Thursday, February 25, 2010

Shout Out Louds - Work

Album Review
Pitchfork
February 25, 2010
Link
 












For these Stockholm-based indie vets, Work signals an embrace of music as a calling. Or, at least, a living. When advance mp3 "Walls" started showing up in bit.ly links late last year, its horns and jittery piano made Merge labelmates Spoon an easy first reference. A more revealing comparison, however, may be Lou Reed and John Cale's "Work", which reportedly gave Shout Out Louds' third album its title. From 1990 collaboration Songs for Drella, the Reed-Cale song is a manic, edgy portrayal of Andy Warhol's blue-collar Pittsburgh work ethic that sounds best on undistracted listens. Work, by contrast-- all innocuous midtempo thrum and vague yearning-- will be pleasant enough soundtrack bait, but it suffers from the bland risk-averseness that can sustain careers while smothering creativity.

Still, having a job at all is cause for celebration these days, and Shout Out Louds have tightened their belts accordingly. Work scraps the Cars synths and trashy Lower East Side glamour of 2003 debut Howl Howl Gaff Gaff, along with the orchestral lushness of 2007 follow-up Our Ill Wills, both at least co-produced by Peter Bjorn & John's Björn Yttling. In his chair is Phil Ek, who worked wonders for Built to Spill, the Shins, Fleet Foxes, and Band of Horses. Ek makes Shout Out Louds sound like rock'n'roll pros, with every drum hit or tastefully atmospheric guitar lead in its right place, especially on a decent stereo. Dude obviously knows harmony, and his best call is bringing keyboardist Bebban Stenborg's tender backing vocals more to the front.

Under Ek's guidance, Shout Out Louds have also cheered up a little. Adam Olenius' high, light vocals lose some of their sensitive quaver-- just the change you'd expect when a band leaves twee-friendly Stockholm to record in Seattle with an indie-rock guy who came up in the 1990s. More broadly, Work replaces Our Ill Wills' open-wound heartbreak with wistful nostalgia. When the choruses are big and the memories relatively specific, as on Phoenix-cosmopolitan opening pair "1999" and "Fall Hard", that's a fine change. But by the bazillionth time Olenius repeats, on strummy sixth track "Throwing Stones", "I'm not slowing down," well-- it sounds like he's trying to convince himself.

Work finds these former Next Big Things railing against maturity while tacitly embracing it. The title of lulling finale "Too Late, Too Slow" pretty much sums the album up. Olenius may want us to "Show Me Something New", but those ringing chords and ignorable lyrics are commercially palatable without a hint of novelty or much personality. "Even if I know that you're right, I'll still go on," Olenius retorts again and again on "Four by Four", as if to unseen parents suggesting he find a normal job, before repetition runs yet another solid chorus into the ground. String-flitting anthem "Moon", meanwhile, gives us the album's most unexpected moment-- unless you encountered any aspect of pop culture in vampire-friendly 2009: "Have you ever tasted young blood?"

For the 21st century's "creative class" of young professionals, Work raises bigger questions, ones that very few-- Warhol, Reed, and Cale, I hope, among them-- have ever been able to answer successfully. Questions like: When does making a living with your art require such inoffensiveness that it's no longer art? And: At what point does getting by mean being untrue to yourself? Thankfully, Shout Out Louds aren't there yet. But they're closer than they were three years ago. "I play the game," Olenius confides. "Are you the same?" Work, as the TV dads say, is work.
 

Sambassadeur - European

Album Review
Pitchfork
Feb. 23, 2010
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From freedom fries to tea parties, the American relationship with Europe over the past several years has been as complicated as continental philosophy. Or a sibling rivalry. Coming out of a global financial crisis, the Old World way-- with less conspicuous consumption and more built-in safety nets-- looks more than ever like the better way. Named after a Serge Gainsbourg song, winsome indie poppers Sambassadeur won't shake up any Sarah Palin fan's European stereotypes. But the Gothenburg, Sweden-based band's third album, European, again demonstrates the virtues of cosmpolitanism, craft, and restraint.

