Music | We’re Off to See the Witch: Eliza Wren’s dark side of Oz.

POSTED // Dec 17,2008 - When Eliza Wren was a little girl, she always had a taste for spooky things. n“I always really loved scary movies,” Wren says, “But it’s not like my mom was going to let me rent The Exorcist. I had to take what I could get.” nThe local musician wasn’t a morbid little girl. She was simply drawn to things that pushed the outer limits of the imagination. nWren indu...

All the Young Dudes: SoCal's Abe Vigoda are in no rush to grow up.

POSTED // Oct 22,2008 - Bands like Abe Vigoda suggest that all-ages venues—like Los Angeles’ The Smell—have the power to transform music as we know it. nLos Angeles-based pals No Age, Mika, Miko and a whole slew of other Smell regulars have taken the nation—and the world—by storm. And it wasn’t until this month that all of Abe Vigoda could legally drink. n“We love playing all-age...

Music | Easy Riders: Salt Lake City’s Blue Sunshine Soul get real, slowly.

POSTED // Sep 17,2008 - Like so many good things in life, Blue Sunshine Soul is the product of a happy accident. The Salt Lake City band started as a prolonged jam session: A few friends hanging around, covering each other’s spontaneously composed songs. It was a sweet,...

Music | Southern Spark: The Watson Twins burn bright with Fire Songs

POSTED // Jul 16,2008 - Identical twin sisters Chandra and Leigh Watson—known as The Watson Twins—haven’t lived in their hometown of Louisville, Ky., for more than a decade. After the sisters graduated from college, they gassed up their pickup truck and crisscrossed...

Music | Supreme Beings: King Khan & The Shrines hypnotize American audiences with soul

POSTED // Jul 9,2008 - Once upon a time, a cynical, sarcastic group of young Montreal-based layabouts received welfare checks from the Canadian government and decided to found a magazine. Said layabouts dubbed their publication Vice, which was fitting, since their pages explored...

Theater | Kick in the Asana: Stephen Brown revisits New Age satire in Revenge of Yoga the Musical

POSTED // Jun 4,2008 - From the very beginning, SB Dance impresario Stephen Brown intended to do a second run of 2007’s satirical Yoga the Musical. Brown even had a sequel in mind from the onset. “If we didn’t get shot at or run off the stage the first time...

Ballet | Company Time: Ballet West dancers create their own new works for Innovations

POSTED // May 21,2008 - Fourteen months ago, when Adam Sklute arrived in Salt Lake City to begin his tenure as Ballet West’s artistic director, he was greeted by an interesting seedling of an idea that had been patiently waiting to sprout. This seedling called for a program...

Music | Quiet Riot: New York’s Ra Ra Riot starts to explode.

POSTED // May 7,2008 - Nineteen years ago, Alexandra Lawn started playing the cello because she attended Montessori school, and every child—in the name of fostering one’s creativity—was encouraged to play an instrument. “My parents picked out my instrument,”...

Music | Got the Beat: The Helio Sequence keep a different sort of time

POSTED // Mar 19,2008 - Peruse “musician wanted” fliers pasted on bulletin boards, walls, and lampposts on any street corner, in any city, and you’re bound to notice multiple bands seeking drummers. Why? Because drummers are apparently, well, different. The...

Music | Human Touch: The Black Swans forge new bonds with unique record sleeves

POSTED // Mar 12,2008 - If you order a vinyl edition of The Black Swans’ most recent album Change! you will also receive a copy—Xeroxed with love by frontman Jerry DeCicca—of a Columbus Dispatch article which provides some background on your new record’s...

Dance | Dance Dance Resolution: Studio D provides a sampler platter for the art of movement

POSTED // Feb 27,2008 - It’s a question for the ages: Can ballet dancers and modern dancers collaborate productively and peacefully? Pointe shoes vs. bare feet? Romantic tutus vs. understated costumes? Can such stylistic preferences be reconciled? According to Ballet...

Music | She Blinded Me With Music: Logan’s Libbie Linton balances bioengineering and an acoustic guitar

POSTED // Feb 27,2008 - Fans of singer-songwriter Libbie Linton’s distinctive voice will be shocked to learn that Linton was initially hesitant to sing in front of an audience. “I was always much more confident as a guitar player,” says a notably shy Linton...

City Guide 2008 | Culture: Dance - Where Feet Meet

Local dance companies invite you to a moving experience.

POSTED // Feb 1,2008 - It’s not surprising that dancer Julianne Hough—the blonde firecracker who captivated the nation when she partnered Dancing With The Stars champions speed skater Apolo Anton Ohno...

