Far afield: Folk singer-songwriter Damien Jurado began his solo career in 1995, self-releasing cassettes and performing intimate acoustic shows around his hometown of Seattle. Aptly described as experimental, Jurado’s work includes forays into found and field recordings—in 2000 he released a collection of fragments that he had found from sources such as thrift store tape […]
Far afield: Folk singer-songwriter Damien Jurado began his solo career in 1995, self-releasing cassettes and performing intimate acoustic shows around his hometown of Seattle. Aptly described as experimental, Jurado’s work includes forays into found and field recordings—in 2000 he released a collection of fragments that he had found from sources such as thrift store tape […]
Happy at home: A rhythm guitar-centric band with a monster sax player that formed through late-night sessions at the University of Virginia might sound like a familiar backstory, but this six-piece rock act founded in 2013 relies on original, epic jams to cut its own swath through the East Coast venue map. Kendall Street Company […]
Drummer’s beat: Ari Hoenig gets so immersed in the art of drumming that he’s been known to use his body as an instrument when performing with The Ari Hoenig Trio. The jazz drummer, composer, and educator has a unique ability to modify the pitch of a drum, playing notes in the chromatic scale, melodies, and […]
Wild sax: Musical wilderness is the running theme as the Telemetry Music Series highlights free jazz with the “ferocious, sorcerous, and way out there” improv of Charlotte, North Carolina’s Ghost Trees sharing the bill with Space-Saver’s drum and sax-tinged combos of doom metal/acid techno/minimal synth. Guitarist, electronic musician, composer, and educator Kittie Cooper amps up […]
Nomadic harmony: Izzy Heltai’s indie-folk tells emotionally captivating stories that leave enough room for the listener to relate. His sparse piano and strong vocals are simple and soaring, invoking his nomadic lifestyle—Heltai has been traveling across the country, living out of his car to facilitate a passion for nature and motion. These elements are strongly […]
Three years after starting her tenure as Second Street Gallery’s executive director and chief curator, Kristen Chiacchia says she feels at home. For the next month, when she enters the gallery, among the works greeting her are a watercolor and oil painting by celebrated mid-century abstract expressionist Joan Mitchell. The untitled works from 1957 form […]
The conclusion of the X-Men franchise was never going to be great, but it didn’t have to be this bad. Back when the first film came out in 2000, the idea of a series of sustained and even quality films based on comic books had not solidified—Superman, Batman, and Blade all started strong but saw […]
Seventeen syllables. Seventeen syllables to say whatever you want, to say as much, or as little, as you’d like. Hell, you don’t even have to use all 17 syllables if you don’t need or want to, says poet and artist Raven Mack. That’s just the typical form of a Japanese haiku in the Western world: […]
Firmly entrenched: After huge success with 2015’s thematically cryptic Blurryface, Twenty One Pilots entered into a period of “going dark” for a year, which singer Tyler Joseph says was needed to bring authenticity back to the music and battle some unspecified personal demons. When the duo released its follow-up, Trench, in 2018, its fanbase, better […]
Anything but tired: Very loud Bay Area doom metal trio Sleep attained underground legend status with a monolithic late-’90s riff monster called Dopesmoker. The long-awaited 2018 follow-up, The Sciences, brought new commercial success and a bit more sonic variation without sacrificing the band’s trademark bongwater-soaked power. Rumor has it that the oft-shirtless guitarist Matt Pike […]