I have two reviews running in Blurt Magazine today – Gang Gang Dance and Of Montreal. Both new albums are excellent, innovative, weird, and lots of fun. Read them here and here.

This week, Chaplin was released on DVD as a special 15th Anniversary Edition. Robert Downey Jr. plays the title character here, pre-drug problems and pre-Ironman fame. His performance is spectacular, but the film is a biopic made by rote (directed by Richard Attenborough). Read my review here.

Kathy from The Thermals other band, All Girl Summer Fun Band, put out a record last month. And if you’re gonna lump girl groups together, which I would never do, you could say that they give Vivian Girls a run for their money in terms of pop-punk, indie rock, Ramones-style garage rock. Read my review for Blurt here.

Italian horror master Dario Argento’s latest film, Mother of Tears, was released on DVD last week. This schlocky supernatural horror film is good for a couple of laughs, but it’s not gonna change your life or anything. Read my review here, and watch the trailer below:

It’s that time of month… you know, time for Glaciers of Ice, my monthly hip-hop roundup for Lostatsea.net. Check out my melody.

I recently reviewed the film The Lucky Ones for Paste Magazine, which you can find in the October issue out now. Directed by Neil Burger (The Illusionist), this sappy attempt at a road movie follows three soldiers (Tim Robbins, Rachel McAdams, Michael Pena) on leave from Iraq as they cross the country, deal with the difficulties of returning home, and “find” themselves. But that’s not the most infuriating thing about this movie. Trite dialogue and plot contrivances aside, the film seems to suggest that if you haven’t been to war, you can’t really understand or criticize it. Sure, the first part of this may be true, but I hardly believe that one must experience combat to acknowledge the failures of and lies leading up to our current conundrum. Read my review here.

Just got back from vacation in New York and Cape Cod, so I’m doing a quick update of some new reviews I have running at Blurt Magazine. First up, San Diego’s The Donkeys – read it here. And secondly, the excellent solo album from Wilderness’ guitar player, known here as The Lord Dog Bird – read it here.

The Lord Dog Bird – "The Gift of the Song in the Lion's Den"

New Glaciers of Ice column is up at Lost at Sea. This month, I cover GZA, Ras Kass, Doomtree Collective, Elzhi, and more. Read all about it here.

LA’s shoegazer-classic rock hybrid, Darker My Love, recently released their new album, 2, which I reviewed for LA Weekly. It might sound apologetic, but as I say in my review, this is a band I want to like, but can’t. Like Silversun Pickups, they just lean a little bit too much towards cheesy ’90s alt-rock conventions. Read my review, watch this video, and see what you think.

When I first heard the song “All Parts of Me” off of Love as Laughter’s new album, I didn’t know quite what to think. However, after spending some time with Holy, out on Isaac Brock’s Glacial Pace imprint, I began to appreciate it more. Gone are is gritty rock of Destination 2000, but Sam Jayne still knows how to write a damn good classic rock-referencing song. Read my article for SF Weekly on the new album and Mr. Modest Mouse’s input here.

The bastards at Sony or the bastards at Youtube won’t let me embed this, but watch the video for “All Parts of Me” here. Damn bastards.