There
is nobody like Andrew Bird in the world, a songwriter and a performer
who makes his whistling, his glockenspiel, and his violin at home
with guitars, drums, and vocals in detailed, pitch-perfect pop songs
that never seem precious or forced, as eccentric as they are.
But when you're as idiosyncratic as Bird is, that means there aren't many people whose vision matches your own. That was one reason that the gestation of The Mysterious Production of Eggs - Bird's breakthrough from 2005 - took so long, with so many false starts.
In
band-speak, "indefinite hiatus" is the equivalent of filing
divorce papers; it's the formal beginning of the end.
In
retrospect, everything turned out well, but Dewey Bunnell was
skeptical when America was presented with an opportunity to record
its first album for a major label in more than 20 years.
If
you casually watch the Charlie Hunter Trio on stage, something might
nag at you. It sounds like there's a bassist, but ... there's no
bassist. Just Hunter and his guitar, drummer Simon Lott, and
keyboardist Erik Deutsch playing jazz fusion with the direct appeal
of rock music.
If
you've ever heard William Elliott Whitmore's singing - or read
reviews of his work, which typically note that he has the weathered
pipes of someone at least twice his age - you might snicker at this
statement from the singer-songwriter: "I always wished I could sing
like Frank Sinatra, or Morrissey, or fucking Dean Martin - those
real crooner guys," he said in a phone interview this week.
Reel
Big Fish's new record, Monkeys
for Nothin' & the Chimps for Free,
features "Another F.U. Song," which begins "Hey kids! It's
time to use the 'F' word!" and includes, among its tamer
phrases, "with a big rusty pole or a splintery post." You can
guess the context in which those words are sung.
The Young Emerging Writers will celebrate the release of The Atlas on Friday, August 30. The Atlas is a literary magazine put together by 11 interns, ranging from 15 to 19 years old, that includes poems, short stories, comics, and other writings by the interns and people they asked to submit work. The party will start at 7 p.m. in the third-floor conference room of the Bucktown Center for the Arts in downtown Davenport. Copies of the issue will be distributed free (while supplies last), and the magazine's contributors will read selections from the issue. This event is part of the Bucktown Final Friday series, which begins at 6 p.m.
