The Baltimore Book Festivaltakes over the Inner Harbor this weekend, and not to play favorites or anything—do check out the authors appearing at the City Lit stage and the Ivy Bookshop stage and the music stage and more—the annual Radical Bookfair Pavilion not only means a solid block of writers and thinkers talking about their work, it’s the first dose of Red Emma’s bookstore coffeehouse cultural programming since July and, well, I for one am seriously in need. The Book Festival, even with its Inner Habor location, is one of the more user-friendly outdoor events for those of us who might be getting a little skittish in large crowds these days.
Also: The High Zero Festivalof experimental and improvised music concludes its 20th anniversary celebrations this weekend in Baltimore, after making stops in Chicago and New York. Fifteen local musicians/performers toured to both cities to collaborate with musicians there, and for this weekend’s concerts—at the Baltimore Theater Project Sept. 28 and 29—the touring group will get thrown together with fifteen other local musicians/performers, meaning there’s gonna be a huge dollop of thoughtful, local wing-nuttyness concentrated in one place for two solid nights. If you’ve gone to any HZ concert or event over the past 20 years, you’ve probably heard somebody introduce or discuss the fest as something where the performers don’t know what’s going to happen. I kinda think that’s a bit of fib. Sure, the musicians don’t know what their combinations with other musicians may sound like, or what somebody else might end up doing, but these artists know exactly what they’re doing, and they’ve been doing it in small pockets of communities around the country and world, honing their ideas, exploring new possibilities, imagining what different tomorrow might sound like in the hopes of making the future look different, too. Don’t miss.
FRIDAY 28SEP Bosleycelebrates the release of his new album, Unreal Fire, at the Ottobar with Frenemies, and, yes, his fifth album is more of the white-boy soul, R&B, and funk that’s sincerely bowing at the altar of Stax, Motown, and Prince, and he continues to be as consistent at delivering American Bandstand-polished pop. Local pop-punk trio Something Moreplays the Metro Gallery with RVA’s Centerfolds, Austin’s Nominee, and those local know-it-alls in At Face Value. Cuban jazz legend Chuchito Valdes and his quartet play An die Musik.
Ursula Ricks (Severn Records)
SATURDAY 29SEP The Ursula RicksProject takes over the Eubie Blake Cultural Center. Ever since local indie-rock outfit Super Citybegan to take shape in the riff trading of a few Towson University jazz students in 2014, they’ve always always kinda so unabashedly worn their songwriting influence on their sleeves—a little soft rock here, a little Crowded House there, maybe a little dash of St. Vincent, and some OK Go on top. But what started outed sound like the Sea and Cake with more outright pop ambitions has matured into a more self-assured brand of off-kilter art-pop on Sanctuary, the quintet’s new album. This kind of radio-ready alt-pop has never been my cup of tea, but Super City is very good at it, and in a professional “indie” landscape that has lifted bands such as Clap Your Hands and Say Yeah, Brand New, Car Seat Headrest, and the National into quasi mainstream, Super City can more than hold its own, and plays a CD-release show at the Ottobar with Vita and the Wolf. The Feed the Scene-curated Metal Quest V at the Metro Gallery features A Sound of Thunder, Master Sword, Random Battles, Recently Vacated Graves: True Zombie Metal, and DJ Ducky Dynamobetween sets. The Upstarterswelcome Virginia’s Audacity Brass Bandto Joe Squared for a night of Brass Rocks with the Melon Farmers. Everything’s coming up skatastic at the Sidebar with Skluttz, the Chariots, Steady Ratchets, and DJ Bobby Babylon. Cuban jazz legend Chuchito Valdes and his quartet play An die Musik.
Melanin Free (stolen from Facebook)
SUNDAY 30SEP Philadelphia trio Yarrowsculpts an angular blast of noise-pound on its six-song A Mild CircusEP, and the band headlines a sharp bill at the Undercroft with Mavis Beacon and Lil Perc. Chicago’s Steve Hauschildt, one third of the swirling ambient electro group Emeralds, recently released his solo debut, Dissolvi, a funkier update on Pan American’s mood oceans; he plays the Crown tonight with Brett Naucke, a Chicago composer of minimalist technicolor minimalism, and Baltimore’s own, absolutely unfuckwithable Melanin Free. The Pique Collective, a local experimental chamber quintet, and Ogni Suono, the Cleveland saxophone duo of Noa Even and Phil Pierick, perform at the Motor House; Pique’s program includes Igor Silva’s “Smart Alienation” and Steve Reich’s “Music for Pieces of Wood.” Octopoulpeputs your one-sheet to shame by describes himself, uh, itself as an “half-naked creature playing tentacular music, from Math-rock to punk-hardcore” and “8 tentacles-one man band from France/South Korea,” and everybody,” and he, geez, it(?) stops—crawls? swims? little help here, please—into the Sidebar with Oraku Sakiand Uncle Buck. The hook-filled local indie-pop outfit Mothpuppyhits Joe Squared with fellow indie-something bands Spumoni, Middle Kid, and Corduroy. New York-based Japanese jazz pianist Miki Yamanakamakes her Baltimore debut with a solo show An die Musik at 2 p.m. Vocalist Mina Caputo and veteran metal band Life of Agonyfinds a place where there’s no pain at the Baltimore Soundstage with Silvertomb, the sludgey Brooklyn outfit featuring members of Type O Negative and Agnostic Front, and local combo End It.
Ohmme (lifted from Instagram)
MONDAY 01OCT Parts, the sophomore release from Chicago duo Ohmme, scratches an itch I didn’t know I had: art-rock damaged pop that’s as harmonically idiosyncratic as musical theater, a hard-sell description that doesn’t capture how many hooks vocalists/multi-instrumentalists Sima Cunningham and Macie Stewart pack into their genuinely bent sense of pop, nor for how disarming soaring harmonies fit over almost no-wavey bursts of jerk and throb. The duo stops by the Metro Gallery tonight with Renata Zeiguer, and NYC singer/songwriter wandering down her own path of country-fried dreampop, and Nina Gala. Both Chicago’s Bruce Lamont and NYC’s Kevin Hufnagel have spent time in bands pushing at metal’s fringes; they also both released solo albums, Lamont’s Broken Limbs Excite Pityand Hufnagel’s Messages to the Past, this year that continue their experiments with metal, approaching heavy ambient music from different directions. Lamont and Hufnagel hit the Ottobar tonight with Baltimore’s nose-rock power trio the Waywardand Musket Hawk. Tulsa’s Planet Whatdelivers a solid dash of gal-fronted garage rock on its five-song EP Maggie Fingers, and its old VHS-tape quality video for the growling “The Girl With the Pounds of Pourage” was kinda exactly the kinda awesome I needed this week; PW stomps into the Sidebar with Chicago’s fabulously named Viet Rahmand Chumps.
Outer Spaces (stolen from Bandcamp)
TUESDAY 02OCT There’s a hint of Tom Petty in singer/songwriter Cara Beth Satalino’s otherwise straight-up indie-rock trio Outer Spaces, a vulnerability that’s comfortable following hurt with a laugh, an appreciation for a guitar that jangles when a trad rocker might want it to stomp; Outer Spaces plays Joe Squared with Evan Jewett, James and the Giant Peach, and Hothead, the thousand-yard-stare solo project of guitarist/singer Laurie Spector that’s as raw and jagged as the late no-fi great Jim Shepard. Medusa, the fifteenth album from England’s veteran proto-doom-metal quintet Paradise Lostthat was released last year, is a pretty tasty cut of creeping melodicism—maybe edging a bit closer to metal’s radio-ready side, but lands with a nice crunch. The band hits the Baltimore Soundstage with a pair of bands the compliment its thundering crawl: Iceland’s atmospheric Sólstafirand Chicago’s little bit prog, little bit stoned the Atlas Moth.
