COLUMN

 » Missed the Boat #6: Supergroups and Solo Surprises - In a time when more albums than ever are being made and fewer publications can afford to exist, more gatekeepers than ever are needed to separate the wheat from the chaff. Here's this month's batch of unreviewed but worth your time records that may have been overlooked.

COLUMN

 » Missed the Boat #5 - In a time when more albums than ever are being made and fewer publications can afford to exist, more gatekeepers than ever are needed to separate the wheat from the chaff. Here's this month's batch of unreviewed but worth your time records that may have been overlooked.

LITERATURE

 » 33 1/3: It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back - Whereas Geeta Dayal's well-intentioned Another Green World book started to shore up my impatience for an album where I was usually able to ignore Phil Collins' playing credits, Christopher R. Weingarten performs a minor miracle and brings me around to an album I always found slightly overrated for its massive impact.

COLUMN

 » Missed the Boat #4 - In a time when more albums than ever are being made and fewer publications can afford to exist, more gatekeepers than ever are needed to separate the wheat from the chaff. Here's this month's batch of unreviewed but worth your time records that may have been overlooked.

LITERATURE

 » 33 1/3: Another Green World - Despite Geeta Dayal's frustrated-sounding efforts to wring an interesting story from Brian Eno's monumental album, her book strains to justify its own existence. It's incredibly padded and quickly grows repetitive.

MUSIC

 » The xx / jj / Nosaj Thing: LIVE - Over the weekend in Canada this well-hyped triple bill (of double letters, ridiculously lowercased) provided an across-the-board survey of the great powers and limitations of onstage electronics.

COLUMN

 » Missed the Boat #3 - In a time when more albums than ever are being made and fewer publications can afford to exist, more gatekeepers than ever are needed to separate the wheat from the chaff. Here's this month's batch of unreviewed but worth your time records that may have been overlooked.

COLUMN

 » Missed the Boat #2 - In a time when more albums than ever are being made and fewer publications can afford to exist, more gatekeepers than ever are needed to separate the wheat from the chaff. Here's this month's batch of unreviewed but worth your time records that may have been overlooked.

COLUMN

 » Michael Jackson, 1958-2009 - My first musical memory was the "Black or White" video. I asked my dad, "Why is that woman named Michael?" Now that The King of Pop is gone, taking a look back at whatever Monster or Magic he was, it is more clear than ever that everything about him was always misunderstood.

COLUMN

 » Missed the Boat #1 - In a time when more albums than ever are being made and fewer publications can afford to exist, more gatekeepers than ever are needed to separate the wheat from the chaff. Here's this month's batch of unreviewed but worth your time records that may have been overlooked.

MUSIC

 » Steinski vs. Girl Talk - In the latest hypothetical brawl of the "versus" series, we're pitting a 1983-2006 Retrospective of Steven Stein's production work against the latest banger from the reigning king of dance floor mash-up madness. Thickening the soup is the fact that its a family feud of sort, with both albums coming from the Illegal Art label. Oh, drama.

MUSIC

 » TVOTR vs. The Knux - Take it from a TV on the Radio hater, Dear Science is worth every pull quote. And though I don't have that sort of credibility for the Knux, they can hang too. Maybe if the success d'estime can teach the Knux something about humanity, the rappers can give them a primer on guitar tunings. As America demonstrated a week ago, anything can happen.

MUSIC

 » Al Green - Lay It Down, released in early summer, is Al Green's best work in years, but the years are just as good. Why the album particularly sounds like Grammy gold, and I hope it is, is because all Green needed was a star to hitch his campaign trail to. Enter ?uestlove.

FESTIVALS

 » All Points West 2008 - I Went to All Points West and All I Got was this Lousy Scar On My Wrist. Dan Weiss reports on an eventful weekend, which included three days at the New Jersey festival billed as the East Coast Coachella, not to mention a morning leafing through mugshots.

MUSIC

 » Portishead - When reconsidering the band's recently-released third studio album, which he considers the ugliest record he's heard in some time, LAS staff writer Dan Williams can no longer deny that the shakes it gives him are not bad. After six months Third is truly a blessing as a puzzle worth parsing.

MUSIC

 » 33-1/3: Reign In Blood - In his detailed analysis of Slayer's seminal 1986 album for Continuum Books' revered 33-1/3 series, D.X. Ferris doesn't open a whole new world of perspective on the album, but he does dig up a few anecdotal tidbits worthy of conversation, and gets Tori Amos to fantasize about menstruation over Afghanistan.

LITERATURE

 » Black Postcards - From his days at Harvard with the indie dreamscicles Galaxie 500 to his broader success with Luna and that band's subsequent dissolution, Dean Wareham's memoir is measured in relationships. That most of them seem to have failed isn't the point, the point being equal parts "Rock & Roll" and "Romance."

MUSIC

 » Mountain Goats, The: LIVE - Recording artists have a long history of hitting the road to move units of new albums, but when John Darnielle and his decidedly rockist backing band rolled into New York this month in support of Heretic Pride, their Webster Hall performance didn't do it any favors.

MUSIC

 » Be Your Own Pet - After blasting out of nowhere and garnering widespread critical acclaim for their eponymous 2006 debut, the youthful quartet of Nashville prodigies are hoping to capitalize on their momentum with the upcoming release of Get Awkward. LAS staffer Dan Weiss recently sat down with the band to talk about recording, Walt Disney, and guitar shredders.

MUSIC

 » Mike Doughty vs. Nick Lowe - In looking at two albums - one new, one old - (re)released on Tuesday, LAS staff writer Dan Weiss found a unifying truth at the heart of his latest "versus" installment. "Aging sucks, and one thing Mike Doughty and Nick Lowe have in common is that they prove the hell out of it."

MUSIC

 » Lifesavas vs. Ghostface Killah - Continuing in the spirit of his Kanye West vs. 50 Cent match-up and his comparison of pianists PJ Harvey and Nellie McKay, LAS staff writer Dan Weiss pairs up Portland's indie hip-hop powerhouse and the legendary Wu Tang primary for a head-to-head.

MUSIC

 » Art Brut - "Galleries in Los Angeles just have people sitting around quietly with mochas or whatever, and art galleries in England just piss me off. I was getting quite angry about that really." LAS staff writer Dan Weiss recently cornered Argos in a laundry room for a chat about the lack of novelty in his novelty act.

MUSIC

 » Yo La Tengo: LIVE - One thing you have to love about this band is their willingness to put themselves in challenging situations. Would any other quite feedback-laden band be willing to strip down to acoustics and brushes for two hours on the altar in a church, all the while fielding questions and impromptu requests from the audience?

MUSIC

 » PJ Harvey vs. Nellie McKay - What is it about the piano that yields such specific expectations? Maybe the naked plink inspires solitude and the hovering echo demands proper spacing, but the great, glistening elephant-teeth machine only competes with a marching snare drum as arguably the most attention-getting solo instrument. In the spirit of the Kanye West vs. 50 Cent match-up, let's compare pianists.

MUSIC

 » Kanye West vs. 50 Cent - With the official sales numbers already in -- Graduation eclipsed Curtis by some 200,000 units -- LAS staff writer Dan Weiss takes a look at yesterday's "Decision 2007" album rivalry, but does so by the music, not the numbers.

MUSIC

 » Northern State - Trios of female rappers with redeemable politics of any race only come along once a decade (Luscious Jackson being the last shot), and look at all the high-minded stuff they name-check; Chekhov and Snoopy in the same couplet. Give these three girls credit for trying to exhume some legends.