Busy Miss Lizzie
If you have never heard of Lizzie McGuire, you are not a female child between the ages of 6 and 14, nor are you a parent with a female child between those ages. For the uninitiated, then, Lizzie is the eponymous heroine of Lizzie McGuire, the three-year-old, wildly popular Disney Channel TV series that focuses…
Pete Yorn
Hunky Pete Yorn immediately became the hopeless romantic du jour with his 2001 debut, Musicforthemorningafter, a solid blend of Smiths-like melancholy and rustic singer-songwriter rockers. Although relying less on lush keyboards as decoration, Yorn’s recently released follow-up, Day I Forgot, finds him with just as much passion bursting from his heart and guitar. With a…
Impossible Dreamer
Filmmaker Terry Gilliam is no stranger to fiasco. After all, this is the human dynamo who saw 1989’s inventive (if sometimes incoherent) The Adventures of Baron Munchausen through a series of artistic and financial crises that would have landed most people in an asylum. But Gilliam’s encounter with the tale-spinning Baron, trying as it was,…
Fred Hersch Trio
There are few who can speak eloquently in both the classical and jazz arenas the way that Fred Hersch has managed to do, over a career spanning some 20 years. As an honors graduate of the prestigious New England Conservatory and recent beneficiary of a Guggenheim Fellowship, the pianist has appeared as a soloist with…
20th-Century Sex
Sometimes, playwrights could use a little help from the marketing world. Not that Hello Again is a terrible title for a play, but it would probably sell a lot more tickets if it were called Ten Sex Scenes Without Character Development or Plot. A bit ungainly, perhaps, but it clearly defines this thoroughly entertaining production,…
Madonna
Two decades after she emerged as the Material Girl, Madonna now decries all things shallow and superficial on American Life, her 10th studio album. When she rails against artifice, backed by the sputtering, robotic production of Mirwais, it’s as confounding as her attempt to rap on the album’s title cut. But as a woman who…
Corporate Rock
Giant corporations have always had a raging lust for the youth market. Mega-businesses like ’em tender and innocent, so they can instill brand loyalties that will generate profits for decades. And there’s no better doorway into the minds of kids than through their music. The corporations’ music, that is, since so much of what passes…
Blur
Radiohead may receive the lion’s share of attention for its robotic reinventions, but fellow Brits Blur are similarly skilled musical chameleons. Beginning as a quartet of mop-topped lads with a knack for Technicolor pop hooks, they evolved from the cheeky eccentricities of 1994’s Parklife to lo-fi noise and abstract indie rock by 1999’s fuzz-toned 13.…
Of Boobs and Blood
He claims to be blacklisted and close to busto. Thirty years in the film biz, with a cult bigger than David Koresh’s and a disemboweled body of work that would make any studio boss blood-red with envy, and still he kvetches in a voice so eerily similar to that of Mel Brooks. The cable networks,…
Goldfrapp
Goldfrapp’s debut LP, Felt Mountain, should have sounded dated on the day of its 2000 release; it should have gone down as trip-hop’s last dance, the album that finally shot the wad, where the played-out, Bristol-generated, Madonna-copped sound was concerned. But Felt Mountain was way too fucked-up for that. Perverse, surreal, icily lush along the…
Bad News for Larry
Though the Indians beat Baltimore 8-3, April 15 was probably a grim day at Jacobs Field. That morning, The Wall Street Journal reported the sale of the Anaheim Angels for $180 million. Larry Dolan, you may recall, paid $323 million for the Indians in 2000. Dick Jacobs must wake up whistling, because the chances of…
The Southern Edge
It’s not the “A” train that takes you to Alexandria’s on Main, the hip hangout on the second floor of an old warehouse beneath the Main Avenue Bridge. It’s a cheerless, bare-bones elevator that lifts you from the gloomy lobby to the dining room above. But leave your second thoughts behind: When those sterile elevator…
