Interviews and Long Cuts: Scan, Indy Week

Interview: Lost in the Trees' Ari Picker discusses the band's new, non-orchestral lineup

Jordan Lawrence — Wed, 15 May 2013 10:40:00 -0400

About a month ago, the crowd at Krankies Coffee in Winston-Salem was treated to a far different Lost in the Trees than anyone had seen previously. Playing the city's third annual Phuzz Phest, the Chapel Hill outfit—known for swelling strings, complex arrangements, and the uninhibited emotions of frontman Ari Picker—debuted a new line-up.…

Today: Donna Ray Norton channels old ballads at the N.C. Museum of History

Chris Vitiello — Sun, 14 Apr 2013 10:40:00 -0400

Jack Spicer wrote that a poet is a “counterpunching radio.” He also could have been talking about Madison County ballad singers. Just as poets are speakers through which the broadcast of language flows, so are ballad singers like Donna Ray Norton, who gives a free performance Saturday at the North Carolina Museum of History.…

Pet-Tich-Eye's Ashlie White responds to criticism of her ambitious project

Jordan Lawrence — Wed, 06 Mar 2013 10:30:00 -0500

Ashlie White certainly isn't lacking for ambition. The 30-year-old graduate student at UNC-Chapel Hill is also the instigator of Pet-Tich-Eye, a compelling (and confounding) project hoping to bring together local musicians, visual artists and community organizations.…

Whatever Brains on recording their forthcoming third LP

Jordan Lawrence — Wed, 20 Feb 2013 15:35:00 -0500

If you're into bands that stay the same with each record they release, Raleigh's Whatever Brains are not for you. In 2011, after a string of compelling 7-inches, the punk pranksters offered their self-titled debut, a marvelous mess of twisted psych-rock detritus that shifted from aggressively mumbled verses to sarcastically epic choruses without missing a beat.…

New Kind of Kix: The long-running hair metal band persists, Saturday at Lincoln Theatre

Bryan C. Reed — Fri, 07 Dec 2012 18:18:00 -0500

In January, the second annual Cliff Jackson Memorial Show at Lincoln Theatre scored a one-off reunion by regional metal band Maxx Warrior as the headliner. On Saturday, just 11 months later, promoter Marty Burns’ tribute to a friend continues to grow, giving its top slot to the long-running Maryland hard-rockers Kix.…

Stranger Spirits release new album, Masterpiece Rock Parlour

Ashley Melzer — Thu, 15 Nov 2012 13:00:00 -0500

Check out a Stranger Spirits set, and you may find yourself faced with a hype ninja or a surfing Amazonian librarian or the Sherriff of Rockingham himself. “We call ourselves rock ’n’ roll pilgrims from another planet,” explains Aubrey Herbert, aka Destructika Poppins, a most evil take on a favorite English nanny.…

MAKE's Scott Endres talks about new EP, Axis

Corbie Hill — Mon, 05 Nov 2012 13:50:00 -0500

MAKE's debut LP, Trephine, got folks' attention: The 2011 offering made many best-of lists, including the Indy's, and garnered a flurry of press. Last Wednesday at midnight, the band released the first post-Trephine EP, Axis, on its Bandcamp site.…

Horseback's Impale Golden Horn to see vinyl release (and slick new artwork)

Corbie Hill — Thu, 27 Sep 2012 11:43:00 -0400

Debut Horseback (AKA Jenks Miller) LP Impale Golden Horn will see a vinyl release Oct. 23 jointly through Three Lobed Recordings and Divide By Zero Records. Impale's patient dronescapes have been released twice on CD (once by Indy Music Editor Grayson Currin's former label Burly Time Records) and are digitally available through Relapse Records, but have not been pressed to vinyl yet.…

Hopscotch 2012: Gimme five, part two

Corbie Hill — Thu, 06 Sep 2012 10:06:00 -0400

This is the second and final—for this year at least—of a little series in which we asked music-savvy folks to give us five Hopscotch picks. We gave them a bit of latitude, though, so they could give us anything from five essential acts to five memories or five suggestions.…

Hopscotch 2012: Gimme five, part one

Corbie Hill — Wed, 05 Sep 2012 11:45:00 -0400

We asked a handful of people who are knowledgeable about or involved in music, locally and beyond, to give us five picks for Hopscotch. We left it open to anything from five essential bands to general suggestions or standout memories.…

Jozeemo speaks out before his final show

Eric Tullis — Fri, 31 Aug 2012 16:27:00 -0400

Last week, outspoken Durham rapper Jozeemo announced that his performance at tonight’s Wrath of the Godz hip-hop show at Casbah would be his last, after more than 10 years of wrangling with a promising music career that never quite took off. In the place of tough-guy street raps and outrageously obscene web videos, he’ll be concentrating on an something entirely different: a higher education.…

Dwarr lives!

Bryan C. Reed — Wed, 16 May 2012 14:15:00 -0400

[Editor's note: Dwarr was set to play The Pinhook in Durham tonight, Wednesday, March 16. His entire tour has been canceled.]

