Outside of Bickett Gallery after Ticonderoga’s second show ever last March, Drew Robertson of Phon made a telling observation of the new band from Iowa City: “If Mark, Phil and Wes play more and if they get some confidence, they’ll be incredible.” On the surface, it seems that Ticonderoga has that confidence now. They’ve inked […]
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
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in wide latitude
Sitting in their home studio on Ashe Avenue about a year ago, the three pieces of Ticonderoga –Mark Paulson, Phil Moore and Wes Phillips, best friends since grade school back in Iowa City–pronounced that they didn’t need a label. For the moment, they were content, or even eager, to spend their time writing, recording and […]
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Wolfpack lament
In these 21 years, I suppose you could say I’ve been through a few tough things. The usual suspects: death, rejection, heartbreak, the kind of stuff that hurts like hell every time. I’ve just wandered through the toughest emotional hurdle of my senior year at N.C. State, one I put on par with all the […]
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Barlow gets all, uh, warm and fuzzy
Excuse the adjective, but Lou Barlow’s “The Ballad of Daykitty” is as an adorable a song as has ever been written. Yes, adorable: As beckoning as its paramour, the smile ‘n’ cry folk ditty frolics through a grown man’s feline affections, literally bouncing through percussive, six-string slaps and Barlow’s lilting, gentle picking. About two years […]
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in memorable acts
Rachel’s is an evolving, revolving Louisville collective of a decade-plus, bent on genre-bending in a soundtrack-building, trailblazing way that morphs found sounds and abstract noise patterns into brazen instrumental post-rock categorically (and rather coarsely) classified as classical. Systems/Layers–the band’s epic 2003 collaboration with New York’s experimental dance and theater troupe The Siti Company–displayed the outfit’s […]
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Homebrew
Seventy-four seconds into the third track on the more-than-eagerly anticipated Des_Ark debut Loose Lips Sink Ships, Aimee Argote emancipates a howl that’s a teetotal reminder of what it means to be rock ‘n’ roll. “Everything’s gonna change when they come for you,” she sustains before unleashing that roar, the kind of scream that comes from […]
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Crashing the boys’ club
Today, Bellafea’s Heather McEntire is gah-gah over the new Sleater-Kinney, still three months away from release. Asked about her influences, she’s quick to mention them again, though not dismissing admiration for Shannon Wright and Team Dresch. Asked the same question, Des_Ark’s Aimee Argote is reluctant: “I’m not sure that there’s anyone specific. I know there […]
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Strange sensations
According to the Raleigh rumor mill, former Swervedriver leader Adam Franklin paid STRANGE the ultimate compliment before he took the stage after them last November at Kings. “What country are these guys from again?” Ostensibly impressed by the band’s draconian guitar and trumpet swells and David Mueller’s howl, Franklin’s seven-word summary–a laurel for any fledgling, […]
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The Moaners serve up Dark Snack
Given Melissa Swingle’s musical past as the swamp-voiced siren of Trailer Bride, it seems unlikely that she would reference The Streets–the one-man hip-hop crew of Brit Mike Skinner, a white guy rapping in his country’s vernacular over ambitious, homemade beats–as one of her current favorites. But tonight, sitting in Chapel Hill’s newly opened rock space-turned-hip […]
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in traditions
If bluegrass lore has it right, Del McCoury left his spot as Bill Monroe’s lead vocal man in The Blue Grass Boys to marry. In that case, karma met him full circle, rewarding his familial dedication with perhaps the best bloodline bluegrass band in the music’s history. They come dressed in suits and smiles, picking, […]