Covet

Covet started in 2014 as a bedroom project by guitarist Yvette Young, who at the time, was balancing writing music part time with working as an art teacher. Over the years, the project has certainly grown beyond its “Bay Area garage band” roots and has been fortunate enough to reach people all over the world- enough so that Young eventually left her teaching job to pursue making music with a band full-time.With a background in visual art, art therapy/education, and classical piano/violin, Young aims to write emotive songs that capture colorful imagery, uplift, and tell stories. Their sound can be described as “instrumental progressive rock” but the music draws influence from many genres like Midwest emo and shoegaze and doesn’t try to adhere to one main sound. Young’s fluid and polyphonic fingerstyle approach to guitar is often described as very piano-like, and although her playing at surface level is technical and intricate, the music still aims to make people feel something and make people want to dance.The band has released an EP Currents, an acoustic EP, and 2 full length albums Effloresce and Technicolor. Over time the sound has really transformed from its twinkly mathrock origins to a more evolved, fuller, more melodically complex sound that incorporates a myriad of tones and textures. There is currently one new album in the works, which the band will be playing songs from.Website | Bandcamp | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook | Spotify

Magic City Hippies

Hand of Doom, Speed Stick

North Carolina’s Premier Black Sabbath Cover Band.Hand of Doom Links: Facebook Speed Stick Links: Bandcamp | Facebook

Don’t Lie To Me! Celebrating The 50th Anniversary of Big Star’s #1 Record

Big Star’s #1 Record is now widely-regarded as a seminal work. It is included in Rolling Stone magazine’s list of the 500 greatest albums of all time. Rolling Stone also ranked the song “Thirteen” in its 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.In a celebration of the 50th anniversary of its release, the album will be played in its entirety, by a great electric band: Jody Stephens and Jon Auer (Big Star), Mike Mills (R.E.M.), Chris Stamey (dB’s), Mitch Easter (Let’s Active), & Brett Harris. This will be followed by a second set of equally classic material from Radio City and a selection of songs from the legendary Third album and Chris Bell solo recordings, as well. Special Guests will include Django Haskins, Skylar Gudasz, and Charles Cleaver.About #1 Record (from wikipedia):Six years earlier in 1966, when their hometown of Memphis, Tennessee became a tour stop for The Beatles, primary songwriters Alex Chilton and Chris Bell were fifteen years old. Heavily influenced by the UK band, the pair—Bell in particular—wanted to model their songwriting on the Lennon-McCartney partnership, with the result that they credited as many songs as possible on Big Star’s debut album to “Bell/Chilton”. In practice, they developed material incrementally in the studio, each making changes to the other’s recordings. Drummer Jody Stephens recalled, “Alex would come in and put down something rough and edgy and Chris would come in and add some sweet-sounding background vocals to it.” Chilton once offered the following on Chris Bell’s unique vocal contributions: “Chris and I did all the harmony vocals, and he had a brilliant mind that worked in a sort of contrapuntal way. It wasn’t based so much on ‘Oh you’re singing the root. I should be singing the 3rd above,’ he would just sing along with the line I was singing. He was a brilliant, instinctual maker of counterpoint.”The pair also each contributed songs to the album that were individually composed before Big Star was formed. Chris Bell brought the songs “Feel”, “My Life Is Right”, and “Try Again” to the recording sessions, which he had previously recorded with a band called ‘Rock City’ (which featured Big Star drummer Jody Stephens and Steve Rhea), and Chilton brought “The Ballad of El Goodo”, “In the Street”, and the acoustic ballads “Thirteen” and “Watch the Sunrise”. “The India Song” was written and composed by Andy Hummel. Bell had a major hand in the record through songwriting, vocals, guitar work and the album’s production. Producer John Fry: “When Chris Bell was still in the band, he took more interest than anybody in the production and technology end of things. Bassist Andy Hummel : “Chris [Bell] was in charge. I would pretty well credit him with recording and producing that LP [#1 Record]. Of course, he had a lot of artistic help from Alex [Chilton] but Chris was the technical brains behind it. He was the only one of us at that time who knew how to record.” Alex Chilton would also acknowledge Bell’s heavy role in the studio production: “Chris was really into recording. He didn’t want the rest of us fooling around in the studio, that was his business.” Chilton would also give producer John Fry credit for achieving the album’s high level of production quality: “John Fry was a genius in his way of mixdowns. We didn’t put things on tape much differently than was the standard method of doing things, but he just had such finesse and great ears, and he was just a great meticulous mixdown engineer and producer. […] He’s the one responsible for making those records sound so fucking great.”

