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Rock Art Rock
The Decemberists
September 19, 2009
Terminal 5, New York, NY
By Amanda Hatfield "The Decemberists played a special one night 'lottery show,' where the songs played were picked at random by a master of ceremonies, played by John Wesley Harding..."
Ra Ra Riot
April 4, 2009
Webster Hall, New York City, NY
By Amanda Hatfield "This show was, at the time, the biggest one Ra Ra Riot had sold out as headliners, and it was clear to me after watching it that the band is destined for even bigger and better things..."
Florence and the Machine
October 28, 2009
Bowery Ballroom, New York City, NY
By Amanda Hatfield "Florence Welsh and her backing band delighted and mesmerized a sold-out crowd at Bowery in her first official NY headlining show..."
Dirty Projectors
July 19, 2009
Williamsburg Waterfront (Brooklyn, NY)
By Amanda Hatfield "I was skeptical about how well Dirty Projectors' gorgeous, complex vocal harmonies would carry over outdoors, standing under hot sunshine..."
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Column: Reviews
ARMS: Kids Aflame
ARMS
Kids Aflame
(Gigantic, 2009)
When he’s not crafting riffs for the Brooklyn-based pop-rockers the Harlem Shakes, guitarist Todd Goldstein becomes ARMS, a project he’s been chipping away at between Shakes tours since 2004. ARMS is a nice break from the Harlem Shakes for fans, and a refreshingly sweet (though still edgy) listen for any fan of neurotic, folk-influenced indie-pop.
In Kids Aflame, Goldstein’s debut full-length as ARMS, his moody baritone mixes with his sparkly electric guitar and melancholy ukulele under a heavy layer of reverb. It’s an authentically lo-fi album, recorded here, there, and everywhere on portable recording equipment—sometimes nothing more than a microphone and a laptop in a dressing room, sometimes as much as a bedroom setup. The format definitely suits Goldstein, as his songwriting and vocal quirks enjoy the spotlight here—fancy production would eliminate the charm and shift the focus away from those things. As it is, without bells and whistles, Kids Aflame speaks with a distinctive voice. read more
Norah Jones: The Fall
Norah Jones
The Fall
(Blue Note, 2009)
Critics can be cruel. And for the past seven years or so, the success of Norah Jones has been whipping some of my nastier colleagues into a frenzy. I’ve seen more than one review refer to her as “S’Norah Jones,” which may be a clever quip, but doesn’t really say anything about her music or vocal style. She’s knocked for being “jazz lite” and laidback, but her warm, intimate vocal style is preferable to the over-singing and over-emoting of the American Idol winners and their clones who have dominated mainstream pop of late. Except for a brief period in the early to mid-’70s, the mass American audience hasn’t necessarily appreciated subtlety in music, so Jones’ success seems like a hopeful sign to me.
This past summer, word began to leak that Jones was working on a “rock” record. While there’s plenty of electric guitar on The Fall, don’t expect Jones to be joining AC/DC on tour anytime soon. The record is a bit, but only a bit, more uptempo than Not Too Late, but it does show off Jones’ considerable songwriting chops. She has a few co-writes here, including two with old collaborator Jesse Harris and one with alt-country ne’er-do-well Ryan Adams, but the strongest tunes are the ones Jones wrote all by herself. Like her past albums, there’s more than a bit of country in her compositions, but the biggest surprises are her excursions into classic ’50s-style R&B.
The Mary Onettes: Islands
The Mary Onettes
Islands
(Labrador, 2009)
With synth-pop still pulsing in clubs and Jesus and Mary Chain clones continuing to draw, um, buzz to their linty bubblegum, it’s only a matter of time before the ’80s revival has officially gone on longer than the ’80s themselves. Even the Mary Onettes—a Swedish four-piece drawing on radio-ready, mega-produced pop songs—are still relatively early in their life cycle, releasing their sophomore album here in the decade’s dying months. Their self-titled debut album, from 2007, boasted at least one crypto-cover of “I Melt with You” (“Lost”), and like their countrymen in the Shout Out Louds, that kind of head-cold-afflicted Scandinavian English inflection makes the Cure comparisons even more inevitable. (Bonuses: A bit of eyeliner goth, the “Be My Baby” drum intro, and some, god help me but the word does apply, angular New Order keyboard lines. It’s a fun record, and you should totally check it out.)
