My review of the Clientele's Strange Geometry disc is up at PopMatters. Anyone who frequents this blog will be familiar with my intro, which was adapted from a post here about that disc. It's a good album from a good band that deserves more notice here in the States than it has received to date. Upcoming: reviews of the new EP from the Long Winters and the latest long-player from Pinetop Seven.

This warning comes months too late, but I wish I'd seen something like it before wasting time and money: Return to Sin City, the DVD of the concert tribute to Gram Parsons, is terrible. To clarify: the DVD itself is terrible. The performances over two nights at two California locations in July 2004 seem to be good, and any time someone commemorates the life and work of Parsons, it's a treat. But somewhere along the line someone should have realized that the recordings were not up to standard and held back this DVD's release. The sound, from front to back, is shameful. There is no middle to any of this, just highs and lows. The result is bootleg-quality audio that sounds as if a single microphone was hung over the audience to capture the performances. You hear the high end of the guitars and the thump of the bass drum and little else. The result, sadly, is that while the viewer is tempted by seeing Dwight Yoakam, Steve Earle, Jim James, Jim Lauderdale and many others singing the songs of Gram Parsons (many while decked out in fitting Nudie suits), you can't even hear enough to tell whether the performances are any good. Because the same backing band is used for most of the performances, the only stylistic variation is with the vocals, and that's the one thing most difficult to hear. What a profound disappointment.

It's a great season for jazz fans as three new releases capture a handful of giants at the peak of their powers in previously unissued live recordings. The two getting the most ink are Thelonious Monk Quartet with John Coltrane at Carnegie Hall and One Up, One Down, from John Coltrane. A third, not quite on the mainstream radar but no less vital, is Town Hall New York City, June 22, 1945 from Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker.

Each has much to recommend it. The Monk release features a group previously thought unrecorded save for the interesting but sonically inferior Discovery! Live at the Five Spot disc that came out in 1997. Here, Coltrane is four months into his work with Monk's group. Jazz lore reports that Trane was tentative at first in playing Monk's odd compositions, but that is clearly not the case here as he blows with authority. This show, Nov. 29, 1957 at Carnegie Hall, is fantastic. This was the point at which Coltrane was starting to lead his own groups -- his wonderful Blue Train was released earlier that year -- and it is clear from this performance that he was more than ready.

The new disc under Coltrane's name finds this saxophone colossus seven years and a lifetime later, performing with his classic quartet at a New York club. The group is near its end -- A Love Supreme was already in stores and Coltrane was heading into uncharted territory that would find him leaving McCoy Tyner, Jimmy Garrison and Elvin Jones behind. But for these two sets, these four men are playing as one, proving that on any given night, you just might wander into a place and see the best show of your life.

Less has been written about the Gillespie/Parker set, though there are a few reviews out there if you hunt around. You may have to hunt to find the disc itself, but it's worth the trouble. Hearing it is like popping open a time capsule, releasing into the air the sound of one of the best jazz pairings in history. The sound isn't as crisp as on the other two discs here, but that is a minor quibble. When the reliably late Parker strides onto the stage midway through the opening tune, "Bebop," to take over for Don Byas, the electricity in the room is transferred through the speakers and doesn't let up until the final note is blown.

Not to beat a dead (Crazy) horse, but Nude as the News has an interesting joint review of Neil Young's Prairie Wind and Bruce Springsteen's Devils and Dust up that expresses disappointment with both.

"It's disappointing to listen to these albums as they make us wonder whether either artist can ever be vital again," writes Ben French. As I've written here, I would agree with regard to Young. Springsteen, however, is another matter. When he fails, it feels as if he is trying too hard. When Young fails, it feels as if he isn't trying hard enough.

With Devils and Dust, there is much to like. Where it bogs down are the points at which it seems like he's trying to channel the dusty textures of Nebraska or even The Ghost of Tom Joad, rather than perform the songs in their best form and then worry about whether they fit the album as a whole. The same problem plagued The Rising to a certain extent, as weaker songs were given the full-blown USA treatment as Bruce sought to offer a balm for the nation.

