By naming his latest album The Historical Conquests of Josh Ritter, the titular folk singer displays a level of bravado and macho posturing that serves as an ironic contrast to the lyrical content of his songs. His lyrics reflect an uncertainty, as he wonders on the track “Right Moves”– “Am I making all the right moves, am I singing you the right blues? Is there a chance that I could call you just to see how you are doing?”

The characters populating his songs are lonely, and their loneliness leads them to desperation. For instance, the hero in “The Temptation of Adam” is a soldier in a nuclear missile silo who ponders turning the key that will end the world so he might die before his relationship can end. Ritter manages to express loneliness and frustration without descending into self-loathing and despairing misery. Rather, his songs are energetic and pounding, from the driving chorus of the opener (”To the Dogs or Whoever,” which finds Ritter utilizing historical and literary situations as a backdrop for his expression of love) to the wistful lines of the closing track: “And she’ll know me by the sound of my hoping, singing don’t let me into this year with an empty heart.”

Josh Ritter manages to pull off the posture of a man in full possession of his dignity, opening his heart so that the world can feel the aching sweetness of being in love.

-Nate Campbell

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County fairs and country music go together like milk and cereal. They are better together–you could even say they were made for each other. Similarly, the mud-soaked arena of the Crawford County Fair in Meadville seemed the perfect backdrop for Sugarland’s set.

The band crackled with energy as they ripped through their hits. The crowd’s raucous enthusiasm showed that the longing embodied in songs like “Something More” and “Happy Ending” struck quite the nerve with the audience.

In fact, the longing for a better life–for something more–was the predominant theme of the band’s set. The most poignant example of this was Sugarland’s performance of Bon Jovi’s “Who Says You Can’t Go Home.” As Sugarland played the chorus, the audience drowned out the band as they roared along, “who says you can’t go back? I’ve been all around the world, and as a matter of fact there’s only one place left I want to go.”

Sugarland’s set was powerful and dynamic and successfully tapped into the longings filling the hearts of their audience.

-nate campbell

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According to current polls, two out of every three people think that President Bush is doing a bad job running the country right now. This number must be higher among people with recording contracts. But with the recent crop of blatant musical statements of political dissatisfaction, Bright Eyes’ latest work, the Four Winds EP, stands out.

Although his political commentary isn’t hidden beneath layers of complex literary constructions, Conor Oberst did have the grace to craft his songs into clever and compelling metaphors, avoiding the descent into blatant and puerile name-calling that has plagued the work of other folks forwarding similar messages.

And while his lyrics do become heavy-handed in places (“the Bible’s blind, the Torah’s deaf, the Koran’s mute/If you burn them all together you get close to the truth”), the album is not a tirade. The Four Winds is certainly tinged with sorrow and despair, but Bright Eyes keeps things listenable with his skillful folk rock arrangements. This collection of songs is one of the most palatable statements of frustration to come out of the cottage industry of dissident voices that have sprung up since Bush’s re-election.

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Let’s be honest: James Bond will always be James Bond. There will be explosions, there will be a ridiculous villain, and there will be a fairly offensive and chauvinistic approach to all the female characters. Casino Royale is no exception to the Bond formula. In addition to the sex and violence, however, the latest installment in the series takes an opportunity to slow down and do something very interesting.

In the slower moments of the film, the writers take time to deal with the origins and consequences of the callous mindset that defines James Bond. They take a sensitive look at the casual sex-hound and remorseless murderer, which–while still admiring–shows a certain hollowness to his being.

Over all, Casino Royale is little more than a fun popcorn flick, but its moments of introspection lend it a gravity and sense of dignity seldom found in the blow-’em-up super-spy genre.

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In his latest novel, Dave Eggers undertakes a bold task, presenting a lightly fictionalized account of Sudanese refuge Valentino Achak Deng. Fortunately, Eggers proves himself to be up to the task.

Deng’s wild, tragic journey across Sudan and into refugee camps in Ethiopia and Kenya is framed around a tale of suffering induced in the one place Deng should allegedly feel safe–the United States. He tells his life story to the audience while lying on the floor of his own apartment, bound and gagged by robbers claiming to teach him a valuable lesson.

