Mylene: Queen of Pop

This week in the fishwrap, Charles Taylor makes the case for French pop, through the lens of the latest Mrs. Johnny Depp album. Below, longtime Phoenix critic Michael Freedberg, whom we consider our resident expert on the topic, provides his own master-class in variete francaise -- one that is necessarily weighted towards Mylene Farmer, who is the Reed to his Bangs, the Kixx to his Eddy.

If you're headed to M.I.A. at the Palladium tonight, get there early: Cool Kids have cancelled, but we're dying to see what C440R's monster party-rap duo have in store when they step in tonight as a last-minute opening act. Big Digits at the Palladium: who'da thunk it? For an idea of how much awesomeness is in store, check the video above to see what happened the last time someone offered TD and Mac Swell a nice big stage.

Sure, it was only two songs. (Turns out they had a third ready to go, but decided against it. What, the applause wasn't loud enough? "Exactly," said Chris Brokaw.) But since this was the first time Come have performed since their 2 1/2-hour farewell gig at the MidEast's downstairs room back in -- what, 1998? -- well, this was pretty fucking rad.