Robin Pecknold, lead singer for Fleet Foxes, summed it up nicely as soon as he hit the stage at the Arcata Community Center last Monday: "I’ve really got a bad case of school-dance anxiety right now. It’s like this is junior high, and we’re the house band for the most uneventful teen-movie ever made. But […]
Music
Coverage of the music scene in Humboldt County with upcoming shows from locals and out-of-town acts, reviews, interviews and more.
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Atlantic Ocean
When news of your latest album is prefaced with "recorded in Wilco’s studio on an analog tape machine sold to Swift by Jeff Tweedy and featuring talented guests such as Mark Ronson and Ryan Adams," expectations are raised. Singer-songwriter Richard Swift’s Atlantic Ocean, newly out on indie-stalwart label Secretly Canadian, doesn’t disappoint. This is the […]
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Listen
Continuing our discussion last week about the viability of record stores, well, this Saturday, April 18, is officially Record Store Day. As RSD co-founder Michael Kurtz explains, "Record Store Day is an excuse for record stores to have a party with the artists who love them and who want to celebrate their art with us. […]
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Between Floor and Flight
For those of us who have been attending HSU dance concerts for the past few years, there is no doubt that Sharon Butler has done a great job at the helm. But as I’m not a fan of long program notes, her lengthy pre-performance exposition included in every program drives me bonkers. There is a […]
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Continuation
Percussionist, drummer and composer Alex Cline offers one of the most dynamic and challenging releases to come out so far this year with Continuation, his first recording as a bandleader since 2001’s The Constant Flame. Simple definitions seem inadequate in attempting describe Cline’s compositions — contemporary, orchestral, jazz, Eastern, avant-garde. All of these influences and […]
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Records Are In
Remember records? You know, those flat plastic discs that hold music in their grooves? You might think, in this digital age, that records are dead. And what with the rise of the iPod and cell phones that play music, with even CDs becoming a thing of the past, not to mention music sales moving online, […]
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Beware
Aptly named Beware, Will Oldham’s subtle and mysterious new album is not what it initially seems. Depths of strange light and dark meaning emerge with repeated listening. The cover presents a skull visage against sinister black, a pale orb of the title’s warning hovering above; on the back a surging planetary volcano. The palindromic catalog […]
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Easy Come Easy Go
Marianne Faithfull’s hard, troubled life has hardly been a secret. And her voice seems to directly reflect her long road. There’s a combination of beauty, sadness and pathos in her low delivery that calls to the ghosts of Nico (former Velvet Underground chanteuse), German actress/singer Lotte Lenya and Bessie Smith. So, it’s no wonder that […]
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Fools
Woke up this morning with a tune in my head: an old Joe Jackson thing called "Fools in Love." "Fools in love, they think they’re heroes ’cause they get to feel no pain. I say fools in love are zeros; I should know. I should know, because this fool’s in love again." Joe comes off […]
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To Be Still
It is no misnomer that singer/songwriter Alela Diane Menig falls into the growing musical community known as "New Weird Americana" or "Freak Folk." What’s interesting about her segment of this developing "scene" or movement are the roots, which derive from British folk traditions, which in turn borrow from earlier Gaelic musical traditions, namely Scotland, Ireland […]
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Talkin’ Nocturnum
Anyone out there ever eat at O-H’s Townhouse? It was a classic old-school steak house, a place where you could pick out your meat from a glass-fronted case, then hit the bar for a shot of straight whiskey to be sipped while sitting in a cushy red Naugahyde booth. The cushy booths are still in […]
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Ghostride The Whip
If we were to put the Oakland Hyphy movement and its precursors on a timeline, it would look something like this, according to Ghostride The Whip: Black Panthers social solidarity movement … city wide crack epidemic of the ’80s … MC Hammer … Too Short … Mac Dre … Hyphy. Narrated by MTV anchor and […]