During his first year at UVA, Louis Smith felt homesick. He missed his hometown, Virginia Beach, and places like Kendall Street, a beach access road where Smith and friends lit bonfires and watched fireworks. Fast forward five years, and Smith, still in Charlottesville, feels right at home. While studying music at the University of Virginia, […]
During his first year at UVA, Louis Smith felt homesick. He missed his hometown, Virginia Beach, and places like Kendall Street, a beach access road where Smith and friends lit bonfires and watched fireworks. Fast forward five years, and Smith, still in Charlottesville, feels right at home. While studying music at the University of Virginia, […]
When rock band Trees on Fire went on hiatus a few years ago, not only did the local scene lose a source of rhythmic, groove-driven innovation, but a passionate voice in the fight for protecting the environment was disbanded. The group is reuniting to head up a new family-friendly music festival that includes the Greg […]
“My fascination with the Underground Railroad began in elementary school,” says photographer Jeanine Michna-Bales in an email. “It was part of our school curriculum and I remember just being amazed that people had to go through this long journey in order to be free.” Michna-Bales, now based in Texas, grew up in the Midwest amid […]
Well, the good news is that The Mummy is not a remake of the 1999 Stephen Sommers film starring Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz (itself a remake of the 1932 film by Karl Freund starring Boris Karloff). The bad news is, well, everything else. Where the 1999 film was self-serious and knowingly preposterous in equal […]
A mysterious woman named Iz arrives at a sanatorium-cum-medical spa, completely mute. She’s brought in by her husband who explains that one night, while putting their son down to sleep, Iz stopped singing mid-lullaby and hasn’t uttered a word since. Everyone at the sanatorium/spa finds Iz—and her silence—compelling. So begins Drugsong, theater and performance artist Jennifer […]
Justin Townes Earle Kids in the Street (New West) Being Steve Earle’s son and Townes Van Zandt’s namesake unfairly provokes expectations of preternatural songwriting gifts. Happily, on Kids in the Street, oft-troubled Justin Townes Earle lives up to his lineage. It kicks off with the Stones-y stomp of “Champagne Corolla”—the band sounds great, horns nestling […]
There’s no lack of love for ’80s pop culture these days, and no one covers it better live than The Legwarmers. Chet Reno, Lavaar Huxtable, Roxanne Rio, Captain Morgan Pondo and Clarence McFly proudly champion the top hits from a decade that’s grown more rad through romantic nostalgia. Still, nobody can defend the shoulder pads […]
Sometimes art is so public—in galleries, in gardens, on exterior walls of buildings—that unless we purchase it ourselves, we forget that it may go on to live a private life inside a home, becoming part of the fabric of lived human experience. In the case of “Housing2Home,” this month’s exhibition at New City Arts Initiative’s […]
It was never fair that Wonder Woman would have to carry the burden of rescuing DC’s entire cinematic future from the obnoxious, overlong, joyless clunkers that came before it. Thankfully, it not only rises to the occasion of being the best movie of this series, but is an enjoyable and thoughtful film in its own […]
On a recent Friday night, a bunch of punk rockers in patch- and pin- covered jean jackets, cutoff shorts and moth-eaten band T-shirts packed into the front room at Magnolia House. Some donned well-worn baseball caps, two wore dreadlocks, one wore a dangly yin-yang earring. Charlottesville punk band Haircut had second billing on the hardcore […]