Album reviews: Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds, Joe Pug, Ships Have Sailed

Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds Chasing Yesterday/Sour Mash Noel Gallagher’s stellar second solo effort, Chasing Yesterday, furthers the notion that Noel was the creative thrust behind Oasis (compared with the failure of Liam ’s band Beady Eye). Riff-heavy hook fests like “Lock all The Doors” demonstrate that Gallagher’s flair for rock ‘n’ roll dramatics hasn’t dwindled […]

ARTS Pick: Six Pack Songwriter Series

Founded in 2013 by Jason Burke, the quarterly Six Pack Songwriter Series hosts a lineup of native Virginia musicians with diverse acoustic styles and subject matter. This time around, the series takes the stage in a bigger venue and places past participants John Kelly, Justin Storer, Michael Coleman, Sue Harlow, Susan Munson and Thomas Gunn […]

Lunar inspiration: Rich Tarbell aims high for ‘Moonlight Silhouettes’

“I remember being at my mom’s house when I saw these two silhouettes she had done of my brother and I when we were toddlers,” said Charlottesville-based photographer Rich Tarbell. “Her house is full of quilts and artwork that have rotated over the decades, but those were always there somewhere. They struck me as timeless.” Tarbell, […]

Joy ride: Changing perspectives on public art at the Tom Tom Founders Festival

The creative process requires commitment to an idea, openness to feedback, repeated attempts (a failure or two) and adaptation. When approached thoughtfully, it offers space for new ways of understanding the world, engaging in a community and expressing the emotions that otherwise go unsaid. Just ask Paul Beyer, founder and director of Charlottesville’s Tom Tom […]

Film review: Fast & Furious franchise gains new traction

The redemption of The Fast and The Furious series, from critical punching bag to national treasure so late in the game, is something of a minor miracle with few equivalents in movie history. Think back to the mid-2000s when each new release was met with disbelief and jokes about its increasingly contrived titles that awkwardly […]

ARTS Pick: Rhiannon Giddens

After spending several years reviving the time-tested tradition of the African-American string band with the Grammy-winning Carolina Chocolate Drops, vocalist, violinist and banjo player Rhiannon Giddens is breathing new life into early ’60s folk with her first solo effort. Her debut album, Tomorrow is My Turn, dropped this past February and showcases Giddens’ R&B-influenced interpretations of classics […]

ARTS Pick: GRiZ

Grant Kwiecinski aka GRiZ is only going to get bigger. At age 23, the multi-talented artist has carved out a unique musical niche that’s a little bit of funk, a little bit of rap, a little bit of soulful sax, and it’s all GRiZ’s eclectic sound. His rising popularity landed him on festival stages from Coachella to Red […]

Talent search: Get Hard shakes down a stand-up cast

Was prison rape even funny to begin with? The team behind Get Hard seems to think it’s the funniest thing in the world, maybe the only thing that’s ever been funny. A few jokes here and there are to be expected—though it’ll be nice, not to mention not gross, when we no longer delight at […]

ARTS Pick: The Murphy Beds

Traditional folk duo Eamon O’Leary and Jefferson Hamer (above) sing and play the guitar, bouzouki and mandolin as The Murphy Beds. They draw on experience from Irish and American traditions (O’Leary grew up in Dublin and Hamer has roots in the New York music scene) on numbers like “Rise Up, My Darling,” a folk song […]