With yesterday’s announcement that The Love Language had signed to Durham’s Merge Records, frontman Stu McLamb told the press, ‘I’ve overdrawn my bank account by $200, my girlfriend dumped me, and my car won’t start. I think this Merge deal could be a real turning point.” It was said with a tinge of sarcasm’I hope […]
Bryan C. Reed
Bio: Bryan Reed lives in Raleigh, where he nerds out about punk rock and comic books. He's written about music for INDY Week since 2008.Twitter: http://twitter.com/BryanCReed
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Here Lies…’s Here Lies…
It took three years for the current lineup of Raleigh’s Here Lies…guitarists Craig Hilton and Ryan Johnson, bassist/ vocalist Dave Sanchez, drummer John Sneadto coalesce and record this EP. These six metal exercises, and the potential they proclaim, were worth the wait and trouble. Hilton founded Here Lies… after leaving Guns N’ Roses tribute band […]
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Black Skies search for drummer No. 5 (tonight at Local 506)
(photo by Karli Stephenson & Mark Reidy) Chapel Hill doom trio Black Skies had to cancel a recent show in Athens, Ga. The band had never before canceled a confirmed date, a trait in which frontman Kevin Clark had always taken pride. ‘I’m super-bummed that we had to bail out on that show,” he says. […]
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Wild Wild Geese’s Are You a Baby?
The bio is simple: “Ex- and current members of Americans in France, Rongo Rongo, Toddlers and Spider Bags making some beautiful noise.” The music, though, is not so easy to pin down. Are You a Baby?, the prelude to Carrboro trio Wild Wild Geese’s forthcoming debut LP, bristles with springy garage rock verve that seems […]
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The Pneurotics’ Second Skin
Listen up! If you cannot see the music player below, download the free Flash Player. Forty, the 2008 debut from Chapel Hill trio The Pneurotics, defined the band’s sound squarely: Rich McLaughlin’s crisp, crackling guitar led casual-fit Southern rock, buoyed by the loose swing of bassist Mimi McLaughlin and alternating drummers. The album offered a […]
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Homesick Blues: Joe Romeo moves back north
It’s not so much a departure as a homecoming for Joe Romeo, the songwriter and Orange County Volunteers frontman who’s speaking now from his family home in Metuchen, N.J., about 25 miles Southeast of New York City. Romeo left the Triangleand his girlfriend in Chapel Hilllast weekend to seek his fortune in the city, ‘to […]
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Live: The Avett Brothers come home
The Avett Brothers Bojangles Coliseum, Charlotte Saturday, August 8 Several minutes after their scheduled start time of 8:45 p.m. had passed, The Avett Brothers climbed the stairs of the head-high stage at Bojangles Coliseum in Charlotte. The crowd erupted. That thousands of fans had gathered to make the Concord band’s homecoming a major event is […]
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Violet Vector and the Lovely Lovelies’ EPII
The short format is perfect for Violet Vector and the Lovely Lovelies. The band’s charm, aside from its crafty pop hooks, has long been its psychedelic glee club aesthetica super-peppy and often cartoonish obsession with candy and bright colors. But it’s also been one of the band’s biggest drawbacks in terms of long-player potential because, […]
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Out into the races
Raleigh’s Ashley Stove wasand on the two albums it cut for Merge Records, isa testament to late-’90s indie rock. Founded in 1992 by guitarists Ben Barwick and Matt Brown, the band soon grew to include drummer Billy Alphin and bassist Jennifer Walker, herself an alumna of early Merge band Erectus Monotone. 1999’s New Scars and […]
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Tonight through Saturday, The Club Is Open Festival supports CyTunes, Tisch Center
The second-annual The Club is Open Festival began Tuesday night with a pre-fest party and a triple-bill at The Reservoir. Like last night’s Hammer No More The Fingers show at the newly repurposed Players on East Franklin Street in Chapel Hill, that gig was free. But the shows tonight (Aminal, The Dry Heathensand On The […]
