Most Popular
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The Talk of the Green Iguana
Will American voters elect the first gay vice president in November?
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Are We There Yet?
Jeez, can we just embrace the electric car already?
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Accidental Hit Man
Sure, Paul Brandreth talks like a wiseguy. But is he a cold-blooded killer?
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The Muscle Men
Inside the "Rejuvenation Centers" at the heart of the nation's largest illegal steroid and HGH operation
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They'll Take Your Houses
South Florida's real estate forecast calls for pain
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Man-Child in the Promised Land (11)
Pop star Sean Kingston hopes the party's just begun
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Your Mom Thinks He’s Hot (6)
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The Talk of the Green Iguana (4)
Will American voters elect the first gay vice president in November?
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Shooting the Moon (2)
Aim high or aim low, you're bound to hit something, even if it's the sleep button
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Incredible Turnout (2)
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Cheat Sheet to Langerado
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Paul Potts
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Licensed to Chill
How the Beasties went from hip-hop pranksters to musical renaissance men
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Not Your Father's N Word
Eight months after its "burial," the world's most dangerous epithet is more popular than ever in hip-hop
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Sabbath Bloody Sabbath
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Rejected!
12:56PM 03/18/08 -
Palm Beach Post Cuts Coffee, Pages
11:56AM 03/17/08 -
America's Economy Is A Sinking Cesspool
09:41PM 03/16/08 -
Last Bit of SXSW Wrap-Up (2/3): Black Keys, Torche, Ash Grunwald, Working For a Nuclear Free City, Dirty Novels, and more
05:49AM 03/18/08 -
Last Bit of SXSW Wrap-Up (1/3): Napalm Death, Motörhead, Tigercity, the Noisettes, Jens Lekman, Dizzee Rascal, and more
04:22AM 03/18/08 -
Stream Flo Rida's album, out tomorrow
12:19PM 03/17/08
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Recent Articles By Ray Cummings
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Regina Spektor
Begin to Hope (Sire)
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Radioinactive
Soundtrack to a Book (Strangertouch)
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Sonic Youth
Sonic Youth EP (DGC/Universal)
National Features
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Phoenix New Times
Canine Crusaders
That drug-sniffing dog up ahead? He may not be your best friend.
By Ray Stern -
Miami New Times
Picked On
Farm workers earn nada in America's green-bean capital.
By Janine Zeitlin -
Village Voice
"Why I'm No Longer a Brain-Dead Liberal"
An election-season essay from one of America's greatest playwrights.
By David Mamet
Subject(s): Islands
Please excuse Nick Diamonds and Jaime T'ambour while they resurrect themselves. If you'll recall, they bought the proverbial farm at the conclusion of the Unicorns' landmark Who Will Cut Our Hair When We're Gone?, a sort of fey, goofy, indie-rock Final Exit. The Canadian pair have since jettisoned Alden Ginger, taken up with a slew of Arcade Fire-associated luminaries and rapper friends, and reemerged as Islands. Opener "Swans" simultaneously acknowledges glories past while plotting a lusher future; it's a temptingly ornate, piano-trimmed pop masterpiece that quotes Crazy Horse and finds Diamonds stranded on the same isle where the Unicorns expired. Death fixations and Tinker Toy, tiptoeing keyboards are usurped or swamped here by grander, sometimes orchestral ambitions, even as Diamonds' decidedly twisted sense of humor and tongue-in-cheek psychosis remain. Thus, Return to the Sea is one batty, insidious daydream after another — the fiddles-'n'-pedal-steel, string-section-conjoined giddyap of "Volcanoes" collapsing into an unhinged Pavement rout; "Humans," a dark showtune about disaster survivors driven to cannibalism; "Don't Call Me Whitney, Bobby," an unbearably chipper, Violent Femmes-style ditty wherein the narrator can't figure out why his deceased, desiccated girlfriend is so darned skinny. Who knew — Biggie Smalls and Tupac aside — that life after death could be so fulfilling?
