AltWeeklies Wire
'Ten' + 18
Pearl Jam's touchstone grunge record gets a fresh coat of paint 18 years later.
Shocking: 'Crank' 2 Goes Electric
The sequel to a 2006 meta-parody charges up the action, vulgarity, and fun.
Shot in the Blart
Observe and Report is a mean, unfunny mess.
Are They Battling the Devil, or Music Itself?
Eddie Argos and company return with an album that finds them running out of ideas, but finding just enough new ones to keep things interesting.
California Rockers Make Big Strides with Their Second LPnew
Silversun Pickups break out of the shadows and into their own identity with their terrific second album Swoon.
Meet the New Rock Opera
Colin Meloy and the Decemberists stretch their penchant for story-songs into an album-length piece on The Hazards of Love.
The Passion of the Ram: 'The Wrestler'new
The Wrestler is a moving character study, featuring an amazing lead performance from Mickey Rourke.
Little Big Man: 'Notorious'new
Biggie Smalls' large life is reduced to a by-the-numbers biopic in Notorious.
Will a New Safety Law Bankrupt Small Businesses?new
Many manufacturers and retailers of children's products, along with book publishers, artisans, concerned parents and consumers, even the American Library Association, have begun to panic about the monumental scope of the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act's impact.
Does Will Smith Think He's Jesus?
Seven Pounds is so pleased with its concept and its message that it drives right by some pretty big flaws.
'Benjamin Button' is Gump for Dummies
I don't care what anybody says: David Fincher's adaptation of the F. Scott Fitzgerald short story is a meandering bore.
'Kind of Blue' Keeps Its Cool at 50
Miles Davis' landmark album Kind of Blue continues to sound fresh after half a century.
Mercury Rev Delivers One of the Year's Most Intriguing Albums
If you played Snowflake Midnight next to one of the band's early-'90s guitar-noise workouts, you'd think the two were recorded centuries apart.
Be Your Own Pet Releases a Miniature Pop-Punk Teen-Girl Party Piece
At three tracks and barely six minutes in length, does this even qualify as an EP? Well, kind of -- the three songs on this, the swan song for the Nashville garage quartet, were removed from the U.S. release of the band's early-2008 Get Awkward disc by Universal lawyers for being "too violent."
The Modern Folk Sounds of Fleet Foxes Are Simply Divine
This reverb-drenched beauty seems to be gunning for the title of coolest record ever to be sold across a Starbucks counter.
