The most recognized award in the Triangle is back for 2024 – Orange & Chatham County nominations are live and will end on August 12th! Go now to nominate your favorites!
Hi! Happy weekend.
Our Pets Issue is now on stands and online. Pretty much everyone at the INDY has a pet or generally loves animals, so we have a vested interest—here are our beloved pets and their hobbies, which include tuna juice, ice cubes, and validation—but it’s also a good time to adopt a rescue if you’re thinking about it.
Nationally, shelters are facing a capacity crisis—an issue that trickles down, in part, from inflation, high rents, and other material realities that force some families to surrender their pets or simply choose not to have a pet—and in Wake County, the shelter is so full that it may need to euthanize animals for the first time in eight years. Here are some dogs looking for homes.
If you can’t take on a pet, you could always join a local rescue squad to help search for lost pets or visit an area cat cafe (a surprise to me: there are several) or the library for one of its Dog Days of Summer events.
And finally, if dogs and cats aren’t your thing: Maybe the Bull City’s baby red wolf pups or vultures are?
Ok, more below—new music, a fun Twister review, and other culture news from around the region. Thanks for reading!
Fancy Gap’s Stuart McLamb and Charles Crossingham rehearsing. Photo by Jordan Brannock.
elsewhere in the culture section
Two new local albums drop today: One, The Fear of Standing Still, from Raleigh mainstays American Aquarium, which writer Jordan Lawrence gives four stars. It’s the band’s tenth album and, as Lawrence writes, takes the band’s already considerable legacy further, rollicking and ruminating with “equal profundity, cementing gravelly-voiced songwriter BJ Barham’s band among the upper echelon of modern Americana acts.”
The other is a debut from Fancy Gap, a new duo but one with familiar faces—Charles Crossingham and Stuart McLamb (of indie-rock powerhouse The Love Language)—and a familiar feel to it. I get the sense that this is the kind of band that will have the wide appeal of Watchhouse or, going a bit further back, The Avett Brothers. I’ll let writer Nick McGregor say it best:
Lead singles “How to Dance” and “Little Heart Racer” are unabashed bangers. The latter features McLamb, singing in the deepest Southern drawl of his career, paying homage to the “back roads down in Carroll County,” where “the summers are as slow as they should be.” It’s pure country radio catnip—which, just five years ago, might have felt disorienting.
“That song came out of nowhere,” McLamb laughs. “It wasn’t like, ‘Let’s sit down and write a big country ballad!’ But I’m a funny chameleon. I love pop music.”
That love is evident on “Strawberry Moon,” which features gentle, cascading pianos and guest vocals from indie rock hero Sharon Van Etten, whom McLamb has known for years. His original idea was a synth-pop version, but after workshopping it with Crossingham and tracking Van Etten’s vocals during her most recent North Carolina tour, they excavated a witchier, more Fleetwood Mac–meets–War on Drugs vibe.
I really like Nick’s writing; I also immensely enjoy film reviewer Glenn McDonald’s writing, as with his very funny review of Twisters. (“Tyler and Kate rub each other the wrong way, naturally, until later when they fall in love and presumably find the right way to do it.”).
out and about in the triangle
321 Coffee is closing its location in the Durham ID building—a spot that I would’ve imagined would get a lot of foot traffic—and just moments ago, Fullsteam Brewery announced that, after landlords raised rent and the brewery faced a torrent of obstacles from nearby luxury condo development, it is relocating. It sounds like it has a promising new location on tap, but the news still makes me very anxious for the future of Rigsbee Avenue and its ambling neighborhood appeal. Stay tuned, I guess!
A New York-style deli is opening inside Raleigh Union Station. Also in Raleigh, the Postino location is looking to open soon and Red Hat’s current location is in jeopardy. In Chapel Hill, Southern institution Mama Dips is shifting to a family takeout style model, a plan that the late Mildred Council’s daughters floated earlier this year.
out and about in the world
A recent profile of Utah influencer Hannah Neelman, who runs the Ballerina Farm account, seems to suggest that the mother of eight does not have all that much autonomy. Worth a read, I think, especially as we immerse ourselves in an election cycle in which a Republican VP candidate has expressed hardcore conservative pro-natalism views.
“The existential dread of grocery shopping“—this very much resonates with me (there was a time before cereal was $7, yes?). No link, but I just finished Eleanor Catton’s Birnam Wood, which earns its label as a thriller—really good!! On Mdou Moctar. Feist on Tiny Desk. Via The Bitter Southerner: “Paul Kwilecki, the great Southern documentary photographer, was so enamored of his hometown that he could get homesick without even leaving.”
— Sarah Edwards —
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