Music | Love Your Beard: Utah’s Grizzly Prospector! channels Burl Ives

POSTED // Jan 23,2008 - Although music has always been near and dear to Grizzly Prospectors!’s sole member Parker Reece Yates, he didn’t officially consider himself a musician until the summer of 2005. “The creative juices were flowing, and I couldn’t...

Music | Walk Soft: Angela Correa continues to share the spotlight

POSTED // Jan 16,2008 - Los Angeles-based singer/songwriter Angela Correa, says that hearing—or, rather watching—your voice come out of someone else’s mouth onscreen is a surreal, even otherworldly experience, but certainly not an unpleasant one. Correa’s...

Music | Still in Session: Landmark Salt Lake City music venue Kilby Court changes hands

POSTED // Dec 26,2007 - When I was a senior in high school, an unpaved side street off of 300 West and 700 South seemed like the edge of the known universe. But I happily drove my clunky blue Chevrolet (or was it my best friend’s Geo? I can’t remember) towards unexplored...

Music | Khaaan!: Blacksnake and BBQ get saucy

POSTED // Nov 21,2007 - I should have guessed that two guys who call themselves Blacksnake and Creepy were going to mess with me a little bit. But some journalists never learn. That’s why reporters have the same public approval rating as used car salesmen. Blacksnake (aka...

Music | Shake It: Polaroid Kiss win friends with synth-y bleeps and boops but, so far, no label-maker.

POSTED // Oct 24,2007 - In less than one year, Salt Lake City’s Polaroid Kiss has accomplished things that might cause musicians in more metropolitan cities to shake their fists in the air. How, they must be asking, does a band with no formal public-relations or marketing...

Music | Review: Morrissey proves he still matters'even in Lehi.

Music: Take a Bow

Local quintet Loom brings down the house; ruins the carpet.

POSTED // Oct 10,2007 - Most of Salt Lake City’s bike-riding, yoga-practicing, NPR-listening youngsters are quick to claim cultural enlightenment. Truth is, however, the bulk of kids who attend rock shows recoil when they see a violin onstage. The last instrument most...

Room for Improv-ment

Dance: Movement Forum brings on-the-fly choreography to The Game.

POSTED // Sep 5,2007 - Improvisation isn’t always pretty. A guitar solo, a comedy routine or a fire-and-brimstone sermon assembled on the fly can be captivating one moment, incomprehensible the next. In the production The Game, Movement Forum Improvisational Dance Company...

Empress-ive Return

From burlesque to family theater, a Magna landmark rises again.

POSTED // Aug 22,2007 - Many architecture enthusiasts insist that while a building may be inanimate, it has its own vibrant life similar to that of a human being. The life story of Magna’s 91-year-old Empress Theatre—which began as a seedy burlesque for miners and...

Local CD Revue

Music: Atherton, Melodramus, Medicine Circus

POSTED // Aug 15,2007 - Atherton Skyline Motel Skyline Motel is an apt title for such a sparse, dreamy, smooth and distinctly Western album. These spare songs of love and roaming clearly originated in the desert, not east of the Mississippi in the green avenues of Nashville...

Local Warming

Glacial is (slowly) coming to get you.

POSTED // Aug 6,2007 - Glacial drummer/Salt Lake City sound engineer Andy Patterson believes that basic human chemistry is one of the most vital components behind a band’s success and longevity—or its tumultuous, untimely demise. “Sometimes, just one member...

Form of Carnie

Salt Lake City’s Accidente bring the carnival to the Help Marty cause.

POSTED // Jul 18,2007 - It’s positively amazing what a group of carnival-inspired rockers who jokingly dubbed themselves Accidente—with a sound that drummer Kevin Ivers likens to swinging a bag of cats furiously in the air—can do for a member of the community...

Silent Night

SLC indie label Eden’s Watchtower celebrates Christmas with Dead Trees and a Conspiracy.

Fish Tales

How SLC label Rippyfish Records got out of the jungle and into the big pond.

Basement Jazz

For all your ghostly, impressionistic jazz needs, call Ether Orchestra.

Spaceland

Local alt-rock trio Our Time In Space go Euro in Hollywood.

D’ana Baptiste, founder of D’ana Baptiste Studios

Random questions, surprising answers

Eye of the Needle

Utah Opera’s veteran costume designer turns her attention again to La Traviata.

Yogi Fair

Local yoga instructors come together to offer a charitable “sampler” event.

Ain’t No Mountain

Stephen Brown scales a new creative summit in the multimedia biography This Mortal Coil.

Casting a Spell

William Blake inspires choreographer Tandy Beal.

Kinder Garden

Imagine Ballet Theatre gives young dancers a shot at a homegrown production.

Eastern Parade

Stephen Brown satirizes self-help trendiness in Yoga the Musical.

Death by Chocolate

Or, how City Weekly’s editorial intern embarked on a single-minded choco-rampage.