This production of The Two Gentlemen of Verona had too much U2 in it, even for me.

Posted on January 26, 2012 | Leave a comment

Nick Dillenburg & Miriam Silverman, fine actors in a shaky production

Reviewed for the Washington City Paper.

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When the Star Talks Himself Blue: Ryan Adams at Strathmore, considered

Posted on January 26, 2012 | 1 Comment

Adams: "I got a plan."

I saw Ryan Adams and the Cardinals open for Oasis (!) in 2008 (!!!) but I only caught part of their set from across a basketball arena and anyway it was not an especially memorable experience. But I quite enjoyed the talky, sloppy Adams solo show — and opener Jason Isbell — that I review in today’s Washington Post. Continue reading →

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More on Springsteen’s Wrecking Ball: Mistakes Were Made, by Me

Posted on January 24, 2012 | Leave a comment

Bruce Springsteen announced U.S. tour dates this morning. He’ll be here in DC on April Fool’s Day. So I’ll just get this over with: Bruuuuuuuce!

Thank you. And now, let us proceed.

When The Boss announced the title and release date of his forthcoming album Wrecking Ball last week, I just couldn’t see past its abysmal cover, an area in which he has been a career offender. I noted that Wrecking Ball is also the title of a very fine Emmylou Harris album from 1995. Dana Stevens, Slate’s superb film critic, noticed that too.

(When I was on the Filmspotting podcast the week after Stevens, I tried to say how much I admire her writing and how honored I was to follow her on the show, but it came out wrong. I apologize for that, Ma’am.)

Anyway, we exchanged a few Tweets about that title. “Title re-use doesn’t infringe copyright, but it’s crass,” Stevens wrote. I pointed out that Emmylou got the title from Neil Young, whose song “Wrecking Ball” (from his 1989 album Freedom) Emmylou covered on her album Wrecking Ball. Got all that?

“If Bruce covers the Neil Young song on this record, then the nab is vindicated,” Stevens concluded. Continue reading →

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My NPR Monkey See debut, sorta, on MMA star Gina Carano’s film debut, sorta

Posted on January 20, 2012 | Leave a comment

MMA star Gina Carano in HAYWIRE

I have a lengthy, discursive post up on NPR’s Monkey See blog today ruminating on Steven Soderbergh‘s action-cinema debut, Haywire. Continue reading →

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Bruce Springsteen to release another album with an ugly cover on March 6

Posted on January 19, 2012 | 2 Comments

You can’t judge an album by its sleeve, and that’s good news for Bruce Springsteen.

My admiration for The Boss is a matter of public record, and it was from a place of love that I took the occasion of his last album’s release three years ago to point out that nearly all of his album covers are terrible. Today he announced that his 17th studio album will be called Wrecking Ball and will be released for sale on March 6. Any resemblance to Emmylou Harris‘s great album from 1995, Wrecking Ball, is completely coincidental, probably.

That’s the cover of Bruce’s Finger-Painting With Bird Shit Wrecking Ball at the top of this post. Hideous, right? He probably paid Danny Clinch a lot of money to take the photo before scrawing his name over it in Wite-Out. What this says to me is Eh, only a fraction of those of you who bother to listen to this at all are actually going to pay for it, so why I should I sweat the packaging? Just sit tight, we’re gonna play “Badlands” later.

Continue reading →

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Image of Zen: I Am Curious (Yellow)

Posted on January 18, 2012 | Leave a comment

Courtesy of the Criterion Collection’s Twitter feed, which says this is from a 1971 issue of The Amazing Spider-Man. No. 101, cover date March ’71, it turns out.

I so enjoy referencing the title of this 1967 arthouse film, which was banned for a while in the U.S., that perhaps one day I’ll actually watch it.

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Legendary art-punk Jon Langford coming this way to sing songs he wrote for Richard Byrne’s new play… in five months.

