I just finished reading Bust, the latest offering from the great Hard Case Crime paperback book series. This one is a collaboration between Irish writer Ken Bruen and American Jason Starr. I've become a huge Bruen fan in short order, having devoured everything available by him stateside in the past year or so (starting with the excellent The White Trilogy). I have yet to read any of Starr's well-reviewed books, but will likely dive in. This isn't the strongest thing with Bruen's name on the cover -- it's no surprise the narrative is a bit disjointed given the presence of two cooks in the kitchen -- but it's a well-plotted story that serves as a solid entry in this series of modern day pulp fiction.

Starr reports on his web site that the two plan to collaborate on a sequel for Hard Case Crime: "We're bringing back TWO characters from BUST. One won't be a surprise; the other will."

You can hear Bruen and Starr discuss Bust on KUHF Public Radio here.

Elsewhere, Newsweek has a nice Q&A with Paul Westerberg, who talks about the briefly reunited Replacements and his worries about sobriety should the band go back on the road. That's not as far-fetched as it sounds: Westerberg says that the group recorded more than the two songs appended to the Rhino best-of coming tomorrow, and adds that he doesn't "think it's out of the realm of us making one, Tommy and I," referring to a new record.

Over at Stylus Magazine, Matthew Weiner explores the backlash against the Flaming Lips' latest, At War With the Mystics. I'd argue that it's not a backlash, but rather a fitting critical drubbing from the few people who seem to be able to hear the middling songs buried beneath the hype. Simply put, AWWTM isn't very good. This isn't so much the case of a band getting its comeuppance from the very people who built them up, but rather of a band who spent too much time reading all of that praise. This sounds very much like a disc made by a band trying to sound like the Flaming Lips as described in the reams of positive press lauded upon and The Soft Bulletin and Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots. Where once the band's quirks dressed up solid songs, they now seem to be the kernel around which songs are spun, and that is clearly not the way the Lips work best.