Word: alt
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...album’s sound: Oldham’s usual lo-fi folk aesthetic is dropped in favor of a Skynrydesque Southern-rawk. The album’s harder sound is also due to Matt Sweeney’s guitars: the last time Oldham and Sweeney collaborated, as the alt-country power-duo “Superwolf,” the results were similarly heavy. Though you wouldn’t expect it, this harder sound really enhances Oldham’s vocal performance: he forsakes the irritating mumble-whisper delivery of albums past for throatier, fuller vocalizations...
...Actual Air” was released to much critical acclaim), and he brings his unique literary sensibility to each of the group’s records. Perhaps because of Berman’s strange proclivities, the Silver Jews have never achieved the (comparative) popularity of some of their alt-country contemporaries: Wilco and Ryan Adams especially. Berman savors the absurd, and his songs abound with bizarre characterizations and nonsensical turns of phrase. Berman’s genius is his ability to invest these caricatures with pathos and existential import: the freaks and geeks that populate Berman songs are transformed into...
DIED. R.L. BURNSIDE, 78, ex-sharecropper and Mississippi blues master who first found fame in the 1990s with the documentary Deep Blues and his recordings for Fat Possum Records, based in Oxford, Miss.; in Memphis. His raw, unrehearsed sound soon drew a cadre of mostly white, alt-rock admirers, some of whom, like Jon Spencer, became collaborators; one of Burnside's pioneering 1998 blues-techno tunes, It's Bad You Know, was later featured on TV's The Sopranos...
...businessman and Cuban immigrant Aurelio Barreto III, 46, dreamed up a chain of mall stores selling cool Christian stuff for teens, even other Christians rolled their eyes. Undeterred, Barreto named his venture C28 (for Colossians 2:8) and has opened six stores since 2001. The loud music is Christian alt-rock, the graffiti on the floor is a blue cross and the toe rings say JESUS NEVER FAILS YOU. "When you walk in here, it's happy," says customer James Persinger, 19. Barreto admits he's not always happy contemplating the balance sheets: C28 has eaten up $1.9 million...
...Compared to the severe problems the NHS faces in improving the quality of service and accountability of doctors,” Alt wrote in an e-mail, “there is still a long...