Heavy Stuff
The air of danger that surrounds Catherine Breillat’s Fat Girl (À Ma Soeur) never lets up, which is unusual for a film that doesn’t mean to be a thriller. Rather, it’s a merciless look at adolescent insecurity, the mixed signals of emerging desire, and the ruthlessness of carnal gamesmanship that, in the end, leaves you…
Pretty Girls Make Graves
Boasting a name that seems to have crawled straight out of a lurid pulp paperback, Pretty Girls Make Graves emits killer rock with a distinctly feminine cast. As Andrea Zollo’s saucy vocals intertwine with the trashy, spiraling guitars of Jason Clark and Nathen Johnson, the band appears to be the sonic equivalent of serial killer…
Benjamins Brat
Before the opening credits of All About the Benjamins have rolled, we’ve seen Ice Cube clothesline a girl in a bikini and repeatedly zap a redneck in the testicles even after he’s been subdued. Not half an hour later, Cube’s calling his Middle Eastern boss “ragtop son of a bitch” and pointing a gun at…
Buddy Guy
Most “modern” blues is garbage: Well-intentioned but relentlessly banal 12-bar hooey that shoots for old-time authenticity, only to end up sipping Orange Juliuses in lukewarm, ultra-slick Mall America. Leave it to 65-year-old Buddy Guy to buck this trend. Last year, the legendary Chicago guitarist ducked into a Mississippi studio, borrowed a few songs from Fat…
White Power Outage
Betsy Williams was driving recently when she saw the Reverend exit the police station, rake in hand. She had last seen Kenneth Molyneaux, who claims to be an ordained minister, in a courtroom. A year and a half ago, Williams, an Akron city prosecutor, persuaded a jury to convict Molyneaux of trespassing and littering, and…
. . . And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead
Not since Malcolm McLaren foisted the Sex Pistols on an unsuspecting world has a band so thoroughly engaged in an active campaign of rock and roll swindle as . . . And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead. Since forming in 1994, the Austin-based post-punk quartet has told so many conflicting stories…
Big Egg on Its Face
It was a dive that somehow became a legend, a Cleveland thing that wouldn’t make sense anywhere else. For decades, the people who dined at the Big Egg and the people who complained about it were one and the same. They loved it because it was so bad. In the Big Egg’s 24-hour-a-day heyday, devotees…
Billy Bragg & the Blokes
A better title for this album would be Too Damned English. That’s always been Bragg’s problem, as far as his inability to break out in America is concerned. Even hard-core U.S. left-wingers have a tough time relating to the guy, despite obvious sympathies with Bragg’s anti-Thatcher broadsides and working-class hero persona. Unlike the revolutionary battle…
Brotherhood of Wheels
After battling four-wheeled demons all day, Cleveland’s bike messengers seek warmth, bed rest, and a few beers to rinse the road salt off their teeth. The last thing their sore butts want is to sit through a long meeting in a hard-backed chair. So they surprised themselves one recent Wednesday evening, when they actually assembled…
The Persuasions
In the past three years, America’s premier a capella doo-wop group has been on a creative roll, issuing a gospel CD, a children’s album, the brilliant Frankly a Cappella tribute to Frank Zappa, and last year’s gloriously surprising Might as Well, a collection of Grateful Dead songs. After all that, tackling the Beatles’ songbook may…
Don’t Blame Trakas
Jim Trakas thought he was doing right. In 1987, the last time Cleveland had a major school construction project, the district burned through the money like a crackhead vacationing in Bogotá. Bids were rigged. Patronage was rampant. The books were such a mess, they couldn’t be audited. “When you have $80 million pissed down the…
Super Furry Animals
On paper, the Super Furry Animals aren’t very likable: goofy name, deliberate blend of eclectic genres, fondness for ’70s pop pap, not to mention techno music. These elements usually translate to “too ambitious,” which usually translates to “too pretentious.” The band bought a soccer team, for Chrissakes! But a listen to Rings Around the World…
God Fails His Lab Test
Miracles may happen, but not in science class: I always enjoy reading your editorials, and though I wear a tweed coat once in a while, I wanted to respond to your recent article [“God, Man of Science,” January 31] that is somewhat in support of opening science classrooms to alternative theories about origins and life…
