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Amid the unexpected late-90s rush of Lilith fairies and Nick Drake-loving neo-folkies, English singer-songwriter Beth Orton was a standout—if not for her disarmingly fragile voice, then for her ability to flirt with club-music backdrops and borrowed beats without betraying the intimate acoustica that informs her best songs. Even in the company of esteemed electronic icons like Everything But the Girl and William Orbit, her unvarnished delivery and astute melodies have managed to dominate the frame. At the moment, she’s crossing the U.S. on a headlining club tour in preparation for the July release of her long-awaited third album, Daybreaker. The new disc features contributions from British digital wizards (Chemical Brothers, EBTG’s Ben Watt) and American roots-rock royals alike (Ryan Adams, Emmylou Harris), but this road trip is Orton’s, and it’ll take surprise guests or some awfully persistent heckling to steal the spotlight. Fine Line, (612) 338-8100

No matter how desperately loyal you might be to Minneapolis music, there’s no use begrudging the Goo Goo Dolls for taking the Replacements’ sound farther than the Replacements themselves ever could. As an enlightening exercise, erase the sales figures from your memory, spin the Goos’ new Gutterflower and Paul Westerberg’s new Stereo/Mono back-to-back, and ask yourself which act sounds more vital. That said, we still don’t change the station when one of Johnny Rzeznik’s endlessly soundtrack-friendly rock confections comes creeping through the speakers. From the pre-breakthrough anthem “We Are the Normal” (co-penned by Paul) to the critically undervalued Dizzy Up the Girl to the new stuff, there’s plenty to like about this trio that began as a drunken cover band in Buffalo, New York. And if you wanna boil it down to hooky singles from soundtracks to drippy romance movies, we’re uncomfortably split on the question of “Iris” versus “Dyslexic Heart.” While the rudiments of their writing may have moved toward the center, word is that the Goos still exploit the energy of live performance with bar-band enthusiasm. Northrop may not be 7th Street Entry, but it’s not Target Center, either. Northrop Auditorium, (612) 624-2345

With Car Wheels on a Gravel Road in 1998, Lucinda Williams finally got the attention she so richly deserved. The Texan singer and songwriter had been toiling away to the beat of her own strummer for years, more content to drop out of the music biz than to compromise her own deceptively simple wheat-field lullabies and sultry midtempo come-ons. We weren’t entirely sold on her polished folkie approach to hillbilly country until we saw her give a speech down in Austin, Texas, a couple years ago. That speech consisted of a three-minute screed on the music industry, followed by 45 minutes of unaccompanied crooning and strumming that had us literally wiping the tears away. Last year’s follow-up to Wheels, Essence, really twisted the knife. Williams seemed to realize that her best material—the essential dope, it seems to us—is the slowest, sweetest, most melancholy, and this is a double dose of it. Catch her live and let the scales fall from your eyes, too. And don’t be surprised if you hear a couple cover tunes penned by her secret soul-brother, local hero Greg Brown. First Avenue, (612) 338-8388

It has become a bit of a cliché: Aging rocker rummages through decades of demos, acoustic tracks, original recordings, bootlegs, tablescraps, and cancelled checks to put on a sort of garage sale of wares for (with any luck) mass consumption. Most likely it’s only the die-hards and completists who take notice, but then that’s the point, isn’t it? Fans of the Who and Pete Townshend’s solo career have a delicious new two-disc set to add to their collection. Scooped features hand-picked recordings, showcasing oddities and outtakes from his phenomenal career, including solo versions of such classics as “Pinball Wizard,” “Substitute,” and “Behind Blue Eyes.” The discs span Townshend’s entire career and include insightful commentary from the man himself. Keep an eye out for yet another Who reunion tour this summer. Until then, hop in your magic bus and prime the engine with this rocket fuel.

“What, you thought this was another Pepsi commercial?” asks Wyclef Jean on his new single, “PJs”—not an ode to Mickey Mouse onesies, but rather a proud rally cry for anyone who grew up in public housing. Say what you will about this famously cocksure rapper-singer-guitarist-producer, but you can’t accuse him of selling out his own domineering sense of self. As uneven as his stylistically scattershot track record may be, Haitian-born ’Clef continually aspires to the heights he first brushed against when the Fugees conquered America back in 1996. His strummy Bob Marley impression tends to wear thin, but he’s still eminently preferable to Shaggy as an ambassador of reggae-derived crossover pop. If he has yet to make nice with ex-partner Lauryn Hill (whose own new solo outing is worlds away from ’Clef’s heedless eclecticism), at least he’s found a fine backup singer in City High’s Claudette Ortiz, who guests on the tasty troubled-lover ballad “Two Wrongs Don’t Make It Right.” Such island-inflected R&B nuggets may not hit as hard as the grittier jams, but even the clay-mation homies from the PJs are plagued by the occasional heartache.

