Critical Mass - September 2006

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Critical Mass:
Noteworthy new releases for September

 Mythologies (Blue Note) Chicago jazz chanteuse Patricia Barber composed a song cycle based on Ovid’s Metamorphoses; paradoxically, the high-concept CD tones down Barber’s prickly intellectualism to yield some of her most straightforward and heartfelt music to date.
Fading Trails (Secretly Canadian) Fronted by Jason Molina, the shifting country rock collective Magnolia Electric Co. tapped fiddler Andrew Bird for a new album so bluesy it could set a trance. The songs were recorded at Molina’s Chicago apartment and at Sun Studios in Memphis.

 

The Blog of War (Simon & Schuster) Chicago blogger Matthew Currier Burden made a name for himself writing about his military experience under the name “Blackfive”; in his first book, he excerpts blogs from other soldiers who toured in Iraq and Afghanistan.
A Futile and Stupid Gesture (Chicago Review Press) Evanston writer Josh Karp interviewed 100-plus people to compile this biography of National Lampoon cofounder and Caddyshack writer Doug Kenney, who died mysteriously in 1980.
 
 

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