War On Women

War On Women is a feminist hardcore-punk band.Links: Website | Bandcamp | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook

WXYC Presents: Can I Kick It? Old School Hip Hop Dance Party

Free for UNC students with ONE-Card, $5 for non-studentsDJ lineup:10pm – 11pm: DJ Starcross’d & DJ EBUN11pm – 12am: DJ XELLE12am – 1am: DJ Triple AAA1am – 2am: DJ Healthcare Links: Website | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram

The Marías Present: CINEMA

Please note – this show has been rescheduled to Haw River Ballroom in Saxapahaw, NC.The Marías are the psychedelic-soul lovechild of Puerto Rican-bred, Atlanta-raised María Zardoya and Los Angeles native, Josh Conway. A smooth rendezvous of jazz percussion, hypnotic guitar riffs, smoke-velvet vocals and nostalgic horn solos, there’s something undeniably sensual in their dreamlike fusion of jazz, psychedelia, funk and lounge.  Drawing inspiration from both their vastly diverse backgrounds and the intimacy of their mystic Hollywood Hills commune, Josh and María write, record and produce within the walls of their own home with their dog, Lucy.  In their live show, with María on lead vocals and Josh on drums, the couple is joined by their closest friends. On guitar, Jesse Perlman, born and bred of LA, with ‘tones that can melt steel,’ say his bandmates. On keys, Edward James. And on trumpet, Gabe Steiner. Bio written by Carlotta HarlanLinks: Website | Instagram | Facebook | Twitter

Senses Fail

Having a kid changes you. Ask most new parents and they’ll say that when you bring a child into the world it instils in you a previously unimagined perspective on existence. Some even go so far as to say that it makes life make sense, that it gives it a purpose. For Buddy Nielsen, the sole remaining founding member of Senses Fail, it’s also made him think about his own mortality more than ever before. That started during his wife’s pregnancy, but it’s persisted ever since. As such, he’s found himself staring directly into the black abyss of his mortality a lot recently. It’s that heightened sense of his own impending doom that’s at the center of Hell Is In Your Head, the band’s eighth studio album.“My wife had a pretty serious childbirth,” he says. “I don’t want to say she almost died but it was pretty scary for a minute. And the relationship you have to have with your child is just a constant letting go of yourself in ways that you didn’t necessarily perceive you needed to. I’ve had to start to come to terms with my own death because my daughter, who’s now four, keeps asking about it. So this felt like an opportunity to maybe address grief and how we process being – how do you have a kid, how do you be alive, how do you continue to live a meaningful life while also knowing that you’re going to die?”It’s those questions and more that Hell Is In Your Head explores and attempts to answer across its 11 dark, brooding songs. It does so in two very distinct halves. Five of the first six tracks – “The Burial Of The Dead”, “A Game Of Chess”, “The Fire Sermon”, “Death By Water” and “What The Thunder Said” – take their titles from the five parts of TS Eliot’s “The Waste Land”. They aren’t based on the 1922 poem per se, but they’re set in its world, and use that setting as a foundation to explore those topics in a more philosophical, abstract and timeless sense.Nielsen, in fact, says he views these six songs “more like a play”. That’s why the portentous, gloomy, atmospheric opener has “references to exiting and entering the wings of a stage.”“What’s the answer to the inevitable trap of the fact that you’re going to die?” asks Nielsen. “This record attempts to go to the dark place of ‘What is it that we’re so afraid of death?’ We’re afraid of death because of grief. Are we truly afraid of death because of death? Through my own therapy, I’ve learned you don’t even really have a clear understanding of death because it’s unknowable. And since you literally can’t die and come back, I tried to place the record in a much darker fictional place to help talk about those unanswerable questions.”Links: Website | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook | YouTube

