By Ben Grad

By Julia Reidy I’ve come to really dig the homemade decorations bands have taken to draping across their equipment for the sake of… what, beauty? Hipster kitsch? Either way, it’s pretty charming. (I mean, have you ever seen These Are Powers live?) For Portland,Ore.’s Nurses (pictured above), the knitted doilies tied to their tables and […]

By Ben Grad Noted experimental rockers The Fiery Furnaces played the Variety Playhouse last week with the most basic of basic set-ups: drums and bass, while Mathew Friedberger lead with guitar and Eleanor Friedberger covered most of the vocal duties. Keyboard and organ were noticeably absent on stage; and considering how much I'm Going Away […]

Review and photos by Julia Reidy If there had been wires running from the instruments Megafaun (pictured below) and Bowerbirds (three shots, above) played onstage, from their faces and hands to the eyes and ears of everyone in the crowd, you would’ve seen bursts of green light, energy snapping and crackling along the lines all […]

Review and photos by Micah Mclain The Drive-By Truckers brought the rock show to the Capital Theatre in Macon Thursday night. Opener Tift Merritt played a great set, although her acoustic-leaning alt-country tunes struggled to find the volume necessary to drown out the loud, rowdy (and borderline rude) crowd that DBT shows have become known […]

By Micah Mclain During a break from their increasingly regular opening slot for Kings of Leon, The Whigs stopped by The Hummingbird in Macon for the type of intimate performance that is quickly becoming a rarity for the Athens' band. They brought the uniquely named Vulture Whale along to open the show. The Birmingham, Ala.-based […]

By Julia Reidy Dirty Projectors arrived late, during Atlas Sound’s set on The EARL’s welcoming stage. They’d driven straight to Atlanta from Louisiana, they told us, and more than one band member was sick. In a gesture of goodwill, the audience agreed to put out cigarettes for their benefit. Fortunately, the smokes were the only […]

Our resident arty photographer Angela M. Scarola took some great shots of the very special, very sold out EARL 10-Year Anniversary Show featuring the lovely Cat Power.

By Scott Roberts; photo by Sue Volkert During the initial heyday of Athens music back in the early to middle 1980s, most of that city’s bands were purveying either a sort of quirky, danceable artsiness (Pylon, Love Tractor, Method Actors) or a folk-fueled, Southern jangle-pop (REM, Buzz of Delight, Art in the Dark). One band, […]

By Scott Roberts; photos By Sue Volkert Any trepidation I had about seeing a legendary L.A. punk rock band whose members are in their mid-50s (at least!) playing 30-year-old songs was joyfully and powerfully obliterated approximately 10 seconds into the opening song of their set at Variety Playhouse on Saturday, June 13. All four original […]

By Julia Reidy It began with "Runaway." The nine-member incarnation of The National, complete with three horn players and a keyboardist, began the set with a new, mesmerizing, post–Boxer song. Poignant and compelling even on the first go-around, everyone listened with rapt attention. Then, like one communal exhale, guitarists Aaron and Bryce Dessner launched into […]

By Noel Wurst As someone who doesn’t know every Mastodon song by heart, there came a time at their show in Atlanta on Friday night when I had to stop trying to make out any of the words – whether from the band themselves, or the maniacal fans around me – and just sit back […]

By Ben Grad Seeing your favorite singer/songwriter play in person is always disappointing. With a rock band, you expect the muddier live sound – that in-your-face, energetic dissonance is part of what defines “rock.” But singer/songwriters (even ones who play with three-piece backup bands, like Kevin Devine) are defined by the clarity of their sound […]

By Julia Reidy Three white animatronic cats perched atop a speaker preceded the five men of Man Man onto the Variety Playhouse stage after they finished their plain-clothes sound check and ventured off to get into costume. The cats would stay still barely long enough so that you’d think they were lifeless, then move just […]