Word: folk
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...better or for worse, Josh Ritter’s “The Animal Years” could just as easily have been released in the 1970s, if not earlier. He’s an adept, though plain, troubadour, who here treads the well-worn path of mostly-acoustic folk, fusing the singer/songwriter vibe with bluegrass and country-western. In this release, Ritter has built solidly from the down home sound of his earlier albums, and he has effectively expanded his lyrical and musical creativity without losing his distinctively homespun sound. His rendition of mellow folk music is reminiscent...
...where Robin Williams is a big silverback ape and Jon Stewart a sneaky hyena, Flight of the Conchords are tiny fawns. Their whimsical acoustic-guitar songs and gentle banter totter out on spindly legs to nibble at funny bones. The duo, who claim to be the "fourth most popular folk parodists in New Zealand," sing about the usual stuff--mistaken identity, killer robots, racist dragons--but with an earnest, blinking naivet. It's a hemisphere away from the witty social commentary that reigns on America's comedy circuit. "I guess we're kind of nerdy hipsters," says Bret McKenzie (except...
...butch and the femme lesbians learned to get along), but she resists the label some have tried to stamp on her. "That puts something first, besides funny," she says. "My show's about a hundred other things." Like, oh, AIDS and Hurricane Katrina--for which she devises cheery mock-folk songs--and Brokeback Mountain, which she turns into a video game. Drysdale, 27--who spent her grade-school years in Versailles and Vancouver, B.C., and dropped out of Sarah Lawrence to sell T shirts at Chicago's Second City (before joining the troupe)--is that rarity in the tired...
...people embarrassing themselves. It juxtaposes shots of random people singing along to “Walk Away” as it plays on the radio, making utter fools of themselves in the office, in the locker room, and even in a broom closet. And all these average-looking folk seem to be reveling in their tone deafness while they repulse everyone around them...
...between well-to-do city dwellers and impoverished peasants gets wider, the fury of the poor is fast becoming explosive. With access to the mass media and the Internet, village folk are becoming more conscious of pervasive hardship and injustice and are beginning to voice their resentment. The protests have put the authorities in a bind. True to the dogma of communism, the regime is making incessant efforts to clamp down on websites and blogs, hoping that dissent will not burst into a wildfire. When the demonstrations get ugly, the government may opt for bloody suppression and further fuel...