ON WEDNESDAY NIGHT, Durham bar The Pinhook will host the fourth and final gig of South Carolina outsider-metal outfit Dwarr’s first-ever tour.…

Foreign exchange: UNC Beat Lab curriculum to be taught in Goma, DRC

Corbie Hill — Mon, 07 May 2012 11:11:00 -0400

May 13th is UNC's graduation date, which makes it an appropriate day for the UNC Beat Making Lab to release its free compilation. These 13 tracks—which draw samples from a wide variety of North Carolina acts—represent the final project from a course on beat-making taught by The Beast emcee Pierce Freelon and Chapel Hill producer extraordinaire Stephen Levitin— better-known in music circles as the Apple Juice Kid.…

Pontiak's relentless hard rock evolution

Jordan Lawrence — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 09:36:00 -0400

You will find few brothers who work together better than Jennings, Van and Lain Carney. You'll also find few bands that work as hard as Pontiak, the lead-heavy Virginia psych rock trio comprised of these siblings.…

Former Light Pines leader talks new project Cocoon

Jordan Lawrence — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 12:28:00 -0500

It's impossible to listen to The Storm (streaming here), the tight, well-produced psych-rock debut from Raleigh-based recording project Cocoon, without thinking of another band — one that no longer exists. Josh Pope, the man behind the Cocoon moniker, was once the frontman of The Light Pines, a band that rode a similar sound to the brink of national recognition before breaking up last summer.…

Landing in America: Kathleen Edwards' Voyageur

Peter Blackstock — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 10:20:00 -0500

“I’m moving to America,” Kathleen Edwards sings over and over in the chorus of “Empty Threat,” the lead track of her new album, Voyageur. Thing is, it wasn’t an empty threat: The Canadian singer-songwriter recently relocated to Wisconsin, leaving behind a marriage to a former bandmate and finding a new beginning both musically and personally with Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon.…

On the record: American Aquarium talks live LP

Dan Schram — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 16:00:00 -0500

American Aquarium has a lot in store for their fans this year. One is a live CD recorded at The Pour House, which will be available February 11.…

Kenny Roby lands Kickstarter success in less than a day

Grayson Currin — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 13:25:00 -0500

Early yesterday afternoon, I reached out to Raleigh singer-songwriter and former Six String Drag leader Kenny Roby with a few questions about his Kickstarter campaign, which he'd launched just a few hours before. I'm a proponent of artists funding projects through Kickstarter, but still, I sometimes get flustered by artists who ask for and promise the moon in exchange for a little financial boost.…

Interview: Jack the Radio's double duty

Corbie Hill — Wed, 04 May 2011 15:07:00 -0400

Raleigh’s Jack the Radio mixes modern Southern rock with light electronica, incorporating just enough a bit of grit into otherwise polished pop tunes. Last Tuesday, the band both released its debut LP, Pretty Money, and played a 10-band benefit show for local tornado victims.…

Interview with Buika

Sylvia Pfeiffenberger — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 17:00:57 -0500

Concha Buika ravishes with her singing voice, but even in spoken conversation, the sweetly rasping flamenco singer provokes goosebumps, pouring out her ideas in poetic cadences. Her artististic principles are at one with her outlook on life: an open bisexual, a child of African immigrants, a one-time Tina Turner impersonater, an aspiring electronica programmer—nothing's a contradiction for the ever-evolving Buika.…

Tonight: Shearwater and Wye Oak at Local 506—interviews with both

Ashley Melzer — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 14:30:21 -0400

We spoke with Shearwater and Wye Oak, who play together tonight at Local 506. Hospital Ships open the 8:45 p.m. show.…

[ Read more ]

[ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

A Funky Elegance: Bill Kirchen at Six String Cafe tonight

Rick Cornell — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 20:17:25 -0500

It’s not a stretch to describe Bill Kirchen as one of the music world’s Zeligs. There he is back in his Ann Arbor, Mich., childhood in a school picture with Bob Seger and James “Iggy Pop” Osterberg, Jr. That’s him, Fender Telecaster in hand, in the team photos for Commander Cody and the Lost Planet Airmen and for proto-new wavers (found in that big tent’s roots-revival corner) the Missing Moonlighters.…
[ Read more ]

[ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

Five Words with Blag'ard (tonight in Chapel Hill, tomorrow in Raleigh)

Corbie Hill — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 15:09:31 -0500

There’s a treacherous drive—alternating clay and gravel, and passing over a shallow creek—that turns off of a certain Chapel Hill road and leads into the trees. After several hundred yards, the red clay driveway opens, revealing a little house that’s more of a hermitage.…
[ Read more ]

[ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

Phonte Coleman & Eric Tullis present five songs to get you dumped for Valentine's

Eric Tullis — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 16:33:01 -0500

Over the years, we’ve relied on The Foreign Exchange’s lead singer and one-half of Little Brother, Phonte Coleman, to offer helpful anecdotes on the casualties and celebrations of love and relationships. So, who better to provide us with five songs that would surely get us dumped on Valentine’s Day than Coleman himself?…
[ Read more ]

[ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

Wanda Jackson, still meeting ‘em head on: An interview

Rick Cornell — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 19:34:10 -0500

It was a good year for the future Queen of Rockabilly, Wanda Jackson. Yup, in 1952, still in her early teens, she won a talent contest, which led to her own radio show on a local station and, subsequently, an offer from bandleader Hank Thompson to perform with his Brazos Valley Boys.…
[ Read more ]

[ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]