Thursday, May 14, 2009
Snoop Dog
Lincoln Theatre, Raleigh
Wednesday, May 13
If you're not puffing ganja or drunk-fingerbanging someone in the crowd (which, honest Eric, happened last night), there's really no other way to enjoy yourself at a Snoop Dogg show, right?
Mastodon, Kylesa, Intronaut
Cat's Cradle, Carrboro
Wednesday, May 13
So, as 2009 heavy metal goes, what’s possibly better than Mastodon’s fourth album, this year’s Rasputin/ Icarus/ black hole/ Stephen Hawking-baiting conceptual expectation breaker, Crack the Skye?
BTE joins the August 22 bill with Airiel Down. I can think of a dozen jokes right now, but I'd rather waste my time imagining 10,000 dudes just like this in Moore Square in August. So pitted.
“Northern Lights,” in Bowerbirds nature-speak, is like a bouquet of fireflies on a still, moonless night for those who are pro-Martin Stephenson, pro-love song, and pro-Band.
Thursday, May 7, 2009
Dexter and Sara Romweber stopped by Jack White's home studio in Nashville, Tenn., last week to record. Along with engineer Vance Powell, White lent his talents to the sessions by producing, playing guitar, saw, bass and singing. The two tracks cut over the two-day session—Geeshie Wiley's great "Last Kind Word Blues" and Dex's own "The Wind Did Move"—will be released through White's label, Third Man, later this month. Third Man, a vinyl label, currently has one release to its name: "Hang You From the Heavens," a seven-inch slab by White's new band, The Dead Weather.
"It feels good. I can go to my grave and at least know I accomplished something," Romweber told Nashville's Metromix over his long-purported influence over The White Stripe. "Nothing gigantic. But still, it’s something. It’s touching." Complete track details after the jump."
Tuesday, May 5, 2009
From Deep South's e-mail list:
Jimmie's Chicken Shack - May 30thCharm City Devils - June 13th (Also on Cruefest 2 and signed to Nikki Sixx's Label)
Cracker - June 27th
Marcy Playground - August 8th
Oh, fantastic, they are on Cruefest 2 AND Nikki Sixx's label?!?! A great summer does that make... Full Downtown Live line-up to date, including some admittedly pretty great local bills, after the jump.
Monday, May 4, 2009
Jake Shimabukuro
Fletcher Theater, Raleigh
Thursday, April 30
After opening his sold-out performance with the flamenco-influenced “Let’s Dance,” ukulele virtuoso Jake Shimabukuro spread his next 90 minutes of stage time over a pair of seven-song sets and a well-deserved encore, spending almost as much time chatting about his songs as playing them.
The pockmarked path of devoting your new band to a vintage sound rides bumpy at best. It’s often a process of osmosis, though, that leads one band to sound like a whole bunch of older bands—less looking directly in the rearview mirror for something to recreate and more just playing some variation on what’s funneled into your mind.
New York band The Pains of Being Pure at Heart has received an unusual amount of comparisons to its predecessors. Some have been fair, like early My Bloody Valentine or the Jesus and Mary Chain. Others, like Blink 182, have just been plain weird. It’s an interesting question: Does a band need to have an original sound to matter? And should the band be discounted if the sensors of past musical obscurity and good ol’ age are working to that band’s advantage? Maybe it shouldn’t be that simple, and usually, it’s not that simple.
Friday, May 1, 2009
Tim Kasher’s been the creative mastermind behind Cursive for almost 15 years and six full-length albums. During that time, the band’s sound’s evolved from a bristling hard rock that owed a significant debt to Fugazi into something much more rich in dynamics and instrumentation. During that same period, Kasher also released five solo LPs, frequently using different players under the name The Good Life.
With Cursive’s latest, Mama, I’m Swollen, the two projects seemed to have merged, judging from the often downbeat, more theatrical tone of the work. Perhaps that’s to be expected, now that Cursive’s members live in different towns. Kasher recently moved from his longtime home of Omaha, Neb., to Los Angeles to pursue a dream of becoming a screenwriter and perhaps find financing for a movie he’s written. We caught up with him on the latest Cursive tour, as the band made its way from Nashville, Tenn., to Birmingham, Ala.
Well, Chapel Hill band Violet Vector & the Lovely Lovelies isn't actually moving to Kentucky (as far as we know), but the slightly psych quintet has moved its label affiliation to Color Wheel Records, a Lexington imprint led by Samantha Herald and Tony Miller. VVLL represents the first non-Lexington band signed to Color Wheel, which has previously released only an LP by Ideal Free Distribution (which isn't free, by the way: $10 ppd). A regional comp and a local EP are on the books for the summer, but they'll be the CW003 and CW004 to Violet Vector's CW002: The band's second EP, EP II, is due on the label later this Spring. To hear what appears to be an early mix of one of the new tunes, scramble to TheirSpace.
EP II is a follow-up to last year's EP I, released by Carrboro's Holidays for Quince Records. Don't be bummed for the locals, though: This morning, HFQ announced its own exciting news: The Moaners—the blistering-and-brazen rock duo of Laura King and ex-Trailer Bride leader Melissa Swingle—has joined the HFQ roster after two records for Yep Roc."This summer they will begin recording a full length here in Chapel Hill for an early '10 HFQ release," HFQ's HQ said this morning.
I'm a physicist (just like Dr. Hansen) and this article is overloaded with misinformation and biases. It is an advertisement …
by John Droz on Duke professor Orrin Pilkey takes on the deniers in Global Climate Change: A Primer (Reading)
thanks for the article i heard boundaries on an nyu radio station in new jersey and i loved it man! …
by Peter Talarico on My Dad is Dead bids a redemptive farewell (Music Feature)