]> http://www.artistdirect.com/nad/editorial/albumreviews/0,,,00.html Most Recent Album Reviews on ARTISTdirect 86400 Wed, 27 Aug 2008 15:31:10 PST en-us http://www.artistdirect.com/nad/store/movies/title/0,,4014216,00.html#review Miss Pettigrew, she of the delightfully pleasant, semi-fairytale period comedy Miss Pettigrew Lives For a Day, may have lived during the 1940s, but she faces obstacles, like unemployment and limited job options in the service sector, that women of today continue to encounter. Frances McDormand shuffles on screen as a dowdy and frumpy governess who can't hold a job as a caretaker because of her prickly personality and her uncanny knack for losing more jobs than she lands. She sneakily secures a gig as a personal assistant to Delysia Lafosse, a breathy, flame-haired, clueless starlet embodied by a scene-stealing Amy Adams. Adams' character is a blithe woman cloaked in satin dressing gowns who wears her hair in perfectly styled finger waves, showing off physical attributes that are valued by the social circles she runs in. Adapted from Winifred Watson's book, Miss Pettigrew Lives For a Day is a day-long look at the age-old "opposites attract" convention, pitting a woman who gets by Wed, 27 Aug 2008 15:31:10 PST 4759378 Album Review http://www.artistdirect.com/nad/store/artist/album/0,,4759320,00.html#review In 2008, Daz Dillinger epitomizes West Coast hip-hop. The Long Beach, California rapper was a part of the famed, mid-90s Death Row Records dynasty, contributing to landmark albums like Dr. Dre's essential The Chronic. We could spend all day dissecting the feuds Dillinger has partaken in. He was rolling eyeballs deep with countless rappers in the Death Row entourage, including Kurupt, with whom he was one half of The Dogg Pound, and the perennially embattled Suge Knight but with Only on the Left Side, Dillinger's star is finally let to shine. He's more than happy to brag about how he's made it to the top of the urban food chain. His butter-smooth vocals glorify his membership in the gangsta lifestyle, and they're backed by top-down, laid back beats in "Meal Ticket." The title track darkens the mood, with its sped-up tempo, thunderous beats that pop like the ticker in your chest and Dillinger's snappy vocals. He engages in a verbal waltz with R&B diva Nicole on "Regretz," an Wed, 27 Aug 2008 08:33:02 PST 4759321 Album Review http://www.artistdirect.com/nad/store/artist/album/0,,4717547,00.html#review Jerry Douglas has always been a consistent figure in country and bluegrass music. Not only has he played on a zillion records, but he's also consistently been underrated as far widespread success goes. Let’s just say it's a good thing he was a staple on the O Brother Where Art Thou? soundtrack. Glide probably won't find him throngs of new followers, but those who have followed his career will appreciate the diversity that extends throughout the record. The album's got Travis Tritt contributing his desperate, southern charm on "A Marriage Made in Hollywood." Moments later, Douglas takes you through a New Orleans funeral-style march during "Sway." The opening cut, "Bounce" pairs Douglas with longtime friends Edgar Meyer and Bela Fleck, setting the tempo for a more atmospheric mood that Meyer's work is known for. But for the most part, it's Douglas's recent touring band that accompanies him. Not surprisingly, they blend nicely with him, while allowing for his famed sound to shine Wed, 27 Aug 2008 07:41:46 PST 4759318 Album Review http://www.artistdirect.com/nad/store/movies/title/0,,4131926,00.html#review Death Race is purported to be a remake of the 1973 movie of the same name, but that hardly matters. It's like The Fast and the Furious meets Prison Break and is thoroughly modern. British hunk Jason Statham, playing the type of contemplative, conflicted action hero role vacated by Jean-Claude Van Damme and Steven Seagal after they got older and less agile, gets his brood on as a jailed man and former race car driver with a checkered past wrongly convicted of offing his wife. At first glance, the swan-like Joan Allen would appear horribly miscast as bitch-on-wheels warden with a raging case of bloodlust. But as one inmate comments, "She is the baddest ass in the yard." Allen camps it up as the icy-demeanored architect—essentially the segment producer—of a violent spectator sport that evolves due to overcrowded prison populations. Set in the near future, the jails are stuffed with too many criminals after the collapse of the economy caused crime rates to soar. Private corporations Tue, 26 Aug 2008 14:04:58 PST 4759240 Album Review http://www.artistdirect.com/nad/store/movies/title/0,,4678371,00.html#review The American Mall is High School Musical taking place at—you guessed it—the mall, where part-time, teenaged employees sing their way through life while trying to remain one step ahead of a bratty nemesis. The film is brought to you by the same producers behind HSM, so the similarities are both obvious and expected. But, The American Mall lacks some of the definitive sparkle of HSM. The mall is a decidedly American construct. In any city and any town, the shopping mecca, with its fashionable stores and food courts, is a bastion of comfort and familiarity in a world defined by chaos. Wannabe musicians toiling at minimum wage jobs are reminiscent of the rebellious teenyboppers in Grease and Grease 2l. A keen appreciation for characters that burst spontaneously into joyous song is needed to enjoy The American Mall to the fullest extent. The actors' voices are pop-star thin at best and the choreography isn't world class, either. However, The