The Jayhawks
Although it sounds like “classic” Jayhawks more than anything since Tomorrow the Green Grass, Rainy Day Music is the first post-Mark Olson Jayhawks record not haunted by Olson’s absence. Even on the Jayhawks’ huge, pop-driven Smile, loyal fans scoured and deconstructed all 48 tracks of the mix, believing Olson’s voice must be hidden in there…
Family Feud
Doreen Bailey speaks with the determination and sense of moral purpose rooted in the recovering dope addict. “Eight years,” she’ll tell you early and often. The beaten house on West 37th was part of her resurrection. The single mom arrived four years ago with her two boys. She’ll show you the flooring she’s laid, the…
Freaky Tiki
Willoughby restaurateurs Nicholas and Giovanna Kustala, proprietors of Lure Bistro (38040 Third Street; 440-951-8862), returned from their annual Maui vacation with a craving for a crazy little tiki bar to call their own. “The ’80s were cruel to the concept,” says Chef Nick, “but today, tiki bars are so retro and over-the-top that they’re becoming…
Arab Strap
Few bands have captured the feeling of love turning from sugar to shit as succinctly as Scotland’s Arab Strap. In the past, Aidan Moffat’s swaggered rants about cheating, jealousy, and other ways relationships go wrong have maintained a brutal honesty that holds no punches. But that has changed with their latest album, Monday at the…
Money Pit Park
There’s a plaque hanging in an Eastlake stadium with a portrait of Mayor Dan DiLiberto and the inscription “The house that Dan built.” The stadium is a monument today. It could be a political tombstone tomorrow. In the late 1990s, when DiLiberto launched his drive to bring minor league baseball to this small eastern suburb,…
The Mixmaster
Though his name suggests moaning females and Cinemax after-hours, DJ G Spot mostly just gets busy with his mail carrier these days. “Me and the UPS guy are very good friends now,” he says with a chuckle, gesturing toward a stack of postage labels sitting atop a computer in the basement of his Euclid home.…
The Birdhouse Gourds
A national music website recently chose the Birdhouse Gourds as Ohio’s best alternative band. Alternative? To what? Paul Simon? The VH1 divas? This is every bit as absurd as the chain record stores in local malls sticking 10,000 Maniacs and R.E.M. CDs in the “alternative rock” bin. The Birdhouse Gourds, three unglamorous middle-aged guys from…
The Kids Aren’t Alright
Six years ago, a couple sued Cuyahoga County, claiming that it didn’t properly warn them that a girl they adopted had been sexually abused and was at risk to molest others. The girl had been repeatedly raped by her stepfather and had shown signs of imitating the abuse on others. After the couple adopted her…
Higher Ground
Conor Oberst, the man who is Bright Eyes, does not aim small. Speaking about his most recent album, Lifted, or The Story Is in the Soil, Keep Your Ear to the Ground, he touches on what he considers its overarching theme: “It’s sort of about . . . celebrating music and the love I have…
Kimberly Rishert Septet
Get past the amateurish packaging and liner notes, and you’ll encounter a surprisingly sophisticated jazz recording here. Clevelander Kimberly Rishert (Juilliard School graduate in bass, 1998) is an accomplished composer, equally at home with the blues, ballads, and uptempo neo-boppers, and she has assembled a very good band to showcase her stuff. The stalwarts are…
The Very Dark Horse
There is nothing of the glad-handing politician in Gary Nolan. He’s terrible at remembering names. He dislikes pressing the flesh. When it comes to details about his personal life, forget it: He actively resists providing the self-serving anecdotes most politicians relish. Nolan greets his audience at Case Western Reserve without the experienced stumper’s warm-up: no…
Cry Uncle
It’s been a decade since Uncle Tupelo released its major-label swan song, Anodyne. During the intervening years, the Belleville, Illinois band’s two frontmen — the sullen, grieving, and earnest Jay Farrar and the eager, hoarse, and earnest Jeff Tweedy — have seen an entire genre, “alternative country,” emerge in their wake. Both have gone on…
