Robyn Hitchcock Cat’s Cradle Back Room, Carrboro Tuesday, Feb. 4 For the first few numbers, the figure onstage could have almost passed for a dour-voiced folk classicist with an idiosyncratic lyrical bent. Finally, a brief offhand remark signaled that we were attending a Robyn Hitchcock concert: “As it’s autumn tonight, we celebrate the menopause.” During […]
David Klein
Bio: David Klein lives in Chapel Hill with his wife and two sons. His first book, If 6 Was 9 and Other Assorted Number Songs, is available at his website.Link: http://www.if6was9thebook.com/Twitter: http://twitter.com/DKleinandFall
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For Phil, an old friend
I’ve been watching Philip Seymour Hoffman play his best parts for the last day: the supercilious lacky in The Big Lebowski, the hooked agent in Charlie Wilson’s War, the rock critic dropping wisdom in Almost Famous. Since he died of a probable drug overdose last Sunday, those moments have filled the feeds of my social […]
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“Ask me when I am no more”: The Robyn Hitchcock interview
When Robyn Hitchcock takes the stage for a two-night stand in Cat’s Cradle’s Back Room on Feb. 4 and 5, he’s almost certain to highlight songs from the soon-to-be-released Love From London. But nothing is set in stone for a man who has a catalog of more than 500 songs. From the skewed art-pop of […]
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Appealing justice
The old, bleak, transitional, almost holiday-free month of January is the obligatory jury duty of the calendar year. And that makes January the ideal month for jury duty. Or at least that’s what I reasoned as I guided my mother-in-law’s Subaru toward Hillsborough through a steel gray downpour last week. On my way out, I’d […]
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Eston Dickinson’s debut is one of the Triangle’s most charming pop-rock collections in years
Eston and the Outs with Strange Faces Saturday, Jan. 11 $5, 9 p.m. Slim’s Eston Dickinson was a preadolescent, the sixth of his family’s eight children living in New Haven, Conn., at the height of the MC Hammer era. But the song he played on repeatthe song that gave him a vision of his own […]
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Amid a wave of alt-country nostalgia, bygone favorites 6 String Drag reunite to make new music
6 String Drag with Boneslinger Saturday, Jan. 4 8:30 p.m., $10–$15The Pour House In Raleigh, Sadlack’s is now ready for the wrecking ball. And last month, crews leveled the block that once housed The Brewery and its neighboring dive bar, The Comet Lounge, to make way for more student amenities. But alternative countrythe particularly pugnacious […]
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Live: Johnny Marr is a rock star without ego
Based on various unofficial barometers, including a post on this very website recalling that Johnny Marr’s most recent local appearance was sparsely attended, I was ready to conclude that the Triangle doesn’t have much affection for the former Smiths guitarist whose tour T-shirts read “JOHNNY FUCKIN’ MARR.” My fears were laid to rest, though, Tuesday […]
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No, Johnny Marr doesn’t have that voice, but at least he wants to see you sing
Johnny Marr with Meredith Sheldon Tuesday, Nov. 19 8 p.m., $22–$25 Cat’s Cradle Despite the quick breakup of his most famous band, his pedestrian voice and his career spent in the shadow of a misanthrope he hasn’t played with in a quarter-century, Johnny Marr has led a charmed life. As a teenager in the south […]
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Rose Windows, Moondoggies update the Sub Pop aesthetic
Rose Windows, The Moondoggies Local 506, Chapel Hill Sunday, Oct. 20, 2013 Some 20 years ago, Seattle indie label Sub Pop became virtually synonymous with a certain style of noisy, no-frills guitar rock that eventually spawned the umbrella term grunge. These days its roster is far more varied. Two of Sub Pop’s leading lights performed […]
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Saints Apollo’s We Are Ghosts
Before everything got granulated and genre-tagged and multihyphenatedespecially before indie-folk-pop-Americana-roots rock became not just a genre but an extremely crowded fieldtrends in pop music generally required that aspirants plug something in: a guitar that went to 11, a Casio keyboard that went chirp, a drum machine that went boom, and onward through the extended Auto-Tune […]