New Music Tuesday: Dolly Parton, The Killers, and Animal Collective
A straight A report card for this week's new releases
Animal Collective
“New music” is a relative term this first Tuesday in December, since we’re loaded up on best-of compilations, live albums, and reissues today, with a wide and varied assortment including The Best Of Bryan Ferry, Elvis Presley's Best Of The Best, Lou Reed/Velvet Underground's Live 1969/1972, Green Day’s Last Night on Earth Live in Tokyo, and Biz Markie’s Diabolical: The Biz's Greatest Hits. We don’t have many thoughts on these, but we do have an A- for Dolly Parton’s four-disc retrospective, Dolly. Reviewer Keith Phipps assures us that although the hits stop at 1993, “Dolly already features enough twists and turns to fill a box set.” Also getting an A- today is The Killers’ recently released Live From The Royal Albert Hall. Says reviewer Marc Hawthorne, “Whether the cuts are deep or ended up on the charts, they all sound like hits here.” Finally, Steven Hyden gives Animal Collective’s new EP Fall Be Kind a solid A, saying that the celebrated avant-pop group “still sounds engagingly warm and extroverted” coming off of the instant classic Merriweather Post Pavilion.
