News from the Music Industry

Man Gone Down (Black Cat)

In this stupendously jittery novel, the narrator, with no idea how to make it to the end of the week when the bills come due, walks into a Brooklyn club on amateur night. AI Green is on the sound system, singing “Tired of Being Alone”–cut off to make room for Ed and Peter, a folk group, who before they can do their song about the day “we started bombing Afghanistan,” have to explain it–and the scene as Thomas lets it play is so perfect you can hardly bear to stay in the room. Even as your skin crawls over “It’s a song about war, I guess…. But it’s about the sadness of it all, which is something people don’t really see,” you can’t wait to find out how much worse it will get.

2 THE AVETT BROTHERS

Emotionalism (Ramseur)

Employing mainly guitar, banjo, and inferior recording equipment, two brothers from Greenville, North Carolina, listen for the Beatles. That opens the door to the house their songs make–a place where the doors stick and the floors aren’t level. There’s an odd, shifting light and folk-art knickknacks in the bedrooms, not to mention Buddy Holly 45s and a warped copy of The Band’s second album in the attic.

3 THE POLYPHONIC SPREE