Elevate Difference

Reviews by Kiri Oliver

Quiet Little Voices single

Hyped-up Scottish indie rockers We Were Promised Jetpacks have been around since 2003, but are only now releasing their debut album, These Four Walls (out June 15 in the UK and July 9 in the U.S.).

Ani's Raw Food Desserts: 85 Easy, Delectable Sweets and Treats

Raw food chef Ani Phyo’s latest cookbook is a creative and diverse collection of no-bake dessert recipes. All of her creations are free of wheat, gluten, dairy, and processed sugar, and rely instead on nuts, seeds, fruit, and natural sweeteners like agave nectar and maple syrup.

Stolen Sharpie Revolution 2: A DIY Resource for Zines and Zine Culture

First published in 2002, Alex Wrekk’s Stolen Sharpie Revolution has served as a resource for untold numbers of people both in and outside of the zine community.

A Wink and a Smile

Deirdre Timmons' documentary A Wink and a Smile is a love letter to Seattle's thriving burlesque scene. Our tour guide is Miss Indigo Blue, veteran performer and headmistress of the Academy of Burlesque, which offers classes including a six-week Burlesque 101 course culminating in a public performance. The film focuses partly on the ten women who took the Fall 2007 course.

Uncharitable: How Restraints on Nonprofits Undermine Their Potential

In Uncharitable, Dan Pallotta demands nothing less than a complete overhaul of the way charity is understood and expected to function. He traces America's nonprofit ideology back to the Puritans, for whom charity was a form of self-denial used to counteract and assuage their guilt about their unabashed self-serving capitalist pursuits.

Screen Your Stuff: A Fun, Funky Introduction to Silk-Screening Your Tees, Totes, Towels & More

Screen Your Stuff is an extremely basic introduction to silk-screening, aimed at young girls. Marion Levy and Veronique Georgelin share a rudimentary method that involves covering the screen with plastic laminate with shapes cut out of it.

Action Speaks Louder: Violence, Spectacle, and the American Action Movie

In Action Speaks Louder, Eric Lichtenfeld's illuminating history of the action film genre, the author claims that “the action film has deserved the right to be discussed in the same terms as those used to qualify other more established genres.” This idea, while not brought up until the book’s conclusion, forms the basis of Lichtenfeld’s study, which traces action film trends from the early hard-bodied heroes and martial arts stars like Stallone and Seagal all

The Dust of Retreat

The Dust of Retreat is an impressive, eclectic debut from an eight-piece band that easily navigates the waters of folk rock, chamber pop and alt-country. Like Conor Oberst of Bright Eyes, singer and multi-instrumentalist Richard Edwards can tell compelling stories with just an acoustic guitar, but many of his songs, while simple in melody and structure, ascend to thrilling heights when backed by the right combination of instruments.

The Lookout

Before the accident, Chris Pratt (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) had a beautiful girlfriend and was his high school’s star hockey player. Four years later, the victim of a serious head injury, he works as a night janitor at a bank and tends to forget things he’s told unless he writes them in his notepad. All he wants is to be who he was.

El Perro Del Mar: Live at the Bowery Ballroom (3/1/2007)

Some musicians are primarily recording artists, and others excel when they play live. Because El Perro Del Mar (Swedish singer-songwriter Sarah Assbring) plays quiet, repetitive, melancholy pop songs that are great to listen to when you’re reading or half asleep, I had her pegged as belonging to the former category. However, her recent headlining performance at the Bowery Ballroom in NYC left me pleasantly surprised to find that she has found a way to make her music thrive in a live setting.

Chuck Klosterman IV: A Decade of Curious People and Dangerous Ideas

Chuck Klosterman is a music journalist and pop culture critic known for his quirky theories and extensive knowledge of classic metal. Chuck Klosterman IV is a collection of his previously published work, including features, essays, and a short story. The features that make up Part I of the book showcase Klosterman’s passion for talking to interesting artists (mostly musicians) and then explaining why they are interesting. Bono is interesting because he lets random fans ride in his car and preview the new U2 album during the interview.
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