Bella Morte celebrates a long career of sincere goth
Charlottesville’s Bella Morte is one of the most successful contemporary goth bands in the world. But unless you can name any contemporary goth bands, there’s a good chance you don’t know this.
Musical loom: Dan Deacon weaves dense sonic delights
Dan Deacon is a busy man. Best known for his sweaty, gloriously fun concerts, his talents go far beyond the ability to get a crowd excited. Once you get past a surface-level wackiness his music is finely crafted, and sublimely structured, owing as much to Philip Glass or Aaron Copeland as it does to underground […]
ARTS Pick: Jamie Dyer, Dan Sebring, Cathy Monnes
Jamie Dyer is an unavoidable figure in Charlottesville music; a prolific musician and man-about-town, an animated conversationalist and renaissance man beloved by many for his long tenure as the sole consistent member of long-running rock-flavored bluegrass band the Hogwaller Ramblers. He’s often found at the Blue Moon Diner, but once a month he can be found performing […]
Beyond suburbia: Woods’ frontman Jeremy Earl’s psychedelic musical forage
Woods may be from Brooklyn, but its music is utterly lacking in urbanity. The band’s sound comes from that place where the suburbs stop and the farmland begins. Since 2006, the prolific band has tempered its shambling garage fuzz with a homegrown, psychedelic folk flavor, finding surprising common ground between the Velvet Underground and CSNY. […]
With a twist: Live music at the tea house flourishes under new booking team
The Twisted Branch Tea Bazaar (affectionately known to locals as the “tea house”) has been hosting live music since it opened a decade ago. The first concerts were organized by Jason Andrews (whose business card read “Hospitality Czar”). But since Andrews’ departure in 2006, a dozen different individuals have taken turns working out arrangements with […]
Garden state of mind: Andrew Cedermark’s ode to transience
For the past five years, Andrew Cedermark has consistently made some of the best and most vital rock music around: unpretentious and exuberant, quiet yet confident, messy and triumphant. But his career path has been a strange one, with several unexpected twists and turns, a story that is still being told as he cautiously finds […]
Tried and true: Dwight Howard Johnson rides an irresistible formula
The pun-named Dwight Howard Johnson is neither a hotel chain nor a center for the Lakers, but rather a Charlottesville band. It plays appealing and charming pop rock, drawn from the timeless well of all pop rock bands, while reminding one of the 1990s, when such pop music was actually popular. The most obvious comparison […]
ARTS Pick: The Rocketeer
The record-breaking success of 1989’s Batman green-lit a wave big-budget retro-adventure films, including the outlandish, neon ensemble piece Dick Tracy; the brash, moody grotesquerie of The Shadow; and the feather-light, straight-faced camp of latecoming entry The Phantom. Nestled amongst them is 1991’s The Rocketeer; though it was considered a modest disappointment upon release (Disney thought […]
Going dark: The closure of Random Row Books extinguishes a community light
After almost four years of serving the Charlottesville community, Random Row Books will close its doors at the end of the June. The building that houses the store—a former auto repair shop near the corner of West Main Street and Ridge/McIntire Road—will eventually be demolished, along with other buildings on the property to make room […]
LOOK3 Pick: Nick Nichols
Michael “Nick” Nichols’ years of work for National Geographic have taken him around the globe, providing an up-close look at some of the few corners of the world that remain untouched by human civilization. His recent work in the Serengeti uses state-of-the-art advances in photo technology to investigate lions, documenting their world and their behaviors […]