Music

This week, we had our ups and our downs. Missy Elliott had promised us new tracks over Labor Day weekend — instead, this Monday we got a 90-second snippet and a countdown clock for a week later. Amanda Palmer and Steve Albini tussled.

Exitmusic's Aleksa Palladino and Devon Church have forged a profound partnership: The couple came together in a romantic, cinematic way, meeting on a transcontinental train. Then, over the course of two albums — Passage came out earlier this year — they've created an artistic identity that's beautifully beguiling and darkly unsettling.

At 11 a.m. on a weekday, Calexico rehearses for its upcoming tour in a cramped studio on the south side of Tucson, Ariz. The stereotypical musician would just be getting up, but lead singer and songwriter Joey Burns has been up since dawn with his twin baby girls.

Trumpet player Jacob Valenzuela arrives late to the rehearsal — and that's because his washing machine broke and he had to deal with a small flood. Valenzuela grabs his trumpet as the band launches into "Splitter," the first single from Calexico's new album.

Reviews of the new film The Master have ranged from acclaim to disdain. Almost all the critics, though, seem to admire the film's music, composed by Jonny Greenwood.

Greenwood's story begins in the early 1990s, when he was playing the viola at Oxford University and not making much of an impression — even on himself.

"I was headed for the back of the viola section in some orchestra," Greenwood says. "If I practiced hard enough."

For a metro area of only about 3.5 million people, the Twin Cities region is unusual in the way it supports not one, but two world-class orchestras. Now, with looming deficits on the horizon and musicians' contracts at both the Minnesota Orchestra and the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra expiring Sept. 30, the Twin Cities may have two orchestras on strike.

This past July, the prolific indie-rock band Dirty Projectors returned with a new record, Swing Lo Magellan. Just as accessible as the group's 2009 breakthrough, Bitte Orca, Dirty Projectors' sixth studio album places an added emphasis on the songs' concepts rather than just unique pop arrangements.