New Bums and Tashi Dorji Friday, March 21, 7 p.m. $8 thepinhook.com Tashi Dorji picked up a guitar for the first time in circumstances befitting any American teenager. He was playing basketball on an outdoor court close to his home when he noticed some kids hanging around nearby, idly playing tunes by The Doors 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 inMusic
Mipso covers Drake, refuses to admit doing so was fun
If you’ve ever listened to the young Chapel Hill kind-of-like bluegrass band Mipso you know that there’s more going on there than mere picking and strumming. Their pleasant debut LP, last year’s Dark Holler Pop, pointed to the group’s melodic inclinations in its title and confirmed them during most of its breezy, affable music. They’ve […]
Posted inMusic
Superchunk’s famously mature 1997 album Indoor Living gets a deserved reissue
Mac McCaughan probably didn’t predict that his newfound keyboard fascination would become a punch line for two professional comedians. In 1997, Superchunk cut a clip for “Watery Hands,” the romantic and entreating single from their then-new sixth album, Indoor Living. It’s a music video about high-concept music videos, a send-up of silly premises and big […]
Posted inFood & Drink
How to win a hot pepper-eating contest (and still lose)
Competitive eating is not a team effort. Instead, its very methodof using willpower to gorge beyond all bounds of satisfaction, comfort and healthmakes it an entirely selfish activity, an ultimately American extension of both ego and intestines. Your abilities are not shared, your obstacles not offloaded. These are your calories. Those are your bowels. And […]
Posted inMusic
To make the new Lost in the Trees album, Ari Picker finally had to leave the past alone
Lost in the Trees with All Tiny Creatures Friday, Feb. 28 8:30 p.m., $15 Cat’s Cradle In 2012, Ari Picker was standing on stage in front of a nearly sold-out room of strangers when he decided it was finally time to stop talking about his mother’s suicide. He’d spent the three years since her death […]
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Lud’s personal and political new album, Defenestration Boulevard
After two casual and sporadic decades as a band, the two-guitar Orange County institution Lud knows how to build a record, no matter how old-fashioned that rock ‘n’ roll notion might sound. Defenestration Boulevard, the quartet’s first since 2008’s functionally titled V, opens sweetly, slides through a guitar fantasy, later lands on a would-be jangle-pop […]
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Clive Carroll is often called one of the best guitar players working, but should you care?
Clive Carroll Tuesday, Feb. 25 $12–$20, 8 p.m. The ArtsCenter British guitarist Clive Carroll does not suffer for confidence. Without hesitation, he talks about the complicated Doc Watson and John Renbourn tunes he might pick for fun at home (but not in public), hypothesizes about the electric bandleader he could have been, and wonders aloud […]
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Forced to find their own funds, N.C. State’s college radio station expands its audience and ambitions
Double Barrel Benefit with Mount Moriah, Bombadil, Loamlands, Daniel Bachman Friday, Feb. 14, 8 p.m., $12–$14 Lincoln Theatre Derek Torres surrenders the first song of the biggest set of his life for the radio station that inspired it. Standing at center stage of the Cat’s Cradle on a recent Friday night, Torres pushes the buttons […]
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In Demon Eye, four musical veterans age into heavy metal
Demon Eye Saturday, Feb. 1 9 p.m., $7 Kings Barcade On a Monday morning, the audience of the rock musician Erik Sugg is attentive and enthusiastic, shouting along to his words and dancing around to his guitar strums. It’s the ideal response for someone who has been playing in bands for two decades, especially one […]
Posted inMusic
An Indigo Girl loves Durham and the creative tangents it allows
Amy Ray with Heather McEntire (Mount Moriah) Saturday, Jan. 25, 9 p.m., $15 Motorco Goodnight Tender, the alternately rollicking and sweet-hearted new country album by Indigo Girl Amy Ray, taught her a lesson in trust. Last year, Ray re-encountered a musician named Phil Cook, a Durham multi-instrumentalist she’d met on tour years before. His songsand, […]