But unlike the first record, there is a crucial difference between Islands and the awesomely ’80s one-hitters whose moves it bites: The choruses. As far as atmosphere goes, Islands has teen-movie drama to spare—but there are precious few of the kinds of hooks that’ll send you leaping over the driver’s shoulder from the back seat to grab the volume knob (after which the driver will join you in singing along too, momentarily forgetting the fact that you almost sent the car off the road). read more
Monotonix: Where Were You When It Happened?
Monotonix
Where Were You When It Happened?
(Drag City, 2009)
One admirer I know of this feral Tel Aviv power trio gushed about a live show recently where he went home smelling like trash because the band emptied the venue’s trash bins over the audience’s heads. Uh, rock ‘n’ roll? If that’s the experience the title question of their first “full-length” (just minutes longer than last year’s EP debut) refers to, then I’ll gladly answer a few years from now, “at home, not smelling like trash.” But I’ll still be enjoying Where Were You When It Happened? as a wild souvenir someone else who’s braver brought me.
The scuzzy sound of these eight relentless, crackly, distorted yet excellently cut tracks recalls some psychedelic nightmare triangulation of Gov’t Mule, early Soundgarden, and maybe the Jesus Lizard. Their sound is so in-your-face dry, it’s not hard to see why their concert setup (usually on the floor amongst the crowd à la Dan Deacon and Lightning Bolt) works—the churning effect is such a grainy black hole you feel like you’re inside it. Happened? is certainly the thickest, densest-sounding indie rock I’ve heard since Sleater-Kinney’s The Woods (or for that matter, molasses-y Woods tour openers Dead Meadow). Or maybe Queens of the Stone Age. But counter to what their name suggests, Monotonix are anything but “robot-rock.” Showoff-y, jammy, highlighting sludgy chops over craft, it’s a wonder they’re any good at all. But there’s no more eloquent way of putting it: The band succeeds at fulfilling and overturning clichés so well you may even hold out for a drum solo. Their best hook (from “My Needs”) screams “ohhhh noooo / ohhh yeaaaaah,” their funkiest chugga-chugga jam an early Soundgarden pastiche called “Set Me Free.” Great, wildly exaggerated reconstitutions of the over-fetishized ’70s, all the songs feel the same even though they run the gamut from six-minute Black Sabbath to two-minute Dead Boys.
The problem, if any, is their debt to the power-trio format that renders the parts somewhat inconsequential to the sum. That is, their tightness is messy and jarring but doesn’t actually leave room for much personality to spill out. But the songs are memorable, thankfully, and they know (for now) to leave relentlessness alone: Eight tracks in half an hour of this stuff should be all you need.
Listen: Various Tracks [at myspace.com]
The Swimmers: People Are Soft
The Swimmers
People Are Soft
(MAD Dragon, 2009)
No need to worry about a sophomore slump from Philly four-piece the Swimmers. People Are Soft, the follow-up to 2008’s Fighting Trees, is a thick slice of shimmering pop, with more layered arrangements than their debut, and a hefty dose of atmospherics for those that like a side of ambiance with their rock.
There are lots of production surprises on the record, which keep things interesting throughout. On “What This World Is Coming To”, just when you think the song has run out of steam, it winds up and drops into a wonderful half-time breakdown, replete with hand claps, bass, and g-funk synth courtesy of Krista Yutzy-Burkey. Steve Yutzy-Burkey’s vocals on “Save Me” use some anticipatory backwards doubling before being funneled into a whirlpool of echo.
The only song that seems overly repetitive is “A Hundred Hearts”, with its nursery rhyme-like chorus: “If you had a hundred hearts you could try to ration out ‘em / But then one by one they’d break ‘em and you’d only be without ‘em.” Repetitive, yes, but so much so that it gets stuck in your head till you want to play it again.
The stormy lyrics continue with the dreary “Dresses Don’t Fit”, a brooding dirge set to a quick tempo. The chorus picks up a hopeful chord change just to slam you with the quizzical downer: “No, the dresses don’t fit / But they won’t quit until you’re gone / Uh-uh, the windows won’t lock / But people will find their way into your heart.” “Drug Party” also does a remarkable job of setting heavy subject matter over a fun sing-along. Fuzzy bass and drums—supplied by Rick Sieber and Scott French, respectively—are accentuated by distorted xylophone and vocals that intone, “Tell me that I’m alright sister / Pick me up and give me water… I am always outside getting sick.”
