Baltimore City Paper | Music | AAN.org

Ian Nagoski Brings Us Obscure World-Music 78snew

That elusive journey to another time and place purely via ephemeral music is what Nagoski aims for with The Black Mirror. It's a 24-track tour through obscure Syrian, Thai, Balinese, Indian, and various Eastern European folk music, with liner notes providing the best information Nagoski could uncover about the recordings, the music, and the artists.

Baltimore City Paper | Bret McCabe | 10-30-2007 | Profiles & Interviews

Tags: The Black Mirror: Reflections in Global Music 1918-ca. 1955, Various Artists

Challenging the Limits of Inaccessible Music with Popnew

The appeal of pop-based music generally lies largely in its accessibility, its ability to capture and hold one's attention right away. But artists like Sightings, Yellow Swans and Fiery Furnaces do the opposite.

Baltimore City Paper | Raymond Cummings | 10-23-2007 | Reviews

Devin the Dude Abidesnew

A Devin album is an experience, the aural approximation of "puff, puff, pass," and Waiting to Inhale is his finest harvest.

Baltimore City Paper | Brandon Soderberg | 10-16-2007 | Profiles & Interviews

Tags: Devin the Dude, Waiting to Inhale

The New Pornographers Issue a 'Meh' Albumnew

The joyfully erratic sounds present in their earlier Mass Romantic, Electric Version, and, to some degree, Twin Cinema are, on first listen, surprisingly absent.

Baltimore City Paper | Allison Levin | 09-18-2007 | Reviews

Tags: Challengers, The New Pornographers

Common and UGK Offer the Best Rap Releases So Farnew

Common's Finding Forever and UGK's Underground Kingz are "albums" in the true sense of the word: a group of consistent, thematically cohesive songs.

Baltimore City Paper | Brandon Soderburg | 09-18-2007 | Reviews

Tags: UGK, Underground Kingz

Black Moth Super Rainbow Doesn't Write Songs, It Doodlesnew

Dandelion Gum can sound like the lo-fi bedroom work of one or two people.

Baltimore City Paper | Michaelangelo Matos | 09-18-2007 | Reviews

Tags: Black Moth Super Rainbow, Dandelion Gum

The Black Lips Grows Up By Staying Youngnew

With Good Bad Not Evil, the band's Vice Records studio full-length debut and fifth album overall, the Georgia quartet is building more buzz than fuzz with the group's least rust-bucket, adolescence-addled collection of blues-rawk.

Baltimore City Paper | Tony Ware | 09-18-2007 | Profiles & Interviews

Tags: The Black Lips, Good Bad Not Evil

Merle Haggard has Served His Time Making Musicnew

Haggard turned 70 in April, but he hasn't slowed down a whit: Over the past year and a half he has released five albums of new music in addition to a flood of reissues.

Baltimore City Paper | Geoffrey Himes | 09-04-2007 | Profiles & Interviews

Tags: Merle Haggard

The New Flesh: Evolutionary Warnew

The band celebrates a half decade of half-decayed, weird punk rock.

Baltimore City Paper | Al Shipley | 08-28-2007 | Profiles & Interviews

Tags: The New Flesh

Checking in with the Latest Round of MuzikMafia Releasesnew

In some quarters, the MuzikMafia was hailed as country-music saviors who would change the way music was made in Nashville; in others, they were dismissed as flashes-in-the-pan who would soon vanish like most novelty acts -- neither prediction proved accurate.

Baltimore City Paper | Geoffrey Himes | 08-14-2007 | Music

Red Sammy Debuts Its Forlorn Folksy Gothicnew

Every one of its 11 languid and dolorous "gothic Americana" songs hangs with the same tawdry antebellum decay familiar to anyone who's whiled away a sticky August night in Baltimore drinking too much beer and nursing heartache.

Baltimore City Paper | Violet Glaze | 08-14-2007 | Profiles & Interviews

Tags: Red Sammy