In his New Yorker blog, music critic Sasha Frere-Jones reviews the two soundtracks for the HBO series The Wire, ...and all the pieces matter and Beyond Hamsterdam, recently released by Nonesuch Records. He excerpts an interview reprinted in the ... all the pieces matter CD booklet, between writer Nick Hornby and series creator David Simon, to highlight The Wire's m.o.: respecting the intelligence of its viewers and their ability to appreciate experiences outside their everyday lives. Frere-Jones says that as true as that is for the show, it applies to the soundtracks as well.

Beyond Hamsterdam features music from the Baltimore club scene that "in a typically depressing instance of blindness to native culture," writes Frere-Jones, has gone largely unnoticed outside of its local fans. He hopes that, in following the show's example, the soundtrack will open listeners to a rich, new world:

I hope that a CD like Beyond Hamsterdam, which contains music that is simultaneously plainspoken, poetically complex, and formally exciting, will be received as enthusiastically as The Wire, and that listeners will be as open to the m.c.s Bossman and Tyree Colion as viewers have been to Stringer Bell and Bubbles.

To read the complete blog entry, visit newyorker.com.