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Douglas Wolk

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The Crit and Shap Poll

You've had the best; now, the year's most overrated records

By Keven Mcalester, Jim DeRogatis, Jeff Niesel, Sara Scribner, Zac Crain, Steve Appleford, Douglas Wolk and Robert Wilonsky
Dec 31, 1998

The process is nothing if not scientific: At the end of every year, we contact each contributor to our music section and ask him/her to submit a roster of the 10 most overrated, mediocre, or generally offensive records released that annum. In order. These individual tallies are then painstakingly transcribed...
Love letters

Belle and Sebastian'slong-distance romance continues with The Boy With the Arab Strap

By Douglas Wolk
Sep 3, 1998

I know I love Jo despite all the things I hate about her. I know I love her with as much certainty as I love Belle and Sebastian. --From Belle Lettres, a Web site of original fiction inspired by Belle and Sebastian (http://www.virtual-pc.com/tangent/belle_ lettres/) There are records that have been...
Blank generation

Hooks, cliches, and highbrow wit: How Stephin Merritt has become a pop songwriter without peer

By Douglas Wolk
Aug 20, 1998

"The name of the record is 69 Love Songs," Stephin Merritt drawls, pouring himself the day's first cup of tea, from his first of two pots. "I've got 53 so far. Only 16 more to go." This is his plan for the sixth album by the band for which he's...
Funk that

James Brown used them. Hip-hoppers stole from them. Will these women finally get their due?

By Douglas Wolk
Apr 30, 1998

Lyn Collins, "The Female Preacher," is probably the most-heard unknown singer in America. If you've listened to any hip-hop in the last 10 years, you've heard her voice sampled over and over, most famously calling out the chorus of Rob Base and DJ E-Z Rock's "It Takes Two"--a sample from...