Annabelle’s Curse continues to evolve past obvious comparison­s

The story of the Bristol, Tennessee-based Annabelle’s Curse begins, as so many band origin stories do, in the vicinity of a college campus. “I had a mutual friend who invited me over for a party,” says guitarist Zach Edwards. There, he met singer-songwriter Tim Kilbourne. “We ended up playing music together and I kind of just never went home.” Annabelle’s Curse performs at The Grey Eagle Sunday, Dec. 6.

The Milk Carton Kids’ contempora­ry take on American folk music

The Milk Carton Kids are really just two Los Angeles-based singer-songwriters — Joey Ryan and Kenneth Pattengale — who figured out that they sounded good playing together. But to the rest of the Americana world, the two are magic in a bottle, blending the fraught folk weariness and preternatural guitar picking of Gillian Welch and David Rawlings with the fragile pop harmonies of Simon & Garfunkel.

Watkins Family Hour takes its casual, intimate vibe on tour

Sean and Sara Watkins, the brother-and-sister duo who rose to fame as youngsters in acoustic trio Nickel Creek, alongside virtuoso mandolin player Chris Thile, started the Watkins Family Hour as a monthly residency in Los Angeles over a decade ago. It was a way to play music in an informal setting. That show comes to The Grey Eagle for two nights, Friday and Saturday, Sept. 11 and 12.

Sound values: How LEAF’s eclectic lineup defines the festival’s ethos

The 2015 lineup for LEAF, which prides itself on its globally conscious reach, is unsurprisingly excellent. Topping the bills each night are acts that range from soul revival firebrand Charles Bradley & his Extraordinaires to Australian world-roots act Xavier Rudd & the United Nations, demonstrating the festival’s knack for mixing quality bedrock American music with an eclectic range of styles that span the Earth.

Atlanta’s Suno Deko crafts wide-eyed, loop-based experiment­al pop

Even a fleeting experience with the music of Suno Deko will inevitably be a pleasant experience. The shimmering, experimental-pop project of Atlanta-based musician David Courtright takes the stage at The Mothlight on Sunday, Nov. 9. Building his songs primarily on intertwining, gently cascading electric guitar lines and sinewy vocal parts in the vein of Ben […]

The Afghan Whigs play The Orange Peel

These days ’90s alt-rock band reunions are a dime a dozen. Then again, there really wasn’t another ’90s band like The Afghan Whigs. When its major-label debut, Gentleman, dropped in 1993, the group’s sprawling soul-and-R&B-inflected rock histrionics and dapper style stood out among a crowded field of flannel-clad grunge upstarts. The Greg Dulli-led outfit went […]

Harvest Records celebrates a decade in business with Transfigur­ations II music festival

Although “pretty much everybody” told them it wasn’t a good idea, Matt Schnable and Mark Capon opened Harvest Records in 2004. “We were just out of college and pretty headstrong about it,” says Schnable. “We figured even if were open just a year, at least we had seen something through.” The West Asheville-based store was […]