This was one of those wholly manageable weeks for me at Spectrum Culture: one album review, one film review. The album review was the tricker of the two, largely because it was another instance of a record that didn’t inspire strong feelings one way or the other. And “It’s pretty good” simply isn’t enough. In my malaise, I completely missed my opportunity to invoke a long dreamed of touring contingent. Since I spent the first part of the review musing on how many different groups shared some variation of the band’s name, I should have suggested that all of the similarly-monikered groups get together for a package tour, which would be second only in pure marquee entertainment value to a triple bill of Xiu Xiu, Yip-Yip and Zom Zoms.

On the film side, I picked up the new film from Brian De Palma, not because I expected it to be great (the advance word was not good, even from the lingering Kaelites inclined to praise everything he does) but because it would at least be interesting to write about, especially in the wake of covering all sort of his films for our prior Oeuvre feature. It was indeed not great. The “interesting to write about” part didn’t quite work out as I’d hoped, though. Would someone please help Rachel McAdams fix her once promising career?