Field Guide: Gearing Up for Next Week’s Hopscotch

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Hi! Happy weekend.

Hope you’re having a nice end to the week. I’m writing this from New York, which I only mention because my boyfriend bought tickets for us to see Waxahatchee at Beacon Theatre for my birthday — just days before Waxhatchee announced that she is co-headlining Hopscotch, a bit more locally, next week in Raleigh. Which is just to say: All roads lead back to the Triangle and our music scene is good.

So: Hopscotch! Whether you’re gearing up to go or if you’d like to follow from the sidelines, we’ve got a feature on Hopscotch’s steady evolution and INDY schedule picks from festival veteran Jordan Lawrence, who has now been, I believe, to 12 out of the 13 Hopscotch’s. Also: an interview with Asheville musician Indigo De Souza, who has a new album coming out next year.

Here’s what he has to say about this year’s headlining acts:

St. Vincent arrives having shown herself to still be in firm command of her signature powers on this year’s alternately slinking and thundering All Born Screaming, an album that conjures wide-screen Bond theme theatrics, twilit radio pop, and defiantly angular art rock with equal assurance. St. Vincent emerged in the late aughts when insistent stylization dominated much of indie rock—years later, she still does it better than pretty much anybody.

Waxahatchee puts a bow on a more recent era with this year’s triumphant Tiger’s Blood, her bend-don’t-break emotionalism spirited forth by windswept rock with deep ’70s roots as she delivers tunes that were readymade for shout-alongs at a music festival as 30-somethings “roll around in the disarray / In the final act of the good old days.”

I’m also looking forward to seeing Amen Dunes, Jooselord, Snail Mail, Fancy Gap, and, in the unlikely event that I can make it past midnight on Saturday, the “swaggering, swaying, and sparkling Zamrock of ’70s-born Zambian band WITCH.”

elsewhere in the culture section

LocoPops has a new location (!) coming to downtown Durham this fall: “LocoShop, an evolution of LocoPops, will open at 600 Foster Street in the space previously occupied by Altered Image Hair Designers.”

Owner Summer Bicknell tells the INDY that, like the Hillsbourgh Road location, the store will have a selection of grocery goods “shaped by surrounding neighborhoods, just like the selection at LocoPops is.”

“I’m sure it’ll have different rhythms than Old West Durham and Watts Hillandale,” Bicknell says. “We’ll take a lot of stuff over there, and the people who are in the community there will tell us what they need.”

Have you taken the INDY’s new weekly news quiz yet? I’m biased, but—it’s informative, slightly cheeky, and not your average news quiz. NYT Connections….out! INDY news quiz….in!

Finally: This is a beautiful public art campaign in Durham helping to normalize breastfeeding in public and make women feel comfortable.

ICYMI: Debutantes. Translators. And more!

out and about in the triangle

Cousins Maine Lobster is leaving Morgan Street Food Hall and “high-end burger” joint La Gana is coming to Raleigh this fall from local chef Luis Zouain. 

Durham Parks & Recreation is looking for feedback on a community branding exercise. The Mountains to Sea Trail celebrates 47 years, come September, and has a bunch of very cool commemorative events. (Also! Here’s a fascinating story about Howard Lee, Chapel Hill’s first Black mayor and a hiking evangelist who sparked the idea for the Mountains to Sea Trail in 1977.) Dix Park is open to applications for its new Artist Residency program, which includes a one-year budget of $80,000. 

Culture Mill’s season launch is on September 19 at the Haw River Ballroom. (Sidenote, the Ballroom has some great programming this fall and I’m bummed that Gillian Welch & Dave Rawlings’s 3-night stay is sold out; also, here’s a great New Yorker interview with them from this week.)  Carolina Public Humanities fall programming at UNC is live, as is fall programming at the Durham Arts Council. After having to shutter for several days, the Scrap Exchange in Durham is fundraising to make up the difference.

If you were in the market for a local 16,000-square-foot mansion with a bullet-proof safe room, I’m sorry to say this one got pulled from the market. 

out and about in the world

Critics on Gamergate at Ten: “the moment when online trolling — once dismissed as apolitical and anarchic — coalesced into a political movement.” The brilliant jazz of Charles Bell. I’m looking forward to the Oxford American’s fall Southern Literature issue.

Also, speaking of Asheville and indie rock musicians, the New Yorker has a profile of MJ Lenderman (who, rumor has it, is considering moving close to Durham).

— Sarah Edwards —
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