This week at spectrum Culture, I started with an album review. Specifically, this was another of my attempts to write about an artist who I like a great deal, but whose work is a little outside of my proverbial writing wheelhouse. I’m somewhat satisfied with the resulting review of the new record from M.I.A., but I do feel like it could have used more precise and detailed descriptions of the music itself. I was somewhat at a loss to describe the melange of sounds she creates. M.I.A. makes fantastic songs, but I don’t thing she’s yet pulled off a album that lives up to the promise of the dynamic, devastating singles.

On the film side, I wrote about the latest from John Sayles. It’s not good, but my conflicted feeling about calling it out for its middling quality wound up as the crux of the review. Not that I have any delusions whatsoever that my small review will impact the viability of future Sayles projects, but it still feels like a sort of betrayal to disparage the latest work from a filmmaker who I’d gladly bestow the gift of a perpetual green light upon. Still, a flawed film is a flawed film.