Tag: Vol. 34 No. 32

The Romantic idea of the artist as a closed but chaotic system permeates the Seldoms’ new hour-long work, Recluse. Begun during a residency that artistic director Carrie Hanson and assistant artistic director Doug Stapleton held at the pastoral Ragdale Foundation in February, the piece is far from quiet, instead envisioning the artistic process as “vigorous […]

With their first two albums the Books–Paul de Jong and Nick Zammuto–devised a breathtaking new kind of chamber pop. They relied heavily on digitally chopped-up guitar, cello, banjo, and violin, and once in a while they’d add some vocals (theirs or other people’s), but most arresting was the way they uncovered music in sampled chunks […]

Upstream Theater, based in Saint Louis, makes its local debut with this clever riff on Franz Kafka’s short story “A Report to an Academy,” about a captured ape who wills himself to become human to gain a semblance of freedom. In director Philip Boehm’s conception, the report takes the form of a history lecture by […]

It’s easy to get all snarkiferous toward the Boss whenever he emerges, slimed with pundit slobber, with an album that’s overblown or otherwise flawed in some crucial way. (If there ever was an artist who should be banned from using synthesizers, it’s him.) His latest, Devils & Dust (Columbia), doesn’t have such problems, but even […]