Posted on January 13, 2012 | Leave a comment

Jon Langford's portrait of Hank Williams

Here’s a little write-up I did about how one of my favorite songwriters who is also one of my favorite visual artists, the great mekon/Waco Brother/etc. Jon Langford has co-written some songs for a new play by DC-based playwright Richard Byrne. Continue reading →

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Bomb Out the Lights: Studio’s Time Stands Still, reviewed

Posted on January 12, 2012 | Leave a comment

Holly Twyford is a wounded photojournalist (SCOTT SUCHMAN)

The Studio Theater has kicked off 2012 right with a fine production of Donald Margulies’s Time Stands Still, a drama about two journalists’ uneasy return to domesticated life after separate injuries send them home from the field.

What I ran out of room to say in my Washington City Paper review is that the book the character played by Greg McFadden starts working on during his convalescence, an examination of the political subtext of horror cinema, sounds an awful lot like Shock Value, the one published by the New York Times’s Jason Zinoman – son of Studio Theater founder Joy Zinoman – last summer. Continue reading →

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Drive-By Truckers 9:30 Club Setlist Table II: The Secret of the Ooze

Posted on January 2, 2012 | Leave a comment

It’s not much of a photo, but it was a pretty fantastic way to spend New Year’s Eve. That’s Booker T. Jones, stage-right, performing at the 9:30 with the Drive-By Truckers, a band I love and that I’ve written about a lot. The first time I saw them play was at The Troubadour in Los Angeles in 2003 or 2004. All I remember about that show is that my then-girlfriend had a pain in her leg and we left early. Since then, I’ve seen DBT play the 9:30 probably 10 times. When they were there for a Friday & Saturday night stay last February, I made a table to show how different the two setlists were. Hey, some people care about baseball statistics. (DBT singer-songwriter Mike Cooley does not.) Continue reading →

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Patterson Hood & Mike Cooley of the Drive-By Truckers Take Your Questions!

Posted on December 30, 2011 | Leave a comment

(Okay, my questions. But still.)

The Drive-By Truckers are one of my favorite bands, and I’ve had the privilege of speaking with singer-songwriters Patterson Hood and Mike Cooley on several occasions during the last three-and-a-half years. I talked to them again, separately, for Washingtonian about their plans for their year-ending three-night stand at the 9:30 Club, which kicked off last night.

One of the things we discussed was Cooley’s two-night-only battlefield promotion to full-time frontman when Hood fell too ill to perform just before a weekend of 9:30 Club concerts in February 2009. I reviewed the first of those shows for the Washington Post. Continue reading →

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You, Narcissus: DC’s theater of theater

Posted on December 29, 2011 | Leave a comment

Christian Conn and Erica Sullivan in VENUS IN FUR. (SCOTT SUCHMAN/Studio Theater)

What was the Number One Topic under consideration by DC theaters in 2011? Why, the theater, of course.

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And Now for Something Slightly, If Not Completely, Different, but Also Slightly Longer: HARK HARK, DECK DECK: Yule-Tunes Eclectic & Inexplicable Team VI – The NOW SOUND of Christmas [Side B]

Posted on December 19, 2011 | Leave a comment

Side B. Merry Christmas!

You can find both sides of Hark Hark, Deck Deck: Yule-Tunes Eclectic & Inexplicable Team VI: The NOW SOUND of Christmas here.

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Presenting HARK HARK, DECK DECK: Yule-Tunes Eclectic & Inexplicable Team VI – The NOW SOUND of Christmas [Side A]

Posted on December 16, 2011 | Leave a comment

Yippe kai yay, Christmas lovers! My sixth annual audio Christmas card has arrived to illuminate and/or obfuscate your yule! At two hour-long sides, the first of which you can hear right now, this is the longest yulemix ever. Remember those 120-minute blank cassettes introduced in the twilight of the analog era that allowed you to record more music at lesser quality and were highly prone to breakage? Continue reading →

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Decadence, Inc.: Arena’s You, Nero and Signature’s Hairspray, considered.

