ARTS Pick: Getting animated at film fest

A variety of techniques, budgets and effects come together at the 19th annual Animations Show of Shows. The festival traverses themes of societal trends and modern anxieties with 16 screenings including The Burden, a quirky stop-motion short about how being trapped in a routine life makes the apocalypse seem liberating, and Everything, “a simulation of […]

ARTS Pick: Asher McGlothlin’s musical limbo

Asher McGlothlin perfectly captures the spirit of his childhood in the Appalachian Mountains, as well as the leap from teenager to adulthood, on his January 2018 debut EP Bardo, which takes its name from the Buddhist term describing the halfway place between death and rebirth. Able to be both chaotic and delightful, McGlothlin takes on […]

ARTS Pick: Time travel with Scott Bradlee’s Postmodern Jukebox

Scott Bradlee’s Postmodern Jukebox can be summed up in three words: musical time travel. The group, founded by pianist and arranger Bradlee in 2009, takes listeners on a journey across decades, playing songs from the modern era—everything from the party pop of Miley Cyrus and Lady Gaga to the minimalist rock of Radiohead—and rearranging them, […]

ARTS Pick: Paying tribute to the Harlem Renaissance

African-American culture in 1920s New York City is discerned through the poetry of Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen and Claude McKay, seen through the eyes of painter and muralist Aaron Douglas, and told through the voice of art historian David Driskell in Of Ebony Embers: Vignettes of the Harlem Renaissance. These iconic figures form an ensemble […]

Victory Hall Opera’s Marginalia reads between the lines

Imagine the thousands of hands that have held the spine of a library book, the fingers that have turned the pages. Imagine the moments in history that have intersected with the text through the lives of its readers. Beginning in 2015 and ending in June of 2017, a project called Book Traces @ UVA sought […]

Fifty Shades Freed pales as softcore porn

This whole thing started as porn, right? Like, I’m not making that up, am I? I don’t say that to ridicule anyone’s idea of what’s sexy—you do you and have fun doing it, don’t apologize if no one’s getting hurt—it’s just puzzling to sit through a silly, directionless adoption/kidnapping intrigue with a vague notion that […]

The light and dark interplay of Fax Ayres’ imagery

Do we continue to have time to admire the still life? In a world where disposable and looping ultra-high resolution video pops from the phones in our pockets, the composed scenes of the genre require more from our attention. The art form that originated with painting centuries ago has been criticized for nearly as long […]

Keller Williams keeps stacking up the sets

There are certain musicians whose style is so unique that any snippet of their music is immediately identifiable. Multi-instrumentalist Keller Williams is one of those artists. A staple on the jam scene and the festival circuit for nearly 25 years, Williams has created a singular sound, which he dubs “acoustic dance music.” Although he wields […]

Free Idea trades the rules for psychedelic nirvana

A blank canvas. That’s what Marie Landragin sees in her mind’s eye when she’s about to play guitar with Free Idea. Just before the first note rings out, she sees a frame, some material, potential for the space to become anything. When the music starts, she says, it begins painting forms, “and there’s color, and very […]

Album reviews: Xylouris White, Inara George, Carmen Villain and Khruangbin

Xylouris White Mother (Bella Union) “Goats are mothers, Zeus was raised on Amaltheia’s milk, Black Peak is Mother Earth. …Mother Earth is the mother of everything.” Giorgos Xylouris thus explains his duo’s third album, the first two being Goat and Black Peak. It’s inscrutable and suitable. Cretan lutenist Xylouris and heavy-duty drummer Jim White (of […]