WEDNESDAY 03OCT Fellow olds remember the Swirliesfor a string of DIY dreampop albums in the ’90s that could swing from lo-fi buzz and hiss to intoxicating purr and melody in a heartbeat, and if the recent Part Time Punks Radio Session recording is any indication, the group is still capable of hitting that shambolic sweet spot at the Ottobar with Raindeer. Singer/songwriter/style maven Tammy Ealom and Denver’s Dressy Bessy, the band she’s put a mod suavity into since the late 1990s, always kinda felt like the power-pop middle child in the Elephant 6 group of latter-day folkie psych-pop, the ones sneaking Buzzcocks, Cheap Trick, and the Jam LPs onto the turntable when everybody else wasn’t taking notes while listening to Pet Sounds and Smile for the 138th time; the group rocks the Metro Gallery with Seattle’s Big Biteand PLRLS. Expect a swinging, straight-ahead vibe from the Yotam Ben-Or Quartet, led by the harmonica-playing young composer Ben-Or, plays An die Musik. Minneapolis’ After the Burialand Western Massachusetts’ Acacia Strainbring their take on barking, noodly metal to the Baltimore Soundstage with the progish Erra, the pop-adjacent metal outfitMake Them Suffer, and the locals in Emerge a Tyrant.
THURSDAY 04OCT Finnish conductor Hannu Lintuleads the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra through Sibelius’s symphonies No. 6 and No. 7 at the Meyerhoff Symphony Hall in a program that includes Hummel’s Trumpet Concerto and Penderecki’s Concertino for Trumpet and Orchestra, both featuring Norwegian trumpeter Tine Thing Helseth. Philadelphia’s indie-pop quartet the Chairman Danceshead into the Sidebar with Sullen Brotherand Mrs. Kitching.
Serpentwithfeet
COMING SOON Avant-soul experimenter Serpentwithfeettakes the Ottobar to Afrofuturistic church Oct. 10. Jazz giant Randy Westonpassed away Sept. 1; his bandmates in the Randy Weston African Rhythm Quartet—bassist Alex Blake, percussionist Neil Clarke, and saxophonist/flutist T.K.Blue—play a tribute to the late pianist Oct. 13 at An die Musik. Vancouver’s Needspounds the Undercroft Oct. 15 with Indictments. Unregestitered Nurse presents Crumb at the Metro Gallery Oct. 16.
Happy Ganesh Chaturthi. I know pretty much nothing about Hindu culture, so please let me know if I’m being disrespectful by typing, in my out loud voice, “Happy Ganesh Chaturthi.” I am modestly familiar with Ganesh, the elephant-headed lord of beginnings, the remover of obstacles, the patron of arts and sciences, the deva of intellect and wisdom—all of which makes him sound pretty righteous, and in 2018 the celebration of his birth began September 13. I have no idea what the appropriate, customary way to honor Ganesh is, so I’m going to be a lapsed Catholic heathen arts enthusiast and use the beginning of this episode of The Week This Week to point you to the Indian films opening/playing at Cinemark Egyptian 24 at Arundel Mills Mall, which remains the best theater in the region for popular foreign films from India, Latin America, the Philippines, and South Korea that don’t play art-house theaters: C/O Kancharapalem (in Telugu with English subtitles; see Times of Indiareview), Manmarziyan (in Hindi with English subtitles; see Times of Indiareview), U Turn (in Telugu with English subtitles; see Times of Indiareview), and Sailaja Reddy Alludu (in Telugu with English subtitles; see Times of Indiareview), which is also playing at Cinemark Towson. India released more than 1,900 films in 2017, in more than 20 languages; the U.S. and Canada released 724. And while its films didn’t bring in as much money as American films in 2017, $2.3 billion to $10.2 billion, global audiences bought nearly 3.5 billion tickets to Indian films; Hollywood nabbed about 2.5 billion tickets worldwide.
Ami Dang (stolen from her website)
FRIDAY SEP14 Ami Dang has been a bit more active recently in the duo Raw Silk with cellist Alexa Richardson, whose self-titled debut on Ehse Records has consistently delivered a gorgeous headphones trip over the summer. Dang the sitar ‘n’ beats producer, though, remains one of Baltimore’s underground pop gems, and her 2016 outing Uni Sun showcased an ever more sophisticated flair for fusing Indian melodies and pop beats, the stunning “Nazm” one of the more hypnotic doses of haunting pop that’ll ever make your ears trip balls; Dang plays a night of exploratory sound at Alchemy of Art with Dope Body/Scroll Downers percussion machine/electronics mood sculptor David Jacober and Clean Breast.
Also: Candice Hoyes has a voice that’ll drop your jaw, so know that when she performs a tribute to Billie Holiday at the Motor House, she’s coming correct. Monozine presents power-pop trio Jukebox the Ghost at Rams Head Live with the Greeting Committee. The Underside of Power, the 2017 sophomore outing from Atlanta’s avantrock&B powerhouse Algiers, almost seemed to reign in the knife-edged soulpunkgospel of the band’s 2015 self-titled debut, which sounded like what might happened if a southern church band spent a summer in a woodshed with nothing but their instruments, Fela and 1960s free jazz albums, and a cassette copy of a copy of copy of No New York; the zine EPs the group’s been Bandcamp releasing, though, show it hasn’t lost its ability to stun. Algiers shakes you out of your television coma at the Creative Alliance at the Patterson with the butt-moving experience of F-City. Akron’s rust-belt punk trio Southside Choir Boys corrode the Sidebar with locals Silver Gulls and Subtastics. The Phil Thomas Quintet plays two sets at An die Musik. You snoozed you, uh, lost on this one: JPEGMAFIA, now based in sunny Californ-i-a, sold out the Metro Gallery with Joy Again. Down in Washington, the first night of the Black Cat’s 25th anniversary shows starts up, with Subhumans, Ocampo Ocampo and Watt, Ted Leo, Des Demonas, Dagger Moon, Scanners, Honey, and Work Ethic.
The Obsessed (stolen from Bandcamp)
SATURDAY SEP15 New Orleans’ Eyehategod and Maryland’s the Obsessed aren’t merely veteran metal bands whose thundering oomph still packs a wallop, they’re a bunch of working musicians who have lived through some rough stretches of life’s shit, and like the Geto Boys’ Scarface, age has added deeper wrinkles to their already formidable sounds; their joint tour hits the Ottobar with, Tombs, Crow Hunter, and Earthworm Von Doom.
Also: Joyce Scott, Baltimore’s very own MacArthur genius, hosts Taste of Tuva at Towson University’s south campus pavilion, an evening of Asian music, art, and food, featuring the Tuvan throat singing group Alash Ensemble, Shodekeh, J. Pope, and Wendel Patrick. Ami Dang and Jacob Marley play Bollymore’s one year anniversary party at the Motor House. Kix, the pride of Hagerstown, rock your face off at Rams Head Live with Ever Rise. Eighteen-year-old Baton Rouge MC YoungBoy Never Broke Again stops by the MECU Pavilion.Local psychedelic pop outfit Strawberry Sleepover headlines the Cult Pop Carnival at the Crown with Spish, Albert Bagman, and Mess. Maestra Marin Alsop leads the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra through its season opening gala at the Meyerhoff Symphony Hall, which includes Strauss’s Till Eulenspiegel’s Merry Pranks and selections from Gershwin’s An American in Paris feauring Cynthia Ervio and emcee Wordsmith. Waldorf’s Flying Jacob plays an album release show for its new Renew at the Metro Gallery with the Chief End, Circuit Villans, and Night Hums. Trumpeter Charmaine Michelle and the Rodney Kelly Experience play a two show tribute to guitarists at An die Musik. Canada’s long-running punk-metal quartet Propagandhi complies/resists at Baltimore Soundstage with Iron Chic and Sharptooth. Down in DC, the second night of Black Cat’s 25h anniversary show features Ex Hex, Gray Matter, Hurry Up, Algiers, Hammered Hulls, Wanted Man, Foul Swoops, and I will see you there. And the District New Music Coalition, hosts its inaugural new music conference this weekend on the campus of Georgetown University. See its website for programming and more info about its Sunday afternoon concerts, featuring the District5 wind quartet and soloists from the Boulanger Initiative performing works by women composers.
