This is night four and the last show of Merge Fest–Merge Records’ 15th birthday celebration. The first three nights have been sold out for weeks now, and for good reason. Night three’s pairing of Spoon and Destroyer sold out first, followed by night one’s superb bill with Superchunk, The Rosebuds, Essex Green, M. Ward 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
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Life in the Merge lane
On the outside, it might seem that things have been strangely quiet so far this year in the downtown Durham office of Merge Records. In the past seven months, the 15-year-old label founded by Superchunk frontman Mac McCaughan and bassist Laura Ballance has released only four albums–a slower than normal pace for one of the […]
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in cuttin’ grass
After forming in Chapel Hill five years ago and cutting their collective teeth at The Mellow Mushroom, the four pals and one gal of The Steep Canyon Rangers self-released a debut before signing to Yep Roc’s Bonfire Records for a brilliant follow-up, Mr. Taylor’s New Home. Fiddler Lizzie Hamilton made a quick exit for family […]
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Sequence event
After two critically acclaimed albums on the small Northwestern label Cavity Search, The Helio Sequence–the Portland duo of Brandon Summers and Benjamin Weikel, best friends and bandmates since high school–knew they had to do something else. “We wanted to do something that was closer, dryer, with less reverb,” Weikel says, fishing around for an explanation […]
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in mahalo
Around this time last summer, Five Points’ Bickett Gallery was caught in a storm with the Raleigh Police Department and city-wide noise ordinances that caused the gallery to move its ambitious month-long arts-and-music festival, ” 23 Hours ,” indoors and out of earshot of the hundreds of houses surrounding the space. This summer, the living […]
Posted inMusic
Movie mojo
As fireworks rolled over many North Carolina towns Sunday night, Mel Melton was doing what he had done the night before: resting. Melton’s brother had arrived a day earlier from Colorado, but a small welcoming party had been scrapped after Melton turned in early, exhausted from an eight-hour shift on Saturday. Melton is a blues […]
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in vote rockin’
Fahrenheit 9/11 got you worked up? Finally ready to save America and yourself from Daddy’s money? W.’s rolling eyes? The “Smoke ‘Em Out” mentality? If so, you probably want to be at Go! Room 4 in Carrboro for the Triangle’s only chance at the nationwide Rock and Awe tour, sponsored by the activists at redefeatbush.com, […]
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Happy birthday, Kings
Kings’ Birthday “It’s brand new as I write this, so I don’t know all the details, but I do know this… they promise much live rock, and given the gentlemen involved, I think it’s safe to say that they know exactly what rock is,” reads the description of Kings Barcade from trianglerock.com , presumably written […]
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In three-part harmony
Supergroups are touch-and-go, hit-and-miss affairs. This one, though, is a definite hit, especially when gauged by the material co-written by members of the band rather than what’s brought in from other projects. Given that criterion, Tres Chicas–the trio of Whiskeytown’s Caitlin Cary, Hazeldine’s Tonya Lamm and Glory Fountain’s Lynn Blakey–is an outright wonder. “When Was […]
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in Cash honey, y’all
If you’ve ever dismissed Rosanne Cash as the daughter of her more famous father, as a mainstream country relic from the ’80s or as the former wife of her producer-turned-lover Rodney Crowell, you haven’t heard “I’ll Change for You.” A brilliant 2003 duet with Steve Earle written entirely by Cash, the instantly addictive number is […]