Looks Good to Me Manning

In Giant, Plaxico Burress takes you into the locker room, onto the practice field, and into the huddle, providing a flat-out-honest look at life on and off the field with the New York Giants and at the making of a champion.Throughout the 2007 season

Merge continues its 20th anniversary festivities with a comp of non-label artists– Bright Eyes, Shins, New Pornos– covering songs from its catalog.
Merge Records doesn't look its age. Originally formed as an outlet for Superchunk material, the Durham, N.C.-based label has grown into an indie institution, but only gradually– year by year, release by release. It never allied itself with a scene or a sound, so the mind doesn't automatically tether it to a specific place or time, the way Sub Pop, despite its strong roster this decade, will be most closely associated with Seattle in the late 1980s and early 90s. So it's hard to believe Merge is already 20 years old, an occasion the label is marking with a big birthday bash– the five-day XX Merge fest in July– and a subscription-only series of commemorative retrospectives and remixes. Perhaps the most intriguing party favor is Score! Twenty Years of Merge Records: The Covers, a choppy but oddly endearing compilation that enlists 20 non-Merge acts to cover Merge songs.

Nostalgia can be wonderful and amazing. It’s OK to look back. But then you gotta get the fuck out of there.” So says singer-songwriter Jill Sobule, explaining the theme of her new album, Nostalgia Kills. On Nostalgia Kills(out September 14 on Jill’s own Pinko Records), the woman hailed by The New York Timesfor making “grown-up music for an adolescent age” turns her warm wit and poet’s eye on herself more than ever before, revisiting moments from throughout her life that made her into the person she is today. It’s an especially poignant look back at childhood — “exorcising some junior high school demons,” as she puts it.