Left with the task of simply recording an album of good songs without the need to soothe the soul of a country -- or pat it on the back and say everything will be all right in about 3 1/2 years -- I'm confident Springsteen can delivery another winner.

Young, on the other hand, just doesn't seem capable. While Prairie Wind is growing on me still -- I'm past what French writes about disappointing albums from favorite artists: "These are the albums you play a few times and don't really enjoy, play a few more times hoping to find something to like, and then never play again to protest the disenchantment" -- it doesn't feel like things are going to get any better than this.

I saw another club rock show this weekend, making it, while not like the Rocktober's of old, certainly the most rocking stretch of decent live music in a while. I'm getting old, of course, but it just seems like we're not getting the caliber of bands through that we once did.

The Ponys were latest on the list, playing a tight, loud set of tunes from their two LPs. The show was just as loud as the Posies show I ranted about last week, but the appropriateness of that volume made all the difference in the world. While the Posies music is more based on subtlety, harmonies and hooks, the Ponys use noise as a bludgeon, part of the overall structure of their songs. From the searing opener, "Let's Kill Ourselves" (itself the opener to the band's debut disc, Laced with Romance) to the lacerating tunes from the band's sophomore outing Celebration Castle, the band lassoed guitar squall, pounding drums and herky-jerky vocals to create something greater than the sum of these parts.

I heard parts of the same things that make most of the New York scene so hip, from Talking Heads to Gang of Four to Richard Hell and even the vintage 4/4 barre chord rock of early Velvet Underground, all filtered through the angular songs of singer-guitarist Jered Gummere. So, no, there really is nothing new under the sun. But the Ponys, making this kind of music in Chicago, no less, have found a new way to harness the sunshine.

The New Yorker College Tour stop at the University of Iowa came to a close Wednesday night with an interesting event focused on graphic novels. It was the lone part of the evening program, as the session with New Yorker Cartoon Editor Robert Mankoff was cancelled.

The graphic novel session featured a conversation with cartoonists Adrian Tomine and Chris Ware, moderated by Owen Phillips, illustration editor at the New Yorker. As with Monday's conversation featuring Lorrie Moore and Vijay Seshadri, the presence of two artists on stage greatly enhanced the event. Ware, in particular, is clearly not comfortable talking in front of people, but he seemed more at ease commenting on Tomine's work in a way that allowed him to talk about his own as well.

Once they had warmed up by showing examples of their work -- Ware from his Acme Novelty Library/Jimmy Corrigan books as well as the new "Building Stories" feature for the New York Times Magazine's new "Funny Pages" section; Tomine from his Optic Nerve and subsequent longer-form collections -- the two had a lively conversation about influences, the importance of place in their work and the limitations and liberties of the standard strip format.

The magazine provided it's own strange context for the event, having just published an interesting yet somewhat defeatist look at graphic novels from art critic Peter Schjeldahl. "A certain theoretical frenzy about comics today is understandable, as it has been in other art forms in periods of their rapid development -- think of the debates about painting that roiled Renaissance Italy," he writes. "But such intellectual arousal rarely precedes creative glory. On the contrary, it commonly indicates that an artistic breakthrough, having been made and recognized, is over, and that a process of increasingly strained emulation and diminishing returns has set in."

An odd sentiment at a time when graphic novels are breaking through at a rate that would seem to indicate a broadening and evolution of the genre, not its slow demise. Ware and Tomine seemed excited about the possibilities of their own future work, as well as that of others, and that excitement seems fitting and well-placed. Each also is taking a look back. Tomine has shepherded the work of Japanese artist Yoshihiro Tatsumi back into print, while Ware edited a new collection of Gasoline Alley strips, Walt and Skeezix.

Ware said he sees comics as "a living language," and that the evolution of comics involves becoming "an ever more accurate representation of what it is to be alive." Rather than assume the best has come and gone it would seem more apt, given the mix of historical awareness and the desire to find new ways to tell stories within that context that is shared by these and other artists, to think that the best is yet to come.

