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Iglesias goes for straightforward pop on '7'

'Skull Ring' recalls three decades of Iggy Pop's music

With this month's release of , Iggy Pop has entered his 34th year of recording music. Still heroin-thin with ghostly silver hair and knotted veins stretched over bone, Iggy is a barely covered skeleton. And he has been recording music that sounds like he looks for over three decades. 

Berlin Project still underway

The Six Parts Seven makes mixed album

Jimmy's Comet blazes brilliantly with 'bye'

Jimmy's Comet, the Madison quintet of Karl Christenson, Kris Larson, Patrick Cassidy, Adam Strom and Brad Kolberg, proves it is not going to be a shooting star with its upcoming release, . The album resists easy classification as it jumps from country-twang in \About Girls"" to pop-rock in ""My Face is Clean"" to emo in bits and pieces throughout. But those genres only go so far. After a verse or two, the style fades away and each song emerges as a well-crafted accomplishment. Thankfully, Jimmy's Comet managed to put together 15 such songs on .  

New Ferrick album needs a long 'Listen'

Melissa Ferrick 

Jet lag helps out garage rockers

Political spectrum changes at U-Square

The office space at 31 University Square is currently empty, save for a couch and a few desks and chairs. As Collegians for a Constructive Tomorrow prepares to move into this new home, the location's former tenant, the UW InfoShop, moves on to a new place and a new role in the community. 

That's sophomore to you, Door-Troll!

You can imagine my indefatigable exhilaration last Saturday morning around 3 a.m. when I realized that I didn't have to get up five hours later to do a power hour or a few beer bongs to get properly lubricated for the game.  

Places to go for indie film

Now that I have the pesky job of highlighting Madison's blockbuster theaters out of the way in last week's column, it's time to give the smaller, independent theaters their due. Many college students (and film audiences in general), prefer movies that involve as much taste as popcorn and carry about the same weight. I'll gladly point to the box-office success of \2 Fast 2 Furious"" and ""Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle"" for proof that many moviegoers are simply out for a quick, action-packed movie that doesn't make (or allow) them to think too much, if at all. I love an exciting action movie as much as the next guy, but you have to have standards. 

'Secret Lives' reveal suburban tension

Dentist Dave Hurst's whole family has been stricken with the flu and he juggles vomiting children, while the requests of a half-conscious wife and visions of his dental hygienist dressed in a sexy dress crooning \You Give Me Fever"" follow him through his house. This is one of the many scenes in Alan Rudolph's latest film, ""The Secret Lives of Dentists,"" a film told from the perspective of Hurst, a husband and father on the verge of breaking down. 

Want to be indie rock? Follow these 3 steps

Let's face it. You are a corporate music fan, born from corporate radio, culled from corporate playlists, clothed by Abercrombie and Fitch. Your punk is Good Charlotte, your sensitivity is Ben Harper and your haircut is frat-boy. You, whose headphones blare nothing more creative than Dave Mathews Band, sip Starbucks coffee (and you know how much their bean pickers earn). You are a mass-commercialized ideal. Your free will in music selection is but an illusion. You are everything that is wrong with music. 

Scraping the bottom of the barrel

Every school year brings a lot of joy into our lives here at Cardinal Arts page. But we're cynical bastards, so we prefer to focus on the worst things to happen and we aren't talking about genuinely tragic events like the fatal Great White concert or Joe Strummer's passing. Here are 15 ways in which the arts hit rock bottom this school year. 

The polarity of white hip-hop today

Two upcoming hip-hop albums by white artists have left me with the realization that there's a right way to do things and a wrong way to do things.  

James Madison ready to rock

With only two weeks of classes left before it's time to start cracking down on the books, students looking for something to do this weekend will want to check out Party in the Park, hosted by WSUM.  

Spring flowers give way to party season

Graduating seniors are plotting and scheming right now. Questions need to be answered. Where are they going to live? Who are they going to live with? What will a post-graduate apartment look like? Will they be able to take care of plants? How will they assert their post-graduate status? Will it be a job, a live-in girlfriend, the great American novel or a dog? A distraction is needed. Luckily, a great thing is about to happen. Amid the whirlwind of possibilities flitting before seniors arises a nice piece of solid ground to stand on: the party season. 

Boomkat should stop making music

Calvin Johnson a treasure of the indie rock scene

I know very few people who would die for rock 'n' roll. In fact, I know very few people who would volunteer to even be mildly inconvenienced in the name of rock 'n' roll. It's an unlikely comfort, then, that one of my personal heroes, Calvin Johnson, was willing to sacrifice a finger for the music that's been such a large part of his life for the last two decades. 

Steve Albini dissects his music

To our age group, the independent music scene started with Nevermind. Ten years before Nirvana, before independent music was considered commercially viable, only independent record labels stood for bands who were actively noncommercial. In the mid '80s Big Black, fronted by Steve Albini, made every effort to confront its audience with abrasive sounds and songs about rape and racism, molestation and guys who enjoy watching cows get slaughtered.  

Gaines at a loss on new album