Old mojos, new songs: Robert Cray. Sometimes, the passing of the years has a way of putting old cliches to rest. That has certainly been the case for Robert Cray. It’s now been 20 years since Cray was rather simplistically, and misleadingly, touted by much of the music press as “the great black hope for […]

“Envie III,” by Werner Haker. There are those who insist there’s no such thing as a female aesthetic, but a visit to Upstairs [artspace] in Tryon makes it hard to deny. The works in the small front gallery are dramatically different in sensibility from those in the two main rooms. In the big street-level space, […]

• You know you live in an Art Town when the stuff you see in coffee shops and restaurants rivals the work in the galleries — check out the quirky paintings of Julie Armbruster on the walls at Early Girl. • Jean Loewer’s beautiful mural, “Books for Everyone: Katherine Case and the Bookmobile” at Pack […]

CD reviews Town Mountain, Original Bluegrass and Roots Country (Meat on the Bone Records): Two Stars • Genre(s): Bluegrass • You’ll like it if: Songs of “rambling,” “breakups,” and “tear-fueled whiskey” stoke your senses. • Defining song: “Pork:45” Local pickers Town Mountain put all their creativity into the picking, while sparing imagination for both the […]

“Karadada,” by Lily K. Ask any trend-spotter about Australian art, and chances are they’ll pipe up about patterns of dots and rhythmic lines and depictions of mysterious Dreamtime Gods and animals. Since the introduction in the early ’70s of acrylic paints to the Aborigines, work by these indigenous peoples has become the emblem of art […]

Seminally speaking: Bob Mould. The notion of an artist “coming full circle” or “returning to his roots” is an appealing one, especially to longtime fans — for whom such a “return” can sometimes seem no less portentous than the prodigal son coming home after years of decadent and callow indulgences. For the better part of […]

• Check out the exhibit featuring Jason Weatherspoon and Jeremy Russell in the Arts Council’s Front Gallery before it leaves on March 28. • New Orleans refugee Christia Zelenka, manager of the Carol Robinson Gallery in that city for 12 years, is looking to build a stable of 30 artists for her new gallery on […]

Local Music News Ting, the brand-new release by local musician Seth Kauffman, came in at No. 10 on the CMJ (College Media Journal) Top 200 for the first week of March. The album (written, recorded and engineered solely by Kaufmann) runs alongside big names like Jason Collett (of Broken Social Scene) and Calexico. Local bluegrass […]

Typically, when bands reach a certain age, their intent is to evoke a musical maturity rich with wisdom and distance from the folly of youth. The four members of Animal Collective are quite content to be heading in the opposite direction. From their playful aliases – Avey Tare (David Porter), Panda Bear (Noah Lennox), Geologist […]

Skeletons in the jukebox “Skeletons” provides a forum for local musicians, artists, record-store owners, etc., to erase cool points by expressing their unseemly affection for an unhip album from their past. Billy Joel Glass Houses, by finger-style guitarist Patrick Fitzsimons The cover says it all. Billy with a rock in his hand about to chuck […]