Of all the Swedish groups in recent years, Sambassadeur have perhaps the most in common with likely indie-kid preconceptions of Swedishness-- no blog-house attitude or hip posturing here. One part ABBA, one part C86, the fragile, idyllic pop of 2005's self-titled debut translated naturally to a studio and the lusher production of Dungen's Mattias Glavå on fine 2007 follow-up Migration. The new album doubles down on an aesthetic that should appeal to fans of Camera Obscura, the Clientele, or the Concretes, resulting in Sambassadeur's most consistent full-length to date, even if its peaks don't quite match earlier highlights like "Between the Lines", "Kate", or "Subtle Changes", marred in part by occasionally generic lyrics.

As with generations of Swedish popsters before them, Sambassadeur excel at picking up sounds from the U.S. and UK and refining them to their catchy essence. When European is at full gallop, making loneliness almost cheerful on first single "Days" or another album highlight, "Sandy Dunes", it's pretty tough to beat: Those horns! Those strings! That piano opening! Where Migrations quotes Pavement and includes a Dennis Wilson cover, Sambassadeur's latest sprinkles its lyrics with well-selected phrases from Nick Drake or James Bond movie titles (though you probably enjoy them more if you don't realize it). Plus there's a hushed, intimate rendition of Tobin Sprout's "Small Parade".

For all that, it's hard to pinpoint moments when European rises beyond "pleasant" or "comfortable" to something transcendent. While the slower songs may drag on early listens-- hint: try speakers instead of headphones-- "Albatross" eventually emerges as the closest thing. "I was happier alone/ Cut my hair just like a boy," sings frontwoman Anna Persson, her voice full and conversational over Astral Weeks-style upright bass. It's a moment that more than makes up for every "ivory skyline of your smile" or "pine trees like paintings." Put down your protest signs, people: There's still so much we could learn from each other.
 

Securities Lending Recovers, but Uncertainty Remains

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February 23, 2010
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New Pay Metric to Compare Boards' 'Degree of Difficulty'

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February 23, 2010
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Monday, February 22, 2010

This Is Not a Mixtape

Feature
Pitchfork
February 22, 2010
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Last December, Brooklyn's Oneida issued a limited-run cassette, Fine European Food and Wine, on Scotch Tapes. Sure, the tape contained years-old live improvisations the band deemed unfit for "mainstream" treatment. But Oneida aren't unheralded kids laboring in their bedrooms. Over the past decade, they've put out 10 albums on Jagjaguwar, including 2009 triple LP Rated O. "Why release a cassette?" their singing drummer, Kid Millions, muses. "Man, who knows, right?"

Oneida are only one of the most recent indie-inclined outfits embracing the tape format. London label the Tapeworm opened its virtual doors last summer, selling out a limited run of cassettes by enigmatic multimedia artist Philip Jeck. Upstart bands Jail and Harlem each put out tapes on Fullerton, Calif.-based Burger Records; Sub Pop went on to sign Jail, now Jaill, while Matador inked a multi-album deal with Harlem. Hometapes, the Portland-based label behind art-rockers like Bear in Heaven and Pattern Is Movement, capped the year by mailing out a label sampler to journalists-- on cassette.

Perhaps more surprisingly, a few of underground music's heavier hitters are also championing the medium. "I only listen to cassettes," Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore told CBC radio last summer. Dirty Projectors released last year's highly anticipated Bitte Orca on CD, vinyl, mp3-- and cassette. Deerhunter have made two EPs available on tape: 2008's super-limited On Platts Eyott and 2009's aptly titled Rainwater Cassette Exchange. Beck told Pitchfork last summer he was recording a cassette-only cover of Moore & co.'s classic EVOL album for an upcoming Sonic Youth box set (a spokesperson contacted for confirmation did not immediately respond to e-mail).

Tapes never fell completely out of favor among experimental and noise musicians, but their broader underground resurgence appears to reflect a confluence of cultural trends. Instant access to almost any recording has left some of us over-stimulated, endlessly consuming without really digesting what we hear. Many children of the 1980s first owned their music on cassette, so for them the format represents a nostalgia for simpler times; younger kids probably never owned cassettes in the first place, so for them tapes don't have any negative associations. The spread of Internet-enabled smart phones and 24/7 social networking has made work and pleasure increasingly intertwined in our digital existences. Like records, cassettes offer listeners a tangible experience at a time when our jobs, our social lives, and our popular culture are becoming more and more ephemeral.