Two other lines from “Drug Party”—”I can settle into my own skin” and “I know I’ll learn to settle in”—are evoked again on the finale, “Try to Settle In.” That song is an audio massacre. The drums sound like they’re in another room, down a tunnel, and around the block; the vocals are delivered in mumbles; the whole song swings, throwing around its weight, until it crumbles and dissolves into a stream of fizz. The record seems completed when a dancefloor-worthy synth breakdown reintroduces the melody with church bells.
Even more so than the noise and effects, the melodies are astounding. The melodies hook you like earrings from the get-go. Opener “Shelter” layers three complementary melodies on the opening drive, and from there they proceed to empty out their bag of melodic tricks. I would recommend a little settling in or maybe settling down for the Swimmers, except that it might stunt their growth.
Listen: Various Tracks [at myspace.com]
Neon Indian: Psychic Chasms
Neon Indian
Psychic Chasms
(Lefse, 2009)
What I know of Alan Palomo comes from his first album, whose title I originally read as Psychic Charms. “Glo-fi” or “chillwave,” as it’s been called, has been making the rounds since June or so, with bands named after items from the attic—like Washed Out and Memory Tapes—following suit with a sound akin to a twirly cassette tape blur that nicely implements indie’s childhood fixation of late. Generally, sound is more important than lyrics. Think Talkboy recordings made by children that’ve been melted by sun and drugs. Prototypes of this shoegaze-derived soundscaping include Boards of Canada and the Olivia Tremor Control, with Daft Punk thrown in for funk and heft. But Palomo (aka Neon Indian) has developed into the DJ Shadow or Burial of the genre. Album-oriented while his peers prefer singles, he typifies the tape-y haze’s extreme to its max and uses it on the best album the scene has seen since Boards of Canada’s Music Has the Right to Children. And Psychic Chasms is half as long and twice as tuneful.
His music isn’t beautiful or anything, and certainly not subtle or tender like Endtroducing…, but even Palomo’s one-minute songs are a display of riches in a shiny glass case that showcase his mind-boggling synth collection. Drums boil down to the same mash/stomp kick/snare pattern, just like Justice used on Cross in 2007 as a metronomic framework for extraordinarily maximal music. Flutters, runs, Mario 3 power-ups, and the occasional plastic guitar solo perk up your ears every few seconds, which means that, in a half-hour running time, there’s a lot of ear-nuzzling for your ADHD.
Every track stands out eventually, but the initial phase of these—the woo-hooing “Deadbeat Summer”, the guffawing “Laughing Gas”, ’80s movie montage “Terminally Chill”, the glinting title tune, and the heavenward “Should’ve Taken Acid with You”—make me wish there was a radio format for this parallel, under-the-bed universe. Even the intro is memorable: Just a square wave greeting and a drum roll. I’d categorize the lyrics as “wistfully regretful” if “Acid” is any indication—too bored and baked out of his mind to quite recall a breakup that he may or may not have hallucinated altogether. And the wide sonic palette has its in-jokes; a 303-like acid synth blurts underneath it before the Nintendo-fied “Mind, Drips” shows up. The :25, :48, :57, and 1:43 songs definitely aren’t interludes. If there’s any guilt to be had, it’s how nostalgia-driven the project is, designed to sucker us in like an old cartoon on YouTube. This was made for the MySpace generation. So I can’t promise Chromeo fans won’t dig the thing, but let’s be thankful Palomo backed it up with melodies and wit.
Listen: Various Tracks [at myspace.com]
Hyperstory: Hyperstory
Hyperstory
Hyperstory
(Pureland, 2009)
If you Google the name of C. Scott Blevins—the songwriter, guitarist, and producer who records as Hyperstory, you won’t find very much at all. Most sites merely paraphrase, or print verbatim, the four paragraphs of the press release that accompanies his self-titled debut. What is known is that Blevins lives in Los Angeles and has a far-reaching musical vision that’s hard to pin down. Almost 30 musicians, including a full horn section, female backing vocalists, acoustic and electric bassists, drummers, keyboard players, and a pedal steel guitar whiz, contribute to the soundscapes on Hyperstory, but there’s not a single cluttered note.
