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Tuesday, July 29,2008

Various Artists / Dirty Laundry

More Dirty Laundry (Trikont)

By David Luhrssen
Black country singers? It sounds as oxymoronic to some ears as Mexican polka, but then much Mexican music was influenced by polka and north of the Rio Grande, the cultural lines between black and white, blues and country, were often fluid. The pair of Dirty Laundry compilations is among the most enjoyable . . .
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Tuesday, July 29,2008

Cyberchump

Our Wizards of Earth (Internal Combustion)

By David Luhrssen
Milwaukee’s Cyberchump is an electronic duo crafting wonderful melodic soundscapes. Drawing from a wide palette of instruments and influences, Cyberchump summons Pink Floyd in a mellow moment, ambient chill room electronica, moody low-key art rock, whoosing spacey sounds of Krautwerk, Near Eastern . . .
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Monday, July 21,2008

Jakob Dylan

Seeing Things (Columbia/Starbucks Entertainment)

By Todd Lazarski
With the Wallflowers on hiatus, the band's frontman, Jakob Dylan—who happens to be the result of rock's greatest romance in Bob and Sara—attempts to find his own identity among the usual route of hushed obscurities and loosely finger-picked acoustic guitar. Seeing Things . . .
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Monday, July 21,2008

Weezer

Weezer (“Red Album”) (DGC/Interscope)

By Saby Reyes-Kulkarni
Get ready to laugh, cry or do both the moment you hear Weezer’s Rivers Cuomo start rapping on the band’s third self-titled album. That he does so over a song filled with piano and choral-chanting bombast (no lie) suggests that Cuomo may have seriously lost his marbles. His hysterically loyal fan base is no doubt . . .
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Monday, July 21,2008

The Orb

The Dream (Six Degrees)

By David Luhrssen
The subgenres of acid house and ambient electronica have produced sonic wallpaper by the yard, but few artists as creative or compelling as The Orb. The duo of Alex Paterson and Youth, two Englishmen on the ground floor of late-’70s punk, meld found voices and electronic melodies into a symphony of sampling and gentle . . .
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Monday, July 21,2008

Barbara Stephan

I'm Awake

By Jamie Lee Rake
Milwaukee's Barbara Stephan has built a reputation as a jazz-pop vocalist with blues flavor. She must realize, however, that Diana Krall and Etta James aren't getting as much airplay as other adult-contemporary divas, so she has adapted—and pretty well, at that. At this solo album's best, when Stephan . . .
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Tuesday, July 15,2008

John Hiatt

Same Old Man (New West)

By Todd Lazarski
Along with the album’s country-leaning roots rockers, listeners of Same Old Man get a bit of the bittersweet, ripened wisdom of John Hiatt, whose voice registers somewhere between Philip Roth's aged sentimentality and Saul Bellow's caustic remembrances as he reflects on a life in love . . .
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Tuesday, July 15,2008

Camper van Beethoven

Popular Songs (Cooking Vinyl)

By David Luhrssen
It’s time to say it: Camper van Beethoven was one of the great bands of the ’90s. They had a wacky sense of humor that sometimes delivered serious observations. They were a collective, a true band with various songwriters and multi-instrumentalists contributing to a sound that couldn’t be categorized because . . .
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Tuesday, July 15,2008

Caamora

She (Metal Mind Productions)

By Michael Popke
She—a lavish two-CD set written by veteran British progressive rocker Clive Nolan and based on H. Rider Haggard’s 1887 Victorian-adventure novel of the same name—fits practically every definition of “rock opera.” The majestic, large-scale story of a white African queen who made herself immortal by . . .
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Tuesday, July 15,2008

David Stoddard

Get Off My Lawn

By Jamie Lee Rake
One might hope that a folk album with such a confrontational title would be something of a laugh riot. Instead, it’s more of a minor ruckus from Minnesota-via-Wisconsin folkster David Stoddard. The fun he pokes at NASCAR, Thanksgiving, materialism and reality TV are mostly good-natured. Garrison Keillor . . .
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SEXPress

What’s Sex?

Think outside your box

Welcome to SEXpress, the Shepherd Express’ new sex advice column. As your lovely hostess, I’ll be answering your questions, interviewing nationally known sexperts as they travel through our city, and sharing my thoughts about all things sex related. How did I get this plum job, you ask? Well, I’ve worked as a sexuality educator for more than a decade—on college campuses, in community organizations, in state agencies and in congregations.



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