Via Audio - Animalore

Album Review
Pitchfork
February 22, 2010
Link
4.8













Via Audio's band van has the word "SNOB" painted on its side in cartoonish block letters. The Brooklyn-based, Berklee-educated foursome surely aren't the only music lovers who self-identify that way these days-- even beyond their home borough. Based on the recent chart successes of Vampire Weekend, Grizzly Bear, and Animal Collective, a growing portion of U.S. record buyers now think a lot like critics. If widespread connoisseurship leads to more adventurousness inside and outside the mainstream, as Solange Knowles' Dirty Projectors cover or Antony Hegarty's Beyoncé cover appear to portend, then the stage could be set for some of the weirdest and most exciting pop in ages.

As Animalore shows, however, the new snobbishness isn't always for the best. That's a shame, because the mature, earnestly proficient folk-pop of Via Audio's first LP, 2007's Say Something, was mild-mannered to a fault. Again produced by Spoon's Jim Eno, Animalore keeps its predecessor's smooth gloss and evident chops, demonstrating why Death Cab for Cutie's Chris Walla was an early supporter, but adds touches of funk, R&B, and cloying humor. With songwriting that veers between snoozy and face-palming, it's the kind of sophomore album that makes you question whether the debut deserved so much love in the first place. To paraphrase Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, true expertise is knowing there's a whole lot we don't know.

For instance, I don't know how much it matters that Animalore shares its name with a rare 1953 "animalanthology" featuring Lewis Carroll. If there's a concept here, it's subtle: "The Lizard Song" ably ventures into tropicalia; "Tigers" rides an indie pop groove but catches its tapping toe on Mother Goose-like rhymes. Animalore's charms are subtle, too, but easier to find. Spoon's Eno establishes a dubby sense of space beginning with the jazzy chords and thick bass of coolly seductive opener "Hello". Co-songwriter Jessica Martins' light, versatile voice should please fans of former tourmates Headlights, particularly on acoustic-to-technicolor finale "Happening"-- the album's best song. Martins also keeps the Fleetwood Mac-dreaming "Summer Stars" and castanets-kissed "Wanted" from collapsing underneath their complex arrangements. She can't save "Goldrush", which sounds like a 1970s-era "Sesame Street" ditty about the Olympics, but its hook should be sharp enough to catch some listeners.

When Via Audio engage with recent chart pop, though, they bring an ironic distance that can be... off-putting. It's hard to imagine anyone would actually "want to make babies" to first mp3 "Babies", which turns the sci-fi synths and slinky rhythms of a Timbaland production into wry parody. "Digital" adopts the deadpan electro of LCD Soundsystem to broach the shocking revelation that pop stars use Auto-Tune: "It doesn't even matter how good you are," co-songwriter Tom Deis sneers, aghast. It's sad and embarrassing hearing complaints about "something 12-year-olds will like" from a band that elsewhere sings, "Olga, the poetry of music rises like the ashes of a life before I knew you." As long as pop is going to encourage us would-be connoisseurs, here's hoping it doesn't forget about the 12-year-olds-- or the 17-year-olds, either.
 

Merck Settles Vioxx Suits, Agrees to Governance Changes

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February 16, 2010
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Fluor Changes Bylaws to Permit CEO-Chairman Split

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February 16, 2010
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Voluntary ‘Say on Pay’ Adoptions Continue With JPMorgan, AmEx

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February 16, 2010
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Goldman Director: Scrutiny on Board Service Won’t Affect Day Job

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February 16, 2010
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BofA-SEC Settlement Imminent, Judge Says

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February 16, 2010
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Genzyme Strengthens Lead Independent Director Role

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February 16, 2010
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Playboy Suit Says Hefner Harming Shareholders

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February 16, 2010
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Thursday, February 18, 2010

Everybody Was in the French Resistance... Now! - Fixin' the Charts, Vol. 1

Album Review
Pitchfork
February 18, 2010
Link
3.8













"Answer records are not new," Time magazine wrote. That was in 1961. From "Yes, I'm Lonesome Tonight" to "No Pigeons", "Roll With Me, Henry" to "Wearing His Rolex", songs that respond to other songs have long been a lively pop tradition. In 1995, German reissue label Bear Family put out a three-volume compilation series, And the Answer Is: Great Pop Answer Discs From the '50s and '60s. It shows that as engrossing as the answer record trend can be, most of the records themselves are for obsessives only.

