Epinions Recent Reviews for plorentz

Progressive Bubblegum = Extinction Level Event? Roger Joseph Manning Jr.'s "Catnip Dynamite"

Tue, 9 Jun 2009 14:43:37 GMT

rating: 3/5 by: Epinions Author plorentz - Do you ever wonder what “Roundabout” might have sounded like if Barry Manilow had written and recorded it instead of Yes? Ever wonder what might have happened had Graham Russell and Russell Hitchcock of Air Supply made sappy love...

Is Common's "Universal Mind Control" Really As Bad As It Once Seemed?

Sun, 7 Jun 2009 16:07:01 GMT

rating: 4/5 by: Epinions Author plorentz - Some albums defy our expectations of a certain artist so willfully that our only initial reaction can be to reject them outright. In the case of Chicago rapper Common’s late 2008 album Universal Mind Control, a...

A One Hit Wonder... Twice: Martin Page "In the House of Stone and Light"

Thu, 16 Apr 2009 17:56:32 GMT

rating: 3/5 by: Epinions Author plorentz - There are some artists who get inducted into the Rock N' Roll Hall of Fame twice. Hey, as a member of both the Yardbirds and Cream, along with his work as a solo artist, Clapton's in there three times. But singer-songwriter Martin Page has...

Greetings from the Third Ring of Pop Hell... You Wish You Were Here.

Wed, 25 Mar 2009 17:49:47 GMT

rating: 4/5 by: Epinions Author plorentz - Chicago's The White Tie Affair is one of a few zillion new bands that have cropped up in the wake of the success of groups like Panic At The Disco, The All-American Rejects and (geographic neighbors) Fall Out Boy, producing crisp,...

Songs from High Above the Sea of Love: M. Ward's Lovely New Album "Hold Time"

Tue, 24 Mar 2009 17:31:04 GMT

rating: 4/5 by: Epinions Author plorentz - It's 160 years ago and there's a little covered wagon rolling its rickety way along a dirt trail in the middle of what we now call Wyoming, kicking up a tiny wake of hot dust in the oceanic bigness of the untamed west. You hear it in the...

Franz Gone Wild! "Tonight: Franz Ferdinand"

Tue, 24 Mar 2009 00:13:53 GMT

rating: 4/5 by: Epinions Author plorentz - In the first couple of minutes of Franz Ferdinand's promisingly/threateningly titled third album Tonight: Franz Ferdinand, you get a palpable sense that you may have just stumbled into the kind of bar on the kind of night where some act of...

The Ghosts That Haunt Me: Duncan Sheik's "Whisper House"

Thu, 5 Feb 2009 01:45:02 GMT

rating: 4/5 by: Epinions Author plorentz - The recent arrival of Duncan Sheik's new studio album, his sixth, called The Whisper House offers an occasion to thank heavens, once again, that Duncan Sheik and musical theater have found each other. In another bygone era,...

I Got It At Target: Antony and the Johnsons' Awesome (and Grotesque) "The Crying Light"

Tue, 3 Feb 2009 14:31:51 GMT

rating: 5/5 by: Epinions Author plorentz - A big box discount retailer is the last place I might have gone looking for the latest album by Antony and the Johnsons. But sure enough, on a recent trip to Target for a new pair of shoes, I stopped by the music section to make sure...

Albums I Meant to Review in 2008: The Last Goodnight's AM Radio for MP3 Players

Mon, 19 Jan 2009 02:11:32 GMT

rating: 4/5 by: Epinions Author plorentz - Don’t let Kurtis John’s big black mohawk fool or frighten you. And pay no attention to the theatrical emo locks of guitarists Anton Yurack and Michael Nadeau. And try to ignore the fact that these moderately pretty...

Albums I Meant to Review in 2008: Spooning with Neil Diamond's "Home Before Dark"

Mon, 19 Jan 2009 00:10:16 GMT

rating: 5/5 by: Epinions Author plorentz - Among the winners of American Idol Season 7, there weren’t just the two Davids and the rest of the bunch of young and as-yet-undiscovered hopefuls who competed for the votes of the nation’s 12-year-old girls. There was...

Albums I Meant To Review in 2008: Paul Doucette Breaks Hard From Matchbox Twenty

Sat, 17 Jan 2009 12:19:23 GMT

rating: 4/5 by: Epinions Author plorentz - We always underestimate the drummers, don't we? We expect the lead singers to "outgrow" their bands, to want to go solo at some point (usually the peak of a band's popularity), to, y'know, spread their wings and stuff. Lead singers...

Albums I Meant to Review in 2008: Chicago's Mythical Stone Unearthed!

Fri, 16 Jan 2009 18:20:43 GMT

rating: 4/5 by: Epinions Author plorentz - In the early 70s, the band Chicago established themselves as the foremost practitioners of a briefly fashionable corporeal-horn-section-enhance
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hybrid of jazz, pop and rock, churning out an impressive series of ambitious albums (four of...

Albums I Meant To Review in 2008: Mike Doughty's "Golden Delicious" is Both!

