Fantastic Metropolis

Louisiana Breakdown, Lucius Shepard

As has been said elsewhere on this site, Shepard produced a lot of amazing fiction in 2003. Funny, because of his lush prose, he’s not thought of as a minimalist, but this short novel illustrates his skill with setting, language, and a complex story that some would have drawn out to 400 pages, but which he distills into its essential elements.

Music

Just An American Boy, Steve Earle

Both live album and anti-war statement. I read an article last year about how protest songs are soon dated. If the message of this album is ever dated, it will mean the world is in a much better place–I’ll be happy with that and I’m sure Earle will too.

The Party Platform… Our Schedule is Change!, Total Sound Group Direct Action Committee

The latest from guitarist Tim Kerr (Big Boys, Poison 13, Lord High Fixers) and vocalist Mike Carroll (also Poison 13 and Lord High Fixers). Ragged blues-punk. Guitars growl, organs squeak, and voices bark out a series of intense journeys into the realm of the raw.

Hala Strana, Hala Strana

Improvisational instrumentals based on Eastern European music. Sometimes dreamy, sometimes screeching playing with a ragged insistence, featuring an assortment instruments, including guitar, cello, violin, harmonium, optigan, drums, gourd guitar, clay flowerpots, glockenspiel, bottles, harpsichord, and laundry cart.

Reissues

With These Hands, Alejandro Escovedo

With Escovedo suffering from Hepatitis C and lacking health insurance, Rykodisc re-issued this out-of-print 1996 album and added a bonus disc of an outtake and parts of two live sets, one electric, one acoustic. The combination makes it a great introduction to his music.

Positively and For the Country, Dumptruck

I don’t have these yet, but I will soon. Dumptruck was one of my favorite guitar-pop bands of the mid-1980s, and this is the first cd releases for both of these albums, Positively (1986) and For the Country (1987).

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Robert Freeman Wexler is the author of In Springdale Town (PS Publishing, 2003), a novella, and Circus of the Grand Design, a novel forthcoming from Prime Books in the Summer of 2004.