If you’re like us, you couldn’t help but wince at Gosford Park director Robert Altman’s loss to Richie Cunningham at this year’s Academy Awards, if only because Altman must have an all-time classic Oscar acceptance speech in him that’s just dying to get out. With any luck, he’ll get another shot before the decade is out, and not just in the guise of some lifetime-achievement retirement trinket. Thanks to the Independent Film Channel and waning suggested-retail-prices on digital cameras, there’s no shortage of convention-bucking filmmakers out there, and despite the fairweather mainstream accolades, Altman remains a worthy hero for any commercially challenged artisan. In the process of giving some of Hollywood’s finest actors (Warren Beatty, Tim Robbins, Sissy Spacek) the most distinctive showcases of their careers (McCabe & Mrs. Miller, The Player, 3 Women), he’s developed the kind of uncompromising yet wholly malleable aesthetic that can turn any movie genre into a gently experimental playground. Critics like to swipe at his overlapping narratives and restless pans and zooms, and there have been more than a few stinkers on his C.V. over the years. But jeeze, even Opie Howard had a couple of Gung Hos and Far and Aways en route to A Beautiful Mind. Oak Street Cinema’s month-long Altman salute sticks to the good stuff, from M*A*S*H to Nashville to Short Cuts, including several newly restored prints. Oak Street Cinema, (612) 331-3134

The last time John Woo directed Nicolas Cage, it was in Face/Off, a hammy sci-fi shoot-em-up sandwiched between Cage’s throwaway turns in the clumsy flicks Con Air and City of Angels. Now the Hong Kong action specialist re-teams with his most vexing leading man for (of all things) a World War II flick—not the most immediately promising prospect after the flame-out of Michael Bay’s Pearl Harbor and the muted viewer response to Tom Hanks’ Band of Brothers miniseries. Embellishing on a few factual elements of the war in the Pacific, Windtalkers concerns the strained camaraderie between Native American soldiers and their white comrades, complicated by the use of the Navajo language to encode classified U.S. military secrets and an unsavory protocol for dealing with fluent speakers who are on the verge of Japanese capture. No matter how deeply Woo delves into the racial and emotional complexities of the (kinda true) story, we’ll assume that MGM hired him mostly for his expertise in the field of eye-popping movie combat. While it seems incongruous to imagine the slick melees of Mission: Impossible 2 transposed to suit the low-tech grunts of WWII, maybe less authentic battlefield action is just what multiplex regulars need, faced as they are with plenty of present-tense military realism by way of their daily papers and 24-hour newscasts.

It’s too bad that Akira Kurosawa’s last film isn’t one of his best; it feels slow and contrived and a bit too steeped in self-congratulation in the same way the later works of his hero John Ford did. But this story of a retired teacher and his devoted students is a fitting testament in other ways. Besides the touching homage it pays to Ford in all the scenes depicting rituals of male society, it is also a tender and sometimes funny paean to Kurosawa’s own experience—that helpless will to live just a little longer, do just a little more, which tugged at him to the end.

Those among us who spend too much time combing the shelves at video stores are all looking for the same score—the little movie we neglected to check out, or never heard of, that turns out to be a revelation. This one registered first as a curiosity: What, an Albert Brooks movie released straight to video? Not quite. There’s only so much you can say about the plot without saying too much, but let’s stipulate that it’s conventional enough to outward appearances. A lonely and cautious middle-aged businessman hires an equally lonely and disaffected 17-year-old goth chick to work in his clothing store, and they become friends. You can see where the story goes, right? Maybe you can, but the telling is filled with so many unexpected touches of grace and feeling that the ride seems anything but familiar. Brooks plays the same neurotic mensch as ever, though to more measured effect, and Leelee Sobieski takes utter command of every scene she’s in. If it weren’t for the movie’s inexplicable failure to show up on Hollywood radar, she could have been up for the “little picture” Oscar as easily as Sissy Spacek or Halle Berry. And Sobieski isn’t the biggest surprise. My First Mister was directed by the longtime yeoman actress Christine Lahti, who apparently has been spending her time on the wrong side of the camera.

While HBO continues to congratulate itself (deservedly so, we’ll admit) over the steamrolling successes of Sex and the City, The Sopranos, and Six Feet Under, it has neglected one of the most gifted and talented kids in the family. Showcasing the wonderfully reckless comedy of Bob Odenkirk and David Cross, the network’s Mr. Show series married the satirical edge of the best Saturday Night Live with the kooky, free-associating abandon of The Kids in the Hall. Unabashedly acerbic, stridently goofy, and somehow self-effacing at the same time, the duo’s freewheeling sketches are amusing on multiple levels and mysteriously dovetail into something like a cohesive “story” by each episode’s end. Like the best comedy, you just gotta see it, which is why it’s a pleasure to see the first and second seasons of Mr. Show given the same DVD treatment as the aforementioned HBO superhits. In addition to compiling all of the series installments, the set includes in-character audio commentary tracks and a must-see bonus segment featuring Ronnie Dobbs, Cross’ drunken-white-trash-fugitive alter-ego (whose feature-length tribute Run Ronnie Run is reportedly being held in limbo by the confused suits at New Line). With Will Ferrell no longer appearing live from New York every week, this set may come in awfully handy.