As the Mountain Goats, Durham-based songwriter John Darnielle has amassed nearly 20 albums since the early ’90s, a figure that doesn’t include an army of EPs, singles and collaborations. During this prolific span, the changes in his music have been significant but arguably superficial. Darnielle went from releasing raw homemade cassettes on niche imprints to […]
Brian Howe
Posted inMusic
Spider Bags invite their friends over and make their best record yet
Spider Bags play The Pinhook in Durham Saturday, Aug. 11, with Wesley Wolfe. Tickets for the 10 p.m. show are $5. Spider Bags has two bassistswell, at least in a theoretical, Schrödinger’s cat way, not the Spinal Tap way. Steve Oliva is the newest and youngest member of the intricately bruising and famously debauched Chapel […]
Posted inGuides
Tess Mangum Ocaña makes The ArtsCenter a national, and local, destination
There are plenty of places in the Triangle where you can catch shows by legendary musicians such as Lindsey Buckingham, Judy Collins and Suzanne Vega. But The ArtsCenter of Carrboro is a uniquely intimate showcase for these giants, all of whom perform in its 2012–13 season, lured with tenacity, finesse and delicious brownies by Tess […]
Posted inCulture
O Canada: Richard Ford’s new novel is quietly riveting
Photo by Laura Wilson CANADAby Richard FordEcco; 420 pp. In Jim Jarmusch’s film Coffee and Cigarettes, Iggy Pop and Tom Waits discuss how great it’s been to quit smoking and then commence to light up; the joke is that it’s OK for them to have one now, because they don’t smoke. This deceptive notion that […]
Posted inMusic
Dayglow: Dance (almost) naked
Dayglow Raleigh Amphitheater April 21, 2012 The first curious thing about Dayglow is that it happens at night. Walking down Raleigh’s South Street last Saturday, you could already hear the musicthrobbing bass and whooshing synthesizers, syncopated snares and hi-hats. An unusual number of college students, many missing articles of clothing generally considered compulsory, flitted about […]
Posted inMusic
Lost in the Trees’ A Church That Fits Our Needs
Lost in the Trees plays an album release party April 20 at Cat’s Cradle. The Toddlers and Brice Randall Bickford open. With Lost in the Trees, Ari Picker has pulled off something most musicians will envy: He took a mulligan on a significant portion of his early career. In 2007 and 2008, respectively, Picker released […]
Posted inMusic
Archers of Loaf’s reissued Vee Vee
Archers of Loaf play the Triangle twice in May; they’re at Haw River Ballroom on May 11 and Kings on May 12. The re-release of Vee Vee is out now. Underneath each local landscape, the curious abstraction known as “the scene” has several reliable traits: It’s bigger on the inside than the outside. Its perimeters […]
Posted inMusic
Live: Jeff Mangum returns to a (very formal) Chapel Hill stage
Jeff Mangumw/ Andrew, Laura & ScottMemorial Hall, Chapel HillJanuary 30, 2012 Illustration by Chris Williams Photography was not permitted at Jeff Mangum’s show in Chapel Hill on Monday night, increasing the sense that we were about to witness a rare, delicate artifact that could be damaged by bright lights. Yet the person that emerged seemed […]
Posted inArt
Lisa Alther re-imagines the New World and its legacy in Washed in the Blood
Washed in the Blood By Lisa Alther Mercer University Press; 459 pp. Lisa Alther appears at Quail Ridge Books at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 1; Regulator Bookshop at 7 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 2; McIntyre’s Books at 2 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 4; and at Flyleaf Books at 2 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 5. See Related Events below. […]
Posted inMusic
An entertaining but troubled Glass opera in Raleigh
Les Enfants Terribles Thursday, Jan. 19–Sunday, Jan. 22 Fletcher Opera Theater, Raleigh Kill your idols, surebut what happens when your idol tries to kill you? Perhaps, as in Les Enfants Terribles, you abdicate reality for a dark fantasy world you share with your sister, where mutual cruelty becomes a twisted but biddable kind of love. […]
