ALBUM New Orleans rockers MuteMath have re-released their third studio album (their first full-length effort without original guitarist Greg Hill), Odd Soul, as a vinyl LP. This most recent effort is noticeably more bluesy. Paul Meany’s vocals are just as raw and cutting as ever. Roy Mitchell-Cardénas and Darren King remain with the band; Todd Gummerman has since joined as their new guitarist (Mitchell-Cardénas filled in for this record).
ILLUSTRATION Architect and Tulane University professor Errol Barron has compiled dozens of watercolors and sketches into New Orleans Observed: Drawings and Observations of America’s Most Foreign City. Barron’s use of color is frugal but exacting, and his sketches are even more evocative of sensations than they are of actual visual elements. The book jumps from rough maps to topographical representations to architectural schematics to landscapes to portraits.
NATURE Biologist and former U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service manager Kelby Ouchley has composed an encyclopedia of Louisiana wildlife, sentient and otherwise, in Bayou-Diversity: Nature and People in the Louisiana Bayou Country. In this exhaustive compendium, Ouchley catalogs all walks (and growths) of bayou life in essay form, from invertebrates all the way up to human beings, and takes the study one step further with a series of examinations of different ecological phenomena. The collection grew out of a series of vignettes by the same name.
COOKBOOK In her second cookbook, And Still I Cook, Leah Chase brings to bear the considerable weight of her half-century-long stewardship of Dooky Chase with recipes from the restaurant, her recollection and her invention. Peppered with anecdotes from her culinary career and family table, And Still I Cook is a worthy scion of Chase’s first text, The Dooky Chase Cookbook.
Please send submissions for consideration, attention: Alex Gecan, to 110 Veterans Memorial Blvd., Suite 123, Metairie, LA 70005.
