If there’s one way to start off the summer, it’s The Naked and Famous Concert. These guys are awesome. The Naked and Famous consist of Thom Powers, Alisa Xayalith, Aaron Short, David Beadle, and Jesse Wood. Together, they’ve formed one badass alternative rock band. Their songs have been featured in everything from Gossip Girl, to FIFA 2012 and 2014, to The Art of Flight. … read more
The Haim sisters take their usual layout—Danielle in the center, Alana to the audience’s left and Este to their right—which I imagine they’ve been holding down since their childhood days, back when they played with their mom and dad as Rockinhaim. … read more
A sleepy suburb in Utah County, somewhere south of Provo, is not where one would expect to encounter one of the great gothfathers. And yet there we were on a strangely muggy Friday evening—40 or 50 folks folks, mostly middle-aged and bearing the unmistakable marks left by a youth spent (but not misspent) pursuing music on the left of the dial, along with a few kids wearing t-shirts for reunion tours of bands that formed when I was their age, sitting ringed on the tasteful beige carpet around David J Haskins. … read more
SLUG: If you were playing basketball with President Obama and you had the opportunity to dunk on him, would you hesitate to do it out of respect for the office?
RiFF RAFF: I would super dunk 370
… read more
Ten years later the Penguin Lady is working in an entirely different vein. I am sitting on the edge of a black box theater inside Judge Memorial Catholic High School. Natosha Washington is next to me casually watching her troupe rehearsing a series of dances they’ll perform at the Rose Wagner this September. … read more
O, Utah! Should I stay or should I go? That’s the question at the heart of Feast, last weekend’s evening-length performance from choreographer Charlotte Boye-Christensen’s NOW-ID. … read more
Whether they’re out at Denver’s Psych Fest collecting weird shit like “trollops” (ask one of the band members about it) or decorating one of their jackets with pins and buttons found laying around the tour bus, the boys always feel at home in SLC, saying they prefer it to any other scene they’ve played in because of it’s low-ego, no bullshit feel when it comes to personal style. … read more
Merrill Garbus of tUnE-yArDs can do it all. She loops vocal harmonies and noises on the spot, drums and plays an electric ukulele. The latter instrument is unique, but it’s nothing compared to her strongest instrument—her voice. … read more
Punk Rock Bowling invites the positivity of the punk community, allowing everyone and anyone to see bands that they can knock off their bucket list. This festival invites a vast and diverse array of people influenced by this subculture. One can see skinheads, rockers, crust punks and of course the spiky hair punk rockers that make up the popular novelty postcards. … read more
Review of the film B.B. King: The Life of Riley … read more
Attending Repertory Dance Theater’s “Land” felt like visiting an old house, the home of someone who’d lived in Utah a long time. She loved the idea of the West as much as she loved the landscape itself, and had surrounded herself with objects, books and memories that recorded a history of her sentiments. … read more
Powers leaned into the microphone and said, “Did you think we could leave without playing ‘Young Blood’?!” as Xayalith said, “We just like teasing you!”—I knew it! … read more
