Arts & Culture

“All Cool Girls Have Bangs”: Waxahatchee at the Haunt

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I walked into the Haunt on a school night stressed, irritated and wishing I’d stayed in instead of spending a good hour securing a ride and a companion to go see, what I was pretty certain, would be a perfectly pleasant and perfectly missable indie rock show: Waxahatchee. Missable, I mean, in the relative sense, that this is Ithaca, where a line-up as stacked as Monday night’s is not all that remarkable. Ithaca spoils us with such an unrelenting stream of incredible music flooding the bars and basements that my calibration is warped — must-see’s become missable, missables become flimsy “attends” on Facebook, and it ends up being a somewhat monumental feat to get myself out to a group I’ve never heard of before. What I mean to say is, if Waxahatchee is here one month, Angel Olsen or Girlpool or Kurt Vile or Sharon Van Etten will be the next. The crowd, looking like a Portlandia episode, was predictable; I figured the music would be too.

Alabama Shakes

TEST SPIN: Alabama Shakes—Sound & Color

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We learned that Alabama Shakes knew how to play Memphis soul and southern blues rock — and play it well — on their 2012 debut, Boys & Girls. We learned frontwoman Brittany Howard had a tour-de-force, hurricane of a voice and we learned that these kids from Nowhere, Alabama had a gritty, aw-shucks charisma and an old-soul-meets-modern-rock sound that earned them gushing accolades and a Grammy in the same year. It was unclear, however, whether the fledgling group would find a coherence beyond the gorgeous shock value of Howard’s shrieks and croons and the novelty of a niche throwback sound in this musical climate. Their latest release, Sound & Color, seems to settle this question; Alabama Shakes are more than niche; they are more than a novelty. The album shimmies between decades and genres, sampling from soul, groove-rock, gospel, blues, punk, electric rock, bluegrass and folk; embracing motifs and honoring the traditions that so evidently inform their sound from each genre, but executing their own creative, and exciting forms of them.

Arts & Culture

GOLDFINE | Virtual Justice: On Social Media and Ferguson

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“The most significant challenge encountered in this investigation has been the 24-hour news cycle and its insatiable appetite for something, for anything, to talk about. Following closely behind were the non-stop rumors on social media,” said Ferguson prosecutor Robert McCulloch last Monday — the same day the decision that police officer Darren Wilson would not be indicted for the shooting of Michael Brown, was announced. In his statement, McCulloch targeted the role of social media in the case with pointed force, accusing social media users of misleading the public and rendering the investigation unnecessarily confusing and fraught. As a follower of the tragedies in Ferguson, I find McCulloch’s reduction of the role of social media to “non-stop rumors” to be not only flawed, but alarming. His perspective speaks to a trend of fearful and censoring attitudes of authority and media figures towards social media.