Birth
Two years after releasing a fine debut, the jazz power trio Birth has raised the stakes with a stunning follow-up. Not only are the tunes — by Josh Smith, Jeremy Bleich, and Joe Tomino — more highly structured and mature, but the interplay between saxophone, bass, and drums is more tightly wound and expansive. Smith…
Blighted Journeys
Theater rewards audiences with infinite voyages of mind and mood, transporting them anywhere from Neverland, where they can experience the fey pleasure of clapping for Tinkerbell, to the gothic imagination of a Tennessee Williams Southern belle. Yet when these journeys go awry, they prove ill-advised for vulnerable theatergoers. Two current works that coincidentally commence with…
The Essential Parker’s
The food at Parker’s New American Bistro (formerly Parker’s) speaks to our inner culinary child, the innocent who once would have savored the prospect of a crisp red apple or a mug of warm milk. That’s before we learned to crave second-rate foodstuffs hopped up on chemicals and additives, and in-your-face fusions like chipotle-spiked mashed…
Chris Cross
“Are we gonna play chicken here, Robert? Who’s gonna go first?” That’s Chris Moore talking, from the other end of a cell phone–the preferred means of communication for the Hollywood producer too afraid of standing still. Moore–a producer of Good Will Hunting and the American Pie films, partner with Ben Affleck and Matt Damon in…
Sweet Stuff
Marianna Halassy launched her career as a candymaker for the best reason in the world: “I love chocolate, and when I came to the U.S. [in 1984], I just couldn’t find chocolates that were as good as the ones we had in Europe.” So the former Hungarian folk artist turned her passion for handcrafting beautiful…
Sonic Boon
“I hope you like it,” Craw drummer Will Scharf says. He’s talking about his band’s new record from the living room of his Tremont home, which bustles with six extroverted cats as mammoth as Craw’s sound. But then Scharf catches himself. “No, I don’t hope you like it,” he adds with a grin. “I don’t…
Comeback Kids
Two critical qualities that define rock and roll are passion and momentum, and nothing kills both quicker than a long gap between albums. Maybe that’s why all eyes are on Girls Against Boys, to see if the suave D.C. noisesmiths can rebound from their recent four-year hiatus, which began shortly after their former label, Geffen,…
Lonergan’s on Again
Kenneth Lonergan has a way with words. It’s this skill that propelled him to a Best Original Screenplay Academy Award nomination last year for You Can Count on Me and that drives The Waverly Gallery, his latest work for the stage, which opens Tuesday, March 12, in the Cleveland Play House’s Drury Theatre. “What actress…
On the Record at Last
It’s hard to determine what’s blown more smoke in Cleveland over the years: LTV Steel’s coke furnaces or the town’s many nostalgia-obsessed punk aficionados. Granted, Cleveland has as storied a legacy as any city when it comes to no-nonsense rock and roll. The Pagans, the Dead Boys, the Electric Eels, and plenty of other great…
Micks and Match
Shh . . . don’t tell the Irish, but they’re early. St. Patrick’s Day is more than a week away, but judging by the recent flood of Irish bands that have played town (the Irish Rovers, the Frames, the Prodigals), you’d think we had corned beef and cabbage in the oven and green beer flowing…
Sean Na Na
Sean Tillman has enough musical personalities to make Sybil recommend her therapist. Tillman came to wide attention in the mid-’90s with his Minneapolis-based noise-pop combo Calvin Krime, which ultimately disbanded and led to his solo persona Sean Na Na. After a handful of singles and a widely praised split EP with Mary Lou Lord, Tillman…
Future Shock
Science fiction can wow us with gadgetry, but only the truly ambitious stuff lights up our imaginations with disturbing and unshakable aberrations, be they incredible shrinking men, 50-foot women, or Sting’s winged panties from Dune. In this vast genre, it figures that the ultimate human construct — time — proves most unsettling of all, its…
Prince
Is Prince back to his old self, not merely his old name? Kind of, but hold the sexuality, if not the sensuality. The Rainbow Children, the latest CD from The Artist Who Used to Be a Symbol, is packed with the sharp guitar, blasting horns, and livewire rhythms that made Prince Rogers Nelson a key…
