The Handsome Family's music comes from the gallows. Their lyrics stand alone as poetic works, artfully twisting tragic tales into epic epitaphs. You could imagine each song as a long posting on a gravestone. They keep it simple with guitar, bass, banjo and autoharp.
A shined-up, renovated Route 66 is a reason for a parade in Edgewood, N.M. "We're celebrating Route 66 heritage," Edgewood Chamber of Commerce director Myra Oden said. "We're celebrating our new highway, harvest festival - we're just looking for any reason to have a party.
The Enemy UK We'll Live and Die In These Towns Available Now 4/5 It's not often that you manage to find a band that sounds like the Beatles and Iggy Pop at the same time, but The Enemy UK manages to pull it off, and they sound good doing it. Their first album, We'll Live and Die In These Towns, has no business being anyone's first album.
The Hellblinki Sextet have formed a musical trinity that invokes opera, punk rock and Sesame Street. They have only three musicians, but they make enough noise to sound like six. "We wanted to have kind of a jazz-type name, so it had to be a sextet," frontman Andrew Benjamin said.
Taste the blendsation of Keva Juice, a smoothie shop now located across the street from the UNM campus. Nestled in the Brick Light District, next to Satellite Coffee and Brickyard Pizza, the new shop offers an array of smoothies, such as the Hawaiian Holiday and the Razmanian Devil.
Nob Hill is the mecca of locally owned and operated shopping in Albuquerque. Home to chic, urban shops that sell everything from antiques to modern furniture and hot-off-the-runway fashions, Nob Hill's homegrown reputation may come under attack this November when Urban Outfitters joins the neighborhood.
Students looking for their weekly comic book fix need go no further than University Comic Warehouse, a short walk across Central Avenue from the Communication & Journalism building. It's a laid-back shop, opening around noon most days. Inside, the store is decorated only by posters advertising the comics that fill every shelf.
"The X-Files: I Want To Believe" is not a waste of 100 minutes, nor is it a waste of $10. But it isn't a compelling use of time or money either. The movie is not particularly outstanding, but it's not a bottom-dwelling waste either. It's worth watching for any fan of the series, but it is exactly what series creator Chris Carter billed it as: a long episode of the "Monster of the Week" variety.
10 Years Division Available Now 4.5/5 Shame on the person who says he likes music and doesn't own this album. Since its May 13 release, Division has sold less than 100,000 copies. In other words, less than 100,000 people know what an awesome album everyone else is missing.
Christopher Nolan has completely surpassed "Batman Begins" with his latest outing of the masked vigilante. This is no mean feat, as "Batman Begins" was widely hailed as the best Batman movie ever made when it came out in 2005. Now, the torch has been passed to "The Dark Knight.
The modern musical takes yet another hit in the form of "Mamma Mia!" - a hideous adaptation of the wildly successful Abba-inspired stage show about a bride-to-be on a Greek island trying to work out which of three men knocked up her "reckless little slut" of a mother 20 years earlier.
Director Guillermo del Toro has been working on his imagery since "Pan's Labyrinth," and his latest work, "Hellboy II: The Golden Army," has an impressive collection of his signature creepy crawlers. But rather than inspiring nightmares, the creatures stir up a mixture of amusement and awe.
Danity Kane Welcome to the Dollhouse Available Now 1/5 Call it the sophomore slump. Call it the reality TV curse. There is no other way to put it: Danity Kane's newly released sophomore album stinks. As documented on the latest season of "Making the Band," executive producer Sean "P.
In July, lavender fields sprinkle the desert landscape against the backdrop of the Sandia Mountains. It's lavender picking time for Los Ranchos de Albuquerque, and what better way to celebrate than the Lavender in the Village Festival? What started five years ago as a small celebration of the summer harvest quickly turned into Los Ranchos' premier community event, organizer Kelly Kuchar said.
Julianne Hough Julianne Hough Available Now 3/5 We all know she can dance, as displayed on the ABC hit show "Dancing with the Stars." But can she sing? This up-and-coming country starlet known for her bubbly personality on television has a leg up on the competition as she debuts her self-titled country album to adoring fans.
It's a modern-day treasure hunt, minus the treasure. There are no pirates, eye patches or X's on a map. Instead, thrill-seekers use Global Positioning Systems to find small trinkets left behind by others who have found the items, called caches, and logged their experience on the Internet.
Four tents, a dozen squirt guns and more than 50 students chasing each other with paint and water balloons - the India Students Association celebrated Holi in style Saturday. "It's the Festival of Colors," said Krishna Chaitanya, president of the ISA. "There's no festival quite like it in the United States.
At the northern apex of the Rail Runner, I was faced with two options: get off the train and spend a few hours looking around Bernalillo, or keep riding it south, back to civilization. Luckily, my explorer's instincts took over, and I found myself setting off into the sunset.
Coldplay Viva La Vida, or Death and All His Friends Available Now Coldplay's latest album is a return to formula for the London band. Producer Brian Eno seems to have held back some of the excesses of Colplay's previous effort, X&Y, and allowed the band to put together an album that has a sound much closer to its first two albums.
Madrid, N.M., is a unique destination, to say the least. The town, originally founded in the 1800s as a coal mining town, is now an artist's haven - a hippie enclave of sorts. And that's an interesting mix. Rediscovered in the 1960s and '70s, the town provided artists an escape from the "touristy and overpopulated" Santa Fe and Taos, one gallery owner said.
Solutions by The State News
