Two years ago, I saw the Vahnevants play a show on a city bus. The audience was an even split: Half of the people were bus regulars, just trying to get to their stop on their way to or from work. The other half was a mix of the kinds of freaks and art geeks who tend to turn up for these out-of-the-ordinary occurrences of live music. Due to the […]
Doug Nye has been playing shows around Iowa City for almost a decade. A self-taught guitarist, singer and songwriter, he’s always had a resonant, deep baritone voice and an ear for bleak folk-tinged songwriting. His voice has become more confident even as his songwriting has turned more cryptic and playful. […]
Body Punishment surfaced on Oct. 27 with an EP — Body Punishment Presents: Oyster World — released on Bandcamp, which features Siren Song I-IV. The “about” section says, “Millennia old sea sirens surface with a vengeance and a taste for human blood.” Shortly thereafter, the group performed at Yacht Club — a costumed duo […]
Writers of the Depths Anthology Erin Casey & Alex Penland, ed. — The Writers’ Rooms Like a river flowing into the sea, Writers of the Depths, the anthology from the Iowa City–Cedar Rapids workshop collective the Writers’ Rooms, injects a fresh perspective into ocean tales. One traditional story and six fantasy tales are studded with […]
Dark Family’s second album of 2019 is a fucking groove. Released on Oct. 30, Holiness essentially takes the psychedelic supergroup’s first album, The Reverberation Cult, and retrofits it with all the inky, druidic, pot rock energy the band’s full lineup commands. […]
Iowa Dream by Arthur Russell It was awfully sweet what Kevin Costner’s Ray Kinsella said about Iowa — but nobody has made this place sound so good as Arthur Russell. Iowa is always polite, always wild, not the convenient setting of some canonical work of literature read in high school classrooms. The lines are all […]
James Tutson and the Rollback will perform an album release show on Friday, Nov. 15, at 9 p.m. at Big Grove Brewery in Iowa City. There is no cover.
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There’s a classic axiom about judging a man by the company he keeps. Despite my years in this job, I am not IC-scene enough to have met Jeff Nehring (known for Los Marauders, the Rough Housers and the Day Glow Bomber Boys). But I feel like I know him, judging by the amazing array of people who have rallied around him. His support […]
Dan Padley (a member of Laranja and Elizabeth Moen’s band) is releasing a new EP of ambient guitar improvisations Nov. 1 to benefit the Emma Goldman Clinic. Padley is not wedded to a specific style of music. With Elizabeth Moen, he meshes with her rootsy singer-songwriter style; with Laranja, he explores modern jazz. On Druthers he probes the […]
The brightly illustrated Peter Max-influenced pop-art cover of Time Beach Universe, the debut album from Grinnell band Pink Neighbor, gives us a pretty good idea of what lies within. But, it’s not all tangerine trees and marmalade skies — it’s a perfect pastiche of the full variety of 1960s party pop. The neighborly tone of the record is set at the […]
It’s impossible to consider Al Naylor’s album Friends without addressing the underlying fact behind its creation. Naylor — nothing short of a legend in the region’s jazz community as both an educator and a player — has been diagnosed with a health condition that will soon force his early retirement from performing. In the face of the news, […]
Dan Padley, a graduate of the University of Iowa College of Music, has been a versatile asset to Iowa City’s music scene. From touring with singer/songwriter Elizabeth Moen to performing with his band Laranja, he’s a player’s player, meshing seamlessly with the music at hand. Perfectly Whelmed seems more personal and reflective than his […]
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