Uke Springsteen - "Atlantic City" from Johnny Anguish on Vimeo.

"I don't know how he does it," Drake says of the composer. These are the kind of Schubert moments that artists analyze from every conceivable angle, and yet they still find themselves awestruck. As the miller's heart follows its sad and unstoppable march toward grief, Drake remains faithful to the music's constant tolling. He is focused and quiet at the piano. He gives Schubert's blooms of harmony a sad warmth and a deep feeling of resignation. I could see Polenzani falling instantly into the sadness of the atmosphere. You'll hear him allow a new vulnerability into his voice.

It's fascinating to consider the kind of technical awareness that a singer has to maintain, especially at emotional climaxes. How do you keep and lose control at the same time? Polenzani says that, no matter whether you're singing Verdi or Schubert, it doesn't always work. When it does, though, it's as good as it gets.

Full NPR article with playlist.

NPR Music editor and reviewer Stephen Thompson and writer Steve Almond.

By some estimates, upwards of 100,000 albums were released in the United State this year alone. With nearly all of them available for download with the click of a mouse, it can be difficult to know where to start when it comes to new music. Stephen Thompson, editor and reviewer for NPR Music, and Steve Almond, author of Rock and Roll Will Save Your Life, help out by sharing their favorite albums of the year.

Stephen Thompson's Picks

Jonsi, Go
Though its name has become synonymous with atmospherically eccentric beauty, Sigur Ros has taken steps to find its quirky, joyful side in recent years. But it took a side project called Jonsi — technically a band led by singer Jon Thor Birgisson, who prefers not to be addressed as "Jonsi" — to dump out Birgisson's endlessly surprising toy-box of exhilarating ideas. Go showcases plenty of swirling ballads to balance out relentlessly ingratiating thrillers like "Go Do" and "Boy Lilikoi," but the net result is the year's most life-affirmingly sweet, unexpectedly sunny gem.




Horse Feathers, Thistled Spring
The first minute of Thistled Spring is as exquisitely lovely as any 60 seconds of music this year, and that's before Justin Ringle has begun lending his simultaneously comforting and disconcerted voice to the mix. If Horse Feathers' ingredients were listed in order of their prominence, strings and portent would be right at the top, but Ringle's soft croon keeps Thistled Spring grounded in genuine grace. He may sing of "a blossom that's bloomed / a house that's a tomb," but he's also peddling comfort food, to be washed down with an ice-cold glass of sweet tea.




Jeremy Messersmith, The Reluctant Graveyard
The phrase "worthy heir to the power-pop throne long held by Fountains of Wayne" and the phrase "concept album about death" don't usually appear in the same sentence, but here we are. Minneapolis singer-songwriter Jeremy Messersmith closes out his self-released "life-cycle trilogy" with an absolute corker of a record, full of songs that sparkle and shine while Messersmith examines the personae of dead gangsters, casket salesmen and others who traffic in life after life. But for goodness' sake, don't be put off by the concept: The Reluctant Graveyard is an immensely sweet string of infectious pop ringers. As colorfully as they shine, these songs could just as easily be about rainbows or suncatchers.




Titus Andronicus, The Monitor
It's been a great year for New Jersey rock 'n' roll, all suitable for blaring through car stereos on turnpikes. The Gaslight Anthem's American Slang is a terrific slab of Springsteenian odes to fading youth, but even better is The Monitor, Titus Andronicus' messy, monster sprawl of a concept album. Name-checking not only its favorite musicians — including Bruce Springsteen, naturally — but also the history of the Civil War, The Monitor finds room for back-to-back nine-minute anthems, a 14-minute album-closer and several historical speeches. All, of course, while rocking spectacularly.




The Heligoats, Goodness Gracious
The Heligoats' Chris Otepka doesn't write songs so much as he stuffs them with ideas until they brim over with imagination. Take "Fish Sticks," from the sublime Goodness Gracious: It's about a guy who escapes the day-to-day grind by building a biosphere in a swamp, only to learn that the swamp-dwellers view him as an outsider, too. As Otepka's intellectually curious observations whiz by, it takes a while to sink in that the singer has an awful lot to say about the way escape routes often lead back to where they began. Like his friend and frequent tour-mate Eef Barzelay — whose band Clem Snide also released a fine album in 2010 — Otepka has a way of writing sideways, so that the poignancy hits harder when it inevitably arrives.



