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Best Records of 2003

1.OUTKAST Speakerboxxx/The Love Below (Arista) The most fascinating record of the year was this matched set of solo albums by Outkast’s Big Boi and Andre 3000. Both are obsessed with love and sex, not necessarily in that order, but all subject matter here is overshadowed by an amazingly polymorphous musicality. Andre 3000’s disc is more […]

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Local Record Roundup

JOSH ABRAMS Cipher (Delmark) The quartet on Cipher first got together for a one-off gig at Lula Cafe in early 2000, and bassist Josh Abrams (a founding member of rustic minimalists Town and Country and the jazz trio Sticks and Stones) wisely decided to reconvene the personnel in a semiregular project. Trumpeter Axel Dorner lives […]

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Music Book Roundup

Each of the following recently released music books is informative and entertaining by turns, but only the first is an unqualified success. STOMP AND SWERVE: AMERICAN MUSIC GETS HOT, 1843-1924 By David Wondrich (A Cappella) In his appealingly irreverent new book David Wondrich (who writes about cocktails for Esquire) goes looking for the roots of […]

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Punk Primer/Postscripts

Punk Primer Though punk as a concept has had a profound impact on popular music, most of its original practitioners have been consigned to the footnotes of rock history. While a handful of bands from both sides of the pond managed to parlay their notoriety into careers–the Ramones, Blondie, Talking Heads, the Clash, and X, […]