PLANK JULY 6, 2012
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Editor’s Note: We’ll be running the article recommendations of our friends at TNR Reader each afternoon on The Plank, just in time to print out or save for your commute home. Enjoy!
Chicago is facing massive troubles. A crisis is afoot. Can Rahm Emanuel save the city?
City Journal | 13 min (3,228 words)
Why does Hollywood keep making superhero movies? And please God, will they stop?
New York Times | 10 min (2,450 words)
Tired of traffic? You have sat through nothing, unless you have been to Lagos, Nigeria.
The Atlantic | 4 min (887 words)
Those who think American culture is going to the dogs haven't heard the greatest rock album of a generation.
Grantland | 7 min (1,690 words)
3 comments
"Loveless" is a great album. but best of it's generation? That's debatable. And no, it's still not better than Sgt. Pepper no matter what the writer thinks.
- tmmats
July 6, 2012 at 5:19pm
Sgt. Pepper is the most over-rated album; it's not really a concept as it purports to be, and few songs work without the entire album justifying them: "She's Leaving Home," "Lovely Rita," and "A Day in the Life." Sgt. Pepper was the first Beatles album not to produce even one single - apparently, the individual songs simply couldn't hold their own. As for Loveless, though it outstrips Sgt. Pepper in every way imaginable - on a song-by-song basis, from a holistic perspective, etc. - an album released by an Irish group in 1991 doesn't speak much to the state of US culture in 2012. That 21-year gap itself is very telling...depressingly so.
- whyamihere
July 8, 2012 at 12:15pm
If Sgt Pepper was (is) "over-rated", it's due to the poor judgement of the millions who found it exciting & epoch-making. (And many still find it worth the occasional listen.) Gave Loveless an admittedly cursory listen, but it is clearly derivative of the earlier work of the Beatles, & others of the psychedelic era, in my judgement, and so of a decidely secondary level of importance, at best. As for Irish music, give me Van Morrison any day. Astral Weeks is still music that moves. (I know, I'm a dinosaur - but most of what the kids listen to these days just seems deficient in soul, funk, musicality, etc. I feel sorry for youngsters today, when it comes to music. And many other things too, I guess.)
- Haole45
July 8, 2012 at 3:51pm