American Mall certainly turns enough Tue, 26 Aug 2008 13:10:23 PST 4759218 Album Review http://www.artistdirect.com/nad/store/artist/album/0,,4719542,00.html#review The Verve can't deny their Brit pop sensibilities and scope. Before the colossal success of their lone mega-hit, the ubiquitous anthem "Bittersweet Symphony," back in 1997 and their subsequent (and second) breakup, lanky frontman Richard Ashcroft and his cronies were known for composing tunes that were delicate, lush, expansive and lilting all at once. Forth, the band's latest album of new material crafted by the re-assembled original line up, has a gorgeous, melodic Brit rock edge that's been undeniably sharpened by years of running in the same peer circles as Radiohead— the undisputed champions of rock rife with tortured, artful emotion. Forth careens into your ears with "Sit and Wonder," an effects-heavy opener. Then it launches into the noisy yet catchy single, "Love is Noise," which siphons from decidedly British strains of punk and nu wave. "Rather Be" is the contemplative ballad of the bunch, while "Judas" and "Numb" are airy, alternative hymns that rip more than a few Tue, 26 Aug 2008 10:51:09 PST 4759190 Album Review http://www.artistdirect.com/nad/store/artist/album/0,,4716275,00.html#review "America, what if God doesn't care?!" bellows Slipknot frontman Corey Taylor on "Gematria (The Killing Name)," the second track from All Hope Is Gone. It doesn't matter whether or not God cares because Slipknot does. Iowa's nine-man metallic battalion cares enough about their fans not to disappoint, and they care enough about their personal integrity not to sell out. All Hope Is Gone is Slipknot's best record yet because of those facts. It's also the best shard of metal to come out in 2008. Evolving beyond the progressive experimentation of Vol 3: The Subliminal Verses and embracing even more of Iowa's slit-your-throat death metal, All Hope Is Gone comes to life much in the way that Slipknot's self-titled debut did in 1999. This record lives, breathes and kills. The album kicks off in ominous, epic fashion with ".execute." Taylor sounds possessed as he spews apocalyptic rhetoric about the failure of government, religion and the human race. It's creepy, and it takes hold like a Tue, 26 Aug 2008 10:14:02 PST 4759185 Album Review http://www.artistdirect.com/nad/store/movies/title/0,,1860402,00.html#review Questions raised by films like Salo are often concerned with boundaries of decency. What is the line between poetic and pornographic? Striking and vulgar? Art and smut? Director Pier Paolo Pasolini's Salo, or The 120 Days of Sodom, whose title alone indicates the mildly traumatizing viewing experience one can expect, has been called both high art and exploitative filmmaking. It's difficult to argue either either stance with conviction; the film is as coarse as it is intellectual, and sometimes it occupies both realms simultaneously. It is violent, gratuitous, and easily one of the most difficult, disturbingly visceral movies you will ever experience. After being condemned, banned in some countries, and ignored for years, The Criterion Collection has reissued it for audiences far and wide to discover—if they're willing to brave the assault. "Controversial" does not begin to describe Salo's graphic content, which was adapted from a work by the Marquis de Sade, unsurprisingly. It opens Tue, 26 Aug 2008 10:05:37 PST 4759184 Album Review http://www.artistdirect.com/nad/store/artist/album/0,,4759158,00.html#review Shadows Fall are nothing if not culpable to their fans. That's probably why the Western Massachusetts metal band constantly feeds its fanbase with new music. They've issued DVDs, companion efforts and even reissued a remixed and remastered update of their 2000 debut, Of One Blood. Due to this flurry of activity, fans can never accuse the metal band of not releasing a breadth of material. The verdict is in: Shadows Fall never leaves fans clamoring for more and delights in satiating those ravenous appetites. Forevermore is a compact, five-song EP that follows the band's major label debut, last year's Threads of Life, which failed to match the band's previously impressive sales on indie label Century Media, in the most untraditional of ways. Forevermore is only available when you purchase $30 of merch on the band's website. You get "Fade Into Smoke" and "Stupid Crazy," which further showcase the quintet's ability to shred with the best of them. Vocalist Brian Fair, he of the Tue, 26 Aug 2008 08:42:25 PST 4759159 Album Review http://www.artistdirect.com/nad/store/artist/album/0,,4759039,00.html#review There's really no mistaking Zach Hill. If you've seen the drummer extraordinaire in concert or heard him on CD, your thought process probably follows, "Who the hell is this guy?" Once you learn his name, you ask, "Is he a man or a machine?" Hill officially and clearly identifies himself as part of the human race on his solo album Astrological Straits. Robed in Hill's cloak of hazy space rock, the disc's thirteen tracks explode on impact. The snaky opener "Iambric Strays" convinces the listener that the walls are moving, while "Toll Road" recalls the ghost of John Lennon. Perhaps, classifying these songs as "experiences" rather than "music" would be more fitting. If you're familiar with Hill's previous work in Hella and Team Sleep, you know that the drummer's sense of rhythm is unconventional and unpredictable. Astrological Straits, written and performed almost exclusively by Hill, sounds just as eccentric and excellent as his work with those other acts does. Mon, 25 Aug 2008 13:47:38 PST 4759040 Album Review