Eddie Argos is such an obsessive. The plucky raconteur for UK rockers Art Brut has always portrayed himself less as a pop star than as the ultimate fan, whether California dreaming about Axl Rose on 2004 debut Bang Bang Rock & Roll or belatedly discovering the Replacements on last year's Art Brut vs. Satan. And, as titles like "Pump Up the Volume", "Nag Nag Nag Nag", "Twist and Shout", and "The Passenger" may indicate, Art Brut were already making "answer songs" of a sort.

Everybody Was in the French Resistance... Now! is Argos' band with Dyan Valdés of L.A. group the Blood Arm. Produced by former Mighty Lemon Drops guitarist Dave Newton and recorded at Joshua Tree (take that, U2!!! ...I guess?), Fixin' the Charts, Vol. 1, an album-length excursion into answer songs, is only the latest example of Argos' fascination with participatory culture. Too often, though, its jokes are one-note, and so are its arrangements. It's irony. It's rock'n'roll. It's a listening experience not worth repeating a second time.

Wisely if foolhardily, Everybody Was in the French Resistance... Now! have chosen to respond to songs already rich in history. Wisely, because it's difficult not to take "The Scarborough Affaire" on its own terms when the Simon and Garfunkel original was already based on a Martin Carthy arrangement of a traditional song. Foolhardily, because this approach also highlights Fixin' the Charts' shortcomings: The limply parodic indie funk of "Billie's Genes" has nothing on earlier answer records like Lydia Murdock's Billie-Jean's-view "Superstar".

Argos is still witty, but here his punchlines tend to be predictable, due in part perhaps to the disc's overstretched answer-song conceit. I get that trying to reveal the emotional truth behind classic pop songs could theoretically be a way of giving Fixin' the Charts the sort of honesty about relationships that makes Bang Bang Rock & Roll or Art Brut vs. Satan stick with you for so long. But to "fix" the tacit anti-feminism of Avril Lavigne's "Girlfriend", "G.I.R.L.F.R.E.N. (You Know I've Got A)" would have to out-entertain her. Drunken indie-pop karaoke won't cause a generation of young women raised on Taylor Swift's "You Belong With Me" to stop fighting over boys and embrace girl power.

Then again, everybody was on the right side of history... now. When the Replacements sang about a musical hero of theirs, on Pleased to Meet Me/"Rock Band 2" fave "Alex Chilton", Paul Westerberg rasped, "I'm in love/ What's that song?/ I'm in love/ With that song." On "Hey! It's Jimmy Mack"-- in which, guess what, Jimmy tells Martha and the Vandellas he's never coming back-- Argos quips, "It certainly didn't deserve a song." What makes for a mildly amusing MySpace click can lead to a painfully obnoxious album. Particularly when, if you really think about it-- and I'm hardly the first person to have this idea-- every song is an answer song. Why else would you form a band?
 

Frank: SEC Should Require Disclosure of Top Employees’ Pay

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February 8, 2010
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Dodd: Bank Proposal Threatens Financial Overhaul

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February 8, 2010
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As Pressure Builds, Hewitt Spins Off Comp Consulting Biz

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February 8, 2010
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Board-Compliance Communication Could Lower White-Collar Fines

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February 8, 2010
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Will Companies Get to Opt Out of Proxy Access?

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February 8, 2010
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Recent Compensation Changes

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February 8, 2010
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Sunday, February 14, 2010

What Supreme Court’s Political Funding Ruling Means for Boards

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February 1, 2010
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RiskMetrics on the Block?

