As best as I can tell, Ticonderoga’s second full-length album (and their second since April) isn’t named after a European theory of engineering or philosophy, though the disc’s curious title–The Heilig-Levine LP–may conjure notions of transcontinental academia. Fact is, it references The Heilig-Levine Furniture Building, a long-standing Raleigh landmark that–over the next two years–will become […]
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
Soundbite
During the first 10 songs of the first Physics of Meaning album, there’s an obvious lift of hope pulling through for exactly 23 seconds: The disc’s opener, “Charles Wallace, Where Have You Gone?” grinds open with a cut, clipped and sampled noise wash. Then, big chords emerge from a confidently strummed acoustic guitar. Finally, it […]
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Cesar’s reign
Cesar Comanche operates on vision. What other explanation is there? In 1998, Comanche–then a student at N.C. State just up from his hometown in Jacksonville, N.C. –befriended a fellow hip-hop enthusiast named Pat Douthit. They empathized over music, and one year later, they found out through a mutual friend that they both made hip hop. […]
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Freakwater
As the name implies, Freakwater is an odd thing. First, there’s the music: Here are Janet Beveridge Bean and Catherine Irwin, two 40-plus women playing country music after growing up in the ’80s, attracted to punk rock and repelled by the day’s take on twang. They’re obsessed with death and the dying, the doomed and […]
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in small rooms, big sounds
Remember one thing: These aren’t your customary coffee shop or art house gigs. nola–an emerging Raleigh favorite after several strong Sadlack’s outings–crosses into country territory with the sweetly pained voice of Christy Smith and the able playing of a band that includes David Landau, Mickey D’Loughy (Utah!) and Jason King (Between the Buried and Me). […]
Posted inArt
Gratin ‘n’ Budweiser with chef Bill Smith
Bill Smith’s cooking is inspiring–the process and the product. Moving around the colorful kitchen in his Chapel Hill home, a small ranch house surrounded by student apartments off of Columbia Street, Smith peers into a gas oven, stands up and proclaims, “Well, I am sort of fearless.” He’s telling the truth. In the kitchen, Smith–the […]
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Nothing’s easy
A stranger plops down. He has a question for Randy Bickford. “What band are you in?” “The Strugglers.” “Is it a struggle?” There it is: the easy band name pun, the eternal and always available spin on the tag some well-meaning project has chosen. But, then there’s the question: Well, is it? In Chapel Hill, […]
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Not an American four-tracker
When John Vanderslice reaches the end of the jetway and crosses onto his plane, that’s it. Today is Sept. 7, and Vanderslice–songwriter, musician, producer and studio owner–won’t return home to San Francisco until Dec. 10. In two weeks, he’ll get a break, but he and his band will be busy preparing for two subsequent months […]
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Rolling through town, the Stones make their mark
Most 62-year-old men may think twice before running up a slippery catwalk in tiny black shoes, off-balance, one hand holding a microphone, the other gesturing manically in the air–especially if one of your pals had just told you not to. Then again, only one man is Mick Jagger, and he was the sexagenarian doing just […]
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in supportive peers
It’s a common theme by now: Local musicians and their fellow music lovers helping their kindred spirits in New Orleans and other areas devastated by Hurricane Katrina by giving what they have to give: music. Sara Bell–known for Shark Quest, Regina Hexaphone and Dish–launched this ambitious Saturday, Oct. 15 benefit for THE PRESERVATION HALL NEW […]
