Read our interview with Hammer No More the Fingers Hammer No More the Fingers releases Black Shark at Motorco Music Hall Friday, April 1. Midtown Dickens and LiLa open the $8-$10 show at 9 p.m. During the first couple of songs of Black Shark, you might not notice anything different from Durham’s Hammer No More […]
David Raposa
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The Joy Formidable leads an aggressive, artful Britpop pack
The Joy Formidable plays Duke Coffeehouse Thursday, March 24, at 10 p.m. As album titles go, The Big Roar hits The Joy Formidable’s nail on the head hard enough to punch through steel. That handle would’ve been just as appropriate for the Welsh trio’s 2009 debut EP; instead, they chose the decidedly more cryptic A […]
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Wembley’s You Are Invisible
If Wembley’s plan is to play hard to get with current and future fans, they’re succeeding. Their last EP, 2010’s Keywords For Robots, was the sort of four-song appetizer that a newish band offers as a tantalizing teaser for an upcoming full-length. It offered an act interested in textures and sonics as much as melody, […]
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Transportation’s Amusement Park
Chapel Hill’s Transportation is refreshingly unfashionable. While some might disagree with the band’s press materials that this is “an age where genres ape and re-ape themselves in a seemingly endless stream of banal quasi garage rock and No-wave retreads,” there’s no mistaking that Transportation’s “beacon of hope for the true spirit of rock and roll” […]
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Double Negative’s Daydream Nation
It takes some gumption to name your first two LPs after seminal underground rock touchstones (by The Fall and Sonic Youth, respectively), even for a take-no-prisoners hardcore group like Double Negative. Of course, it takes similar bravery for two older fellows with well-established indie rock roots to form a hardcore group this late in the […]
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Gray Young’s staysail
Gray Young releases staysail Saturday, Oct. 23, at The Pour House. Free Electric State and Invasion open. The 10 p.m. show costs $5–$7. A band’s first album is often an imperfect but promising attempt to establish an identity, with subsequent records working to better define or expand on that image. With their second LP, staysail, […]
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Superchunk’s discography
Superchunk plays the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University Thursday, Sept. 16, at 8:30 p.m. Tickets are $12–$16. The show is presented in conjunction with the Nasher’s new exhibit, The Record: Contemporary Art and Vinyl. Even if you don’t know Superchunk’s discography, you probably know “Slack Motherfucker” if you’ve ever listened to indie rock: […]
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The Moaners’ Nocturnal
The Moaners release Nocturnal at Nightlight Saturday, Sept. 18, with Ryan Gustafson. Steph Russ deejays. The 10 p.m. show costs $5. To say that Melissa Swingle’s voice isn’t what one would call pretty would be an understatement. Some might even go so far as to describe it with the sort of backhanded compliments reserved for […]
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The sullen summer tunes of North Carolina expatriate Beach Fossils
Beach Fossils open for Here We Go Magic Saturday, Aug. 7, 9:30 p.m. at Cat’s Cradle. Tickets are $10, and Light Pines open. See Related Events below. With Pavement on tour and records by Superchunk and Versus due to hit whatever record shelves remain by year’s end, nostalgia pervades indie rock’s air. It’s not just […]
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Canada’s Thee Silver Mt. Zion finally matches its politics to its pronunciations
Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra plays Cat’s Cradle Thursday, May 20, at 9 p.m. Free Electric State opens. Tickets are $13-$15. “Musicians are cowards.” That harsh sentiment comes from Efrim Menuck, frontman of Montreal’s Thee Silver Mt. Zion, stringently singing on the group’s second album, 2001’s Born Into Trouble as the Sparks Fly Upward. […]