current music review:
YOU MUST HEAR
DARONDO
LET MY PEOPLE GO
Ubiquity records has recently released an amazing album by the man they're calling "a street-savvy Al Green." What else do you really need to know? Seriously, just look at that cover!

THIS AMERICAN LIFE PODCASTS
This is something of a departure for the site, but I would be remiss if I didn't take the opportunity to point our dear readers to some of my favorite audio bits out there. Back when I was a grad student with no responsibilities except to show up to class three times a week, I could spend many leisurely hours listening to the radio. Saturday mornings meant coffee with Ira Glass and his crew at WBEZ Chicago, where they broadcast an hour of stories focused around a specific theme. This is where David Sedaris and Sarah Vowell got their start, but it is often the less famous folk whose stories hit home. To wit, listen to episode #334, in which a contributor spends an unexpected summer in south Florida, taking care of his estranged alcoholic mother (who has nearly OD'd), and his troubled half-brother. What you or I (and the West coast- raised narrator) would dismiss as "white trash" poignantly comes to life as the man struggles to recount his disbelief at what his family has become in his absence. It is funny, it is sad, and it is utterly illuminating.

This might be why TAL brings some of the best pieces of reportage on the Iraq war. Take "Somewhere in the Arabian Sea" (#206). Glass and his cohort experience life aboard the USS John C. Stennis, an aircraft carrier in the Arabian Sea that's supporting bombing missions over Afghanistan as part of Operation Enduring Freedom. Rather than focus on the standard war heroes (fighter pilots) using the typical jargon, the groups haphazardly interviews the nobodies of the crew--call it Operation Enduring Boredom. The rah-rah Navy ads that inspired so many to serve are not the reality for the majority of young servicemen and women on board; their wry humor and disarming honesty about their work are the stuff of great radio.

Another favorite, "Pimp Anthropology," had me riveted as a former Oakland pimp detailed the tools of the world's oldest trade. Check out their website for free audio, subscribe to the podcast, or buy old episodes via itunes for .95. Your own favorite is out there, waiting to be discovered.