Intimacy (2001)

This album contains songs which are not only about problematic love but contain a universe of feelings. If anyone stops for a moment to consider who in Sweden is capable of moving her audience to deep emotion, touching their hearts with bittersweet sentiments of life, then Agneta Baumann's name must be one of the first that springs to mind, with the husky intimacy of her voice spreading gentle vibrations particularly when interpreting a jazz ballad.

Only from the Rhino Handmade web-based audio salon could such a fulfilling reissue project have likewise been so thoroughly executed. Keen-eyed and eared pop music enthusiasts will undoubtedly recognize Jack Nitzsche from his involvement with Phil Spector's "Wrecking Crew" and later as a producer/arranger and writer for a spectrum of talent that includes but is by no means limited to Leslie Gore, Art Pepper, Tim Buckley, Neil Young, John Tesh, Mink DeVille, and the Prague Philharmonic Orchestra. Three Piece Suite: The Reprise Recordings 1971-1974 gathers three disparate sonic situations under which Nitzsche recorded, and of these only the orchestrated St. Giles Cripplegate has been issued in any form. Very little is known with regard to the other recordings, besides the fact that they were on deposit in the Warner Bros. tape archives. St. Giles Cripplegate features the London Symphony Orchestra (LSO) performing six original Nitzsche scores. According to Elliot Mazer's liner notes essay, the album was the direct result of the jaw-dropping orchestral arrangements Nitzsche had done for Neil Young's Harvest album specifically on the tracks "There's a World" and "A Man Needs a Maid."

For her directorial debut, Jessica Hausner (Lourdes) has created an honest and revealing portrait of Rita, a wilful and unruly teenager on the verge of womanhood. Her sexual awakening leads her to intimacy with a schoolboy too young and a bus driver, too old. Her efforts to break out of her solitude and claustrophobic environment isolate her even more, until one day she crosses the line…

As Robert Eads puts it in one of the first scenes of this remarkable documentary, he lives in "Bubba-land"–which wouldn't be unusual if Robert weren't a female-to-male transsexual. Southern Comfort chronicles the last year of Robert's life, as he succumbed to, ironically, cervical cancer; over that year, documentarian Kate Davis developed an amazing intimacy with Robert and his adopted family of other transsexuals living in the depths of Georgia, including his vivacious male-to-female transsexual girlfriend Lola. The film's title comes from an annual gathering that Robert describes as "the cotillion of the trans community, the coming-out party"–an event part convention, part high school prom.