Fri, 16 Jan 2009 14:03:14 GMT

rating: 5/5 by: Epinions Author plorentz - Back when I was in college, there was this band called Soul Coughing. Though I’d never really listened listened to them (as opposed to being in a neighboring dorm room while somebody else was playing their debut 1994 CD Ruby...

Joseph Bruchac's "Skeleton Man" Brings a Scary Old Indian Legend Into the 21st Century

Thu, 15 Jan 2009 23:20:00 GMT

rating: 4/5 by: Epinions Author plorentz - I became acquainted with author Joseph Bruchac by way of his historical fictions for young adults based on American Indian history – richly researched, deeply felt and politically nuanced books like Geronimo about the legendary...

Brushing Up Against History: Andre Dubus III's "The Garden of Last Days"

Thu, 1 Jan 2009 15:25:33 GMT

rating: 3/5 by: Epinions Author plorentz - In the latest novel by Andre Dubus III, an exotic dancer who calls herself Spring has a close encounter of the creepily intimate kind with world history in the Champagne Room; but, more importantly, her own life is about to be turned upside...

You Think She's Crazy? She's Got Your Crazy! I Love This Crazy! Britney's Circus.

Sun, 7 Dec 2008 22:55:35 GMT

rating: 5/5 by: Epinions Author plorentz - What a difference a year makes in the life of Britney Spears. It's almost impossible to conceive that at this time last year, the pop princess career was a sad, sick joke of a thing - her ability to sell records apparently inextricably...

Get Sir Hobo-ized with Pseudo Echo's "Love An Adventure"

Wed, 12 Nov 2008 20:03:09 GMT

rating: 3/5 by: Epinions Author plorentz - I love eggs benedict. Love. Eggs benedict. And unlike a lot of other foods that I love, I love eggs benedict in just about any form it may take. There's good eggs bennie and bad, and a lot of nifty variations on eggs...

Look Out Barry Manilow! Here Comes Seal with "Soul"

Wed, 12 Nov 2008 15:25:31 GMT

rating: 1/5 by: Epinions Author plorentz - In the race to release the most inane covers album of the '08 holiday season, it appears that Barry Manilow (whose Greatest Songs of the Eighties is about to hit shelves) has run into some unexpectedly stiff competition from, of all...

To Be the Last: Lydia Millet's Gorgeous New Novel "How the Dead Dream"

Sat, 11 Oct 2008 15:20:45 GMT

rating: 5/5 by: Epinions Author plorentz - In her latest book, called How the Dead Dream, novelist Lydia Millet invites us to cuddle up with the idea of our extinction. Quite literally, in fact.This is the story of a man called T. - a real estate tycoon who...

Dispatches from the Oldies Circuit: Journalist Bob Greene's Requiem for a Not So Endless Summer

Thu, 9 Oct 2008 16:48:44 GMT

rating: 4/5 by: Epinions Author plorentz - How's this for serendipity 20 years ago, Chicago-based journalist Bob Greene wrote a book based on a diary he kept as a teenager in 1964. The book was called Be True to Your School, and, a few years after its publication, it...

Papa and the Rolling Stones: John Phillips' "Pussycat", Revealed 30 Years Later

Fri, 12 Sep 2008 19:24:05 GMT

rating: 5/5 by: Epinions Author plorentz - It's not all that unusual for a pretty major artist to have a "lost" album collecting dust on a shelf somewhere, and neither is it all that unusual for a record company (often, the record company which shelved the album in the first place)...

Party May Come, Party May Go, But "Scratch" Perry Remain: Lee "Scratch" Perry's "Repentance"

Tue, 9 Sep 2008 23:16:45 GMT

rating: 4/5 by: Epinions Author plorentz - So you're driving down this road, a long stretch of well, but not necessarily recently, paved, two lane interstate. Not much traffic. And it's a trip you've made hundreds of times, and nothing about it surprises you anymore. You anticipate the way...

Tubthumping Revisited: The Ting Tings' "We Started Nothing"

Mon, 8 Sep 2008 17:46:18 GMT

rating: 3/5 by: Epinions Author plorentz - Something unexpected and sort of wonderful happens in the middle of the second track of We Started Nothing, the debut album by the Salford, England dance pop duo of multi-instrumentalists Katie White and Jules De Martino who so...

It's Not The Bomb: Gary Paulsen's Sentries

Tue, 26 Aug 2008 15:43:56 GMT

rating: 1/5 by: Epinions Author plorentz - Back in the 80s, when I was a youngster, there was nothing more fascinating, more terrifying, or more apparently inevitable than nuclear holocaust. I was into movies like WarGames and The Manhattan Project, and I remember vividly...

From Doubt to Adoration: Culture Club's Highly Underappreciated (Almost) Final Album

Mon, 25 Aug 2008 22:12:08 GMT

rating: 4/5 by: Epinions Author plorentz - Just weeks after the release of their fourth, and what would prove to be final album (at least until their brief reunion in the late 90s), Culture Club were effectively over as a band. Prior to that point, lead singer Boy George had been no...