Magazine /

May 15, 2013

Volume 130, Issue #10

Features

Fade, by Yo La Tengo

Many bands have combined minimalist composition with maximalist guitar noise. Yo La Tengo does this best, carrying on without so much as a chord change while guitarist Ira Kaplan screeches and wails away. But the trio also stands out because this is far from its only trick. YLT brings an encyclopedia of influences and a knack for moody, tasteful arranging. And Kaplan and drummer Georgia Hubley, a married couple, write songs about love and intimacy but sing them with a hushed, deadpan delivery that’s rarely sentimental.

reviewed by Steve Thorngate

Music

Up Like the Clouds by Dubl Handi

Banjo player Hilary Hawke has displayed her fine chops and deep folk foundations in several ensembles. Here she pares things down to a duo, but the sound isn’t all that spare. Percussionist Brian Geltner plays aggressively—on snare drum, various shakers and the antique washboard for which the group is named—and he’s quite forward in the mix; his occasional backbeats are the main element that locates the old-timey material in a new-timier context.

reviewed by Steve Thorngate

Feature

Religion and foreign policy: Scholar Maryann Cusimano Love

"After 9/11, religion was put on the State Department's agenda—as a source of conflict. But religion can also be a force for peace."

by Amy Frykholm

Feature

Shift in the middle: A view from Jerusalem

Netanyahu's fragile new coalition government reflects gradual but steady changes in Israeli society.

by Mordechai Beck

Music

Mermaid Avenue: The Complete Sessions, by Billy Bragg and Wilco

On Mermaid Avenue (1998), Billy Bragg and Wilco wrote and recorded music for some of the 3,000 tuneless lyrics Woody Guthrie left behind. The stunning result was so much more than a reverent, Pete-Seeger-and-friends tribute album could ever be: the great Guthrie expanded in our cultural imagination and introduced to a new generation.

reviewed by Steve Thorngate

Music

Simone Felice, by Simone Felice

I once wrote that the Felice Brothers have one capable lead singer at best: while Ian Felice sings more expressively than his brother James, it’s not a pretty sound. But I was overlooking the Catskills folk-rockers’ third brother, Simone.

reviewed by Steve Thorngate

Cover Story

Singing from one book: Why hymnals matter

Many churchgoers greet the announcement of a new hymnal with a single puzzled, even outraged question: Why?

by Mary Louise Bringle

Cover Story

Debating hymns

In preparing the new PCUSA hymnal, our committee may have made some wrong decisions. But they weren't careless or cavalier ones.

by Mary Louise Bringle

Music

Mercyland, by various artists

Growing up, my listening habits progressed from the evangelical subculture’s schlockiest pop to its Americana fringe to secular alt-country. One common thread: prolific sideman Phil Madeira.

reviewed by Steve Thorngate

Feature

Waco in red and blue

In April 1993, the FBI siege on the Branch Davidian compound ended in disaster. The event still casts a long shadow on our divided nation.

by Philip Jenkins

Books

Moonlight Sonata at the Mayo Clinic, by Nora Gallagher

In November 2009, the vision in Nora Gallagher’s right eye went blurry. For the next two years Gallagher went from specialist to specialist trying to find out what was wrong....

The culture of the mainline

For Elesha Coffman, the pre-1960 Century is a window on the gap between an educated elite and a mass population of churchgoers.

by David A. Hollinger

On the Muslim Question, by Anne Norton

The “Jewish question” was long a topic of concern in post-Enlightenment political thought....

reviewed by Steven Young

Flight Behavior, by Barbara Kingsolver

On her way to a desperate assignation, an unhappy wife and mother is stopped in her tracks by a miracle: a mountain ablaze with color and motion, a fire without heat or sound....

reviewed by Trudy Bush

Nothing Gold Can Stay, by Ron Rash

Ron Rash writes the way a fisherman filets. Nothing is spared getting to the meat. His sharpened knife sends the extras flying off the table. What’s left is naked narrative....

Discovering the poor

Peter Brown considers the fourth-century church's radicality concerning wealth—and its readiness to adapt as circumstances seemed to require.

by Walter Brueggemann

Departments

Editor's Desk

Family hospitality

Each autumn, Fourth Presbyterian Church's sanctuary is full to overflowing with Jewish worshipers attending High Holy Days observances.

by John Buchanan

On Art

A Mind of Winter, by Madeleine Avirov

"I am not strictly a realist,” says Los Angeles artist Madeleine Avirov....

reviewed by Lil Copan

Port Talbot Passion

Recently, 20,000 residents of a Welsh industrial town participated in a play—and reaffirmed the residual power of Christian imagery in a secular society.

by Philip Jenkins