…reviewed in UK Independent.

 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entert…

“Angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night…”

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lfBzCG4H8…

…is now online. Subjects on the slab include the films Creation and The Soloist, William Boyd’s novel Ordinary Thunderstorms, and the sublime Edvard Munch exhibition at the National Gallery.

 http://www.rte.ie/tv/theview/archive/200…

“I always thought it was our America as much as anyone else’s – circus people and carnival freaks, prisoners and music makers, troubadours, minstrels, hobos and poets and such, we can’t let the goddamn country go down to politicians and corporate madmen and media people and college professors, run it over and ruin it all. It’s ours, our goddamn country. We built the midway, didn’t we? And we make the music that goes on the midway, from sea to shining sea. You know, goddamn, Ronald Reagan died recently and they flew the flag at half-mast. Well, did they fly it at half-mast for Ray Charles? For Johnny Cash? Declare a national holiday? Yet these people, Ray Charles, Johnny Cash, Hank Williams, they moved and changed the daily lives more than any politician who are just grifters and scum. Wouldn’t even let them in the goddamn midway. So let us now praise the real American heroes, the ones with heart and soul who changed things for the good.”

– Little Jack Horton, quoted in the epigraph of More Miles Than Money - Journeys Through American Music, by Garth Cartwright, published by Serpent’s Tail.

Shirley Manson interviews the Rev Murphy.

 http://www.faber.co.uk/article/2009/9/wh…

Ghost Dog:

In ancient times bears were considered equal with men.

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFMY4jJ6S…

Richmond Fontaine
We Used To Think The Freeway Sounded Like A River
(Decor Records)

I don’t care who you are, come up with an album title like that and you get a free pass. But then, we were always well disposed to Richmond Fontaine around these parts, and not just because mainman Willy Vlautin is a damn fine novelist as well as exemplary songwriter and bandleader.

It’s the way RF scuff that melancholic diners-bars-and-gas-station sound, playing roots rock with the guts of The Replacements or The Feelies or some such Amerindie act. Vlautin sketches entire lives on a beermat, intoning in your ear like a low-key but compelling Bud buddy (’Ruby And Lou’, ‘The Boyfriends’). Even when he rocks out he sounds like he’s about to come apart (’Lonnie’).

Freeway is a thematic work, subtitled “14 songs written around and about the Pacific Northwest.” As you’d imagine, the narratives are crucial, but the delivery just as much. More alt. than country, songs like ‘You Can Move Back Here’ sound like the Eels at their roughest, while ‘Maybe We Were Both Born Blue’ has the hangdog grandeur of prime Camper Van Beethoven.

My favourite, ‘43′, is a borderline psychobilly number about a middle-aged guy living in his mother’s basement about to go postal, Nebraska as interpreted by the Meat Puppets. Here, and on ‘Two Alone’, the Fontaine evoke the nightmare alleys of Green On Red circa The Killer Inside Me (and I don’t say that lightly). But they give good mood too, on a handful of pedal steely Nashville skyline pieces, plus a downbeat talking blues beauty called ‘A Letter To The Patron Saint Of Nurses’.

Impeccably produced by JD Foster, Freeway is the album Gus Van Sant would make if he could play guitar.

Rare interview with Tom Spanbauer, on Dangerous Writing.

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wZ9vonRs…

Watch this:

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SreufFevU…

Then read this:
Laura Hird interviews Jon Ronson

Laura Albert in the Brooklyn Eagle

 http://www.brooklyneagle.com/categories/…

Norene Cashen Smith (& Wesson) in Detroit Make It Here

 http://www.detroitmakeithere.com/article…