Album Review: Maps by billy woods

It's hard to process the speed at which we've moved on from the pandemic. Emerging from the soft lockdown of 2020 was a little herky-jerky -- especially for live music. Venues tried their best to negotiate keeping people safe while keeping the doors open, which led to a newfound emphasis on outdoor shows. Musicians spent 2020 watching their incomes quickly vaporize, so when things began to open up, tour announcements -- and their subsequent COVID-related cancellations -- flooded social media.

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Here be dragons, there be gourmet cuisine. To unfurl the crinkled parchment of Maps and glean meaning from its faded images takes the patience of a seasoned cartographer. Peering at the surrounding musical landscape, the learned listener will notice that Backwoodz Studioz--with woods at the helm--has built independent success and a devoted audience while dodging broader trends of disposability and two-dimensionality, creating chasms of content that you could leap into as if it were the Cave of Swallows, with nary a plop to be heard from those lingering at the entrance listening, trying to gauge its depths.

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Last May, HBO released the two-part documentary George Carlin's American Dream . Directed by Judd Apatow and Michael Bonfigolio, there's a lot of what you'd expect; the usual dull orgy of talking heads, Stephen Colbert dubbing him "The Beatles of comedy", a pedestrian tribute to a comic pariah. That said, the show has its merits in spite of hedged bets, and this is down to the insights of his loved ones, particularly from his daughter Kelly Carlin.

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