If you believed the stories you read, you'd think Mary Timony was just a cute, slightly trampy airhead who somehow, mysteriously, came up with great records. You'd find it hard to get a sense of the skill, determination, and flair with which she's steered her band to the forefront of indie rock. Profile by Jay Ruttenberg
Only rarely does a band gather an underground following with the kind of emotional intensity this Scottish septet inspire. And all this with only one US release, two shows, and little promotion (they don't like interviews or photos). Jenny Toomey offers an incisive appreciation; Franklin Bruno and Elisabeth Vincentelli pitch in, too
He's made a career out of alternately delighting, tormenting, and baffling his audience-and getting under journalists' skin. His latest riddling move? To jettison the Palace moniker he used for all his earlier releases in favor of his own name. But Alex Abramovich found him willing, for once, to talk about past and present
They did it their way; now they're indispensable. And they probably no longer need to keep explaining themselves. But for Stereolab, dialogue's what it's all about. So they listen (see photo above) and they also respond. Interview by Steve Tignor
She's been likened to Kendra Smith singing Nick Drake. But Edith Frost's songs inhabit their own universe, and despite her hope of sounding "hallucinogenic," they feel transparently pure. By Bob Pomeroy
He was a swooned-over pop celebrity at 25; he's a dauntingly austere cult legend at 55-and he's just released Tilt, a uniquely brilliant album of cracked magnificence and hypnotic intensity. A rare extended interview by Johnny Huston
What made Milwaukee famous wasn't music (the Violent Femmes excepted). But here's a fresh attempt to be noticed as more than a middling-west boy band. By Jon M. Gilbertson
Rupert Parkes is one of those quiet, tense, hot electronica wizards. He's built a trademark sound within this new tradition, and here is related a good deal about how it's done
Longstocking's whiplashings of wit (and the beat) strike home. Plus Björk, the Grifters, Cornershop, David Kilgour, Latyrx, Sonora Pine, Sportsguitar, EC8OR, Spectrum, Matthew Shipp, Mocket, Violent Green, David Thomas, .O.Rang, High Llamas, the Crabs, Rye Coalition, Songs: Ohia, Lamb, Chris Knox, Swoon 23, the Pastels, Tobin Sprout, Auntie Christ, Bush Tetras, Waco Bros., Magoo, D+, Tindersticks over 100 in all. Singles, too!
Fiction: George Case's novel Silence Descends tries to imagine our world five centuries from now, raising intriguing questions about how we might get there from here. Music: Biographies of Sun Ra and Sid Vicious; a scholarly polemic on behalf of anger as musical energy. Photography: Roni Horn implicates the viewer in her attempt to fathom personality through a hundred portraits of the same person in the same pose Also: novels about online S&M, dog people's obsessions, and cheese in a heat wave