Joe Pernice has posted the third installment of his "indie Cribs" series, this time focusing on his garage. Not quite the pimped-out rides you might expect, but amusing nonetheless.

Son Volt is the latest entry in NPR's Live Concert Series, with a performance scheduled for 9 p.m. CDT on Friday. The band's muscular new disc ought to translate well to the stage, and reviews from this tour seem to bear that out. The series, which has been offering up some nice shows, featured My Morning Jacket and Kathleen Edwards in its last, still-streamable installment.

KCRW's Morning Becomes Eclectic has been on a winning streak of its own of late. Performances from Teenage Fanclub, Dungen and Death Cab For Cutie are available, while upcoming sets from Nada Surf, Supergrass and the Magic Numbers are on the schedule. Today, Gang of Four pay a visit, playing songs from their latest, Return the Gift. Now that's truth in advertising: We influenced a lot of young bands + people want to hear our old records + we have a lousy royalty rate = we have a better royalty rate now so we re-recorded the songs so you can return the gift.

The New Yorker College Tour came to town this week, and I checked out one of the first events yesterday, a reading and discussion by Lorrie Moore and Vijay Seshadri. I went to hear Moore, and came away liking Seshadri. Each gave a short reading, then they sat for a discussion with Cressida Leyshon, New Yorker deputy fiction editor.

Seshadri began by reading some of the dozen of his poems the magazine has published over the years. He said they were all depressing, but that the audience shouldn't assume all of his work is that way. He's really quite funny, he said, but the New Yorker doesn't seem to want his amusing work. Not all of the poems he read were dour, however. One drew inspiration from the Iraq war, which allowed him to finally write about being a new father, albeit 12 years after his son was born. The poem, "Baby, Baby," was witty, incisive and clever, and made me want to track down more of his work. I did, and it can be found here and here. Poets & Writers also has a nice interview with him online.

Moore didn't disappoint. She also read something the magazine had published, seemingly right from that issue of the magazine. The story, "Juniper," was from January of this year, and it contained her usual mix of bittersweet life interruptions and sly wit.

The discussion that followed was surprisingly insightful. We are used to seeing big names in literature read here in Iowa City thanks to the presence of the University of Iowa Writer's Workshop, but this format was different and, I dare say, better, because the discussion yielded things a straight one-on-one Q&A would not. Moore and Seshadri bantered back and forth about their craft in a revealing yet lighthearted chat.

The rest of the week promises more interesting events, including a discussion among New Yorker critics Alex Ross, Sasha Frere-Jones and Nancy Franklin (with our own Don McLeese moderating) and a session with comic artists Adrian Tomine and Chris Ware.

Time magazine has published its list of the "All Time 100 Novels," which, rather than being a list of the best novels ever, is instead a list of the best English-language novels written since Time debuted in 1923 (All Time. Get it?).

The list was assembled by Time critics Richard Lacayo and Lev Grossman, and while it includes many, many obvious choices, the real debate will be about what was left off. As Lacayo writes in the accompanying story, "Lists like this one have two purposes. One is to instruct. The other of course is to enrage." That's the beauty of lists. They provoke debate. Should Money really be the book that represents Martin Amis' best work? Should Nabokov and Philip Roth each get two slots (Lolita and Pale Fire) while Flannery O'Connor and Norman Mailer get none? Is it too early to declare works by Jonathan Franzen and Zadie Smith as classics? Did anyone really read Infinite Jest?

One discussion point: Genre. Raymond Chandler makes the list; so do William Gibson and Phillip K. Dick. While writers in these genres today are relegated to the periphery when award time comes, these works and many others prove that tastes change and critical value can be a fickle thing. Peter Preston in the Guardian adds fuel to the current debate (spurred by Ian Rankin and P.D. James, as mentioned here last week), wondering how the work of Charles Dickens would be classified today. "The world is a giant bookshop -- and in that world, everything counts," he writes.