Posted on December 16, 2011 | Leave a comment

Danny Scheie as Nero and Susannah Schulman as Poppaea. (SCOTT SUCHMAN/Arena Stage)

Amy Freed’s You, Nero, is, as I opine in today’s City Paper, a clever play about the limits of art as a humanizing influence. Or maybe the limits of mediocre art as a humanizing influence.

Or maybe it’s about how a bad upbringing can damage you beyond the reach of art’s rehabilitative prowess.

Or mediocre art’s rehabilitative . . . I’m still thinking about this, is the point. Which suggests Freed was successful, even if the ending is kind of a mess. Continue reading →

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Postcards from “Postcards from Italy”: Beirut at the 9:30 Club, reviewed.

Posted on December 14, 2011 | Leave a comment

I covered the first of Beirut’s two-night, tour-ending stand at 9:30 Club last night for the Washington Post. Read all about it in the paper-paper version, or see the version on Click Track for a few more of Josh Sisk’s fine photos from the show.

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Self-Convicted: Lauren Weedman’s BUST, reviewed

Posted on December 9, 2011 | Leave a comment

Not that bust. Grow up.

I wrote about writer/actor/comic/onetime Daily Show correspondent Lauren Weedman’s one-woman-show for the City Paper.

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Hurt’s So Good: Krapp’s Last Tape, briefly considered.

Posted on December 2, 2011 | Leave a comment

John, hurting.

Hey, I reviewed Gate Theatre Dublin’s John Hurt-starring Krapp’s Last Tape today for the Washington City Paper.

I’ve previously chewed on productions of Beckett’s Happy Days in 2007 and this year.

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Talk to the Hansard: Marketa Irglova at the 9:30 Club, reviewed.

Posted on November 30, 2011 | 1 Comment

I’ve seen The Swell Season perform twice. One of those shows was an opening set for Damien Rice about six months before the film Once came out in the States, dramatically raising their profile. I’ve seen male-half-of-the-Swell Season Glen Hansard’s longtime band The Frames play a great show to a half empty 9:30 Club, too.

Anyway, the Paper of Record sent me to the 9:30 Club the other night to cover Marketa Irglova’s first solo tour, supporting her debut album Anar. My conclusion? She’s a great singer but too humble a performer to sustain interest through a headlining-length set, and the songs she’s writing without Hansard all seem to share one, slow tempo. To be fair, I don’t think Hansard’s as good a songwriter on his own as he is when collaborating with her, either. Here’s the review.

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Filmspotting No. 374: On Alexander Payne’s The Descendants, plus our Top Five Movies About Movies

Posted on November 24, 2011 | Leave a comment

Happy Thanksgiving, everybody! The new episode of Filmspotting, wherein Adam Kempenaar let me sit in to talk about Alexander Payne‘s The Descendants with him and then revisit the very first Top Five topic ever discussed on the the show — Movies About Movies — is available for your listening pleasure. Don’t go trampling any Wal-Mart greeters to death tomorrow morning in your pursuit of holiday bargains, now.

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Hey, I Like the Quarry House, Too: Kid Rock at the Fillmore, discussed.

Posted on November 18, 2011 | Leave a comment

So the Washington Post sent me to a Kid Rock show. One of the best things about working as a critic is that it forces you to broaden your taste! It was my first visit to the Fillmore Silver Spring, the new Live Nation concert venue across from the AFI Silver Theater that finally opened its doors two months ago after years of preamble. Here’s my report of what all went down.

Kid Rock is 40 years old. His most recent album, the year-old “Born Free,” was produced by late-career rejuvenation specialist Rick Rubin and evokes 1970s Bob Seger more than it does the Clinton-era rap-rock that made Rock a multiplatinum star. He hasn’t been arrested at a strip club or a Waffle House in years. He’s recorded a duet with Sheryl Crow. Twice, actually.

But chin-and-middle-fingers up, Kid Rock fans. While these harbingers of mortality are unmistakable, Rock’s 105-minute set at a tightly-packed Fillmore Silver Spring last night demonstrated that maturity hasn’t laid its liver-spotted hands on him just yet. Continue reading →

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