Featured Review: Marshall Plan: The Intra European Poster Competition of 1950 This artfully weathered collection of mid-century posters -- the product of a juried contest held by the Intra-European Cooperation for a Better Standard of Living -- displays the winning designs from participati...

With hopes of becoming the next big talent to make it out of St. Louis, self-proclaimed "pop megastar" Tydis has been busy making a name for himself on the national scene with his own brand of pop/R&B music. His talent earned him the attention of local Grammy-winning producers the Trak Starz, who...

When you hear that the guitarist for one of the most successful alternative-rock bands of our current generation has a solo CD coming out, there's probably a very stereotypical (and loud) picture that pops into your head. But instead, the album from Foo Fighters guitarist Chris Shiflett dips deep...

I don't remember who first told me about the Piccadilly at Manhattan. Maybe no one did. Maybe I read something somewhere. Whatever the case, every so often over the past couple of years someone would mention the restaurant, and I would say, "Oh, yeah, been meaning to go there," and make a ...

The sound of Crayon Jewels, the latest, not-quite-full-length album by Memphis Pencils, is Sufjan Stevens filtered through the Mountain Goats' boom box and remixed with Sérgio Mendes and Brasil '66 playing in the background. The choral voices, French horns, harmoniums,...

The highly enigmatic Cults burst on the blog scene in March, leaving a trail of confusion and misinformation in its hype-filled wake. It's a gamble, surely, naming your band something that's entirely impossible to Google, but 21-year-old couple Madeline Follin and Brian Oblivion (not his r...

Bear In Heaven is the brainchild of Jon Philpot, who, like most Brooklyn musicians, doesn't hail from there. Philpot started recording solo work in 2003 and was later joined by drummer Joe Stickney (who has worked with minimalist virtuoso Rhys Chatham and also tours with Panthers), guitari...

The Vermont trio Happy Birthday has been one of 2010's bands to watch, by fusing lukewarm punk with raw, twee pop and the occasional '60s harmony. Its ramshackle brand of lo-fi pop is less straightforward than it sounds, however, thanks to towering power chords and scorching drums (see: "Z...

There was a time when Lyle Lovett and His Large Band was an unsolvable riddle in the country-music world, seeing as though it featured a droll folk singer leading a band made up of Memphis horns, gospel singers and an unusually jazz-versed rhythm section. But in the twenty years since Love...

B.o.B. did his time in rap's AAA league, having brushes with success and remaining one or two degrees of separation from household-name status for three years. But that's all over now: His proper debut full-length, The Adventures of Bobby Ray, has been banging out the open car windo...

During Something Corporate's original time as a band — roughly the years between 1998 and 2004 — it never received its proper due. The piano-driven group didn't quite fit in with prevailing trends (although it was on then-pop-punk mecca Drive-Thru Records and toured with bands ...

In Steve Carell's first few episodes of the American version of The Office, his character, Michael Scott, hewed closely to the template created by the series' British mastermind, Ricky Gervais. Scott, like David Brent before him, was cruel and obtuse, a nightmare of a boss who thinks he's ...

Dear Mexican: As an old gringo who calls himself a gringo (not a gabacho), I study Mexican culture and ask myself, "Where have I seen this before?" The answer invariably is: 1950s America, that's where. Current Mexican culture in the United States is about 50 years behind current...