Getting back to the Time feature, it includes links to the original reviews of each selected book, which is a bit of a tease for those who aren't subscribers with the proper credentials to actually read them. Regardless, it's a credible if flawed list that will get people talking about literature, and that's a good thing.

Congratuations to Michael Connelly for the successful introduction of a new character with his book The Lincoln Lawyer. The book debuted at no. 4 on overall sales charts this week, the strongest debut on the chart. It did even better when considering only fiction titles, charting at no. 3.

What is interesting to consider is that it did so with sales of 38,000. That's a lot of hardback books for a week, but if history serves, it will represent about one-quarter of the total sold. According to The Book Standard, Connelly's last book, The Closers, sold 46,000 in its first week and has sold 173,000 to date. Given the fairly similar starts, it's probably safe to assume a similar sales arc for The Lincoln Lawyer. It's interesting to note -- though I'm hardly the first to do so -- that a top-selling book's sales are dwarfed by those of other media. Top CDs sell well in excess of 173,000 copies in their first week, while films do that kind of business in a day.

Still, Connelly clearly has cracked the upper echelon of publishing, and has done so with his artistry and integrity intact. He earns great reviews that often talk about how his books transcend the mystery genre, which is a nice segue to something Sarah at Confessions of an Indiosyncratic Mind brings up today. It seems that Ian Rankin -- another great mystery writer who earns backhanded compliments like those often lavished on Connelly -- and P.D. James are calling for more consideration of genre fiction when it comes time to hand out awards.

“For me, there are just good books and bad books," Rankin tells The Times. "Crime fiction thinks out of the box. It gets you thinking about the biggest moral questions you can, whereas ‘literary fiction’ can be quite introspective. The crime novel at its best deals with contemporary social issues in a way that isn’t preaching and is not talking down to people.”

Amen. This reminds me of the rather silly debate about the value of genre fiction that took place at Dan Green's place about No Country For Old Men being beneath Cormac McCarthy's talents because it was a genre book. If the mark of a good book is that it doesn't have a plot, doesn't deal with social issues and can't have recurring characters, count me out. These either/or propositions are stifling and ridiculous.

I have been told that I was probably expecting too much -- or at least the wrong thing -- from the Posies earlier this week. I also have been told that the new Neil Young disc isn't as bad as I made it out to be, that there are a few good songs there. Point taken, though I don't apologize. If it's wrong to expect a lot from people who are more than able to deliver, I don't want to be right. I know the Posies can put on a fantastic show, so I'm disappointed when they instead choose to pretend to be a metal band with no regard for what makes their songs work. I know Neil Young can write poignant, memorable songs, so I'm disappointed when he offers yet another Neil-by-the-numbers batch of tunes.

Masochistic though it may be, I'd rather expect too much and be disappointed than to have my low expectations confirmed. That brings us to the "new" Big Star record. I had no hope that this would be any good and still forked over my cash. For once, I was spot-on: In Space is a fairly terrible record, rescued only by the presence, coincidentally enough, of erstwhile Posies Jon Auer and Ken Stringfellow, who contribute the disc's best tracks. Jody Stephens, one of two original members, also pens a couple of songs that, while not great, at least seem to have been written by someone who knows what is expected. And then there is Alex Chilton, a man who clearly lost interest in the chiming power pop of the band's first two albums sometime shortly after the issue of the second of those, Radio City. Since then, Chilton has been on a winding career path that has taken him everywhere but two places: success and his past. Or rather, the past Big Star fans care about. He's willing to replicate the garage rock sound of the Box Tops, and always willing to tackle an old R'n'B tune or two.

So why should it be a surprise that his latest disc is just another in a long line of half-finished, tossed-off collections of such work? Knowing full well that a Big Star disc will sell exponentially more than an Alex Chilton record (10,000 is exponentially more than 100, for example), he stuck the more marketable name on the cover and moved on. I'll admit that curiosity more than the hope of actually buying something I liked is what fueled this purchase, but even that isn't enough to merit future spins.

