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 [...]
Fresh off an extensive July tour—in which the band's merch was confiscated at the Canadian border—local mainstay Deleted Scenes have dropped a new video for its dreamy tune "Bedbedbedbedbed" today. The single comes from the group's forthcoming LP Young People's Church of the Air, due out September 6 on Sockets. The video is appropriately sleep-themed, soaked in [...]
Monday afternoon, D.C. band Deleted Scenes was on its way from Harrisburg, Pa., to play a gig in Montreal. But, like generations of indie groups before them, the band ran into major problems at the Canadian border.
Officials seized 47 records, 88 CDs, and about 50 t-shirts, amounting to roughly $1600 in merchandise. The band posted [...]
An ethereal post-punk song is probably the last place one would expect to hear a slide guitar when there's synth at hand. But there it was, right in front of me Saturday night at the Black Cat Backstage, expertly played by Deleted Scenes guitarist Dominic Campanaro on the band's catchy new single "BedBedBedBedBed." Celebrating the [...]
The Scottish songwriter King Creosote, née Kenny Anderson, sings in a stirring, penetrative brogue, but for some reason he’s most at home when other voices crowd the sonic landscape. His most beautiful song, “So Forlorn,” from the 2003 album Kenny and Beth’s Musakal Boat Rides, has a prominent sample of a yodel-like moan, a disorienting [...]
Local indie-rock dudes Deleted Scenes—makers of good albums, Christmastime mopers—have a new 12-inch out today on Sockets Records, which I'm happy to endorse on the strength of its woozy lead-off track, "Bedbedbedbedbed." The new EP, a teaser for an upcoming full-length, also contains an acoustic version of the same song, a cover of The Smiths' [...]
The lyrics of “Bedbedbedbedbed,” the new single by Deleted Scenes, sound tinny, but that’s a good thing. The martial drumbeat kicking off the track gives way to Dan Scheuerman (sp) singing into an echo chamber. Lines like “We live in difficult times/I fell behind” ricochet while Matt Dowling and Chris Scheffy supplies a gentle rhythm [...]
Growing Up Foo: WaPo's Chris Richards profiles Dave Grohl on the occasion of a new Foo Fighters album and documentary. You'll have to see the doc to learn about the Foos' "falling-outs, betrayals, drug overdoses, quittings, firings — the works," but the WaPo piece has lots of goodies from Grohl's early years in Northern Virginia. [...]