SUNDAY SEP16 Pittsburgh’s indie-rock quartet The Zells chicken walk into Joe Squared with Philly’s Buster, DC’s Saturday Night, and and Coco&bananas. Classical pianist Ben Kim plays a 2 pm matinee at An die Musik; later, Chicago trumpeter Elliot Bild & The Zone take over the club. Rainbow-pop combo Arlie strikes me as the kind of band where somebody’s going to be playing the tambourine at some point during the set; the Nashville group strolls into the Ottobar with Strange New Shapes and the Last Year. Fellow Texan Rhett Miller not only looks like he’s barely aged since I first saw the Old 97’s perform at Club Dada in the ’90s, he’s matured into a thoughtful writer as well as singer/songwriter, and stops by Columbia’s the Soundry with Owen Danoff.
MONDAY SEP17 With its seventh album The Outer Ones due out later this month, Boston’s intricate metal combo Revocation kicks off its fall tour at Metro Gallery tonight with a really solid bill, featuring Exhumed, the modestly proggy death metal of Rivers of Nihil, and Yautja, a Nashville trio whose 2017 Dead Soil contains as much Void-y hardcore as it is does death-y metal. Pianist Joshua Espinoza and bassist Alex Meadow host the Monday jazz jam at An die Musik.
TUESDAY SEP18Secret Club, Tampa indie-rock outfit Pohgoh‘s first album in 21 years, sounds as crunchily confident and unfussy Superchunk’s return-after-a-hiatus Majesty Shredding, and as as unafraid to be touched by time: Club is as informed by a two-decade split from band life and guitarist/vocalist Susie Ulrey’s challenges since being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 2001; Pohgoh rocks the Metro Gallery with Thrushes and J Robbins. Seattle’s Slow Code pounds out an insistent post-hardcore intensity, and moments of its recent Wastelayer have a Three One G-ish/Drive Like Jehu edge to it; the trio stops by the Sidebar with Ex-Motorcylce Couriers, Meatbot, and Scuds. D.R.I. plays an all-ages show at the Ottobar with A Wilhelm Scream, Kaustik, and Babies With Rabies.
Katie von Schleicher (credit: Nick Jost)
WEDNESDAY SEP19 Brooklyn’s Celestial Shore singer/guitarist Sam Evian silkily slides into ’70s soft rock, summer road-trip mood on his sophomore solo outing You, Forever; he headlines the Metro Gallery tonight with Hexgirlfriends, and don’t sleep on tour mate Katie von Schleicher, whose recorded output—Silent Days, Bleaksploitation, last year’s Shitty Hits, and a 7-inch from earlier this year—has revealed her an expert in hijacking sounds, melodies, and moods from the popular American songbook for her own wrist-slittingly intoxicating downer pop. Philly hip-hop crew Jedi Mind Tricks is nine albums deep into a fairly prolific underground hip-hop career, and its latest, The Bridge and the Abyss, is a 19-track monster that sounds like it could’ve been put out by Def Jux in the early 2000s; JMT heads into the Ottobar with ex-Arsonists MC Q-Unique, whose new The Mechanic fucking stomps, Billy Lyve & Ill Luck, Laurel’s Nasa 8, local veterans DJ Mills and DJ Harvey Dent.
Ohmme (credit: Alexa Viscius)
COMING SOON Tickets went on sale this morning for for Animal Collective performing Tangerine Reef at the Baltimore Parkway Theatre Nov. 9, presented by Monozine. Super City plays a CD-release show at the Ottobar Sep. 29 with Vita the Woolf. Chicago art-rock duo Ohmme comes to the Metro Gallery Oct. 1 with Renata Zeiguer. Maxwell‘s 50 Intimate Nights tour stops by the MECU Pavilion Oct. 6. Jazz-punk outfit Clang! makes noise at the Undercroft Oct. 10 with Brian Enemy. And Chris Brokaw and Thalia Zedek play the intimate Club 603 Oct. 13.
Akili Ron Anderson’s “Sankofa Woman” in “AfriCOBRA: The Evolution of a Movement” (Stolen from Galerie Myrtis website)
THE WEEK
FRI14SEP The third-annual Baltimore Podcast Festival occupies parts of the Crown, the Baltimore Improv Group, and the Windup Space today and Saturday, with a variety of live recordings. Check the fest’s Facebook events pages for who, where, and when.
SAT15SEPAfriCOBRA: The Evolution of a Movement opens at Galerie Myrtis Sep. 15 with a reception from 5-7 p.m. The African Commune of Bad Relevant Artists, aka AfriCOBRA, started in Chicago in 1968 and added equal parts intellectual and visual oomph to the Black Arts Movement. Don’t miss.
SUN16SEP Lynne Parks talks Lights Out Baltimore at the Fleckstein Gallery from 1-3 p.m. Local artist Parks is the outreach coordinator for Lights Out Baltimore, a volunteer organization of local birdwatchers working to make the city safe for migratory birds by advocating turning off decorative lighting so that birds don’t fly into glass buildings and die. Parks talks about the organization this afternoon at the Fleckstein Gallery, which is currently showcasing Deborah Donelson’s art in The Living Sky.
MON17SEP The UMBC Humanities Forum presents Carolina Guerrero’s “Breaking the Language Barrier One Story at a Time” at the Albin O. Kuhn Library Gallery at 4 p.m.Guerrero is the executive director of NPR’s 2014 Gabriel García Márquez Prize for Innovation in Journalism award-winning Spanish-language podcast Radio Ambulante, and she’ll talk about telling Latinx American stories, in America, in Spanish.
TUE18SEPCarolee Schneemann speaks at MICA Brown Center Sep. 18 at 4 p.m. as part of the Mount Royal School of Art Visiting Artist Lecture series. “I’m of the opinion that we don’t necessarily need so many artists. I recommend that many of the people who think they want to be artists should go into the [American] Friends Service Committee, or do government outreach to communities that don’t have water, or that need seeds or ecological assistance. It would create a system in which people with engaged sensibilities and potential insight assist instead of imposing. I think it could leap right out of the art world into wonderful community action, just like the kind that happens in cities where small groups begin to revitalize a space with action, with information, with graffiti.” — Schneemann, in conversation with Pipilotti Rist, Interview, Oct. 16, 2017.
WED19SEPWet-N-Wild Wednesdays at Club Bunns, 9 p.m.-2 a.m. Erika Chloe Adams hosts this first and third Wednesday of every month event promises the “best male exotic show in Baltimore;” show starts at 11:30 p.m.
The Battle of Algiers
MOVIES, REPARATORY FILMS & SCREENINGS
My Art at the Baltimore Parkway Sep. 14 at 7 p.m. Artist Laurie Simmons directs and stars in this drama about a woman artist moving into video art in her 60s. Josh Safdie, Barbara Sukowa, veteran character actor John Rothman, and the great Parker Posey co-star. Simmons appears in a Q&A conversation with Rothman following the screening. See Cara Ober’s interview with Simmons at Bmore Art.