On related notes, I have boxes full of old zines in my basement that I would love to get rid of, and anyone interested in recent posts might want to take a look. My zine, Sticks & Stones, featured a cover feature about Guided by Voices' first Suitcase box set in issue 8, with an exhaustive package reviewing each of its 100 songs, while issue 7 had a long Q&A with Ken Stringfellow, talking about his then-recent new gigs with Big Star and R.E.M., as well as the breakup (before the makeup) of the Posies and his solo career. You can find information about all of that here, and anyone willing to fire up Paypal and send a modest sum will likely end up with the complete collection of in-print issues.

Lastly, to see a band that actually lives up to and at times exceeds its promise, check out My Morning Jacket on Late Night with Conan O'Brien tonight. The band's latest disc, Z, is at times thrilling, other times perplexing, but never a dull listen.

I saw the Posies for what will likely be the last time last night. The band may well soldier on, breaking up and reuniting over the years to the consternation and relief of an ever-shrinking group of people who care, but I'm out. After watching them bludgeon their best songs in an assaultive set that completely lacked dynamics, I have decided that I'm fine with listening to them on CD.

I last saw the band at South by Southwest in the mid 1990s, and they were just as abrasive then. This was around the time of their fourth disc, Amazing Disgrace, which found them cranking up the guitars in a misguided attempt, one assumes, to grab hold of the grunge bandwagon as it drove away. I had hopes that now, 10 years later, Jon Auer and Ken Stringfellow were a bit more comfortable, more aware of their strengths and willing to embrace them. There were signs of hope. Their latest CD, Every Kind of Light, is their strongest since Frosting on the Beater, mixing tough guitars with sweet vocals. Instead, they proved to still be the scrawny pop kids acting tough, much to the detriment of their songs. They both have fantastic voices that blend magically, and each has a command of pop hooks that, when properly deployed, led to some of the finest power pop songs of the 1990s. But the Posies are clearly a band that doesn't like what their best at, and not terribly good at what they want to be.

The night wasn't a total loss. Oranger, which opened the show, was great, a power pop band that knows how to strike the right balance between power and pop. They rocked, but you could still discern the guitar hooks and vocal harmonies. If the band had lead vocals of the caliber of Auer and Stringfellow, they'd be dangerous. In fact, I'd have enjoyed the show much more if the two Posies singers had left their guitars at home and let Oranger provide their backing (Oranger's bassist actually does double duty with the Posies, so they're part way there). I have a copy of Oranger's latest, New Comes and Goes, and like what I've heard. That one will definitely move up in the rotation.

Changing gears, a short review I wrote of the latest Snatches of Pink CD appears at PopMatters today. It's one of many capsule reviews on the page. I really wanted to like the disc, having been a fan of the band back in the early '90s, but it was a pretty lackluster listen.

I've always thought R.E.M., with its penchant for strange and interesting covers, would make a heckuva wedding band. They proved the point this weekend, playing at the wedding party of their guitar tech. Not only that, but Bill Berry was back behind the drums for the mini-set. The quartet played a short set: "Sitting Still," "(Don't Go Back To) Rockville," Wolves, Lower," "Begin the Begin," "The One I Love," "Permanent Vacation" and "Radio Free Europe." Now that's a dream setlist, particularly coming from the original line-up.

Some have lamented the direction the remaining trio took after Berry's departure, and I'm sure this will fuel many reunion rumors. I'm fine with the band's post-Berry output, happy to see the experiments of Up and the stab at lush pop with Reveal; the dead-on-arrival Around the Sun is another matter. What I crave, however, is for the band to record the originals in its earliest sets, and put it out as a record. As I've said before, that would be a great fan club project. With Berry back in the fold, if only temporarily, playing a set of early stuff that even includes one of those tracks ("Permanent Vacation"), the time is right, fellas. A one-day, one-off with no supporting tour is all I'm asking. Bill can stay retired. The photos on the band's web site would seem to indicate they had fun playing. Why not extend it a bit?

