When I think of today?s hip-hop, the first thing that comes to mind is scantily dressed women, pimps, bling-bling chains and music that is all manipulated on a producer?s soundboard.
What can you do if everything you know falls apart? If your marriage was essentially perfect, but your spouse's affair involved something utterly absurd, perverse and ultimately unforgivable?
The radio-ubiquitous Matchbox Twenty's new release Exile on Mainstream, the first in nearly five years, is a unique disc that is a hybrid of an EP, a greatest-hits album and bonuses. The greatest-hits portion is an all-encompassing repertoire of the band's radio releases, with a heavy dose from the first breakout album, Yourself or Someone Like You, with super-hits such as "3 AM" and "Real World." The tracks are in chronological order, so it's easy to hear the development of the band.
What do you get when you combine Will Ferrell, Napoleon Dynamite's Jon Heder and male-male pairs of figure skaters?
No doubt you've seen plenty of ghost movies and TV specials about the paranormal or pondered the existence of a soul.
A four-piece band, a lot of dancing and a well-stocked bar, not to mention a healthy amount of infidelity -- sounds like a college house party.
This album would make a god-awful Public Service Announcement. Why, you ask? Boys and Girls in America is chock-full of references to wild parties, drugs and alcohol, with a touch of sex thrown in the mix.
Ben Kweller is like Ben Fold's lesser-known cousin
The cover of British singer-songwriter Beth Orton's Comfort of Strangers is rather boring -- shades of brown in a bland impressionistic landscape.