The stories of Deng’s hardships in both his native Africa and in America become a compelling–if emotionally draining–yarn in Eggers’ hands. He manages to mix in a measure of lightness into the heavy meditations on death and torment, keeping the book from becoming unbearable.

Eggers successfully presents a picture of the very real suffering of individuals in war-torn Sudan, and he does it without hitting a strident or preachy note. His honesty and earnestness give this novelized autobiography an unimpeachably authoritative voice. “Read this” isn’t quite strong enough a request.

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So here’s the thing about whipped cream: it’s very difficult to develop a strong reaction to it, either positive or negative. Sometimes that added bit of white froth makes an otherwise mundane hot drink just perfect. Other times, the bit of additional sweetness is cloying and unnecessary. But ultimately, the cream is just a bit of white foam, and not really worth getting worked up over.

Hello Goodbye has created a bit of whipped cream with their album, Zombies! Aliens! Vampires! Dinosaurs! As the title lets on, it seems that these guys had a lot of fun creating these songs. The album is light fare, full of bright-eyed love songs, exploding with positivity and optimism. The electronic music buoys the tracks along quite nicely, keeping the pace bubbly and discouraging the listener from looking at the generic lyrics too closely. Ultimately the album is sugary fluff, pleasant enough to listen to, but not filling or deeply satisfying.

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Infinity on High is a compulsively listenable artifact of the culture that arises from the ruins of a centerless worldview. In lieu of any higher authority, we tend to establish ourselves as the be all and end all of our existence. Fall Out Boy’s lyrics reflect this narcissism.

The album is not just a celebration of celebrity culture, although it certainly comes off as that. There is a pain in these lyrics hidden beyond the poppy tunes that are an enjoyable departure from the pop-punk formula that permeates the band’s previous efforts. “I’m a stitch away from making it and a scar away from falling apart,” cries “the (After) Life of the Party.” While there might not be anything revolutionary about their pain, it is palpable. They are, through their skillfully produced versions of shoddy myspace poetry, declaring themselves to be the voices of a generation of moderately disaffected suburban youth.

While there is much to revile in the hymnody of these self-proclaimed prophets, the fact that it has the potential to be the new Psalter for a large percentage of the youth population is enough to warrant careful listening and consideration.

–nc

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“Music allows emotionally warped people to communicate by bombarding each other with pitiful cultural artifacts hat in a saner world would be forgotten before they ever happened.” Rob Sheffield is a man for whom music is almost everything; including the only connection he has left with his now deceased wife. Love is a Mix Tape is his way of dealing with his life, providing some fascinating insights about the nature of love and its relation to music along the way.

Sheffield’s book is structured around mix tapes, each chapter opening with the play list of a tape made by him or his wife. The chapter that follows is full of ruminations that were kick-started in his mind by that particular tape. His writing is warm and personal, inviting the reader into the world of his reminisces.

In its tracing of his relationship with his wife from the day they met until the day she died, the book takes an inevitable turn in to the melancholy without being dark or depressing. Despite his past experiences, Sheffield is a man who believes in love and in music, and he has an optimism and confidence lacking in so many memoirs of personal pain. Sheffield concludes that love is a mix tape–sometimes it’s good, sometimes bad, but always worth the effort.

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Clap Your Hands Say Yeah’s latest album Some Loud Thunder is a sonic depiction of the dissolution of modern society. The album opens with the title track which presents a fairly normal rock song with a slight twist: the song sounds like it was improperly recorded to the disc. But this is not a mistake, it was an intentional production choice on the part of the band. It shows how modern structures–while still standing–are no longer paragons of vitality and relevance. The album then descends into darkness and nihilism, only occasionally punctuated by rays of hope and normalcy.

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So Dilbert, funny comic strip right? Well take that comic strip and instead of making it a crappy cartoon (come on, UPN. That was AWFUL) make it into a sweet, single-camera sitcom. The first two seasons comprised what was quite possibly the funniest and most original sitcom ever (at least in America. Yeah, there was a British The Office first). The third season has descended from the realm of the earth-shattering to just being a solid, better-than-average sitcom. For laughs on a Thursday night (or any time) you could do much worse, and not really any better.

–nc

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