All Authors >

RYAN STEWART

Latest Articles

Lonely island

Michael Emerson sheds some light on Lost
This Tuesday, the sixth and final season of Lost will launch onto home screens (ABC; February 2 at 9 pm). When the show last left us, you'll recall, it appeared to have killed off one of the Island's main string pullers, Jacob (Mark Pellegrino), in 2007 while simultaneously detonating a nuclear bomb underneath the Island in 1977.

By: RYAN STEWART | January 29, 2010

Los Campesinos! | Romance Is Boring

Arts & Crafts (2010)
Toward the end of "In Medias Res," the first song on Los Campesinos!' third album, Gareth Campesinos (the entire Cardiff septet have adopted the surname) asks, "Is this something that would interest you?"

By: RYAN STEWART | January 19, 2010

Prep Yourself!

You’ve decided to go back to school. Now what?
So the economy sucks, you’re in a miserable rut at work, and you’re not getting any younger. What are you going to do about it?

By: RYAN STEWART | October 14, 2009

Are you ready for some Footballz?

Ha-Ha Huddle Dept.
These days, thanks to Internet-related information overload, football fans are more educated than ever. So why, exactly, do we need idiotic TV commentators telling us what we already know about how talented Drew Brees and Adrian Peterson are, or that the game all comes down to turnovers?

By: RYAN STEWART | September 17, 2009

Interview: Jason Schwartzman

On trying another identity in Bored to Death
"Three seconds into reading one of Raymond Chandler's books, I want a whiskey and a cigarette."

By: RYAN STEWART | September 15, 2009

Big sleepy

Bored to Death brings a stoner PI to HBO
If television is indeed a reflection of society, then to judge from what's on the screen these days, we're all surrounded by people leading seedy double lives.

By: RYAN STEWART | September 16, 2009

Going steady

This just in: Drug Rug are insanely good
Whenever Drug Rug come up in the press (which is happening more and more lately), writers seem to find it hard to separate the band from the relationship between founding members Sarah Cronin and Tommy Allen. Cronin and Allen are not crazy about this.

By: RYAN STEWART | August 05, 2009

Magnolia Electric Co. | Josephine

Secretly Canadian (2009)
Even though it arose in part from tragedy, Josephine , the latest from Jason Molina and his band Magnolia Electric Co., may be one of Molina's lightest releases.

By: RYAN STEWART | July 22, 2009

Review: Guitar Hero: Smash Hits

Guitar Hero does its greatest hits
When evaluating a new Guitar Hero — or any music-related game — it helps to picture a Venh Diagram consisting of three circles: "Good Songs," "Challenging Songs," and "Songs that are fun to play on plastic instruments."

By: RYAN STEWART | July 13, 2009

Japandroids | Post-Nothing

Polyvinyl (2009)
I was tempted to write off Japandroids as just one more lo-fi punk band who've overdosed on fuzz.

By: RYAN STEWART | July 07, 2009

Bowerbirds | Upper Air

Dead Oceans (2009)
North Carolina's Bowerbirds take the prevailing indie-rock æsthetic — ornate, textured arrangements, clean vocal harmonies — and apply them to Southern gothic, Appalachian bluegrass, and folk.

By: RYAN STEWART | July 06, 2009

Rising stars

Phoenix live at the Paradise Rock Club, June 17, 2009
Toward the end of Phoenix's long set at the Paradise Wednesday night, the Versailles band busted out "Love like a Sunset," a nearly eight-minute, mostly instrumental song from their new Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix.

By: RYAN STEWART | June 23, 2009

Sunset Rubdown | Dragonslayer

Jagjaguwar (2009)
Sunset Rubdown's 2007 release, Random Spirit Lover , is an underappreciated tour de force , a sprawling indie-rock epic imbued with a spirit of anarchic glee. Their third album is as ambitious as its predecessors but mutes the joy in favor of a more serious tone and tighter focus.

By: RYAN STEWART | June 15, 2009

Practice makes precious

Jenny Lewis + Deer Tick, live at House of Blues, June 10, 2009
After seeing her do her thing at the House of Blues on Wednesday, I think I can safely conclude that something about Jenny Lewis just doesn’t do it for me.

By: RYAN STEWART | June 12, 2009

Hard act to follow

TV on the Radio + Dirty Projectors, live at House of Blues, June 4, 2009
Shortly after Dirty Projectors completed their mind-blowing set opening up for TV on the Radio at the House of Blues, vocalists and multi-instrumentalists Angel Deradoorian and Amber Coffman came back on stage.

By: RYAN STEWART | June 05, 2009

The long good-byes

Nine Inch Nails and Jane's Addiction, live at the Comcast Center, June 3, 2009
Some time in the late 90s, Trent Reznor holed himself up in a house near the ocean. Ostensibly, he was there to write some music. And while he did use that time to begin piecing together some of the songs that would become Nine Inch Nails's 1999 double-album The Fragile , Reznor.

By: RYAN STEWART | June 04, 2009