Enough with the “former Archers of Loaf frontman” thing. By now, four albums and one haunting EP into Crooked Fingers, former Asheville kid and Chapel Hill townie Eric Bachmann’s reputation as a songwriter exists apart from AoL for good reason: Bachmann’s dark songwriting and full, deep voice recall both Springsteen and Waits, finding characters and […]
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 inGuides
In the clubs this fall
If music sales in local record stores valley in the next quarter, don’t lambaste Limewire, Soulseek or piracy at large; blame the clubs. Actually, don’t blame them at all. This fall is going to be fun. In fact, grab that stack of College Music Journals sitting in your living room, pull the pages out, throw […]
Posted inMusic
Burn in Technicolor
The most fascinating jazz these days emanates from edgy musicians who can play it either way: inside-out or outside-in. Like an eye-catching reversible coat that’s green one day and blue the next, multi-chromatic bands like Burnt Sugar and the Satoko Fujii 4 are both fashionable and functional. The line between composition and improvisation blurs. Blink […]
Posted inArt
WLOL
From the 12th row of Alltel Pavilion’s elite seats, Jon Wurster should be able to hear. One dozen speakers hang 20 feet from his head. But just as Gavin DeGraw launches into “Chariot,” Wurster goes either deaf or incredulous. “What?” he screams over DeGraw’s too-loud piano and cute-boy audience prodding, Wurster’s face slack-jawed and scrunched […]
Posted inGuides
Doing battle with Chapel Hill’s nightlife
We are soldiers. Well, I am. I am an infantryman with extensive, but basic, training in the trenches of drinking. But George Hage–a college friend one year my elder and my companion for the next two nights–is a three-star general. He was trained in the back of a rock ‘n’ roll touring van and in […]
Posted inNews
Soundbite
I can recall two musicians that have referenced “Public Enemy No. 1” this year: Providence’s controversial provocateur emcee Sage Francis in his “Gunz Yo,” and Mac McCaughan–Superchunk firebrand, Merge brander and Portastatic bard–in “I Wanna Know Girls.” Yes, Bright Ideas is a different kind of Portastatic album. Call it leaving a protective shell: For the […]
Posted inMusic
Robert Moog
On Sunday, the music world lost more than an inventor, more than an engineer: Bob Moog, who died of a brain tumor at home in Asheville after an extended stay at Duke University Hospital, was a daring revolutionary, a man who understood that what he was doing was against tradition and out of line. He […]
Posted inNews
in sonic disobedience
When Steve Earle steps onto the stage Saturday night at the North Carolina Museum of Art, he’ll be preaching largely to an empathetic liberal audience in a Southern capital. Even those conservatives that like Earle’s major-chord acoustics, husky voice and blunt imagery have a hard time reconciling their love of country-based rock with his politics […]
Posted inGuides
Teeny obsessions
The question is regretted before it’s asked. “So, what’s your favorite toy in here?” Standing behind the counter at Wootini, David Woodward answers first with his eyes. They flit around every apparent corner of this gallery, a multi-use space that hosts two- and three-dimensional art installations and also serves as a store for art toys, […]
Posted inNews
Troika gearing up
Zeno Gill is OK with criticism. “I saw how hard it was. Every year [the organizers] received all sorts of complaints and heard how it could be better, and I was one of those people saying it,” says Gill, Pox World Empire emperor and one of four principal organizers behind this year’s Troika Music Festival, […]