The album opens with a prelude of blue synthesizer notes and the sound of a crowd mixed down and processed to provide a ghostly ambience before moving into “A Happening”, a metaphysical soul song with a slightly Eastern European feel. Guest vocalist Julian Cassia’s whispered vocal and a laid-back funk backbeat produce a dislocated feel that complements the confusion of the lyric. Halfway through, a chorus of children’s voices come in singing random “la la la”s, adding to the peculiar ambience. “Something Good” opens with a drum beat and trebly guitar that wouldn’t be out of place on a surf tune, but morphs into a Philly soul style thing with Cassia’s high tenor suggesting a mix of the Stylistics and early ’80s British synth-driven R&B without sounding overly derivative. The lyric balances the desire for satisfaction with the ominous knowledge of ultimate loss and limitation.
“Mandate” drops more weirdness into the mix; a ranting street preacher—again, mixed down and processed—is complemented by a synthesizer’s hiss and the ambient sound of a late night street corner. “Will It Ever Change” is an achingly beautiful torch song with a delicate, chiming guitar pulse and another disconsolate vocal from Cassia. Wailing, wordless, gospel-drenched female vocals weave in and around an indigo horn chart that slowly grows in volume and intensity as the tune comes to a climax. “Ascension” is the trippiest track, an instrumental that conflates Memphis soul, German prog-rock, and Blaxploitation wah-wah guitars. “A Reckoning” moves back into existential angst with Cassia crooning about the impossibility of ever knowing anything for certain. It rides a somnambulant Motown-ish beat and resolves with another big new wave-y chorus that’s catchy as hell and provides a big, if perhaps unsatisfying, release—emotionally that is. Musically, it’s the album’s biggest release, as it builds and builds to a dizzying conclusion. “End Story” tops the record off with a blue electric piano, a bit of devil-may-care whistling, and jazzy horn orchestrations with a touch of Bacharach.
Hyperstory is cinematic in style, with expansive arrangements that suggest the soundtrack for a moody, urban musical. The overall sound is smooth and seductive, and while it implies quiet storm soul, chill room electronica, and trip-hop, it doesn’t fit easily into any of those genres. The songwriting is old-fashioned, producing strongly constructed tunes with solid, catchy choruses and instrumental hooks that make every tune sound like a hit. The instrumental interludes are ambient portraits that evoke bustling nighttime streets and mysterious back alleys. Blevins seamlessly blends real instruments with loops and samples. It’s hard to distinguish between the real and sampled sounds, and the result always sounds organic. The dreamy, soulful vocals of Cassia, who has a subtle delivery that slowly wins you over with its understated emotion, hold it all together.
Listen: Various Tracks [at myspace.com]
Lou Barlow: Goodnight Unknown
Lou Barlow
Goodnight Unknown
(Merge, 2009)
It’s been four years since Emoh? Really? Well, I guess it makes sense that I haven’t necessarily missed Lou Barlow in the last four years. Any of his varying bands, from Dinosaur Jr. to Sebadoh to the Folk Implosion, never really leave my listening repertoire. I go through Barlow phases pretty frequently, seemingly content with what he’s given us thus far. Not to mention the fact that he’s reunited and put out two new albums with Dinosaur Jr., plus he has reissued three of Sebadoh’s classic albums.
However, even though I didn’t think I was missing new musical genius from Barlow, I was. I suppose these things just have a way of showing themselves to be true only after they appear. How Goodnight Unknown could add any more value to his already lengthy, kickass discography of music comes as a bit of a surprise to me, but I’m happy to report that it totally delivers. This is classic Barlow, and his passion for lo-fi creativity still thrives.
When first listening to the record, there’s not exactly an overwhelming sense that Barlow is traversing much new territory (old Lou is still writing on themes of anxiety and ambivalence, but also about still having faith in daily proceedings, enough to move forward), but with some knowledge of his hard work and processes, it reminds us that his creative output has never been the kind to smack one in the face for recognition. Luckily, there’s a short documentary about the making of Goodnight Unknown to give us some insight, where we can view raw footage of Barlow in his studio as he narrates the making of the album.
