Choice Cuts)

Album: Songs in Red and Grey Artist: Suzanne Vega Label: A&M Records

Suzanne Vega is your classic songstress. Though her voice lacks the same power that Sarah MacLaughlin or Celine Dion’s hold, it is still sweet, soft and gentle.

The real flavour on this CD is in the instrumentals, with beautiful gui- tar riffs and a whole lot of mandolin in the background. This CD is total soft rock, and is meant for those whose tastes include Amy Sky, Natalie Imbruglia and Holly Cole. It’s full of haunting rhythms, great instrumentals and deep, metaphor-laden lyrics.

Vega may have striven to write songs in red and grey, but this CD is all pink and mauve with a dash of blue.

-Mariéve MACGREGOR

Book: Speaking with the Angel Editor: Nick Hornby Publisher: Riverhead Books

Speaking with the Angel is an excellent anthology of short stories edited by Nick Hornby (High Fidelity, Fever Pitch). The stories within are all first person narratives - the only con- ceit, other than consistently good writ- ing (Irvine Welsh’s tedious and foul- mouthed moral play “Catholic Guilt” aside) which holds the book together.

There are connections, howev- er; in Roddy Doyle’s “The Slave,” a father’s discovery of a dead rat in his kitchen awakens him to the feeling of being trapped within middle age and a mundane existence. Trapped too are the narrators of John O’Farrell’s “Walking Into The Wind” and Nick Horby’s “Nipplejesus,” a delusional and unsuc- cessful professional mime, and a securi- ty guard hired to guard a collage por- trait of Jesus made of magazine photos of women’s nipples, respectively.

The warmth of humour in these

THE CADRE

Reviews of

stories is another common thread that links these stories; that is certainly the case with Dave Eggers’s “After I Was Thrown Into The River And Before I Drowned.” The story is melancholy, though told with amazing exuberance and directness, all from the point of a view of a dog. It works almost perfect- ly, as does the rest of the book. -Matthew DORRELL

Zine: Zeitgeist the Canary #5 Author: Liane Morrissete

This zine is brilliant, adorable, and hilarious. I have no idea who Liane Morissette is (short of that she lives somewhere in Halifax), but she is a genius and I love her. Zeitgeist the Canary is an independent comic strip about a canary (and a handful of other household pets) doing little more than being damn funny. The artwork is crisp and simple, and the comic strip consists for the most part of the same panels reproduced over and over again with different word bubbles and minor alter- ations. While normally one might expect such an approach to leave the comic strip feeling stagnant, perhaps implying the artist’s laziness, but here it works. beautifully. Remember back when Garfield was funny? Well, this isn’t much like that, cos you know, if you really think about it, Garfield was never that funny, but this shit, my friend, is funny.

(For copies, send three bucks to Zeitgeist the Canary c/o Liane Morissette, 2323 Agricola St. Halifax, NS. B3K 4B5. Canada)

-Jonah CAMPBELL

Artist: The Pocket Dwellers Venue: The Barn Date: Friday 28th 2001

The Pocket Dwellers rocked the barn on Friday night to a sparse

Everything

crowd. This did not discourage the Dwellers, who returned to the Island with their mix of funk, jazz and hip hop.

The Pocket Dwellers’ ability to infuse an MC with a live band and DJ kept things hype. The only thing that they can be compared to musically is

the Roots, but even that is a stretch

because the Dwellers use more of a jazz sound and are a lot more upbeat.

By the end of the night, they even had soccer players up on the dance floor. A great show, but hopefully next

time they come to UPEI the attendance will equal the level of the performance. -Marc MACDONALD

Album: Strange Little Girls Artist: Tori Amos Label: Warner Music, 2001

Tori Amos’ album Strange Little Girls is her sixth since her 1991 debut, Little Earthquakes. Unlike her previous five albums, Strange Little

The Pocket Dwellers.

[16]