See more of Stephen Thompson's favorite albums of 2010 on NPR Music

Steve Almond's Picks

Kim Taylor, Little Miracle (Don't Darling Me Records, 2010)
A record so good it reminded me of Patty Griffin's epic Living With Ghosts. It’s got the same haunted beauty—a woman with a guitar speaking straight to her demons. "Anchor Down" is to going to stay with you through the beautiful doom of autumn.




Gil Scott Heron, I'm New Here (XL Recordings, 2010)
The great unsung prophet of American music returns in triumph.




Drew Smith, Drew Smith's Lonely Choir (Fat Caddy Records, 2010)
A pop record so pure-hearted and lush you'll swear Van Morrison has taken an apprentice. Smith filters his soul music through the stringed instruments of Americana. His obvious pleasure in the obvious pleasure of hooks feels both old-fashioned and completely revolutionary.




Robbie Fulks, Happy (Boondoggle Records, 2010)
Fulks has been a world-class wisenheimer for years, a welcome antidote to the soggy cornpone of the Country Music Industrial Complex. Happy brings his shenanigans to its logical conclusion. It is composed entirely of ... Michael Jackson covers. They range from gorgeous traditional country ("Going Back to Indiana") to wiry swamp rock ("The Way You Make Me Feel"). Fulks is entirely reverential to the source material and, at the same time, able to find new magic inside the mishegas.




Boris McCutcheon, Wheel of Life (Cactusman, 2010)
Brother Boris keeps producing albums that make me and missus long for the days of our cross country drives. There's an endless quality to these songs, as if they've been around forever, waiting for you to find them. Meg Whitman should listen to "I Remember California" until she grows a legitimate soul.




 

Jared Bowen sits down with Boston Globe film critc Ty Burr to talk whatelse, football, and what you should be watching this Thanksgiving.
 
if you’re not going to be watching football on Thanksgiving, the second best thing to do is watch a football movie. And there are plenty of choices.
 
What makes a good football movie? According to Boston Globe film critic Ty Burrr, “It’s got to have a knowledge of the game, and get the audience in there, so they know what’s going on.  And, you also need a certain amount of sentiment, but not too much sentimentality.  And the best ones balance mom and apple pie, football, and Thanksgiving sentiment with some tougher outlooks on life.”

What are Ty’s favorite football movies? “There are some really good football movies, not as many as I think baseball movies, but it’s a smaller genre. North Dallas Forty is one of my favorites.  That’s the cynical sort of pro-movie, but I think the all around sentimental favorite has to be Rudy. “
 
“Oh, I know, the grizzled hardened movie critic…but Rudy gets me weeping every time. When Charles S. Dutton gets up at the end of the movie and starts doing the slow clap. I actually think this may be the first instance of the slow clap in movie history.  You know you do the, clap... clap... clap... And then everybody starts getting on there and chanting Rudy, Rudy. It’s the classic little guy who wants to prove himself on the football field. You gotta get behind that movie.  I mean, it’s corn, but it’s honest corn, well served and well mounted.”

So, what’s the worst football movie out there? “For my money,” says Ty. ”It has to be Radio with Cuba Gooding Jr.  The one in which he plays a mentally challenged young man who becomes sort of the mascot for this local high school team with Ed Harris as the coach.  Remember, what I said that a football movie has to have sentimentality, but not too much—man this movie lards it on. It’s an embarrassment to watch.”
 
Now, what’s the movie that people should seek out that they haven’t seen that they won’t know about?
 
“The sleeper of football movies, to my mind, is a documentary that came out a couple of years ago. It’s called Harvard Beats Yale 29-29. It’s a documentary about a 1968 football game played in Harvard stadium against Yale. Both teams undefeated, but Harvard the underdog. With a minute and 42 seconds to go, Harvard was down 29 to 13,  and they came back to tie it.”

“It’s not just about that, it’s about everything else that was going on in 1968. The movie’s a microcosm of what was happening in this country. One of the players was a Vietnam vet, one of the player’s was dating Meryl Streep, another one had George Bush as a roommate at Yale. Tommy Lee Jones is interviewed cause he was on the Harvard football squad, and his roommate was Al Gore. There’s so much that sort of criss-crossed into this movie. This game sort of reflects that in the background and solves it a very weird, sort of triumph surreal way.”