The Breakfast Club at the Canton Branch of the Enoch Pratt Free Library, Sep. 15 at 11 a.m. “When my daughter proposed watching ‘The Breakfast Club’ together, I had hesitated, not knowing how she would react: if she would understand the film or if she would even like it. I worried that she would find aspects of it troubling, but I hadn’t anticipated that it would ultimately be most troubling to me.” —Molly Ringwald, writing in The New Yorker, April 6, 2018.
Captain America: The First Avenger at the Southeast Anchor Branch of the Enoch Pratt Free Library, Sep. 15 at 2 p.m. I’ve always faulted the modest box-office performance of this pulpy, throwback actioner for muting Hayley Atwell’s totally awesome Peggy Carter, who should be ruling some TV/movie universe right now. Also: it’s a story about a scrawny but scrappy everydude who becomes a superhero for the explicit purpose of punching Nazis.
La Familia at the Parkway Sep. 15 at 1:30 p.m. A father tries to protect his son from retribution in the slums outside Caracas in writer/director Gustavo Rondón Córdova’s gritty debut. Also Sep. 23 at 4 p.m.
Rendezvous in July at the Charles Theatre Sep. 15 at 11:30 a.m. Beautiful young people try to figure out what to do with themselves in Paris immediately after the second world war’s devastation in a restored print of Jacques Becker’s 1949 proto-New Wave movie, reaching American screens for the first time. Also Sep. 17 at 7 p.m. and Sep. 20 at 9:30 p.m.
California Split at the Senator Theatre Sept. 16 at 10 a.m. Robert Altman’s 1970s may be an American director’s strangest decade ever. Bookended by 1970’s career-making M*A*S*H and career-near-ending Popeye in 1980, in between were some of the finest films of the era, as well as some genuine head scratchers. His 1974 California Split sometimes gets lost amid Altman’s ’70s riches—Nashville, 3 Women, Brewster McCloud, McCabe & Mrs. Miller, and The Long Goodbye—but time has been kind to this deceptive buddy flick starring Elliot Gould and George Segal. It’s ostensibly a gambling comedy but feels more like a plunge into the economic desperation that underpins that big business we call America. Also Sept. 19 at 9:30 p.m.
Silent Light at the Parkway Sep. 16 at 4 p.m. Mexican filmmaker Carlos Reygadas’ lavishly austere 2007 drama about love, forgiveness, and faith in an isolated Mennonite community in Mexico would be a great film to revisit if you’re still chewing on Paul Schrader’s recent First Reformed. Screening as part of the the Latin American Cinema series.
Bloodsworth: An Innocent Man at the Orleans Street Branch of the Enoch Pratt Free Library Sep. 17 at 5:30 p.m. Gregory Bayne’s documentary about Kirk Noble Bloodsworth, the first death-row inmate exonerated by DNA evidence in the United States. In 1985 Bloodsworth was convicted of the rape and murder of 9-year-old Dawn Hamilton in Baltimore County; DNA testing led to his release in 1993, and new DNA evidence led to the Kimberly Shay Ruffner, who confessed to killing Hamilton. Bloodworth was exonerated in 2004.
The Battle of Algiers at the Parkway Theatre Sep. 17 at 7 p.m. Gillo Pontecorvo’s neorealist recreation of the Algerian National Liberation Front’s anti-colonial guerilla uprisings against the occupying French military and police not only remains a feat of incendiary, and inspiring, protest art, it invented the vérité action flick .
Death Wish at the Pennsylvania Avenue branch of the Enoch Pratt Free Library Sep. 17 at 5 p.m. Eli Roth’s remake of the 1974 Charles Bronson vigilante flick and arguable first stone in the rise of tough-on-crime politicians, from mayors up to presidents, stars Bruce Willis, was penned by the entertainingly ridiculous action screenwriter Joe Carnahan, and lasted about a day in theaters. If you’ve seen, you know why. Woof.
I Am Not Your Negro at the Senator Theatre Sep. 17 at 7 p.m. Raoul Peck’s documentary explores racism in America as inspired by James Baldwin’s unfinished Remember this House.
Mind Game at the Parkway Sep. 17 at 7 p.m. Masaaki Yuasa’s 2004 directing debut is an anime adaptation of Robin Nishi’s manga about an aspiring young comic book artist’s metaphysical encounter with his childhood crush and the yakuza. Fear takes the shape we’re willing to give it.
American Graffiti at the Senator Sep. 19 at 7:30 p.m. George Lucas’ mash-note to growing up in early 1960s California is possibly ground zero in nostalgic Baby Boomer monoculture that has moved from choking the life out of popular culture to choking the life out of government.
American Horror Storyviewing party hosted by Lyric Bordeaux at Mixers Sep. 19. OK, yes, not a movie, but if you’re going to watch American Horror Story: Apocalypse, the upcoming seventh season of Ryan Murphy’s FX anthology show, if there’s a better place to do so than at a neighborhood gay bar on Belair Road, god is keeping that secret to herself.
Baltimore Parkway Theatre Opening/playing Sep. 14-17 (see website for dates & times): 2001: A Space Odyssey (the Parkway’s Kubrick 90 series continues with the Christopher Nolan-supervised 4K restoration of this 1968 wiggy, sci-fi trip through inner and outer space); Cocote (a gardener travels to his home village following his father’s death and is pushed to consider revenge in Dominican Republic filmmaker Nelson Carlo de Los Santos Arias’ first non-documentary feature); Don’t Leave Home (an American artist travels to Ireland to investigate a missing girl and the artist priest who painted her portrait in writer/director Michael Tully’s gothic horror flick); Mandy (Director Panos Cosmatos’ arty horror actioner unleashes the full Nicholas Cage).
V. Savoy McIIwain as Sweeney Todd in Rep Stage’s current production.
STAGE
The Institute of Visionary History and the Archives of the Deep Now opens at the Peale Sep. 13 at 7 p.m.; this is Submersive Productions‘ latest immersive, intimate theater experience, predicated on the notion that was once an Institute of Visionary History and its archives are shaping the experience. This first episode involves Harriet Tubman. YMMV, and it can feel a bit LARPy at times, but Submersive is pretty consistent at this, and the whole idea here is a wee bit steampunky. Every Thursday through Sunday through Sep. 27.
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof opens at Center Stage Sep. 13. Judith Ivey directs Tennessee Williams’ Pulitzer prize-winning 1955 play about a wealthy Mississippi family going all kinds of southern and rich over the course of a drinky evening and the lower-class young woman who married into it. Through Oct. 14.
Dancing at Lughnasa at Everyman Theater.Amber Paige McGinnis directs this version of playwright Brian Friel’s 1990 drama follows the lives of five sisters in late 1930s rural Ireland as their priest older brother returns from missionary work. Through Oct. 7.
Luther at Arena Players. Writer/director Randolph Smith’s portrait of quiet storm legend Luther Vandross returns to the venerable McCulloh Street theater. Through Sept. 30.
Shakespeare’s R&J at Vagabond Players. Playwright Joe Calarco sets his version of the star-crossed romantic tragedy at an all-boys Catholic boarding school, where four adolescent boy-men go searching for the naughty bits and start acting the play out. Through Sept. 30.
Putin On Ice (that isn’t the real title of this show) opens at Single Carrot Theatre. I have absolutely no idea what to expect from the Acme Corporation playwright Lola Pierson’s latest, and that’s exciting. Read Brandon Block’s Q&A with Pierson and director Yury Urnov at the Baltimore Fishbowl. Through Oct. 7.
