Arts Hound
Collaboration is key in seeing the arts thrive, which is why it’s great to see Lane Arts Council partnering with Eugene Ballet Company for First Friday ArtWalk. Continue reading
Arts: Page 297
Bass Drum of Death
Oscar Shorts
The Oscar-nominated short films are always something of a mixed bag, but this year gives us a particularly strange crop. While there’s always at least one sentimental entry among the live-action films, the most recent nominees are notably melancholy — excepting Butter Lamp, a French and Chinese co-production set in Tibet. The camera in this poignant but funny short never moves. A photographer takes pictures of families, groups of children, a couple; he has props and backgrounds, and encounters minor officials and mischievous kids. Continue reading
New Wheels, New Music
Folk songstress Olivia Awbrey has a love affair with writing
Folk songstress Olivia Awbrey has a love affair with writing. Like any relationship, there are good times and bad times, times when moving seems easier than staying, and growing together is a key to success. Awbrey’s been forced to make some changes since her days as frontwoman for Small Joys, a folk-rock group that enjoyed the winning slot at WOW Hall’s 2013 Bandest of the Bands competition. Her latest EP, New Wheels, is an intimate look at the changes she’s undergone. Continue reading
L.A.’s Las Cafeteras puts modern spin on Mexican folk music
Las Cafeteras
For many Americans, the first introduction to the infectiously happy ditty “La Bamba” was either circa 1958 from the crooning Chicano rocker Ritchie Valens or circa 1987 from a pompadour-ed Lou Diamond Phillips playing the crooning Chicano rocker in the biopic La Bamba. This Top 40 hit, however, is hundreds of years old. “‘La Bamba’ is a traditional Son Jarocho song,” Leah Rose Gallegos explains. “It’s been remade by Ritchie Valens, Los Lobos and also us.” Continue reading
Les Tigres
It begins with playful handclaps, then charming indie-rock vocals
It begins with playful handclaps, then charming indie-rock vocals. It builds to a West African-influenced polyrhythmic bedrock and bright, chiming, highlife-style guitar work. This is “Science Camp,” the de facto lead single off Some Friends Feel Like Family, the 2015 release from Santa Barbara’s Ghost Tiger. Continue reading
Young guns
For all the talk about classical music being your grandparents’ music, there sure seem to be plenty of young musicians heading in that direction. Continue reading
In the Garage
Bass Drum Of Death
As far as band names go, Bass Drum Of Death is in my top five. In recent years, acts such as Ty Segall, Wavves and King Tuff have spearheaded a gorgeous, fuzzy garage revival, leaving footprints in the ashes for other bands to follow. Bass Drum of Death’s eponymous 2013 album was chockfull of tasty lo-fi licks. Every song had the same basic tone: howling six-strings. swampy bass lines and a snare drum that just wouldn’t quit. Continue reading
RL Grime & Company in Review
If you wanted to party at WOW Hall this winter, this was your best chance
All photos by Athena Delene If I learned one thing at the RL Grime DJ set at WOW Hall Jan. 25, it’s that Eugene doesn’t need Sunday to be an end to the weekend — for many, it could have be their highlight. The RL Grime set was the kind of performance that made many sweat with more perspiration than they’d collected at the fancy new UO recreation center. If you wanted to party at WOW Hall this winter, this was your best chance. Continue reading
Information Overload
A swirling, whimsical, breathless catalogue of human relationships in varying stages of intimacy
Caryl Churchill’s new play Love and Information is simultaneously the worst and the best first-date idea ever. In the intimate horseshoe shape of UO’s Hope Theatre, the play’s litany of 57 scenes and 100-plus characters was so relentless that it never occurred to me to shift so that my date could grab my hand. Continue reading