In her essay “On Keeping a Notebook,” Joan Didion describes diarists as “children afflicted apparently at birth with some presentiment of loss.” Of course, she’s talking about herself. But she could just as well be talking about Ari Picker, Lost in the Trees mastermind and ex-member of the Never, whose music is uncommonly elegiac for […]
Brian Howe
Posted inArt
Cory Doctorow’s stories of the techno-present
Overclocked: Stories of the Future Present by Cory Doctorow Thunder’s Mouth Press, 304 pp. How does one write science fiction while living in a perpetual future? Teleportation, artificial intelligence, cloning and time travel are all either physically possible or expressed in cyberspace. They now resemble the quaint stuff of Jetsons cartoons. A city full of […]
Posted inMusic
Whose limbs shatter mountains
Listen! Listen to Fin Fang Foom’s “Machines” from their album Native Tongue. If you cannot see the music player below, click here to download the free Flash Player. Read our review of Fin Fang Foom’s Native Tongue. The 89th issue of Marvel Comics’ Strange Tales is released in 1961. It features the discovery of an […]
Posted inArt
Many multitudes
Should poetry be timeless or timely? With three new titles that are inextricably bound to time and place, Carolina Wren Press makes a tacit argument for the latter. Each book contains multitudes within the purview of its author’s unique cultural vantage point: William Pitt Root’s White Boots is situated among the shining landscapes of the […]
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Joanna Newsom
Joanna Newsom Gail Brower Huggins Performance Center, Greensboro College Saturday, Nov. 18, 7 p.m. Sun City Girls’ co-founder Sir Richard Bishop opens “There are a thousand different ways to sound sinister,” Joanna Newsom confides. She checked off many of them on her debut album The Milk-Eyed Mender, which explored love, loss, inspiration and fidelity by […]
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Elan and circumstance
Listen! Listen to The Old Ceremony’s “Talk Straight” and “Papers in Order” from their new album Our One Mistake. If you cannot see the music player below, click here to download the free Flash Player. When I told a friend I was going to interview Django Reinhardt, she was understandably confused, especially considering that the […]
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Phon
Phon The Orm (Iseler Communication Recordings) In capitalism’s intensely competitive environment, the notion that art’s worth is predicated upon the measure by which it exceeds one’s own abilities is practically pre-axiomatic. It’s not enough for something to be beautiful. It must also be difficult to make. The meme is particularly pernicious in rock circles: DJs, […]
Posted inMusic
Like a weed
Listen! Listen to five tracks from Trekky Records. If you cannot see the music player below, click here to download the free Flash Player. Tucked away in a Chapel Hill office complex, the Trekky Records headquarters hums with the energy of young people pursuing a common goal. Co-owner Will Hackney hunches over a laptop, hashing […]
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The Walkmen
Listen! Listen to The Walkmen’s “Emma, Get Me a Lemon” from their new album A Hundred Miles Off. If you cannot see the music player below, click here to download the free Flash Player. Reconstructed garage rock was all the rage at the turn of the millennium, but the newly minted Walkmen had something grander […]
Posted inMusic
Pop goes the Squirrel
Listen! Listen to two tracks from Katharine Whalen’s new album Dirty Little Secret. If you cannot see the music player below, click here to download the free Flash Player. On the third Saturday of every June, the annual Hog Day Festival descends on the sleepy town of Hillsborough. Drawing up to 35,000 revelers (about seven […]