VISUAL ART
A Designed Life opened at UMBC’s CADVC Sep 13. UMBC associate professor Margaret Re curated this exhibition, which focuses on American textile, wallpapers, containers, and packaging commissioned by the U.S. Department of State in the early 1950s to tour Europe to promote democratic ideas. Through Dec. 8.
Madelein Keesing: Refractions and Sally Egbert: Dust of Summer opened at Goya Contemporary Sep. 13. In previous Goya exhibitions, both Keesing and the Egbert have showcased intense, large-scale abstractions. Through Oct. 30.
Abstract Perspectives, an exhibition featuring the work of Se Jong Cho, Thomas Dahlberg, and Jodi Ferrier, opens at the Montpelier Arts Center in Laurel Sep. 14 with a reception from 7-9 p.m.Through Oct 28.
Find Your Voice: Art and Activism panel at the Waller Gallery Sep. 15 from 4-7 p.m. Featuring Valeria Fuentes (founder, Roots and Raices), Mia Loving (co-founder of Invisible Majority), Bilphena Yahwon (Restorative Response Baltimore), and moderated by gallery director Joy Davis. Waller’s current exhibition, Joaquin Esteban Jutt: We Are Not Voiceless, runs through Oct. 5.
Pooneh Maghazehe: Split Double Zero and Aurelia opens at Resort Sep. 15 with a reception from 6-9 p.m.Aurelia is a group show featuring Sophia Belkin, Gabriella Grill, Amy Stober, and Sarah Tortora, while Zero is an extension of Maghazehe’s current installation at 17ESSEX in New York. Through Oct. 20.
Antonio McAfee delivers an artist’s talk at ICA Baltimore Sep. 15 from 1-2 p.m. about his current exhibition, Theme and Variation. Exhibition through Sep. 23.
Joseph Paul Cassar: Balancing Act opens Sep. 15 at the Ynot Gallery with a reception from 5-9 p.m. The Maltese artist and art historian displays paintings, drawings, and collages, and delivers an artist talk Oct. 13. Through Oct. 20.
Photographer Sierra Haynes’s Breathing Space opens Sep. 17 at the MICA Piano Gallery.Through Oct. 12.
Ceramicist Connor Czora’s Clay Americana opens Sep. 17 at the MICA Pinkard Gallery.Through Oct. 12.
Visual art, ongoing
Baltimore: Beneath the Surface opens at the Eubie Blake Cultural Center, featuring street photographers Lashelle Bynum and Angelia Carter. Through Nov. 3.
Depth of Field at UMBC’s Albin O. Kuhn Library Gallery,features about 100 pieces acquired over the last decade years by UMBC’s Photography Collections. Through Dec. 19.
Pointing at the Sun | An Exercise in Abstraction. Featuring David Brown, Zoë Charlton, Stephen Hendee, Terence Hannum, Bill Schmidt, Ariel Cavalcante Foster, Ruri Yi, Mono Practice is a new gallery founded by Yi, co-directed by Guest Spot @ The Reinstitute‘s Rod Malin. Gorgeous space, solid debut show, and the Charlton, Foster, Hannum, and Schmidt works are fucking exquisite. Through Oct. 13.
Hateful Things at the Reginald F. Lewis Museum of African History and Culture,a traveling exhibit curated by the Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia at Ferris State University that documents more than 150 years of racist and anti-Black imagery and material culture. Through Oct. 14.
Isla: Regarding Paradise at Towson University’s Center for the Arts Gallery. Jackie Milad curates this group show that explores the notion of “paradise” as it usually refers to the islands of Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic. Through Oct. 20.
Survival Bias and Floating on Mended Boats at Current Space. Bias features artists Brittany De Nigris and Adam Milner; Floating is a solo exhibition off Seth Adelsberger‘s paintings from a recent residency in Kenya. Through Sep. 29.
CLUBS/NIGHTS
SEP. 14 |Josh Stokes and DJ Ellen Paul hold down the free Pump dance party at the Crown, and DJ Big Thad spins at the Crown’s HipHop + R&B Dance Party. DJ Hemlock and DJ Solanine bring goth, industrial, and EBM to the Depot for Toxicity. Cospop Productions goes Looney Tunes burlesque for its Cartoons After Dark performance at the Windup Space. And following the closing of the Baltimore Eagle, Grand Central has turned its Loft over to leather community every Friday and Saturday.
SEP. 16 |Pariah Sinclair and Sextia N’Eight host the Bloody Sunday: A Night Drag event at the Windup Space including performances by Anastasia Belladonna, Onyx D’Pearl, and Molly Boro, with pitches of mimosas only a dangerous $14 all night long.
SEP. 19 |Dubmelt brings a slew of low-end to the Depot with R3.No.B.
COMEDY
SEP. 14 |Craig Gass at the Ottobar with Mickey Cucchiella, Beth Haydon, and Eric Navarro.
SEP. 15 | Pariah Sinclair hosts Scandalous Saturdays at the Sidebar featuring queens Shaunda Leer, Shawnna Alexander, and Bombalicious Eklaver and comics Daniel Noble and Violet Gray.
SEP. 17 |Dark Mark Joiner hosts the Open Mic Night at the Sidebar.
Local author Dr. Kerri Moseley-Hobbs talks about her historical novel historical novel More Than a Fraction at the Edmonson Avenue Branch of the Enoch Pratt Free Library Sep. 15 from 2-4 p.m.
Washington Post political columnist Dana Millbank delivers the 2018 Mencken Memorial Lecture at the Enoch Pratt Free Library Sep. 15 at 2 p.m.
WEDNESDAY 05 Sept. In a city where artists do many things well, Abdu Ali is one of the more thoughtfully nimble multi hyphenates. As the founding curator/organizer of the Khalon party, they created an exploratory space for fellow radical musical genre benders and politically astute soundspeakers, and their podcast drum BOOTY is an Afrofuturistic motherboard exploring contemporary black experience. Their music has always been Ali’s most arresting cultural output, an head-spinning alloy of Baltimore club, hip-hop, and dance music that flirts with futuristic jazz and techno dressed down in maximalist sheen. Ali plays the Metro tonight with Philadelphia’s W00dy, Kotic Couture, and Pamela_ and her sons, before heading down to the Hopscotch Music Fesitval in North Carolina this weekend.
Also: Montreal’s Ought reveald itself adept at molding its angular art punk into almost new wave-y pop on its third album, Room Inside the World, and the quartet explores disgrace in America at the Ottobar with the reformed Swearin’, the power-punk outfit featuring Allison Crutchfield, and local bedroom-pop trio Outer Spaces. Sandcathcers, a New York band consisting of oud, lap steel, bass, and drums, and Erik Friedlander’s cello hauntingly interweaving Middle Eastern and American folk music, stops by 4 Hour Day Luthier (4305 Harford Road) in Beverly Hills with local finger-picking guitarist Pergola. Boston’s very Bostony named Chuggernaut plays a disarmingly solid brand of groove-oriented sludge rock on its recent five-song EP Kodiak, and delivers a control burn to the Depot with Takoma Park trio Myopic, Easton’s Side With Villains, and Centreville’s A Flood of Flames.
Ex Hex
THURSDAY 06 Sept. Guitarists Eric Arn and Margaret Unknown have trod their own idiosyncratic paths into free improv and exploratory acoustic guitar figures; their debut duo outing, Paranza Corta, recently issued by the indispensable Feeding Tube Records brings to mind such hallucinatory guitar duo albums as those Alan Licht and Loren MazzaCane Connors collaborations Mercury and Two Nights, less for any sonic similarity than the level of interplay between the two artists. Arn and Unknown land at the True Vine with Superflower and Plake 64 and the Hexagrams.
