Why Alt-J’s "This is All Yours" isn’t just mindless noise

Alt-J’s sophomore effort “This Is All Yours” has been brutally criticized as a tuneless, unimaginative record of unearthly sounds, which is surprising for a band that has been dubbed “the next Radiohead.” Reviews say thae lyrics mean nothing, the music isn’t quite there and none of it really means anything. I say, take another listen. Check out…

Scandal Review: "The Key" (4×05)

While this episode is ultimately a step down from last week, by the final scenes, I can confidently say that the Scandal I know and love is finally back for a while. “The Key” is by no means a perfect episode, but whatever missteps it takes, there’s no denying just how exciting its final third…

Boardwalk Empire Review: \"Friendless Child\" (5×07)

Boardwalk Empire is exceedingly good at doing finale episodes, and its track record with penultimate episodes is equally great. Season two’s one-two punch of “Under God’s Power She Flourishes” and “To the Lost” is looking primed to go down as the best pair of episodes in the series’ history, and in fact, with its focus…

Bleachers "Strange Desire" Album Review

Jack Antonoff is a busy man. In addition to being the guitarist for the pop band fun., he also wrote songs with Carly Rae Jepsen, Tegan and Sara, Sara Bareilles, Christina Perri, and Taylor Swift (the song "Sweeter than Fiction" was nominated for a Golden Globe). However, he takes a slightly different route with Bleachers. The…

Album Review: The Gaslight Anthem, \"Get Hurt\"

“Everything has chains.” That’s hard-learned wisdom from Brian Fallon, The Gaslight Anthem’s frontman, on “Selected Poems”, a latter-half album cut from the Jersey quartet’s latest album Get Hurt. It’s been a particularly hard year for Fallon, as he divorced from his wife of ten years. But he’s also had to deal with the aftermath of…

Emmy Spotlight: \"Mad Men\"

In its final season, Mad Men is determined to come back to basics, and indeed, throughout these seven episodes the audience, and our characters, come face to face over and over again with the idea that happiness, however we define it, is inherently unattainable. Happiness is caught up in desire, and no matter what we…