Musing

The Master Review or The End of the Six Months of Aural Glory The first artists of the year to grace us with new material was Doves, with their third studio album "Some Cities." The title track, streamed from several different sites before the actual release of the album, immediately hooks the listeners with the insistent drumming that Doves are so well-known for (at least, among friends). This is not a rehashing of "Lost Souls," which seems to have lead a lot of fans to give the album less-than-stellar reviews. This isn't even an attempt at the epic art rock that comprised the first two albums. These are short stories, learned and told as the band traveled all around the UK over the past two years. Instead of one giant panoramic work, there are either three or four, depending on where you feel the music changes mood the most (if at all). I can't stop listening to this album. Josh Rating: 9.6 Ben Folds' long overdue return to the studio should make the f...

A Little Something Different or This Is Probably Wasted Effort, But... Usually I don't take time to try to convince people to read a certain book. People don't read - this is an established fact of life, however much I might despise people for it. Tonight however, I feel the need to break precedent over the work I just finished. Tigana , as you may have guessed from the title, is a single novel in the fantasy genre by Guy Gavriel Kay. The author admits in the Afterward that this was probably a risky place to talk about the themes he wished to discuss, only because most people who read a fantasy novel are there for action, magic, swords, and the like. Tigana has all of these; in fact, the climax had my jaw hanging open for roughly 30 pages. (1) It's the themes of the book, however - power, the ambiguity of "good" and "bad," and the way politics and partisianship can fracture a country/region - that leave you glued to your seat, turning over the sto...