By Simon Lazarus Vasta One of the things I love most about pop music is its versatility. It’s a medium with room for everything: the political and the personal, the avant-garde and the lowbrow, orchestral finesse and two-chord anthems, stupidity and intelligence, beauty and brutality. Additionally, these elements can be arranged any which way, swapped 
By Simon Lazarus Vasta So Toronto synthpunk superstars Crystal Castles released their third album last week. Just like their last record, and the record before it, it’s called Crystal Castles, but it seems it’s being stylized as (III) (which is nowhere near as catchy as Melt). I wanted to review this album for you, gentle 
By Simon Lazarus Vasta Previously, on Now Take Them Out, Devils… And now, the exciting conclusion: 2. StageDIIVing @ Music Hall of Williamsburg By the time dreampop/shoegaze/new wave/post punk/critical darlings DIIV reached their encore (which consisted of early single “Geist” and a cover of Blank Dogs’ “No Compass”), the crowd belonged to them. Heck, the 
By Jay Nordlinger Philip Glass and John Adams are the most famous living classical composers (if you don’t count John Williams). Who would be next? Possibly Thomas Adès, the Brit. His opera The Tempest is maybe the most acclaimed opera of recent years. And it has been playing at the Metropolitan Opera. The composer himself 
EXPLORING THE BEAUTY OF IRIS DEMENT’S ‘SING THE DELTA’ To hear Iris DeMent is to be moved. She sings so close to her emotions—and with such artistry—that her meanings can be understood even if the lyrics are soaked in Southern and Midwestern dialect. Her new albumSing the Delta evokes experience and wonder—life, death and very complicated 
TLB Music teaches little ones much more than just singing along By Sarah Albert of New York Family When Katia Asthalter and Carina Zimmerman became good friends and housemates at Wheaton College in Massachusetts, they had one big thing in common: music. Both young women grew up with musical influences all around them; Asthalter took 
Brooklyn Homecoming could Solve Barbra’s Career Problems by DENNIS DELROGH Barbra Streisand is set to return to her native Brooklyn on October 11 at the Barclays Center, where she will perform for the first time in her career. It might behoove her to showcase a medley from Gypsy as a means of silencing some murmuring backlash which 
New York Celebrates the Art of Flamenco BY JUDY GELMAN MYERS No one can make the mistake of calling New York the home of flamenco, but ever since the Great White Way crowned Jose Greco “New Broadway Personality of the Year” in 1952, the city has made flamenco its own. Aficionados make daily pilgrimages to Lincoln 
