Japan hopes to kill 50 of these endangered whales, which have long held a place in the public's imagination with their other-worldly songs, habit of rocketing their 30-plus tons out of the sea and migrations of up to 10,000 miles a year.
With help from her many friends, including the Blasters' Dave Alvin, who produced, Peter Buck and Mike Mills of R.E.M., Syd Straw and Rhett Miller, Ms. McWilson offers finely wrought versions of her worldly-wise songs.
In neon lingerie she performs other-worldly gospel songs amidst bouquets of fluorescent flowers that breathe in her warped foggy synths, hazy guitar feedback, and distant vocals over moonlit lounge beats.
The messages are reverent, if slightly morbid, looking forward to death's release from worldly cares in songs like the Golden Echoes' "Packing a Grip".
His works include a set of 16 Lutheran masses (consisting only of the Kyrie and the Gloria); a collection of madrigals for unaccompanied singers, Geistliche Madrigalien ("Sacred Madrigals"); a set of sacred symphonies for one or two voices with strings and continuo; and 3 books of secular songs, Weltliche Oden ("Worldly Odes").
In the mid-sixties, as Cohen started to record his songs and win worldly success, Marianne became known to his fans as that antique figure — the muse.
Twenty years earlier Mr. Smith, who had just moved to New York, fell in love with Mercer's tender, worldly wise style of art song in New York nightclubs and has since devoted himself to keeping alive the musical values she embodied.
(Chinen) David Murray Cuban Ensemble (Tuesday through Jan . 14 On his vibrant new album, "Plays Nat King Cole en Español" (Motéma), the veteran tenor saxophonist David Murray applies his huge tone and personality to an unusual bit of jazz repertory: interpreting songs from a pair of worldly albums recorded by Cole roughly half a century ago.