I'm always excited to pop open the mailbox and find a CD; Saturday that excitement was fourfold thanks to the arrival of a box from Luna Records holding the new four-CD Guided by Voices box set, Suitcase 2: American Superdream Wow. The box, as the title suggests, is the second of Robert Pollard's closet-clearing collections that gather unreleased songs, demos, outtakes, etc. The first, per the usual ratio of great-to-good-to-decent in his catalog, included a solid disc's worth of good stuff among its 100 tracks, and I assume the same from this. That's a lot of editing that Pollard requires his fans to do on his behalf, but at least this way we know we have access to it all; surely there's no hidden gem avoiding release at this point.

Not quite ready to dive in, but wanting to hear some GBV, I dug up a couple of older discs to put on -- Mag Earwig and Do the Collapse. Diehards who hate the thought of produced music from these lo-fi pioneers would debate this, but these discs represent what to me is the apex of Pollard's work. Do the Collapse, in particular, is a disc full of should-be hits. I hate when critics fall back on the "in a parallel universe" sort of thing, so I'll refrain here. There was little chance that GBV would have a hit, but if it was to happen, "Surgical Focus" or "Teenage FBI" (or even the treacly "Hold on Hope") were the band's best bets. But that's not what the masses want to hear, for whatever reason. At the last GBV show I saw, on the cusp of the band's "Electrifying Conclusion" tour (coming soon to a DVD player near you), Pollard ended one of these latter-day wonders and said, "That should have been a hit. That's why we're breaking up. If that isn't a hit, we should just quit doing this."

I was reminded of that further when watching the Ramones documentary End of the Century this weekend. At one point, Johnny Ramone said he finally realized after the Phil Spector-produced End of the Century disc failed to sell any more than its under-performing predecessors that this was the best the band was going to do. Regardless of the fact that its music was catchy as all get out, the public just wasn't embracing the band. Retrenchment was the solution, he said, the goal from there on out being to continue to please the fans the band had and make a good living on the road.

Why do some things hit and others don't? Well, no matter how good the Ramones were, four surly New Yorkers in leather jackets were a harder sell than say, three cute punks from Orange County 15 years later (that'd be Green Day). By the same token, a 40something former elementary school teacher with a serious Who fetish just isn't going to break through to the mainstream, no matter how good those GBV discs are.

Having just read George Saunders' new book, The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil in one long sitting, I'm having trouble deciding what it is I just read. Is it a children's book? A political allegory? A science fiction novella? All of the above? More to the point, I'm having a hard time deciding whether I liked it or not. It wasn't terribly satisfying, though Saunders' work is never dull. Forced to decide, I would call it a noble, yet unsuccessful experiment.

You can read volumes elsewhere about the story, but the best piece about the book was written by Saunders himself for Amazon.com. There, he tells of the dare that led to the book (an illustrator friend challenged him to write a book in which all of the characters were abstract shapes), and about how the story got away from him: "Soon the story was going off in an unexpected direction, and was becoming that rare and not-so-sought-after thing, a kid's story about genocide." What is perhaps most distressing is the fact that the book took six years to write and was pared down from 300 pages to its now-svelte 130 (You can read a dozen excised excerpts at the book's web site). It feels tossed-off, the kind of extended goofy riff one expects Saunders could crank out in a couple of weeks. That, coupled with what seems to be a steady fall off in his short fiction -- which has taken turns toward oddly pat endings and become increasingly absurd -- would seem to indicate that the fantastic voice of Pastoralia and Civilwarland in Bad Decline might have been misplaced, if not lost.

Still, anything Saunders writes is worth reading, despite that relative worth being a wildly fluctuating thing. The thoughts he shares in interviews are as entertaining as the books about which he speaks (he's the rare author whot more than merits a book-length sit-down someday), and the arrival of this new book means plenty of Q&As. Two of the best -- and certainly the longest -- can be found at Maud Newton's blog and the Morning News (with the always on Robert Birnbaum).

Given the state of the world, the eager audience ready for a thinly veiled critique and the estimable talents of the author, I expected much, much more. What I got was "The Sneetches" for the new millennium.