Stage Buzz
Now with less monster . . .
Deathcore upstart Whitechapel has quickly established itself as one of a handful of relevant names in a genre that initially seemed destined for the dustbin.
Keep on Truckin’
Drive-By Truckers hit town for two shows this weekend, and hope you don’t mind if they come out wearing their Go-Go Boots.
All Februaries must end
This is it, folks: one week left of February 2011 and you’ll never have it again. That’s probably devastating news for those of you who cry on your birthdays — a pathetic tendency picked up when you turned 7. Shameful, really.
Dem post-Grammy blues, Mama
The trouble with the Grammys is they’re on a Sunday, so your week doesn’t even start before it’s wiped out with the seismic, cultural revolution that is this annual broadcast.
The Church today, tomorrow, yesterday
For all of its attributed disposability, ’80s indie bands from all corners of the British Empire were surprisingly durable. Are, if we’re to be correct. The Church might be celebrating an anniversary with some old material, but they don’t need to.
As my uncle Olafur used to say . . .
Upper-crust classical music audiences certainly didn’t enjoy punk rock’s entrance into pop culture, but they got to watch from a distance as beer-guzzling jocks and classic rockers did the dirty work. Well now they have a punk in their house with Olafur Arnalds.
On The Shoulders Of Giants
To become a monolith, one must think monolithic. Very rarely will a band ascend from meek sonic origins and sit atop the mountain (see: Spoon). Young The Giant are of a mind to reach the apex.
Preview: Kings Go Forth
Regionalism used to drive popular music commercially and artistically — certainly more than it does now. Think West Coast jazz, the Bakersfield Sound, Stax . . . all were reactions to something else going on somewhere else in the country.
One year of CHIRPing
We suppose with the way the big sports leagues trample on Thanksgiving and Christmas, it’s not such a sin to offer you something to do on your day off, Monday.
Tomorrow Never Knows 2011
You know a festival’s doing well when people start grousing about how much better it was in the “old days.” Click on for our preview of this year’s TNK package.
Satch-a Claus is coming to town
Thanks to Trans-Siberian Orchestra, orchestral guitar rock has joined instrumental acoustic-guitar picking as a default holiday-music setting. (Along with rockabilly, oddly.)
Holly Days
Metro presents its annual “Home For The Holidays” concert series, which begins tonight and runs through the 30th. The idea is to draw separated college kids together over cheap — er, inexpensive — music and help some less-fortunate folks out, as well.
Plus or minus
The plus/minus stat remains unique to hockey, an exploitable but generally accepted measurement of a skater’s defensive worth. It’s an aggregate of the number of times a player is on the ice when his team scores either at even-strength or shorthanded, versus the amount his side concedes while at equal numbers or on the power […]
Superchunk
As one of elder statesmen of the burgeoning alternative rock explosion in the early ‘90s, North Carolina’s Superchunk’s speedy, punk-rock anthems captured the imagination of indie-cool slackers and collegiate hipsters reckoning with the all-consuming conquest by Nirvana, and grunge in general.
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