It’s a Thursday night on Martin Street in downtown Raleigh in the dimly lit den of Alibi Bar, directly below the city’s construction carnival. Nervously, a guy and a girl flit about one end of the room, plugging in microphones and guitars, asking their assembled friends if everything sounds right. It does. They play six […]
Grayson Haver Currin
Bio: Grayson Haver Currin was the music editor of INDY Week and the co-director of Hopscotch Music Festival.Twitter: http://twitter.com/currincy
Posted inNews
The big question
Cities is a good record from a good young band with loads of potential. It’s not brilliant, as some Triangle scene advocates hoped, but it’s not bad, as jealous detractors of the Chapel Hill band and its record deal hoped. It’s solid. But what Cities lacks in apogean excellence it makes up for, by default, […]
Posted inMusic
The Honored Guests
(Breakfast Mascot Music) There are three ways to interpret Tastes Change, the title of the second LP from Chapel Hill trio-turned-quartet The Honored Guests–as evolution, as holism and as metaphor. All three options provide an accurate view of the band’s sophomore effort, a mature album borne of eclectic rock chops and increased textures. The Honored […]
Posted inMusic
Kid Rock/Ghostface Killah
One was an exercise in instant gratification, the other a case study in baiting and denying. Given that each description fits either Kid Rock’s show at the RBC Center or Ghostface Killah’s set four hours later at the Cat’s Cradle, it’s not difficult to assign the appropriate assessment to the correct performer. Kid Rock played […]
Posted inNews
Holy Fuck, So Good
As a band name, Holy Fuck is bound to fail. The expectations are too high, the risk too big: Any band with the gall to take that name needs to be willing to change someone’s life with sound. And, if it can do that, its members need not be chagrined when they’re relegated to the […]
Posted inMusic
DIRTY5THIRTY
Proving the worth of one’s own flow by rapping about the inherent superiority of one’s own flow is a hip-hop antiquity. It’s akin to rock ‘n’ roll’s extension of a handful of basic chords into millions of songs. New artists making new efforts under an old paradigm can only strive to make something good, not […]
Posted inMusic
American Aquarium’s Antique Hearts
Live, American Aquarium is a big, roots-rock blunt object, a monolithic, acoustic guitar-based band, vicariously drinking behind the wheel and careening down a North Carolina country road via B.J. Barham’s major chord laments. It has its moments, but the band can be as guilty of overplaying as Barham can be of oversinging. On stage, American […]
Posted inGuides
Take it personally
It’s not a revelation, just a reminder: Sometimes the best documentaries work because they are personal. The best documentaries have the unique power to be educational and inspiring. This year, the music documentaries that will work best at Full Frame–Beyond Beats and Rhymes, two headed cow and To Be Continued–are successful because they do just […]
Posted inNews
Ritchie vs. Bushie
Oh, 1999, you infinite wellspring of art music: Remember the triumvirate of new youth heroes that emerged in the dying days of the ’90s as the 2000 presidential campaign started gearing up? There was Eminem, a white Detroit rapper with a bad attitude and an idiosyncratic, whiny delivery. There was Fred Durst, who, in 1999, […]
Posted inMusic
SXSF
Who are you with?” My head is reeling, that’s who. Not a good answer. “Oh man, I’m with Vice.” The official looking fellow smiles and grabs two cases of Sparks, 48 cans of a sweet caffeinated malt beverage, 768 fluid ounces of a drink that makes (and–at 4 a.m. in some warehouse known as the […]
