Arts: Page 365

New Metal, Old Story

Music

In a post-Miley Cyrus world, people of a certain vintage are (again) all twerked-up over young people and their pop culture landscape. It was in this context I checked out the video for “Coming Down” by L.A. nu-metal outfit Five Finger Death Punch. The video, off their 2011 release American Capitalist, tells parallel storylines: A young man commits suicide in front of his parents; a young woman violently vomits, having overdosed on pills, distraught over a sexting scandal.  Continue reading →

Big Sonic Love

Music

Picture Los Angeles. Highways, rolling hills, scatterings of high rises poking through the smog and a candy-cane striped Big Top tent coloring the skyline? The indie-folkstars Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros are joining the circus. Or rather, they are creating one in their hometown. The inaugural Big Top Festival is an experiment, says drummer and vocalist Orpheo McCord. The troupe will play under an actual big top tent on a 360-degree rotating stage with local musicians come Oct. 17.  Continue reading →

Red-Hot Honky Tonk

The Red Cane Theatre kicks off the fall season

Theater

A pair of city slickers arrives in a podunk town. They’ve come to close the local saloon, which is financially strapped. The businessmen’s trip is something of a lark; though their mission is clandestine and cutthroat, they find the saloon, and the people in it, quaint and charming. One of the businessmen starts to fall for the saloon’s proprietress, a gorgeous, lovelorn woman with a stubborn streak. Drama ensues, and the whiskey flows. Fights erupt. Hearts collide. Continue reading →

The Art of Roadkill

There’s more to picking up dead animals than meets the eye

Arts

Wander roads anywhere and chances are you’ll spot animal bones strewn in ditches, a feather on the ground, snake skins baked onto asphalt, even a plump frog that defied a crow’s keen senses. Maybe you’ll feel lucky to find an intact, desiccated owl carcass you just can’t leave behind. Unlike beer bottles, soda cans and other litter that careless people toss out of vehicle windows, under most circumstances it’s actually illegal to take any part of a dead animal home.  Continue reading →

In Her World…

Film

If we’re going to invent new sub-genres for Edgar Wright movies, a la the rom-zom-com (Shaun of the Dead), we need one for Lake Bell’s directorial debut, which is a … well … it’s a fem-fam-film-rom-geek-com? That needs some work. (Maybe Bell, a sharp and nuanced writer, can come up with something clever.) In a World… is a movie built for film geeks, trailer junkies and, well, anyone who’s ever noticed Hollywood’s sexist side. Which I like to think is, by now, all of us. Continue reading →

Back Beat

Music

Music news & notes from down in the Willamette valley. Attention all hep cats! Bebop your way to The Jazz Station ’round 7:30 pm Thursday, Sept. 5, for Smokey Beau’s Café. The audience can pick hot tunes from a menu of vintage swing and pianist Smokey Beau Belanksy, vocalist Dona Clark, bassist Eric Richardson, drummer Javier Gonzalez and sax man Fred Wesley will bring them to life. Zoot suits and Lindy Hop dresses encouraged.   Continue reading →

Back From the Brink of Extinction

Music

There came a time late last decade where indie folk reigned supreme. Singer-songwriters flew out of the woodwork like gnats come to feast on the blood of a millennial Americana revival. But as that fad moved aside and the whole “let’s relive the ’80s for no fucking reason” thing came about, it grew increasingly difficult to find indie folk with the same energetic flair. Continue reading →

Enter the Echo Chamber

Music

As summer drags doggedly on toward fall, it’s time to get those last lazy rays of sunlight under our skin. During this first week of September, the perfect soundtrack for such an affair will hit town. Ernest Greene, the one-man chillwave extraordinaire behind Washed Out, assumed his persona after failing to become a librarian. That aside, he seems better placed as a musician. There’s a drowsy formula to his music that few have dared to exploit, but most are ready to swallow. It’s soporific electronica with wide, relaxed vocals over echoing skeins of drone. Continue reading →