist (an old recommendation from JC), satisfy my ever-growing need for caffeine and await E’s arrival. I call B, my last Iowa City contact who hasn’t moved [...]

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It’s difficult to know where to begin when talking about the Coen Brothers’ new movie “No Country for Old Men.” First, it is a welcome relief to see that despite churning out 11 months worth of mostly drivel, Hollywood can still release a powerful, thought-provoking movie that avoids the clichés and achieves a cinematic brilliance [...]

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The first posthumous collection of Elliott Smith’s songs, 2004′s From a Basement on a Hill (ANTI-Records), showcased the music he had been recording in the months immediately preceding his death. There he can be heard leaning more heavily on electric guitars, experimenting with trippy ambient noises and sounding at times like a self-conscious one-man Beatles. [...]

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