Is Rayo Casablanca’s debut novel the new hipster handbook? Or is it just a Pulp Fiction wannabe?
Peace, Love and Purple: Purple Ball fashion photos
Check out a photo gallery from the recent fashion show.
Listening Party: Barrel House Mamas, Josh Phillips Folk Festival and Shannon Whitworth
Here’s the idea: Each week, we pick three local musical acts, link to a site where you can listen to their songs for free, then ask you to tell us what you think about them. All we ask is that you listen with an open mind.
Pat & Alli’s Weekly Winners
Each week Xpress reporter Alli Marshall and WOXL DJ Pat Ryan team up to bring you their entertainment suggestions.
Don’t look back
Australians don’t go in much for pat sentiment. With sandy wit, Waifs singer Vikki Thorn tells Xpress just how profoundly the experience of having two children in two years influenced her art. Americana from Down Under: Originally from Australia, The Waifs are Bob Dylan-approved folk rockers. Photo by Jason Ierace “My creative processes came to […]
Beautiful nonsense
When that great rock snob in the sky writes the book on outlandish opening lines to albums (and yes, it will happen), “Blue Flowers/Blue Fame” from Destroyer’s latest album, Trouble In Dreams (Merge, 2008), should be taken into account. The opening stanza reads a lot like Destroyer’s career—conversational, nonsensical, pretentious and magnificent all at the […]
Playing dirty
In the year or year-and-a-half or several years (depending on how you count it) that The Trainwreks (formerly No Good and the Trainwreks) have been playing, they’ve managed to establish their own genre, of which they are the “self-proclaimed kings”—at least according to guitarist/vocalist Micha Fishman. Some might argue that former Asheville group The Unholy […]
The anti-humor of the Awesome Show
Even if you’ve never sat down and watched an entire episode of Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!, odds are good that you’ve at least chanced across the 11-minute program while flipping channels late on a Sunday night. The show, which just ended its second season on Cartoon Network’s “Adult Swim” block, is a […]
United by words
WordFest Media Outreach Project’s slogan, “Because poetry unites people,” offers a glimpse of the festival’s four days of poetic diversity. Not surprisingly, the inaugural WordFest includes a variety of poetry performances and events designed to appeal to—and unite—a variety of people. “For millennia, poetry has held cultures together even in the face of great changes,” […]
Picture this
Sometimes the best ideas take their own sweet time (not to mention very circuitous routes) in coming to fruition. Such is the case with The Memoirs of Helene Kottanner, the recently completed book by Warren Wilson College art professor Gwen Diehn. It was just last year that Diehn was selected from a nationwide pool of […]
Top Drawer: Fashion news and views
Local visionary Rylin Mariel is hard to miss: Her brightly colored outfits, mendhi-like body paint, spiky hairstyles and fringed scarves set her apart in the best way. For years, women have asked her how she achieved her look. “I tell them that it just comes from a synthesis of the things I love most in […]
Run for the not-so-proverbial carrot
Since many of us exercise so we can eat what we want, a food-themed race seems just the thing.
Show Review: Feist at Thomas Wolfe Auditorium
Feist has a graceful, commanding stage presence. Once she began to sing, her raspy, sexy voice captured nothing less that the audience’s complete attention. There are few performers who shine as brightly as this Canadian songbird.
Edgy Mama: The family bed
Sleep-sharing — it may not be for every family, and not even for every child, but when it works, it’s a good thing.
Barack the Vote: A review
Missed the Barack The Vote event at the Orange Peel? Here’s the low-down.
Repertoire of Reprehensible Acts
Gallery show features works by noted boxcar artist.
Show review: Kate Nash and the Orange Peel
British pop star Kate Nash won over fans with her accent, her grunge-piano, and a few chords “knicked from Beyonce.”
Book Report: Area readings and events
Dot Frank and the guy behind PETA’s “I’d rather go naked than wear fur” campaign are just two of the literary luminaries making their way to WNC this week.
Listening Party: AxeRats, Richard D. Shank and Nikki Gunter
Here’s the idea: Each week, we pick three local musical acts, link to a site where you can listen to their songs for free, then ask you to tell us what you think about them. All we ask is that you listen with an open mind.
Great expectations
On the list of things that are less likely to happen than being struck by a meteor are: winning the lottery, discovering buried treasure and being called out of nowhere to open for a superstar like John Legend or James Blunt. Carpe diem, y’all: Knoxville’s Erick Baker knows a thing or two about striking while […]
Bring the noise, start the party
Life can be tough if you’re in a local party band. If your aim is to motivate Asheville’s hipster elite to uncross their arms long enough to shake it on the dance floor, as often as not, your efforts will go to waste. Being seen at a show is cool, but actually cutting loose and […]