Word: albums
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...until moderate President Khatami's term in 1997 that regulations loosened up sufficiently to allow Iranian rock band to spring up in garages across Tehran. Today, even state radio runs government-approved pop music, but independent rockers and rappers have thus far failed to receive permits for concerts or album releases...
Alanis Morissette Flavors of Entanglement; out June 10 Miss You Oughta Know's first album since her ex-fiancé got engaged to Scarlett Johansson is, naturally, confessional ("I miss ... the thought of us bringing up our kids"). It takes a hard heart not to be moved by Morissette alone at her piano--but a strong ear to love producer Guy Sigsworth's New Agey indulgences. A mixed bag if ever there...
...fourth album, Viva la Vida, out June 17, Martin has volunteered that his band isn't as good as Radiohead or U2 and that cultural dominance arrived before it was earned. The goal on Viva la Vida, he's said, was to "get better rather than bigger"--which explains the choice of Brian Eno as co-producer. Eno, 60, was a founding member of Roxy Music but gained his greatest fame as the composer of such endearingly odd ambient albums as Music for Airports and as the producer behind U2's sonic leap on its fourth album, The Unforgettable Fire...
...lessons learned musically don't translate to Martin's lyrics. He tries to sound less like the sweetest guy in the world and more like a man of mystery; he's even given the album a theme--death. "At night they would go walking till the breaking of the day/ The morning is for sleeping," he begins on Cemeteries of London, one of several attempts at narrative. But even if you pick your way past that pileup of gerunds, the storytelling never takes off. Beyond the absence of plot and characters, Martin just doesn't have a knack for phrasing...
...museum itself? It's entertaining and briskly informative, filled with flat-screen TVs showing period footage and glass cases that hold things like old Jefferson Airplane album covers. I enjoyed it well enough. But I was never able to shake the feeling that the place that really preserves the spirit of Woodstock is that big open field outside. Woodstock was the last great event of the 19th century, a delayed outburst of Romantic-era communalism and nature worship. It was built on sentiments that aren't conveyed very well by institutional means. So if you visit the museum, which...