Also:Ex Hex, guitarist Mary Timony’s whip-sharp trio with drummer Laura Harris and bassist Betsy Wright, rips up the Ottobar with NYC trio EZTV, who traffic in pretty solid C86-era indie-pop, and the intoxicating downer noise-pop of locals Romantic States. If the Physique playing Sidebar tonight with Flower, Syringe, and Bustdown is the Olympia, Wa., combo responsible for the eight-song EP Punk Life is Shit from earlier this year, come prepared for a righteously blistering slice of Discharge-y crustpunk. Tune-Yards headlines WTMD’s free, final First Thursday Festival of the summer at Canton Waterfront Park with Fantastic Negrito, singer/songwriter Jackie Greene, dream-pop harpist Mikaela Davis, and more. The resurrected Dead Boys get loud and snotty at the Metro with the Cramps-y Austin duo the Ghost Wolves and the local street punk of Ravagers. Pianist Benito Gonzelez and his trio—bassist Herman Burney and drummer Lee Pearson—plays a two show tribute to pianist McCoy Tyner at An die Musik. Local alt-country, folk, and bluegrass combo D.T. Huber and Whale Show play the free honky tonkin’ show upstairs at the Ottobar; dancer Amanda Stearns offers two-stepping lessons before and between sets. And late on Wednesday evening, Unregistered Nurse announced a last-minute Mac DeMarco secret show tonight at Rams Head Live.
Deaf Wish (Sub Pop)
FRIDAY 07 Sept. Australia’s Deaf Wishcrank out a variety pack of postpone snarl and groove on its recent Lithium Zion (Sub Pop), scratching out a circa-Evol Sonic Youthy burr and sneer one moment, a Dustdevils-y sprawl the next. Unregistered Nurse presents the Melbourne quintet at Joe Squared with the postpunky noise-rock of Pittsburgh’s the Gotobeds, Muscle, and Oakland’s Patti.
Also:Gang Gang Dance‘s ambient pop Paxils the Metro with Deakin and DJ Brandon Carlo. Germany’s Excrementory Grindfuckers is exactly the kind of over-the-top theatrical grindcore act that should be headling something called the Baltimore %&*fest at the Depot with the equally ridiculous local duo Earthworm von Doom (sample song from its recent 8279: “Bro, Why is That Light On?”), Cann’d, Roanoke’s Gaffer Project, Cemetery Bastard, and, well Fukbut. Local indie-rock outfit Surhoff gallops into the Sidebar with Pennsylvania’s Wawaset and the lo-fi Yes Selma. We Three—the trio of locals John Lamkin III (drums) and Kris Funn (bass) with veteran guitarist Mark Whitfield—play two sets at An die Musik. Maryland indie rock band Outside Smoke plays a EP-release show at the Ottobar with Thunder Club, Normandy Wood, Strange Attractor, and A-Language.
JaneliaSoul (stolen from her Facebook page)
SATURDAY 08 Sept. Baltimore-based Nigerian-American artist JaneliaSoul makes contemporary neosxoul that’s as touched by afrobeat and reggae as it is by classic R&B; she plays the Westport Block Party, which runs from 3:30-6:30 p.m. at the Westport Academy (2401 Nevada Street), as part of Baltimore office of Promotion and the Arts SoBo Summer Music Series. Brooklyn’s indie-rocking Ritual Talk and dream-popping Ackerman hit the Crown with Strange Attractor. Los Tiki Phantoms, a surf band from Barcelona that can lay down a shimmering garage stomp, fires up the Ottobar with New Jersey’s the Primitive Finks and locals the Bali Lamas, and the Phantom Killers, whose 2016 demos of no-fi monster movie punk you can score for the nice price of $6.66. The Vincent Herring Quartet—featuring pianist Kevin Brown, dummer Joe Farnsworth, bassist John Weber, and Herring on tenor sax—swings at the Caton Castle. All Pigs Must Die—the hardcore collaboration featuring the Hope Conspiracy’s Kevin Baker, Converge’s Ben Koller, and Bloodhorse’s Adam Wentworth and Matt Woods—brings it caustic vision to Metro with DC’s sludge-y Ilsa, NJ’s Homewrecker, and Philadelphia’s Backslider. Doom-y duo Yatra‘s smoke is rising at the Sidebar with Et Mors and Virginia’s most excellently named trio Foehammer. Classical guitarist Ana Vidovic tends to favor the romantic and post-romantic composers who celebrated the guitar’s rich register and moods that’ll be familiar to fans of the instrument, but she’s a focused interpreter and performer with an ability to illuminate anew tunes and melodies you’ve heard many times before; she plays An die Musik tonight. Soulfly and Cavalera Conspiracy guitarist Mark Rizzo shreds Reverb with Crow Hunter, Berkana, and Molldyer. Oh, and Hamdenfest 2018 takes over Hamdenlandia; there’s bands, beer, and toilets.
Seventh August (stolen from the band’s Facebook)
SUNDAY 09 Sept. Local touring musician B&B Feed the Scene hosts a 3 p.m. metal matinee at the Depot featuring Drowning Ares, Seventh Autumn, and more. Brooks Long and the Mad Dog No Good got soul at Metro with the indie-pop or Lushpockets and DJ Rod Macy. For his recent album Book of Travelers, NYC composer and singer/songwriter Gabriel Kahane chatted with people on the train ride from New York to Chicago the day after the 2016 presidential election; his current tour makes a whistle stop at the Creative Alliance at the Patterson. Wiggy Brooklyn J-pop band Love Spread gets noisy at the Crown with Mavis Beacon and local noise-pop project Blood on the Mercy Seat. The industrial bump and grind concocted by ohGr doesn’t deviate that much from vocalist Nivek Ogre and writer/producer Mark Walk’s previous band, Skinny Puppy, though ohGr favors more pop-friendly songs and sounds over SP’s dancefloor electro-goth; Tricks (2018), ohGr’s fifth album, even flirts with outright synthpop. ohGr gets freaky at the Baltimore Soundstage tonight with Lead into the Gold, the side-project of Ministry bassist Paul Baker that delivers a pretty satisfying Wolfgang Press-ish wallop of industrial thump, the darkwave pop of Omniflux (the nom music of Los Angeles Mahsa Zargaran, whose recent Aquarelle has moments of Fennez-y blissout), and DJ Hemlock.
MONDAY 10 Sept. Killing Joke has piloted one of the more curious paths of English postpunk bands. Its 1980 self-titled debut souned like a heavier PiL or Gang of Four and became a cornerstone for a handful of ’80s metal bands, while KJ’s later output moved through shades of goth, industrial metal, and experimental hybrids of all of the above, all laced with an anxious tension that consistently feels like a metal rod that’s about to snap. Th band’s 40th anniversary tour hits Baltimore Soundstage with Pig. Charles Funn leads the Dunbar Alumni Jazz Band through the works of Duke Ellington, Billy Strayhorn, “Count” Basie, Earth, Wind & Fire’s Maurice White, and more during their monthly Monday night at An die Musik.
TUESDAY 11 Sept. Brazilian metal outfit Angra has been around since the early ’90s, and does a rather solid, noddly-proggy update of that NWOBHM twin-guitar attack, if that’s your thing, at Baltimore Soundstage with Bucharest’s a bit more poppy metal quartet Scarlet Aura and Essex’s very own Offensive. The Control, Young Rudiger, and metal guitarist-&-drum-machine solo act Pamela Stashak lay down the riffs at the Sidebar. Canada’s jittery new wave-y quartet Preoccupations eases into the Metro with local indie-pop trio Raindeer. Real Estate sold out the Ottobar with Wet Tuna.
