Get your Viking gear ready, the horned helmet your ale tankards—well not really. Just because The Faeroe Island’s Týr sing a lot about Viking lore and history doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be taken seriously. With six full-length albums notched in their swords and no signs of slowing the momentum is only building. The band employs clean singing and big, fat helpings of majestic melodies. The point of it all, from my experience, is a journey-like experience—you listen and you go somewhere else. … read more
Chelsea Wolfe with Spell Talk and Light Black @ Urban Lounge 08.29
I hear and feel dark swelling tones of bass, looped vocals and keys as they open with “Movie Screen.” Fog machine aside, their ominous stage presence creates an element of awe in the room, and the audience is eerily silent and perfectly still. I can feel the energy waiting to burst out of this band. I’m stoked, because just when I think I know where a piece is going, it does the exact opposite. I’m built up by Chelsea Wolfe’s layered vocal loops, then the ambient guitar sounds and deep bass drop me out a trap door and the music halts for a fraction of a second. They are tight and together, executing these rising and falling swells with surgical precision. … read more
Absinthe Films: Resonance Salt Lake Premiere 09.01
On the first of September, Justin Hoystenek and Shane Charlebois gathered a few of the riders featured in their 15th film, Resonance, to showcase last season’s ups and downs on the big screen at the Tower Theater in SLC. … read more
School of Seven Bells @ Urban Lounge 09.01
Unlike most shows at this venue, the crowd was not speaking in the wings, but corralled into “The Holding Pen,” as I like to call the rail-lined dance floor in front of the stage, and hanging on every extended vocal harmony that Deheza began and finished. She is as good as she ever was. … read more
Why? with Serengeti, Jel @ Club Sound 09.04
The semi-circle set up in the background made plenty of room center-stage, making it clear that Yoni is in command of this game. This isn’t to say that the band adds nothing; one of Why?’s strengths is in their ability to mix indie, hip hop, pop or experimental instrumentation with well crafted lyrics. While the songs embody the attitude typical of a lot of affluent males as a pitiful, lonesome individual, the setup fit. As Yoni started the night with a popular hit from Alopecia, “A Sky for Shoeing Horses Under,” the crowd was quick to warm up to Yoni’s voice that pays solid attention to rhythm and wordplay. … read more
Swagatha Christie: The Swagged-Out Mystery Interview
Swagatha Christie rolled through Salt Lake City for Mike Brown Fest at Urban Lounge on Thursday, Aug. 30. This Portland local legend made time out of her busy schedule to come rock some super progressive, dirty South swag. SLUG was able to sit down with her and ask her a little about herself, her music and her crew. … read more
Fictionist @ Rooftop Concert Series 09.07
This installment of Provo’s Rooftop Concert Series provided an interesting juxtaposition of coming and leaving in the Provo music scene. The show featured the scene’s most recent success story of breaking into the national eye, Fictionist. In contrast, The New Electric Sound is a rising force in Provo and is here to stay (for a little while, anyway). … read more
Add a Dash of Local Art: Lauren Mitchell
Each month, SLUG features a local artist and their work on the west wall of the café in Whole Foods at Trolley Square. September’s Add a Dash of Local Art features Lauren Mitchell. To get a better idea of who Lauren is, we invited her to the SLUG office and asked her to answer a few very strange and random questions that the office staff has come up with. They then create a piece of art out of their answers, with whatever supplies we have laying around the office. … read more
Culture Confidential @ The Rose Wagner, Leona Wagner Black Box 09.05
Aaron Moulton took the limelight (as the most interesting panelist of the evening, in my estimation). Moulton made “An Art Newspaper” called The Naughties that features deliberately stolen art, reframing them as pictures and advertisements to accompany fictional news stories. Moulton blocked most of his contributors’ names to evince a relinquishment of ownership, only allowing people for whom he has the utmost respect to have their name filter through, which I found somewhat hypocritical. Moulton said that he aims for this magazine to be The Onion of the unregulated art world. Moulton was amusingly indignant throughout the discussion, and seemed to be audience critics’ favorite target in a playful way. … read more
FYF Fest: Dylan Chadwick Style
FYF Fest in Los Angeles: A summer block party of indie rock touchstones from sunup to sundown in the middle of the downtown Historic Park. Multiple stages, monitors, concessions, vendors, comedians, water tents … the stuff Perry Farrel tried to resurrect with his travelling roadshow in the 2000s, but didn’t catch it on. … read more
FYF Fest: Esther Meroño Recap
The GPS on my phone tells me we’ve arrived in Los Angeles long before Dylan Chadwick and I finally park on Sunset Boulevard to pick up our FYF media passes on Friday afternoon. “I could never live here,” I say out loud, and that sentiment will echo five days later as we fight our way out of the city, but goddamn, Los Angeles, little do I know you’re about to give me five of the most magical days of my existence thus far. … read more
Down-To-Earth, Down South at the DocUtah Film Festival 09.05-09
Only in its third year, DocUtah has the down-to-earth feel that I think every festival should have. From the directors of the festival to the filmmakers and audience, I felt like everyone was simply there to enjoy a shared film experience. … read more