In particular, there is a scene in which he takes children’s wind-up toys apart, breaking down the melodies of the toys songs and isolating single notes. From there, he would layer that single note with similar notes from other toys onto a cassette four-track, fading them up and down, as if to almost play the four-track as an instrument to create a bed of chimes. Barlow comments in the short film that it was a very involved process, to extract a note, round all the notes up, and adjust the pitch control. These tinkering sounds show up on many songs on Goodnight Unknown (“Too Much Freedom”, “The Right”, “I’m Thinking…”, “One Machine, One Long Fight”, and elsewhere), clinking noises that squirm just below the surface. If a person didn’t know any better, these subtle nuances would easily be glossed over.
Where Emoh was a mostly acoustic, well-produced affair, Goodnight Unknown emerges with the hard-charging “Sharing”, establishing a rock tone that hearkens back to some early Sebadoh tracks and also brings to mind Folk Implosion’s One Part Lullaby. In fact, just as that album was about Barlow’s love/hate relationship with Los Angeles, Goodnight Unknown at times speaks to that same theme as well. “Faith in Your Heartbeat” could be one of those tracks. Barlow sings, “Find me a place rules can be broken / Way out into the open / California, bury me / Have faith in your heartbeat.” Thanks in part to the Melvins’ drummer Dale Crover, many of the tracks on the album take on a more rock-oriented shape. There’s also a yearning urgency to Goodnight Unknown that takes form, not just in the rockers, but also in the tuneful acoustic pop songs. Credit here must also be given to Imaad Wasif (Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Alaska!) whose pretty guitar work appears on seven of the 14 tracks here, including “Don’t Apologize”, which is one of the best tracks on the album, as good as anything Barlow’s ever done.
When all is said and done, however, the songwriting is the most prevalent aspect of Goodnight Unknown. The melodic, driving “I’m Thinking…” is sure to have fans of his lyricism nodding along in assured recognition. Full of sharp rockers and contagious pop twists, the lyrics contained within this album will drill you to the core with all the heartbreak and playfulness Barlow is known for.
Watch: Goodnight Unknown documentary [at youtube.com]
The xx: xx
The xx
xx
(XL, 2009)
The xx seemed to appear from out of nowhere, but all of a sudden everyone is talking about them. I received an email and a download link in my inbox a little over a month ago, and took a listen, having absolutely no idea what to expect because I had actually never heard them, or even heard of them. And then suddenly, within a few days, their name was everywhere, from my Scottish friend who lives down the street telling me about their upcoming show, to widespread blog coverage, to conversational utterances about them becoming more and more frequent, ’til it all culminated in the spectacle of CMJ, a festival made for a band like the xx to come to prominence. They played a ton of shows and seemed to be one of the few common denominators of the entire festival, one of the few bands who rose above the multitudes to make the trek and expense of NYC actually worth something, until, suddenly, they announced that they were taking a break, citing exhaustion and the loss of their guitarist to the rigors of the road and the toils of such an insistent lifestyle. Whew.
Let’s start from the beginning. The xx makes breathy bedroom beats; sexy, ambient music that melts like ice cubes, cool and collected as it smolders under a licking candle flame. A quartet from South London who met at the Elliott School in 2005 (the same place that spawned Burial, Hot Chip, and Four Tet), the xx has a sound way beyond their young years, assured and composed in a way that many bands of various levels of notoriety don’t always manage. They aren’t making catchy, beat-driven music or high-energy fluff that usually gets the kids talking; rather, this is a British-bred take on slowcore. Their roots together go way back—to childhood in the instance of Romy Madley Croft (vocals/guitar) and Oliver Sim (vocals/bass)—and that foundation is translated through their wistful melancholia and sultry confidence that can be so fearlessly channeled in those swingin’ years of youth. When uninhibited debuts are executed this breezily, the indie underground usually tends to realize it is worth the listen—case in point. Hence, today we are practically dizzy in the aftermath of the xx’s quick ascension to become one of the bands to take the autumn of 2009 by storm.
Sure, xx is a really good album, but I’m surprised that it caught on the way it did. Its allure is understated; it’s not exactly bright and catchy. But xx is a grower. Opener, the appropriately titled “Intro”, is a mellow-paced song that signals where the rest of the album is headed with its tempered handclaps and breathy vocals, which melt directly into the following track, “VCR”, which finds Madley Croft singing, “You used to have all the answers / And you, you still have them, too / And we, we live half in the daytime / And we, we live half at night.” Perhaps a mantra for the next generation of disillusioned youth?