WEDNESDAY:12 Sept. Black Stone Cherry‘s “Lonely Train” from 2009 is a rare bird, a classic-slash-Southern-rock anti-war song that delivers on both fronts. The hard-rocking Kentucky quartet is obnoxiously adept at wrapping bluesy, butt-rocking hooks around singer/guitarist Chris Robertson’s twangy, white-boy howl, and the band doesn’t try to fix what ain’t broke on Family Tree, its recent sixth album. Black Stone Cherry rides into the Baltimore Soundstage with fellow Kentuckians Otis, whose Eyes of the Sun has enough shuffle and groove to make any ZZ Top fan nod in appreciation. Kentucky is all over Baltimore tonight, with Louisville metal quartet Stonecutters smashing into the Depot with Mangog and Frederick’s math-y Gloop. Tilian Pearson, who provides the pop harmonies in the odd rock band Dance Gavin Dance, brings his super-polished pop to the Ottobar for a 6 p.m. all-ages show with Royal Coda, Andres, Sunsleep, and DC’s proggy, indie-poppy Body Thief.
WED05SEP: D Convo #94: Artists, Architects, and Making Space for the Arts at the Motor House Showroom Bar, 6-8 p.m. The latest installment of arguably the longest-running local forum for discussing that intersection of the built environment and economic development features presentation/conversations among Renata Southard of Autotroph Design and Aran Keating talking about finding a forever home for the Baltimore Rock Opera Society; SM+P Architects Ron Masotta and the Peale Center executive director Nancy Proctor; and painter/architect Jerome Gray.
THUR06SEP: The Fourth annual Baltimore Taxidermy Open at the Walters Art Museum, from 5-8:30 p.m., in conjunction with Bazaar, allows visitors to get up close and personal with conventional and not-so-conventional works of preserved natural history specimens.
FRI07SEP: Nick Cannon’s Wild ‘N Out Live tour hits Royal Farms Arena, featuring stand-up sets/imrpvo highjinx from the MTV show’s cast, including DC Young Fly, IamZoie, Emmanuel Hudson, Justina Valentine, Conceited, Chico Bean, Hitman Holla, Charlie Clips, DJ D-Wrek and Rip Micheals, and musical guests Rick Ross and Jadakiss.
SUN09SEP: The Windup Movie Club’s free Long Pig Double Feature begins at 7 p.m.; to be perfectly honest, I have no idea what’s going on here, but any movie club that’s grouping “two great films that correlate in one way or another” under the rubric “long pig” has my attention.
MON10SEP: Black Panther screens for free at the Enoch Pratt Free Library Canton branch at 5:15 p.m.
TUE11SEP: Composer/trumpeter Theljon Allen leads a free open jam session at the Motor House.
Ed Wood at the Senator Theatre Sept. 5 at 7:30 p.m., Sept. 9 at 10 a.m., and Sept. 11 at 9:30 pm. Before Johnny Depp’s life/career took its recent turn into TMZland, he was a gifted interpreter of social misfits, and while he may be more beloved for his turns in Edward Scissorhands and What’s Eating Gilbert Grape, his open-hearted portrayal of America’s greatest bad director in Tim Burton’s 1994 mash note remains a startling reminder of Depp’s ability to love a sincere oddball with every beat of his heart. Also: Martin Landau’s Bela Lugosi is one of the finest examples of a great character actor’s ability to find the vulnerable human inside a bona fide movie legend. Pull the string.
Dan Savage’s Hump! festival stops by the Creative Alliance Sept. 6-8. Yes, it’s what happens when you crowdsource short porn films, and consistently more entertaining than that description suggests.
The Last Movie At the Charles Theatre Sept. 6, 9 p.m. Dennis Hopper’s 1971 fever dream—a loopy, experimental anti-Western possibly about the failed making of a Western—remained one of 1970s New Hollywood unseen legends for nearly two decades; its recent full 4K restoration gorgeously revived Lazlo Kovacs’ cinematography and I don’t think a major studio has ever released a film as obstinately defiant of commercial film language, standards, and expectations.
BioKids at the Windup Space Sept. 6 at 7 p.m. Trash flicks and cult epics series Mondo Baltimore presents this howlingly odd 1990 Filipino film that feels like a Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers parody involving a gang of kids battling a—no, really—crime lord party clown.
Bus Stop at the Charles Sept. 8 at 11:30 a.m.The Misfits is, by far, Marilyn Monroe’s best dramatic role, but her turn in this adaptation of William Inge’s play is an early example of her underused range, playing an under-talented cabaret singer who is, well, creepily harassed by who’s supposed to be a socially awkward cowboy but who we can recognize today as a pretty typical stalker. And, yes, this 1956 film is still often referred to as a romantic comedy. Also Sept. 10 at 7 p.m. and Sept. 13 at 9:30 p.m.
Moana screens at Calvert Street Park (2201 N. Calvert) Sept. 8 as part of city’s Department of Recreation and Parks‘ Rhythm and Reels series (see PDF).
Black Memorabilia at the Reginald F. Lewis Museum of African American History and Culture Sept. 9, 2 p.m. Director Chico Colvard‘s documentary follows who makes and profits profits from the ongoing manufacturing of racist objects in today’s global economy. Presented in conjunction with the late Marlon Riggs‘ Emmy-winning 1987 documentary, Ethnic Notions.
California Split at the Senator Theatre Sept. 12 at 7 p.m. Robert Altman’s 1970s may be an American director’s strangest decade ever. Bookended by 1970’s career-making M*A*S*H and career-near-ending Popeye in 1980, in between were some of the finest films of the era, as well as some genuine head scratchers. His 1974 California Split sometimes gets lost amid Altman’s ’70s riches—Nashville, 3 Women, Brewster McCloud, McCabe & Mrs. Miller, and The Long Goodbye—but time has been kind to this deceptive buddy flick starring Elliot Gould and George Segal. It’s ostensibly a gambling comedy but feels more like a plunge into the economic desperation that underpins that big business we call America. Also Sept. 16 at 10 a.m. and Sept. 19 at 9:30 p.m.
STAGE
Angela Delfini Explains It All for You, a one-woman show created by Italian actress, dancer, and clown Delfini and the New York-based physical comedian John Towsen, takes over the Theatre Project on Sept. 6 and 7.
Dancing at Lughnasa opens Sept. 4 at Everyman Theater.Amber Paige McGinnis directs this version of playwright Brian Friel’s 1990 drama follows the lives of five sisters in late 1930s rural Ireland as their priest older brother returns from missionary work. Through Oct. 7.
Luther opens at Arena Players Sept. 7. Writer/director Randolph Smith’s portrait of quiet storm legend Luther Vandross returns to the venerable McCulloh Street theater. Through Sept. 30.
Shakespeare’s R&J opens at Vagabond Players Sept. 7. Playwright Joe Calarco sets his version of the star-crossed romantic tragedy at an all-boys Catholic boarding school, where four adolescent boy-men go searching for the naughty bits and start acting the play out. Through Sept. 30.
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street opens at Rep Stage Sept. 7. Can’t lie: I’m fully expecting deliciously macabre things from Joseph W. Ritsch directing Stephen Sondheim’s tasty human pie horrorshow with music direction from Stacey Antoine. Through Sept. 23.
Wasted at the Peale Sept. 7. Oli (Will Hearle) and Emma (Serena Jennings) crash into each other at the tail end of boozing from pub to club and end up at back at Oli’s flat, each almost blackout drunk. Center Stage presents writer/director Kat Woods uncomfortable exploration of consent tonight at the Peale. 8 p.m.
