Every March, dozens of D.C. artists join thousands of musicians from around the world at Austin, Texas’ massive South by Southwest Festival—a place where hopes are live-tweeted and dreams are expensively publicized. Is this the year the D.C. delegation makes its mark? There will be plenty of individual artists and bands making the Austin trek, but [...]
On Tuesday the Washington Area Music Association announced the nominees for the 26th annual Wammies, which take place Feb. 19 at the State Theatre. It’s no secret that I and others have long been critical of the local awards ceremony's mistakes, omissions, and policies. I'd hoped this year would be very different but, alas, I [...]
The results of The Village Voice's annual Pazz + Jop poll—aka the annual compendium of critical opinion that, given that it drops a month after every other top 10 list, only music scribes truly care about—are out. But how did D.C. do?
First, the albums list: Wild Flag, the so-punk-rock/kinda-classicist supergroup featuring two-thirds of Sleater-Kinney and D.C.'s own [...]
Weird year, 2011. D.C.'s most visible band released an app, not an album. Its great rap hope released an album that was disappointing in critics' eyes, but which cemented him as a mainstream presence. Dischord returned to relevance with a handful of new albums and handsome archival releases; new labels formed; and Sockets remained the [...]
I didn't realize how great a year it's been for music in D.C. until I started compiling this list. While I didn't hear many landmark, career-defining albums in 2011, there were a ton of great songs from both young and veteran artists. Whatever D.C.'s reputation, there's a healthy community of smart, ambitious musicmakers in this [...]
No one's immune to Christmas songs. Not you, not the writers of Washington City Paper, and not the dudes behind Listen Local First. The local scene boosters have put together a compilation of holiday songs by D.C. groups, and today—the third edition of Local Music Day—it'll be in rotation in a handful of local businesses.
The [...]
Just a reminder: Step into your local coffee shop/pub/diner/yogurt shop/furniture store/cupcake joint/ramen shack today, and you just might hear some local tunes. It's Local Music Day, which means a bunch of businesses are playing whole albums by eight D.C. acts. Those would be: singer/songwriter René Moffatt, reggae duo See-I (reviewed in WCP!), rockers Modern Man, U.S. Royalty (reviewed in WCP!), and Deleted [...]
How to Build a Better Umbrella: Tuesday, it rained. Yesterday, it rained some more. Today, the downpour continues. All this rain got the Phillips Collection' Experiment Station bloggers thinking about a meeting they once had with the Italian artist and designer Vito Acconci, who created something called the Umbruffla, a silken, expansive cocoon that envelops its carrier. [...]
Jonna McKone has this week's cover story with her look at the institutionalization of local graffiti culture via galleries, nonprofits, and even government programs—and what that means for the form itself. Bob Mondello leads this week's arts section with a review of Imagining Madoff—the long-delayed Deb Margolin play that generated a national controversy when one [...]
The Vogue Line State: Writing in today's Washington Post, Ned Martel attempts to dissect the very mixed reaction to the University of Maryland football team's new "Maryland Pride" uniforms that feature several images of Maryland's flag. Some Maryland alumni, like Oprah Winfrey sidekick Gayle King, told Martel that "it seems like there’s three different things going [...]
