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.

At the time of his death, on February 24 at the age of 60, Christian freak-folk luminary Larry Norman was working on an album with guests including Modest Mouse's Isaac Brock and the Pixies' Frank Black, the latter of whom said, upon Norman's passing, "Larry was my door into the music business and the most Christ-like person I ever met."

In the animated world, creatures that would otherwise be seen as unsavory have been given a family-friendly makeover, from a disease-ridden rat that happens to be an innate culinary genius to a pesky honeybee that cracks jokes and falls in love.

Josh Homme stopped by to play a few songs for us and about 35 other lucky stiffs on Boylston Street last week before QOTSA's proper gig. We had our doubts about what the hell Homme would do without an electric guitar, and we were doubly dubious when we found out he'd requested no amplification of any kind: no wires, no monitors, no PAs, just two guitars and singing into the wind.