The rest of the album follows suit, song dripping into song, softly simmering just underneath coolly collected studio sounds and vocals, tracks with names like “Islands”, “Shelter”, “Fantasy”, ending in a trifecta of celestially imbued atmosphere: “Infinity”, “Night Time”, and “Stars”, an expansive and ethereal way for this buzzing band to end their first album. Where they’ll take it from here, if they can take it anywhere, we’ll just have to wait and see.
Listen: Various Tracks [at myspace.com]
Them Crooked Vultures: Them Crooked Vultures
by: James Greene Jr.
Them Crooked Vultures
(Interscope, 2009)
The debut album from hard rock supergroup Them Crooked Vultures is a fairly mediocre exercise until you take into consideration bassist John Paul Jones. It was probably no easy feat for the other two Vultures, Queens of the Stone Age frontman Josh Homme and Foo Fighter Dave Grohl, to record an album with a Revolutionary War hero who died precisely 217 years ago. That they could rouse any kind of performance from the long-expired sea captain is, in fact, nothing short of a miracle. Them Crooked Vultures deserve not only a Grammy but several major scientific awards for defying the laws of nature in such a bold, successful manner.
I have just been informed that the John Paul Jones in question is actually the bass player from English music legends Led Zeppelin. While that’s still quite a “get” for our pals Homme and Grohl (Zep’s Jones is known for his finicky nature), it saddens me to learn the space-time continuum has not actually been ruptured by Brody Dalle’s husband and the former drummer for Nirvana. Maybe next time, guys.
Regarding the actual music contained on Them Crooked Vultures, ’tis little more than a murky aural stew boasting the vague flavors of its highly pedigreed ingredients. Like Velvet Revolver and Chickenfoot before them, TCV remain so firmly rooted in a rote 1970s classic rock sound (a sound most commonly associated with, oh, I don’t know, Led Zeppelin and the Foo Fighters) that there is no way anyone who remembers Wolfman Jack or Lynda Carter will dislike them. By the same hand, the Vultures do so little to explore new ideas that there is no way anyone who has ever posted to 4chan or watched Glee will be excited by them. We’ve heard Homme and Grohl whip up thrilling music in the past. Is the influence of the mercurial Jones really that strong?
There are some killer riffs to be found here, like the wobbly one that holds up “Dead End Friends”, but the band’s insistence on staying in third gear tempo-wise makes the entire album seem to go on for an eternity. They could have shaved two minutes off nearly every track and still brought in nearly an hour’s worth of music. I guess sometimes when you “lock into a groove,” the “power of the rock” is too immense to stop from “enveloping your soul.” On a related note, there are a few percussion moments on Them Crooked Vultures that suggest someone was merely tapping on a bong with a pencil.
To be fair, the musicians themselves are in top form. Grohl’s drumming is crisp and precise. Homme’s voice alternates as usual between swaggering, dreamy, and paint-huffing creepy. In addition to his bass work, JP Jones throws out some keyboard dalliances that certainly liven up the proceedings. The recording and production, handled by the three men in question, was clearly done in a professional setting; if any screaming children or howling dogs were in attendance, they were expertly excised from the recording. The worst accusation you can level at Them Crooked Vultures concerns the songwriting—it’s boring, uninspired fart rock we’ve endured a trillion times before. You might as well be pouring molasses in my ear.
Most of the song titles on this record are equally eye-rolling. “Mind Eraser, No Chaser.” “Interlude with Ludes.” “Caligulove.” Who came up with these, the LSD-addled bum who lives in the dumpster behind the Hy-Vee on Route 12? If so, his name is Gene and he needs his diabetes medicine. Please make sure he gets it. We don’t want a repeat of last Christmas.
As far as vanity projects go, Them Crooked Vultures isn’t nearly as painful or offensive as Russell Crowe’s band or any of Jennifer Love Hewitt’s musical releases. Still, for a record boasting such major league talent, TCV is painfully and offensively dull. Sammy Hagar’s wretched cover of “Fight for Your Right” was more inspired and daring than anything here. Perhaps next time the Vultures should try to hire a several centuries dead historical figure to participate in their album. Then they’d at least have an interesting angle (and a potential Ghost Hunters tie-in!).
Listen: Various Tracks [at myspace.com]
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by: James Greene Jr.
published: November 19, 2009 in column: Reviews
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