Deerhunter’s second album, Cryptograms, made it a household name in indie rock circles. Released in early 2007 by the legendary and long-running Kranky record label, the album features an appealing mix of sprawling and dreamy guitar sounds, anchored by slow-building, bass-heavy grooves and distorted, distantly cool vocals. It sounds almost as if the Atlanta-based quintet […]
If you were a cinephile or an aspiring filmmaker in 1994, the influence of Pulp Fiction was impossible to ignore—especially if you were a 13-year-old boy. Throughout that year, Tarantino’s sophomore effort became more or less gospel in the worlds of independent film and popular culture, which were fast becoming synonymous in the mid-’90s. This endlessly […]
When the Charlottesville Lady Arm Wrestlers held its first match in the back room of the Blue Moon Diner in February of 2008, few dreamed it would become a nationwide movement. CLAW began as an all-women’s arm wrestling competition, initiated by Jennifer Tidwell and Jodie Plaisance, in which the stereotype of women as weak is […]
This Thursday, the Library of Congress provides an opportunity to see a film by one of cinema’s masters, the legendary Akira Kurosawa, on glorious 35mm film. 1962’s Sanjuro is a deeper cut in the Kurosawa catalog; a sequel to the previous years’ acclaimed, beloved, and oft-imitated Yojimbo, in which Toshiro Mifune reprises his role as […]
Local artist Victoria Long has curated and participated in art shows all over the world since graduating from UVA in 2006. Long returned to Charlottesville in 2011, and while she’s actively made and shown work since then, this month’s “Surprise” marks the first gallery show she’s assembled here in many years. “Surprise” opened on January […]
The default opening act for many of 2013’s concerts was the local duo Grand Banks, which sprang back to life in 2013 after several years of infrequent shows. While keyboardist/singer Tyler Magill’s other project Mss. went on hiatus, he and Davis Salisbury rekindled their improvisational ambient noise duo. Where Grand Banks’ material was once abrasive […]
Thurston Moore, at 55, is seemingly the oldest teenager in the world, juxtaposing self-consciously dumb classic rock energy with legitimately compelling avant-garde noise-rock riffs and he’s worth seeing live under any circumstances.
On a weeknight in late November, local filmmaker Brian Wimer gathered a large group together at the Al-Hamraa restaurant in the Ix Building to share his vision for the future of the space. The Ix is a large complex south of Downtown which has housed dozens of business and art projects since the original Frank Ix […]
Metal shows are rare in Charlottesville, but the few that do happen tend to be high-quality. This is due in part to the talents and good taste of the few local metal-heads, and Friday night’s show at the Main Street Annex is an opportunity to catch the two of the best local bands from any […]
Throughout last year, I kept hearing the name Guardian Alien. At first I wasn’t at all curious. The band name led me to the assumption that it was “some sort of dubstep or chillwave thing,” and its record sleeve—a watercolor drawing of an alien with dreadlocks, holding a repeating version of the record itself—was easily […]