If this CD were any campier, it would be married to Liza Minnelli. The fact that 99 percent of the songs are sung in German is the icing on the urinal cake.

Heidi Talbot's new CD, The Last Star, serves as a nice antidote to the sort of cookie-cutter Irish balladeers who haunt your local PBS station at pledge drive time.

Franz Ferdinand Schubert was born in Vienna, Austria, on Jan. 31, 1797, to apprentice cabaret dancer Morris "Schecky" Schubert and his possibly imaginary wife, known only as "Rainbo without the 'w.'"

Smart without being pretentious. Funny without being trite. Sonically dense without devolving into noise-for-the-sake-of-noise-arty-bullshit.

Even if 10 of the 11 songs on this CD sucked Michele Bachmann's hairy balls (which they don't), it would still be worth owning for the incredibly infectious tune "I Love 64."

Today, Aid or Invade breaks new ground by inviting you, the reader, to take part in the world's first interactive album review.

If you shout out "Björk" when asked to name a native-born Nigerian folk singer, then you might be surprised to learn that neither David Byrne nor Fatboy Slim are from the Philippines. However, the subjects of their ambitious collaboration most certainly were.

If the song "Awa Na Re" doesn't stir something inside you, then you are dead. Stop reading and lie down.

With Egan's considerable gifts for constructing interesting, quirky characters and her skill at capturing the feel of a given time and place, this could have been a tremendously satisfying read.

As George Rekers well knows, variety is the spice of life.