Letters to the Editor
Cleveland will open its heart: I enjoyed the article about MC Brains very much [“What Becomes of the Broken Hearted,” April 9]. It was very telling and touching at the same time. I hope it will let young people know how difficult show business is, even when you are an attractive, talented brother like MC…
Back in Blues
“Have you ever gone to a club where the owner said, ‘You know what, I have really nice bathrooms!’?” Mike Miller asks with a sweep of his arm, as he throws open the door to the ladies’ room of the new Wilbert’s. Miller is an excitable man, the rare guy who can get pumped up…
Comics Crusader
Sure, Spider-Man helped break a decade-long dearth of successful comic-book-based films last year. But X-Men led the rebirth two years before that, grossing $157 million domestically. Its highly anticipated sequel, X2: X-Men United (in theaters everywhere this Friday), should keep the comics-to-movies synergy rolling. “We suffuse popular culture right now,” says artist and writer Frank…
Crashing the Party
Not a week into Chimaira’s first tour in support of its forthcoming album Impossibility of Reason, the band was involved in a bus accident. As Chimaira made its way from Buffalo to Virginia early in the morning of Monday, April 21, its tour bus slid out of control, smashing into a construction barricade. “With so…
This Week’s Day-By-Day Picks
Thursday, May 1 Film Forward is Madstone’s novel attempt to generate word-of-mouth buzz for half a dozen indie films unspooling at the Centrum over the next six weeks. The featured movies — Soft for Digging; Bunny; Te Amo (Made in Chile); Tattoo, a Love Story; Side Streets; and Seven and a Match — premiere in…
Since by Man
Since by Man vocalist Sam Macon lays it out pretty well on his band’s latest, We Sing the Body Electric, when he admonishes listeners to “Get in step with our soundtrack/Turn it up/Tear it down.” The album is a call to dance, aimed at hardcore fans whose record collections include the International Noise Conspiracy and…
Violent Femmes
At some fast-approaching point in pop culture evolution, we’re due to hit Total Outsider Saturation, wherein everybody is an outsider, and therefore there is no longer an outside. In the fleeting meantime, we have such scintillating reminders of the struggle as X-2: X-Men United, the latest bid from comic-book land to increase the already peaking…
Dave Davies
When not launching verbal jabs at his brother or chasing UFOs (his current passion), Dave Davies has been making records. Bug is the latest disc from the lead guitarist of the Kinks, a band that seems to be on semipermanent hiatus, despite a still rabid fan base. Davies, 56, was a mere 17 when he…
Punks in a Hard Place
Yeah Yeah Yeahs drummer Brian Chase isn’t sure he has an answer to the question: Why is the Brooklyn-based band, on the verge of art-punk superstardom with the release of its first full-length album, wrapping up its tour a week after dropping the CD in stores? “Um.” He searches. He hems. He haws. Then he…
Flora Purim
After all these years, Flora Purim still makes beautiful music. With her husband, percussionist Airto Moreira, the Rio de Janeiro native has been recording for more than three decades, and is best-known for her work with Return to Forever, the pioneering jazz-fusion group that may yet represent Chick Corea and Stanley Clarke’s best work (Airto…
Victor Victorious
It is rare to find a film that defies one’s expectations as sweetly and satisfyingly as Raising Victor Vargas, the coming-of-age comedy-drama from first-time feature writer/director Peter Sollett. The surprise isn’t in the plot — that would be too easy — but, rather, in the extraordinarily subtle and convincing ways the characters grow and change…
Concrete Blonde
Live in Brazil is Concrete Blonde’s response to the South American aggro-surf culture, which is usually defined by more metallic acts. “I hate to generalize Latino culture,” says Johnette Napolitano, singer-bassist for the Los Angeles trio, “but I find it more relaxed — and happier, in a way.” Yet part of Concrete Blonde’s recent world…
