Keith Harris lives and writes in Minneapolis, MN, the greatest city in the world. He’s reviewed music since 1996, writing for numerous magazines, newspapers and websites. He now blogs regularly at http://usefulnoise.wordpress.com, where he’s surveying the best singles of the ’00s, and tweets as @useful_noise.com, where he’s usually complaining about something or other.
More than a decade ago, indie rocker Sean Tillman was reborn as a campy R… more »
The Whigs have always been a straightforward lot. “Staying Alive,… more »
In 1972, Jimmy Cliff’s performance in The Harder They Come introduc… more »
Your first exposure to Youssou N’Dour’s soaring tenor keen li… more »
The soundtrack to a documentary that every N’Dour fan should seek o… more »
Reggae is the lingua franca of the African diaspora, so it was maybe inev… more »
Though less deliberately international in its ambitions than Egypt, Rokku… more »
In 2001, N’Dour traveled to Cairo to record an album of religious-t… more »
The backup here is mostly acoustic — the kora (harp), the xalam (lu… more »
Following The Guide, N’Dour set aside his grand crossover ambitions… more »
Or, you know, not. N’Dour’s first album recorded entirely in … more »
N’Dour’s reliance on call-and-response, on vocal interjection… more »
Set is N’Dour’s first great solo album for one simple reason:… more »
With soundtrack producer and Peter Gabriel pal George Acogny behind the b… more »
N’Dour recorded his international debut in Paris in 1984, but these… more »
Like Elvis’s Sun Sessions or the earliest rap 12-inches, these 23 c… more »
The introductory heavy-metal hammer-ons of album opener "Dança do … more »
Laura Cantrell knows how to stay out of a song's way, and that willin… more »
Love is demanding, without understanding. Buoyant Swedes like these will … more »
Just how old are these hyperactive Welsh art schoolers anyway? Last year,… more »
On their sixth album, art-pop siblings Matthew and Eleanor Friedberger ar… more »
With even Balkan electronica now buzzworthy (and rightly so), it's co… more »
Tabu Ley Rochereau has long been hailed as the Congo's greatest moder… more »
Apparently there can never be enough post-punk in the world for Martin At… more »
As they age, extreme metal merchants often inject various non-metallic styles into their songs in order to hasten their musical growth. Sometimes, as with Alcest and Jesu, they develop to the point where their original… more »
