I'm in the great-for-one-album camp (Are We Not Men?). And you're right: I don't like fun. So says my wife, anyway.

I'd add Peter Tosh's Equal Rights to any list of essential roots albums that are good for people just exploring the form. It's a killer album, serious roots music produced with an eye on the international market (which is an angle of the style that is not really addressed in this primer). I know Bob Marley is the…

Sadly, since Blood and Fire went out of business, I don't think such a recording is currently being released. Depending on the level of your desire, I'd recommend trying to get a used Blood and Fire release of the album.

Can one "cover" a hymn from the 1800s that is set to a melody that is centuries older?

Agreed on Coventry Carol. The synths and vocals work together well; it's a sound I can get nostalgic about. The U2 track is one I always hateskip, though, so I think me and Annie Z don't see eye-to-eye on Special Christmases.

Odd that this would come out so soon after Will Oldham and Dawn McCarthy's album of Everly covers, What the Brothers Sang. I'm a bit surprised, too, that the review doesn't mention this other Everly Brothers tribute, which has actual "rootsy connection to the music (and to the state of Kentucky)." I know there was an…

Honestly? Live and learn.

I'm particular to Priest's "Beyond the Realms of Death" from Stained Class. Both solos on that track are excellent, they really serve the song, and the contrast is nice. Tipton's solo, mid-song, is lyrical and melancholic. Then Downing's solo rages in at the end, rough and angry. Combined with Halford's voice, it is…

I have learned through experience not to get excited by AV Club horror reviews. Sadly it has taken getting burned more than a few times. I want this site to have better sense about horror, I guess. Sinister was the one that finally cured me, I hope. And so I have fairly low expectations on Conjuring. Low enough not to…

(Not sure how serious you are, considering that those bands went through real uniform-y phases, but…) Band shirts/patches are part of the subculture's accepted look for differentiation and self-indentification, obviously. People in bands wear shirts of other bands on stage. The mentality is "support the scene." When I…

Re-Animator is probably the only great adaptation, true. But Dagon is decent, and I think the videogame Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth does a pretty good job of conveying Lovecraft's themes and style in another medium (despite some rather frustrating sections to play through).

I think for me this may be a bad case of seeing the movie first. It was a very good movie, I thought, but perhaps it was too hard for me to let go of it and take the book on its own terms. Perhaps it is time for a re-read! (Glad I read The Ruins before I saw the movie.)

I think for me this may be a bad case of seeing the movie first. It was a very good movie, I thought, but perhaps it was too hard for me to let go of it and take the book on its own terms. Perhaps it is time for a re-read! (Glad I read The Ruins before I saw the movie.)

Campbell is one of my favorite writers, but I find his strengths really on display in his short stories, which manage to package the odd characters with bleak psychological portraits and eerie events in a powerful mix. The Demons By Daylight collection is groundbreaking stuff. Alone With The Horrors is an amazing,…

Campbell is one of my favorite writers, but I find his strengths really on display in his short stories, which manage to package the odd characters with bleak psychological portraits and eerie events in a powerful mix. The Demons By Daylight collection is groundbreaking stuff. Alone With The Horrors is an amazing,…

Like you, I read lots of King when I was a kid in the 80s, and The Raft has stuck with me more vividly than any of his other stories, for some reason. The imagery of people getting pulled down through the cracks in the wood, blood and guts shooting out of the bodies… Awesome. It likewise had me leaping far away from…

Like you, I read lots of King when I was a kid in the 80s, and The Raft has stuck with me more vividly than any of his other stories, for some reason. The imagery of people getting pulled down through the cracks in the wood, blood and guts shooting out of the bodies… Awesome. It likewise had me leaping far away from…

To me, this is a solid argument as to why the book is ultimately not very good.

To me, this is a solid argument as to why the book is ultimately not very good.

I think Candle Cove may be the best creepypasta I've seen, mainly due to the great use of form and the fact that it is relatively short and sweet. I like some of the pasta that verge on alternate-reality games (Ben Drowned, Marble Hornets), but those always seem to disappoint after a while.