Tag: Vol. 35 No. 3

Every time I listen to Metric’s 2003 debut, Old World Underground, Where Are You Now? (Everloving), I have a vivid flashback: I’m standing around in a loud, crowded club, staring at the latest suicide bomb carnage in Iraq on the TV above the bar, which is being narrated by the thump-thump-thump from the DJ booth. […]

Countless classical virtuosos have proven that all the technical brilliance in the world doesn’t guarantee the ability to improvise. Chicago-born cellist Frances-Marie Uitti is one of the few musicians who can walk both walks. Now based in Amsterdam, she’s highly sought after in contemporary music circles, and prominent composers like Luigi Nono, Giacinto Scelsi, and […]

At his best, Percy Sledge combines a keening, tear-swollen tenor and an unreconstructed backwoods drawl to express an abjection so deep it sounds almost sainted. That vulnerability is famously on display in his breakout 1966 hit, “When a Man Loves a Woman,” but it’s there in lesser-known gems too, like his 1967 take on the […]

Slacker antihero Chris Elliott put himself on the pop-culture map with recurring appearances on Late Night With David Letterman, starring roles in Get a Life and Cabin Boy, and his buddy/villain turn in There’s Something About Mary. But he’s been a writer from the get-go–for Late Night and SNL in addition to his own vehicles–which […]

In Robert Koon’s new play, the stranger who comes to town is death, and the focus is its impact on the dead woman’s ex-husband and sister. John Dewey is a professor burdened with the philosopher’s name who was cashiered for plagiarizing and handled his disgrace by drinking and wrecking his marriage to Marie. Though he […]

Even in its censored 70-minute version, Baby Face (1933) has long been celebrated as one of the Depression era’s raciest movies, and this recently discovered uncut version, with six minutes of extra footage, is even more explicit and sordid. Sexy, steely Barbara Stanwyck is a small-town prostitute initially pimped by her bootlegger father; with her […]