Hopscotch Music Festival Preview
(09/06/12 9:04am)
Julia Holter
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Julia Holter
This season Duke Performances has scheduled two of the biggest names in gospel music: John P. Kee and the Mighty Clouds of Joy. Their shows mark the first steps taken by Director of Duke Performances Aaron Greenwald to bring a genre of music only rarely hosted by comparable—predominately secular—concert series.
It’s summer. Many Duke students are half a world away. But the Triangle’s music scene never takes a holiday. If you’re still in the area, if you’re looking for music that can only be found in North Carolina, if you want to be listening to music outside when the weather’s warm, then look no further than these three summer music series. We’ve given them the Recess seal of approval.
Recent graduate Alex Junho Kim is an aspiring filmmaker who was awarded 2012 Student Filmmaker of the Year by Duke’s Program in Arts of the Moving Image. Kim spoke with Recess’ Dan Fishman to discuss Stan Brakhage, filmmaking opportunities at Duke and Kim’s dream project.
This Saturday, Iranian singer and composer Mohammad-Reza Shajarian, widely recognized as the greatest living master of Persian music, will perform at the Durham Performing Arts Center.
On Saturday, put down the end-of-the semester taurine drinks: Free Energy will give you wings.
I would never have expected Matthew Ward to be a fan of T.S. Eliot. M. Ward albums are often breezy. His songs rarely exceed four minutes. He dabbles in genres from folk to synth rock to Christmas pop. Eliot, on the other hand, likes brooding statements, long tales of anomie worlds apart from Ward’s peppy wanderlust. Eliot’s writing is dense and hyper-literate. Ward fingerpicks simply and pleasantly, sings of the working man. To call them uncommon bedfellows is to put it lightly.
Tomorrow at the Coffeehouse, Alex Kotch presents his dissertation. His argument: classical music has a place on the dance floor. His committee: scores of students who want to party.
Justin Townes Earle has about as much grit as Michael Buble.
March begins the season of music festivals, and this year Durham has one to be excited about. On Saturday, the Brickside Music Festival brings some of the biggest names in indie music to Duke’s East campus including Kurt Vile, Mark Kozelek and Oneohtrix Point Never.
Any publication that calls Wrecking Ball a perfect album should have a ball of rusted iron plowed through its headquarters. I’m talking to you, Rolling Stone. Bruce Springsteen deserves all the credit in the world for having good intentions. Better than any of Romney’s electioneers, Springsteen instinctively understands the political environment of Middle America: the everyman’s frustration with crony bankers, the uniquely U.S. version of grassroots patriotism and the perceived lack of Christian virtues in politics. Wrecking Ball has soul behind it, a strong message and a few tablespoons of wisdom. These are songs Democrats and Republicans alike will want for their campaign ads. But we’re judging an album here, not a belief system. As far as the music goes, the Boss has done so much better. Springsteen mistakenly shuns the personalized narratives of Nebraska and Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J. in favor of generic polemics. “Rocky Ground” is a mishmash of New Testament quotations, gimmicky gospel backdrops and cloying hip-hop digressions. The title track asks us to feel pity about the destruction of Giants Stadium, but Springsteen’s writing doesn’t earn our sympathy, and it’s hard to weep for a sports arena. “Jack of All Trades” displays his best character development, but he undermines the narrator with lines like “If I had me a gun, I’d find the [bankers] and shoot ‘em.” The refrains are too often clichéd—none more so than the penultimate track’s which calls America the land of hopes and dreams without the slightest irony. The melodies, though rarely inventive, are usually pleasurable. When the stories are weakest lyrically, loud country guitars and pounding drums serve as a crutch. The arrangements recall (but never match) the strength of earlier efforts—although “Death to My Hometown” comes close to capturing the bravado of Born to Run. In terms of entertainment, Wrecking Ball outperforms the new releases of many of America’s almost- and already AARP-qualified rock stars: Tom Petty, Paul McCartney, the Who and the rest of our recent Super Bowl entertainers. Which is to say: it’s not a bad record. It shouldn’t hurt the Boss’ reputation. But those who are vaunting it have forgotten that Springsteen used to embody American greatness, not just tell us about it.
You’ve probably seen the trailers—we certainly have. And after a long and relentless French Oscar season, now seems a better time than ever for a good party flick. Enter Project X, a faux documentary-style take on a larger-than-life house party. Recess’ Dan Fishman spoke with stars Jonathan Daniel Brown, Thomas Mann and Oliver Cooper about auditions, filming party montages and what sets Project X apart.
In a week that was supposed to be all about Sleigh Bells’ new release, Claire Boucher has stolen the public spotlight. The spunky, Montreal-based synth-pop artist (a.k.a. Grimes) has been featured as artist-of-the-week in Vogue Magazine and been glorified in The New York Times. Her failed attempt to recreate Huckleberry Finn—she and a friend filled a small boat with chickens and potatoes in hopes of navigating down the Mississippi River—has sparked internet fanfare. And her off-beat hairdos and guiltless admiration for Korean pop music have made her into a sort of hipster’s hipster.
Comparing Shearwater to Talk Talk—as many critics do—is sort of like comparing a contemporary Irish novelist to James Joyce, or telling Abel Tesfaye (The Weeknd) that his Michael Jackson covers are better than the originals. It’s inappropriate to compare the trendsetter to the starry-eyed apprentice. In other words, if you’re coming to this review having never heard of Talk Talk, stop reading now and download Laughing Stock.
It is quite possible that, by the time this article is in print, Duke Memes will have already followed the path of Lana Del Rey—the awkward upstart turned blogosphere sensation who met visceral backlash when noticed anywhere but the internet. But risking obscurity in order to comment on Duke’s commodity fetishes is the prime role of the Sandbox—which, like its schoolyard cousin, attempts to make playing in dirt appear civilized.
On Feb. 1, the Duke Coffeehouse welcomes Brooklyn black metal band Liturgy for a performance that may well cause James Buchanan Duke to roll in his grave.
Matthew Dear is often too versatile for his own good. First and foremost a DJ—the man behind the break-beat techno of monikers False and Jabberjaw—Dear also dabbles in ambient music and likes to sing duets with indie rockers. His last and most successful LP, Black City, plays more like a heady concept album than a toe-tapping mixtape. The album conjures a seedy metropolis, and he employs his music in service of this fictional space, intentionally straying from his strengths.
On Jan. 23, Duke Performances welcomes internationally acclaimed violinist Christian Tetzlaff to Reynolds Industries Theater for a recital that few violinists would even attempt.
With their first new material in nearly eight years, Guided By Voices milks nostalgia for all its worth. Let’s Go Eat the Factory is the first album after the reunion of lead singer and songwriter Robert Pollard—the band’s one constant throughout thirty plus years of membership changes— with the original band-members from the early nineties. With Factory, Pollard and co. try their darndest to recapture the atmosphere of Bee Thousand and Alien Lanes, the quirky lo-fi albums that put these Dayton, Ohio beer buddies on the indie map. Every so often, they succeed. The catchy single “The Unsinkable Fats Domino” could have been pulled straight from the garage rock of Alien Lanes. “How I Met My Mother” summons the tongue-in-cheek wordplay of Pollard’s best songwriting. The thirty five-second non sequitur, “Go Rolling Home,” harks back to the self-assured collage-pieces of their first productions.
Tonight, the Duke Coffeehouse need not pay its busboys: DJ/rupture will be turning the tables.