VOTE NOW IN THE AUSTIN MUSIC POLL

December 31 • 2010

Dec 31, 2010 - Jan 6, 2011 / Vol. 30 / No. 18
Digital Edition

Cover Story

Tiny Furniture

Tiny Furniture 2010, NR, 98 min. Directed by Lena Dunham, Starring Lena Dunham, Laurie Simmons, Grace Dunham, Jemima Kirke, Alex Karpovsky. After college, a woman returns home to her mother’s house while she tries to figure out what to do with her life. Each feature in this series is paired with a short film made…

by Chronicle Staff

Maniac

Maniac 1980, R, 87 min. Directed by William Lustig, Starring Joe Spinell, Caroline Munro, Abigail Clayton, Tom Savini. Lustig made a name for himself with this controversial early film in which a man who suffers from well-deserved mommy issues kills and scalps numerous young women. Rob Bottin and Tom Savini provide the makeup effects.

by Chronicle Staff

Critics’ Picks for Dec. 31 – Jan. 6

Critics’ Picks for Dec. 31 – Jan. 6 Marjorie Baumgarten The Fighter Black Swan 127 Hours Kimberley Jones Black Swan Four Lions The Fighter Marc Savlov Four Lions Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale The King’s Speech

by Chronicle Staff

Mr. Smarty Pants Knows

Psychic Julianna Suranyi says Halle Berry and Olivier Martinez will make a shock announcement about a wedding and a child. According to psychic Alizon, in 2011, a shoot-out at a restaurant in a major U.S. city will see many dead. Psychic Christopher Renstrom predicts the gay marriage debate will be amicably settled between April and…

by Mr. Smarty Pants

Phases & Stages

Kanye West My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy (Def Jam/Roc-a-Fella) “I embody every characteristic of the egotistic,” boasts Kanye West during “Power,” a self-defining anthem of solitary confinement. Somehow that’s an understatement. As the song’s sample reiterates, West is the modern manifestation of King Crimson’s “21st Century Schizoid Man.” He’s a constant contradiction – seriously funny,…

by Austin Powell

Phases & Stages

Cee Lo Green The Lady Killer (Elektra) As one of Southern rap’s underground kings via Atlanta Soul Food pioneers Goodie Mob, Thomas DeCarlo Callaway thumped strange fruit atop hip-hop’s house of thugs. Church rang the cannon ball MC’s big brass bells, and by 2002’s Cee-Lo Green and His Perfect Imperfections, the 5-square-foot force of nature…

by Raoul Hernandez

Noms at 3am

For the young and not-so, for those with kids and without alike, this is the time of year we return to the right life: the nightlife. Perhaps the third cup of grog gives us a second wind, or maybe it’s the heady days of oncoming flu that inspire us to drink and dance on winter…

by Anne Harris

Phases & Stages

Glasser Ring (True Panther Sounds) Cameron Mesirow extends her invitation thusly: “If the walls were too thin, you would break right in.” The hypnotic beat of “Apply” lures us into the first room of the Brooklyn singer’s intimate debut LP, and we spend the rest of Ring in one of her design. While there’s a…

by Audra Schroeder

Off the Record

From Cactusgate to Casual Victim Pile, the year in local music ends with the tragic death of drummer Bill Maddox

by Austin Powell

Phases & Stages

Brian Eno Small Craft on a Milk Sea (Warp) Bryan Ferry Olympia (Astralwerks) Wyatt, Atzmon & Stephen For the Ghosts Within (Domino) Music is meditation for Brian Eno, so it’s fitting that portions of Small Craft on a Milk Sea – a collaboration with guitarist Leo Abrahams and pianist Jon Hopkins – sound like they’re…

by Audra Schroeder

Phases & Stages

Elton John/Leon Russell The Union (Decca) Rather than a true joining together, The Union delivers the best Elton John/Bernie Taupin album in decades thanks to Leon Russell’s Dixie omnipresence. The team behind 1970’s Tumbleweed Connection and Honky Château (’72) contribute eight of 14 tunes, the best of which, “Gone to Shiloh,” sounds like a Leon…

by Raoul Hernandez

Phases & Stages

Bob Dylan The Witmark Demos: 1962-1964 The Bootleg Series Vol. 9 (Columbia) At the time of these recordings, the term singer-songwriter didn’t exist. Even Dylan’s first album, released before the making of these demos, contained only two originals. These 47 songs, then, mark a dramatic change in the music business. Dylan, stripped to vocal, guitar,…

by Jim Caligiuri

Phases & Stages

Robert Plant Band of Joy (Rounder) Without co-star Alison Krauss or marquee Texan producer T Bone Burnett, Robert Plant’s latest solo outing suffers the expected sequel slump. Band of Joy lacks the subtle grace and evocative restraint of 2007’s Raising Sand, even as local ringer Patty Griffin’s lilting harmony tops Richard Thompson’s “House of Cards”…

by Austin Powell

Phases & Stages

Annie Lennox A Christmas Cornucopia (Decca) Cornucopia’s muscularly pagan arrangement of “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen” is the centerpiece of this standard Christmas-album-with-a-twist. Annie Lennox makes anything compelling; the video for “Gentlemen” is high art, with the singer decked out in a Victorian fantasy that befits the traditional (“The First Noel”) and the nontraditional (“See…

by Margaret Moser

Oops!

In “A Bumper-to-Bumper Crop of MoPac Proposals,” News, Dec. 24, we mistakenly attributed the following quote to the League of Bicycling Voters: “It’s understandable that much of the focus would be on cars, but it seems extremely shortsighted and out of step with the stated goals of multi-modal transportation that there is no mention of…

by Chronicle Staff

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