Town Mountain

Hailing from Asheville, North Carolina, Town Mountain is the sum of all its vast and intricate influences — this bastion of alt-country rebellion and honky-tonk attitude pushed through the hardscrabble Southern Appalachian lens of its origin.“For us, it’s all about the interaction between the audience and the band — doing whatever we can onstage to facilitate that two-way street of energy and emotion,” says mandolinist Phil Barker. “Whether it’s a danceable groove or a particular lyric in a song, we’re projecting what we’re going through in our daily lives, and we feel that other people can attest to that, as well — it’s all about making that connection.”Amid a renewed sense of self is the group’s latest album, Lines in the Levee, a collage of sound and scope running the gamut of the musical spectrum in the same template of freedom and focus found in the round-robin fashion of the musical institution that is The Band — a solidarity also found in the incendiary live shows Town Mountain is now revered for from coast-to-coast, this devil-may-care gang of strings and swagger.“This is the sound we’ve been working towards since the inception of the band,” says guitarist Robert Greer. “We realized we needed to do what’s best for us. We’re being true to ourselves. It isn’t a departure, it’s an evolution — the gate is wide open right now.”“We’ve always had such a reverence and respect for those first and second-generation bluegrass bands, and it was that sound that initially inspired all of us to get together,” Barker adds. “And that will always be part of our sound. But, we also need to grow as artists, and as individuals — for us, that means bringing in a wider palette of sonic influences.”Formed by Greer and banjoist Jesse Langlais over 15 years ago on a ridge high above the Asheville skyline, the sturdy foundation of Town Mountain came into play with the addition of Barker not long into the band’s tenure. From there, the group pulled in fiddle virtuoso Bobby Britt and bassist Zach Smith. And though the road has been long, it’s also been bountiful.“It’s definitely been a slow climb. But, it’s been a climb nonetheless, where each new opportunity is filled with a sense of gratitude — to be able to make music, to be able to play music with your friends,” Barker says. “And to be able to bring music to the people, and have them want to show up and listen to it? Well, we’re thankful for that every single day.”Lines in the Levee also marks the band’s debut album release for famed Nashville label, New West Records. Well-known and championed as a fiercely independent act, the members of Town Mountain felt an immediate kinship with the record label — this genuine bond of creative fulfillment and sustained artistic growth to ensure the long game for the ensemble.Website | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook | Spotify | YouTube

Old Sea Brigade

Ben Cramer describes 5 AM Paradise, his vivid and moving third album as Old Sea Brigade, as a coming-of-age record: ten songs that balance youthful abandon with maturity and restraint, full of imaginative flourishes, evocative textures, and graceful melodies that lend magnitude to mundane moments.Cramer first introduced Old Sea Brigade with his debut EP Love Brought Weight followed by his 2019 debut album, Ode To A Friend. He toured with artists like Julien Baker, Joseph, Lewis Watson, and Luke Sital-Singh, developing an undeniable chemistry with Luke that carried over to the studio on the collaborative All the Ways You Sing in the Dark EP. At the same time, Cramer was establishing himself as a sought-after producer to artists from around the world who stopped by his Nashville home studio, including Australians Angie McMahon and Lawson Hull, London’s John Joseph Brill, Montreal’s The Franklin Electric, and rising talent from his local community like Braison Cyrus and Paul McDonald. His 2021 sophomore album, Motivational Speaking, was called “some of the best quarantine art” (Consequence) and “sharply written and infectiously propulsive.” (Uncut)5 AM Paradise builds on those successes, as he revels in new sounds and ideas and explores the textures of everyday life in songs that make space for doubt and worry alongside joy and pleasure. He leaves his songs unresolved—posing more questions than he answers—so that they reveal more and more of themselves each time you hear them.Website | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook | YouTube

Genre: Concerts