AltWeeklies Wire
'Transference,' 'Songs for Chris Knox,' 'Contra'new
Spoon might just be the most reliable franchise in indie rock. Transference is just like the previous seven albums: clean-cut but ballsy, uptempo but not even a little bit aggro. Guitar, bass, drums, keys, singer Britt Daniel's fine rasp — everybody's on the same page, synched up, interlocking.
Philadelphia City Paper |
Patrick Rapa |
02-02-2010 |
Reviews
Tags: Transference, Spoon
Petty's Island, a Fin-Shaped Slice of Strange in the Delaware Rivernew
Never heard of Petty's Island? It's littered with colorful characters — Pennsylvania founder William Penn, Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, a man who declared himself the island's king, and even the pirate's pirate himself, Ol' Blackbeard.
Philadelphia City Paper |
Holly Otterbein |
02-02-2010 |
Economy
Do Something: Let's Be There for Samuel Dalembertnew
Samuel Dalembert, the 76ers' center, grew up in Haiti. Dalembert lived in Port-au-Prince, the capital and hardest-hit city, until he was 14. (Several of his family members remain there.) His foundation has been seeking foreign assistance for Haiti since its inception three years ago.
Philadelphia City Paper |
E. James Beale |
01-26-2010 |
Sports
One Small Step For Robots: Drexel Lab Has Big Plans For its Humanoidnew
Jaemi HUBO, a robot, sleeps at the Drexel Autonomous Systems Lab, the headquarters for a five-year, $2.5 million federal grant from the National Science Foundation. Its goal is to make the United States a world leader in humanoid robotics.
Philadelphia City Paper |
Brian James Kirk |
01-26-2010 |
Tech
Afterburn: Coatesville Struggles to Emerge From the Ashesnew
For most people, seeing the house in which they'd lived for the past 28 years burned to the ground would be an unimaginable nightmare. For Karen Engle, it was a blessing in disguise. By the time arson reduced her home to rubble, her neighborhood had become a hotbed of violence.
Philadelphia City Paper |
Rebecca VanderMeulen |
01-19-2010 |
Crime & Justice
'The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus': City Paper Grade B+new
The narrative is a showy gloss on the Faust legend with Tom Waits as a carny-huckster Beelzebub and Christopher Plummer as a monk-turned-immortal showman, and its reliance on oft-told tales and fairy tale archetypes is welcome given how the narrative seems to unravel rather than unfold.
Philadelphia City Paper |
Shaun Brady |
01-12-2010 |
Reviews
Well-Endowed: Very, Very Large Drawings on Display in Philadelphianew
In a word? Satisfying. Seven artists' work is effectively installed in a compact space, and a striking variety of approaches and mediums suggests perennial issues relating to drawing.
Philadelphia City Paper |
Robin Rice |
01-12-2010 |
Art
'The Martyrdom of a Catastrophist' is Superbnew
The Boston metal band Junius, whose superb The Martyrdom of a Catastrophist has the frustrating distinction of arriving too late to qualify for any best-of-year lists, is indeed among the more precise and scientific of recent hard rock bands.
Philadelphia City Paper |
J. Edward Keyes |
01-05-2010 |
Reviews
Developing a Mathematical Model for Predicting Murders in Philadelphianew
John Toczek is rolling out a project he's calling the Analytics X Prize. It's a contest to develop a mathematical model for predicting murders in Philadelphia, something the Police Department could use to best deploy its resources.
Philadelphia City Paper |
Brian Howard |
01-05-2010 |
Crime & Justice
'Death By Oboe': Fiction Contest '09 Winnernew
From the Judge: Death By Oboe invites us into a complete, quirky and tangible world. It isn't self-indulgent, but doesn't hesitate to linger over odd, honest details like the jostling of a roomful of porcelain figurines — a moment both physically present and emotionally revealing.
Philadelphia City Paper |
Jessica Penzias |
01-05-2010 |
Original Work
The Chieftains' 'Bells of Dublin' is the Greatest Christmas Recording Evernew
There's something for everyone: For traditionalists there are wonderful, inspired versions of standards like God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen, O Come All Ye Faithful and O Holy Night, as well as Marianne Faithfull, who sounds like she's been hitting the egg nog pretty hard.
Philadelphia City Paper |
Rodney Anonymous |
12-29-2009 |
Reviews
The High-rise Haul: Improving Recycling in Philadelphianew
In the civic sport of recycling, pretty soon there will be those who can keep score and those who can't. That's unacceptable. Whether the burden falls on building managers, haulers or both, there's got to be a way for everyone to get into this game.
Philadelphia City Paper |
Bruce Schimmel |
12-29-2009 |
Housing & Development
In 1959, Edmund Bacon Imagined in 50 Years, "No Part of Philadelphia is Depressed."new
The problem was not that Edmund Bacon cared only about design: it was that he believed far too deeply in its power. He relied on a model of physical determinism: the idea that manipulation and improvement of the built environment could strongly influence, or even control, social and economic outcomes.
Philadelphia City Paper |
Nathaniel Popkin |
12-21-2009 |
Housing & Development
Consciously Collective: How Four Filmmakers Redefine Our Visual Historynew
Defining the archive as "a repository for any personal memories, shared histories, objects and documents through which we revisit the history of our time," Robert Cargni has assembled four programs by filmmakers who rework the archives of our visual culture.
Philadelphia City Paper |
Shaun Brady |
12-15-2009 |
Profiles & Interviews
Book Quarterly: J.M. Coetzee, Zadie Smith, Stephen King, Nabokovnew
The discerning critics of Philadelphia City Paper review this season's most notable tomes: Summertime by J.M. Coetzee, Changing My Mind by Zadie Smith, Under the Dome by Stephen King and The Original of Laura by Vladimir Nabokov.
Philadelphia City Paper |
Katherine Hill, K. Ross Hoffman, Justin Bauer, Lauren F. Friedman |
12-08-2009 |
Fiction
