After eight years of relative silence since the fairly blah Us, Peter Gabriel’s finally cranked up the steam and put some music out. Besides the new studio album, Up (due out in a few months) and a set of remastered re-releases of a dozen-odd of his older stuff, Gabriel’s also dipped back into soundtrack work … Read more
When most bands come out with a record this strong 25 years into their career, it’s a surprising comeback. For Los Lobos, it’s just the new album. The experimentalism heard on recent Lobos discs and side projects like the Latin Playboys is toned down here in favor of thick slabs of crunchy Latin rock, rife … Read more
If you’ve been paying attention, you know that we take a little time each issue to bang on about The Next Big Thing in music. Well forget everything we said before. If you want to know what the future of rock music is, do this: Take all the wasted potential of Beck, Air, Radiohead, and … Read more
In these distracted times, kids are frequently more adept than their parents at video games, VCRs, and all manner of batteries-not-included-some-assembly-required. But there’s still plenty of room for real magic and wonder. There’s no better place to experience that simple childish joy than the Minnesota Zoo’s butterfly garden, now open through Labor Day. In a … Read more
Ha, the stoic folks at the Swedish Institute are hipper than you think. We take the name of this fete to indicate that Gen-Xers are finally embracing something as square and unironic as their own ethnic heritage, and it’s about time. We’ve decided that ethnic pride among those of us of Northern European descent is … Read more
It was a surprisingly radical idea in 1996 to stage a full-scale Broadway musical that infused show tunes with rock and R&B, and at the same time dealt head-on with AIDS, drug addiction, and homelessness. It’s safe to say that the risk paid off. Jonathan Larson’s high-spirited, gritty look at life among New York’s young … Read more
The Jungle seems to have struck on a formula worth exploring. After a long and successful (and extended) run of The Blue Room, David Hare’s adaptation of Schnitzler’s La Ronde, The Jungle now presents this premiere of a script by St. Paul playwright Craig Wright. Blue Room, you’ll recall, is a sort of Eyes Wide … Read more
This is a six-shooter of great Westerns encompassing the sweep of the genre in all its forms, from the highly traditional to the highly revisionist. Let’s round them all up: The Magnificent Seven, a remake of Kurosawa’s The Seven Samurai, is breezier and less insightful but tremendously entertaining. Yul Brynner shines as the white-knight gunslinger, … Read more
What better way to spend your Monday nights than in the dark with Billy Wilder? This summer’s Walker Art Center-run outdoor series gives due props to the Austrian expatriate, who died in March leaving behind one of Hollywood’s richest legacies. The six films here barely scratch the surface of his filmography. Besides familiar classics Some … Read more
Some of us have a love-hate relationship with the short story: We love it for the discipline and small miracle required to write a decent one, and for the simple, satisfying fact that we can read it in a single sitting. But we hate it for not pulling us in and keeping us there the … Read more