Standing out from the CrowdJanelle Monáe, The ArchAndroid, Bad Boy/Wondaland"Critics are loath to admit it, but every once in a whilewe come across an album of such thuddingly obviousquality that writing a straight-up review seems boring."-- Seth Colter Walls, NewsweekThere's so much to say about this voraciously talented St. Louis-to-Atlanta transplant that it's hard to know where to start. LikePatti Smith, she recalls more male musicians than female, butnever sounds like a man in drag (and nor does Smith).Granted, her power suit and pompadour suggest androgyny, sothis shouldn't come as a completely surprise, but I'm still amaz-ed she can take on s

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Movie ofthe Month:Part 18I recentlyreviewedthe follow-ing filmfor Video Librarian, and thought the results were worth sharing.BEESWAX [***1/2](Andrew Bujalski, US, 100 mins.)Andrew Bujalski continues his winning streak of insightfulindependent features with Beeswax. Sisters Tilly and MaggieHatcher play twins Jeannie and Lauren, who live in Austin, siteof Bujalski's first film, Funny Ha Ha. Jeannie, who uses a wheel-chair, runs a vintage clothing shop and fears that her businesspartner, Amanda (Anne Dodge), may cost her the store.Amanda, whose father drafted their contract, is often out of town,spends little time in Storyville, and even hires employee

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Room to MoveScout Niblett, The Calcinationof Scout Niblett,Drag CityI once described thespare sounds of Notting-ham's Scout Niblett(born Emma Louise) asbare-boned blues. Fiveyears have passed sincethen, but the sound re-mains the same. It's herbiggest strength and...her biggest weakness.So many artists who emerge as architects of stark add more andmore details as the years go by, but The Calcination of ScoutNiblett trades embellishment for volume and control. There'sno collision between notes and words, but rather a lot of space,a lot of air, a lot of room for the individual elements to move.But there's isn't much movement going on, which means that

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Fall Heads Roll (Again)I first discovered theFall when I was in col-lege. They'd already beenaround for seven years,but I'd never heard ofthem. That said, I tooka seminar on Albert Cam-us around the same time,and that's when I alsodiscovered The Fall.I enjoyed The Strangerand The Plague, but TheFall was where the Fren-ch-Algerian absurdistreally kicked in for me. I ended up reading it twice, because I found the narrator so persuasive that I missed the fact that he was completely unreliable. I'd imagine that was also one of the attrac-tions for Mark E. Smith, who took the band's name from the book.I'm pretty sure goth-garage extravaganza "Lay of the L

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May Reviews These are the reviews and other pieces I'm working on this month.Amazon DVDs: Malice in Wonderland (with Lost's Maggie Grace), The Red Baron (with Joseph Fiennes and Lena Headey), You Don't Know Jack (with Al Pacino and Susan Sarandon), and Don McKay (with Thomas Haden Church and Elisabeth Shue). Amazon Theatricals: Casino Jack and the United States of Money (Alex Gibney takes on Jack Abramoff), Nowhere Boy (Sam Taylor-Wood takes on John Lennon), The Concert (with Mélanie Laurent), and Countdown to Zero (from Lucy Walker). Still playing (or yet to open): Alice in Wonderland, Crazy Heart,Diary of a Wimpy Kid, The Eclipse, E

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