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FEBRUARY 2013
•
HEMISPHERESMAGAZINE.COM
Key Changes
Three artists, three new releases,
three career turning points
Jamie Lidell
,
Jamie Lidell:
On this self-produced album
the British singer reprises
the mix of
glitchy
free jazz
and radio-
friendly soul
swagger he
showcased
on his 2005
breakthrough,
Multiply
.
Be er
yet, he recorded
in a place that’s
long specialized in
mixing genres: Nashville, a city
he now calls home.
FEB. 18
Two Lanes of Freedom
,
TimMcGraw:
Country star
McGraw has split with Curb
Records—where he’d been
since 1990—and signed with
BigMachine. The benefits of
the move, he says, are reflected
in his latest release. “I think
you can feel the horses gallop
on this record.”
FEB. 5
Free the Universe
,
Major
Lazer:
For the second
full-length installment
of this hip-hop/dancehall
stew “fronted” by a cartoon
one-armed Jamaican renegade,
dance music superstar Diplo
parted ways with longtime
collaborator Switch and
brought in names like Bruno
Mars, Shaggy and Wyclef Jean
to support.
FEB. 19
The heroine:
“
I wanted
her name to mark her
as an outsider in this very
insular Irish-American
neighborhood of South
Buffalo, even though it’s
where she grew up. No
good Irish Catholic would
ever think of calling a kid
Absalom. In Buffalo, that
name would be a whole
hour of conversation.”
The intrigue:
“
I was
growing up in South
Buffalo around the time
that IRA guys were being
smuggled into the city,
right over the Peace Bridge
from Canada. People think
South Boston when they
think Irish, but there was
a lot of what you’d call
republican sentiment in
my neighborhood.”
The setting:
“
Buffalo was
one of the first Rust Belt
towns that peaked and
then fell. That darkness,
that decline, really works
for a detective story. When
it comes to decaying
cities, Detroit gets all the
attention; when it comes
to Irish enclaves, it’s always
Boston. I demand attention
for Buffalo!”
Buffalo Noir
Even a fleeting synopsis of
the new thriller
Black Irish
—
Det. AbsalomKearney hunts
a serial killer amid historical
IRA intrigue in Buffalo, N.Y.—
raises a question or two. So
we decided to call up the author,
noted journalist (and
Hemispheres
contributor)
Stephan Talty
in his fiction
debut, for some enlightenment.
feb. 26
INTERVIEWING JAMIE KILSTEIN
isn’t exactly a walk in the
park. First, he tends to be quite
sweary, emitting a torrent of
unprintable words in a mono-
logue so rapid-fire that you
worry he’ll asphyxiate. Then
there’s his preferred subject
matter: poverty, reproductive
rights, Noam Chomsky.
“
I’m the least funny person in
interviews,” says theNewYork–based
political comedian, who’s taking his manic, indignant standup routine to
the U.K. this month. “I’ll be going on about the war in Iraq and then I’ll
remember,
Oh, right, I’m plugging a comedy show
.”
Kilstein allows that being a die-hard le y isn’t necessarily the best starting
point for a comedy act. “It’s hard enough to make people laugh,” he says.
“
If you want to make them laugh while convincing them we shouldn’t be
bombing civilians, the material had be er be funny.”
There is one advantage to Kilstein’s political slant: He’s go en a ton of
publicity sparring with Glenn Beck, Jonah Goldberg and other right-wing
pundits. But even this has a potential downside. “At first I was nervous,”
he says. “I thought I’d get all this crazy online harassment. It ended
up being 15 confused old people on Twi er who didn’t really know how
to use it. You could almost hear them—‘How do I hang this thing up?’”
FOR TOUR DATES, GO TO JAMIEKILSTEIN.COM.
culture
||
THEMONTHAHEAD
All
Politics
Is Loco
ANewYork comedian
explores the funny side
of global hegemony
