Bob Wake
Robert W. Norris’s Looking for the Summer is a graceful autobiographical novel that breathes fresh life into a perennial genre: the spiritual bildungsroman. The theme of a questing expatriate who renounces Western materialism in favor of an exotic pilgrimage ...
Mark Jennett
Courtenay Day sounds a like a world weary Liz Callaway - clear and pure but slightly cracked around the edges. It’s not a great voice but she knows what to do with it. Warm, with an edge of vulnerability, ...
Mark Jennett
A couple of recent releases feature benefit concerts devoted to two of the greatest theatre composers of the twentieth century. Both were recorded in Los Angeles and feature many of the same performers. Most of the material is familiar ...
Andy Hughes
The key word here is ‘unofficial’. Tom O’Neil is an American film critic and commentator and he’s been around long enough to be able to sift out the facts and figures from the morass of self-congratulation and financially motivated ...
Mark Jennett
Be careful what you wish for. When I reviewed Lisa Richard's first CD, Born To Entertain, I suggested that, since the most interesting tracks were the lesser known pieces, it was a shame that she hadn't chosen to stretch ...
Phil Freeman
Electronic music seems to have one specific, defining characteristic: it must be made on keyboard- or computer-based instruments, not with guitars and drums. The Canadian trio, The New Deal, have decided that’s a little restrictive for their tastes. They ...
Mark Jennett
Five albums - released between 1972 and 1982 - represent the years between Springfield's critical peak with Dusty in Memphis and her temporary return to commercial form with the Pet Shop Boys and the Reputation album. Although many of ...
Mark Jennett
It is has taken more than four years for Bernadette Peters to follow up her Sondheim, Etc album and some might wish that the result had been something more unusual than an album of largely familiar standards from, arguably, ...
Bob Wake
Don’t be misled by the cover to Mike Magnuson’s disarming memoir about growing up in Wisconsin, Lummox: The Evolution of a Man. The dust jacket photo of Magnuson’s ample gut in a snug shirt and his beefy hand clutching ...
Anne Sheridan
Science fiction may have a narrow appeal, and is not always respected by advocators of “serious” literature. Strangely enough, however, it is still fair to say that science fiction and horror can be considered to be the two genres ...