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February 1, 2010
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Kraft-Cadbury Deal Reveals New Debt-Equity Balancing Act

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February 1, 2010
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Proxy-Access Comment Period Ends, to Uncertain Prospects

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February 1, 2010
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House Panel Hears Tougher Proposals on Executive Pay

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February 1, 2010
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How FBI Nabbed Execs in FCPA Probe

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February 1, 2010
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Google Co-Founders to Relinquish Majority Control

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February 1, 2010
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AIG to Require Approval for All Corporate Jet Rides

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February 1, 2010
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Buffett: CEOs of Failed Companies Should Forfeit Their Assets

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February 1, 2010
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IRS Proposal Would Require More Disclosure About Tax Risks

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February 1, 2010
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Tuesday, February 2, 2010

Lightspeed Champion - Life Is Sweet! Nice to Meet You

Album Review
Pitchfork
February 1, 2010
Link
6.7













Devonté Hynes enjoyed critical acclaim at age 19 as a member of art-thrashers Test Icicles, and now, as Lightspeed Champion, he works with the resigned determination of someone who realizes hype is fleeting. Under a pair of pseudonyms (Blood Orange is the other), Hynes gives away impossible-to-digest amounts of free music online. Most recently, Hynes had his heart sawed to pieces by adorable animated bears in the Kanye West-endorsed (all caps: "THIS IS DOPE") video for Basement Jaxx's 2009 electro-pop stunner "My Turn", a song he co-wrote. As Hynes wonders aloud, "When will this all start?" it sounds like he knows it probably won't. If "My Turn" lays bare Hynes' fears, his Lightspeed project battles them-- eccentrically and at times too obscurely, but no less quixotically.

As Lightspeed, Hynes flees from the trends that briefly propelled his former band, while inevitably failing to escape them. His 2008 debut, Falling Under the Lavender Bridge, embraced the Americana twang of Saddle Creek in-house producer Mike Mogis, skewering ghetto-fetishizing peers with songs like "All My Friends Are Listening to Crunk". It was hard to tell who was being more ironic. Appropriately, then, Life Is Sweet! Nice to Meet You brings on a producer with a hip-hop background, Ben Allen, who also oversaw a little record called Merriweather Post Pavilion. For better and worse, Lightspeed's sophomore album plays like a product of Hynes' restlessness. Alternately inspired and frustrating, it addresses themes of lost love (and lost chicness) with Queen-size 70s-rock pomp, neoclassical interludes, and one ukulele-based chamber-pop song.

Hynes can shred, too, laying down a nasty guitar solo on the album's first single, "Marlene", a twitchy but slightly overlong funk barrage that could make "more triangle" the new "more cowbell." "Stop being cool," Hynes demands, a refrain that might be a mission statement for the whole Lightspeed project. The catchiest song, live favorite "Madame Van Damme", takes hipster self-loathing to its cheerful extreme, repeating, "Kill me, baby, won't ya kill me," over a light girl-group bounce. Heaven knows he's miserable now, but "Faculty of Fears" goes one Morrissey hiccup too far, tethering a badass bass groove to inscrutable lyrics about sarongs and Pythagorean theorems.

The best and the worst of Life Is Sweet! Nice to Meet You meet on "The Big Guns of Highsmith". First it's a clever kiss-off to London: "Chelsea teas and Socrates still haunt me/ A life I strived and chased and had and lost." Then it's clever self-recrimination: "Hurts be to be the one who's always feeling sad," Hynes whines, before a Greek chorus retorts, "Oh, just stop complaining!" This dry self-awareness puts the album's remaining highlights-- baroque keyboard plaint "Middle of the Dark", spaghetti-Western epic "Sweetheart", jazz-splashed rumination "Smooth Day (At the Library)"-- in proper context. It's also bloodlessly cerebral. We are not the champions, my friends. Hynes has been, and still could be again, but for now he's keeping that English stiff upper lip about it.
 

Goldman Seeks to Block Pay Proposal, Citing Errors

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January 25, 2010
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Edison International Adopts Advisory Pay Vote

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January 25, 2010
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Overstock.com Plans to Return to Nasdaq Compliance by May

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January 25, 2010
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IRS Lets Companies Fix Deferred Comp Mistakes

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January 25, 2010
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Companies Look to Raise Special-Meeting Ownership Thresholds

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January 25, 2010
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What Now for Financial Regulatory Overhaul?

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January 25, 2010
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Arbitron CEO’s ‘Misstatement’ to Congress Raises Question

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January 25, 2010
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