When I call Robert Earl Keen a songwriter’s songwriter, I mean it as a compliment – for the most part. It’s a fact that even Keen himself will attest to; in the press materials accompanying his new record, The Rose Hotel, the artist admits that...

I had a literature professor who offered a slight criticism of author Cormac McCarthy, that perhaps he was just a bit too fascinated by a particularly macho vision of violence and bloodshed. I’m not sure that the same could be said of the Coen...

Fantastic may be the understatement of the year– Wes Anderson’s new film is flat-out stupendous, and in an already-historic year for Hollywood adaptations of childhood classics, ranging from Spike Jonze’s triumph of interpretation in Where the Wild...

My friends at Stereo Subversion asked if I might write a few words about the state of jazz in 2009, and I was more than happy to oblige. You can read my essay on the subject here.

Loudon Wainwright’s High Wide & Handsome is billed as The Charlie Poole Project — not, you will notice, The Charlie Poole Album. And that’s fitting. Weighing in at two discs and containing a thick booklet complete with historical notes and...