Fanciful Animals songs often begin the same way most rock songs do: with a riff. While jamming during band practice a while back, Will Ashby picked out a riff on his guitar and it sounded unusually cool. “Play that again,” said bassist Ryan Marley Grant, and so Ashby did, over and over and over again, […]
Des Demonas Des Demonas (In the Red) I’m not a subscriber to the “worst times spawn the best punk” school of thought—after all, times are always bad on some level—and perhaps because the underlying rot has always smelled the worst in the nation’s capital, great punk has always come out of D.C., no matter who’s […]
Unranked and surely incomplete, here’s an alphabetical list of what Charlottesville-area artists released this year. It’s longer than last year’s, and based on interviews and conversations with many of these artists, I suspect it’s because the past year hangs heavy in our hearts. And so, we have music to sustain us, whether we make it […]
There’s no denying it: Charlottesville is a wordsmith-rich town. Whether you’re looking for a page-turner for the beach, autumnal meditations in the form of poetry, or a fireside companion for a winter’s night, there are enough local writers publishing books each year to keep your shelves well-stocked. Here are some of the titles published by […]
You can always tell the parts of a film that directors feel personally attached to by what hits the viewer on an emotional level—and what doesn’t make sense on any level. With The Shape of Water, Guillermo del Toro transports us to a world where love between two outcasts—a woman and a misunderstood amphibious man-fish […]
Sunday, December 31 C-VILLE’s Big Night with casino, dance floor, food, drink and a midnight toast $75, 8pm. 21-plus. Carver Rec Center, 233 Fourth St. NW. c-villetickets.com. First Night Virginia’s 36th annual festival of the arts with family-friendly activities on and around the Downtown Mall $6-38, times and venues vary. Schedule at firstnightva.org. Nelson County […]
Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew is a play within a play that centers on a dysfunctional courtship (defined as misogynistic by modern standards), where subordinate female behavior from leading lady Katherina outsmarts psychological torture by her male suitor, Petruchio, all in the name of comedic farce. Friday, December 29 & Sunday, December 31. $29-54, times vary. American Shakespeare […]
The well-known Brothers Grimm fairy tale Hansel and Gretel becomes an absurd opera in the hands of producer Richard Jones. In a special English-language Met Live In HD presentation, the doomed siblings wander from their home into the dark forest and end up at the Witch’s gingerbread house. With food at its dramatic center, each […]
Are you ready for it? The addition of percussion and keyboards to The Steel Wheels’ signature acoustic sound? The Harrisonburg-formed group steers into new territory by beefing up its traditional folk style on the new album, Wild As We Came Here. “I’m excited to see what happens,” says Trent Wagler (guitar, banjo and songwriter). “There […]
As the events of August 11 and 12 unfolded across Charlottesville, photojournalist Sarah Cramer Shields watched it happen on the news. “I was putting two small children down for naps when it happened,” Shields says in an interview with C-VILLE. “I wanted to be on the front lines telling the stories of what was happening, […]