The 24-Hour Play Slam at Morgan State University’s Murphy Fine Arts Center Sept. 8 at 7 p.m. A group of plays go from page to stage in a day in the free Theater Morgan event.
Unlucky Soldier opens at the Downtown Cultural Arts Center (401 N. Howard St.) Sept. 8. The Theatrical Mining Company produces playwright Robert Garcia’s latest as part of the Baltimore Playwrights Festival. Through Sept. 23.
Putin On Ice (that isn’t the real title of this show) opens at Single Carrot Theatre Sept. 12. I have absolutely no idea what to expect from the Acme Corporation playwright Lola Pierson’s latest, and that’s exciting. Through Oct. 7.
VISUAL ART
Pointing at the Sun | An Exercise in Abstraction opens at Mono Practice Sept. 6. Featuring David Brown, Zoë Charlton, Stephen Hendee, Terence Hannum, Bill Schmidt, Ariel Cavalcante Foster, Ruri Yi, Mono Practice is a new gallery founded by Yi, co-directed by Guest Spot @ The Reinstitute‘s Rod Malin. Reception 6-9 p.m., Sept. 6.
Isla: Regarding Paradise opens at Towson University’s Center for the Arts Gallery Sept. 6. Jackie Milad curates this group show that explores the notion of “paradise” as it usually refers to the islands of Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic. The show includes a series of artists talks, with Gabriela Salazar up first Sept. 6 at 6:30 p.m. Reception Sept. 6, 7:30-9 p.m.
Just East of the Harbor opens at the Capitol Lounge (1531 Pennsylvania Ave.) Sept. 7 from 4-7 p.m., featuring the works of Jessy DeSantis, Monique Dove, Bryan Robinson, Andre Hines Jr., Mikea Hugley, and Ashley Huff Jr., and Akan Udoh.
Survival Bias and Floating on Mended Boats open at Current Space Sept. 7. Bias features artists Brittany De Nigris and Adam Milner; Floating is a solo exhibition off Seth Adelsberger‘s paintings from a recent residency in Kenya. Reception Sept. 7, 7-10 p.m.
Maren Hassinger performs as part of her The Spirit of Things exhibition at the Baltimore Museum of Art Sept. 8, 3-4:30 p.m.
COMEDY
Camirin Farmer and Collin Baker at the CrownSept. 6 with Ian Salyers, Chris Hudson, Eric Glaeser, Dark Mark Joyner, and Michael Furr.
Dan Perlman headlines Gin & Jokes at Joe Squared Sept. 6.
Miz Jaxxxn delivers a one-woman comedy show at the Motor House Sept. 7.
Jordan Raybould and Bret Raybould hit Joe Squared Sept. 8.
The Second Saturday S#!t Show hits the Ottobar Sept. 8 with headliner Sean Savoy and , Rose Vineshank, Kim Ambrose, Kiragu Beauttah, Ian Salyers, Kurt Ryan, and Mike Quindlen.
Michael Ian Black, who has opinions on things, closes for local comedian Christine Ferrara at the Ottobar Sept. 9 with Michael Moran.
Dark Mark Joiner hosts the open mic at the Sidebar Sept. 10.
Art of Comedy open mic hits the Motor House Sept. 12.
In case there’s any confusion, the above is not an endorsement, more an alert to where certain kinds of (probably white dudebro) men may be on a certain day, at a certain time, for a certain reason.
Duchess and the Dead Birds (stolen from the band’s FB page).
WEDNESDAY 29 Aug. The guitar reverb and languid pace puts a whiff of the psychedelic ’60s into the six songs on Duchess and the Dead Birds’Worlds Collide debut EP, released in July, but vocalist Julia Flaccavento’s has the unbashful presence of a country singer and guitarists Ryan Snyder and David Lambert aren’t merely mining jangle pop’s Rickenbacker shimmer, inching D&tDB closer to bands who took what they wanted from the Byrds, et al.—see also: the Paisley Underground, any of the Elephant 6 bands—to craft their own kinda psych pop; the local quintet is joined by the Linwood Light Collective for its show at the Sidebar with postpunk duo Shimmers and the one-dude garage-rock band Vampire Beat.
Also: North by North puts a garage-rock stomp behind its otherwise hooky indie-pop on its 2016 album Last Days of Magic, and the Chicago duo brings its kerosene dream to the Crown with locals HexGirlfriends, Mothpuppy, and Medium Cheetah. Wolf Parade sold out the Ottobar with Outcalls. Mosquito Drone plays the Depot with Pussy Talk, Chumpus Khan, and synth duo Data Recovery Project.
Sissy Spacek’s Pitched Intervention
THURSDAY 30 Aug. For going on 20 years now musician/composer/artist John Wiese has collaborated with a number of experimental musicians and noise makers, sculpting everything from lurching grindcore to twitching electronics tapestries, sonic noise assaults to ambient-smeared techno, like the recent “Scramble Suit/e” collaboration with Matmos’ Drew Daniel, whose video, directed by M.C. Schmidt, premiered this week (that track is from the Daniel and Wiese album, Continuous Hole (Gilgongo Records), available here). Since about 1999 Wiese has crafted evolving variations of noise music as Sissy Spacek, which has included drummer/electronics musician Charlie Mumma for about a decade; they’ve unleashed four–and counting–albums this year, ranging from the ambient gurgling of Pitched Intervention to the Ruins-ish assault of Ways of Confusion. The duo’s 20th-anniversary tour hits No Land Beyond with Tara Fournier’s mighty Beastmaster and Bodies.
FRIDAY 31 Aug. House music veteran Ron Trent first started making his serious grooves while still in high school in late 1980s Chicago, and the Prescription Records imprint he cofounded with Chez Damier in the early 1990s is a treasure trove of deep house cuts (see 2017’s Prescription: Word, Sound & Power for a taste). Trent rocks the Dark Room tonight with Deep Sugar co-host Lisa Moody, Feroun, and Benoit Benoit. Local adrenaline machine F City hits the Windup Space with the Americana-tinted garage rock of Hollywood Blanks, Miss Sara, and bedroom-folk duo Velvet Pines. MW9 is a relatively new jazz nonet co-led by Baltimore composer/trumpeter Leo Maxey and DC-based composer/reeds player Billy Wolfe; the ensemble is joined by local saxophone titan Gary Thomas for two shows at An die Musk. Follow Your Bliss plays an EP release show at the Metro Gallery with One Life to Lead, Bleed the Dream, Crosswinds, and Lotus Kid.
SATURDAY 01 Sept. R&B-slash-neo-soul artist Anthony Hamilton doesn’t seem to get anywhere near the love of a D’Angelo, John Legend, Maxwell, or Raheem DeVaugn, but in addition to possessing a voice that can make the angels weep he’s as talented a songwriter and producer as the unfuckwithable Raphael Saadiq, and that’s rare company. Hamilton takes you home at the MECU Pavilio (formerly Pier Six Pavilion) tonight with En Vogue, whose new Electric Café might not be a Funky Divas but shows the veteran group knows that a New Jack Swing beat can still send a jolt from the ears to the booty.
Also: Humanmania, Wolvesblood, Bust Down, and Olde Tigers play a benefit for the Baltimore chapter of Food Not Bombs at the Sidebar. Let’s knife: Japanese pop-punk outfit Shonen Knife originally formed in 1981–same year as the Beastie Boys–and twists Barbie at Ottobar with PLRLS, undersung local indie-rock trio Manners Manners, and local power-pop outfit the Creachies. Local power trio Phase Arcade‘s four-song EP of angular indie rock from earlier this year is totally worth buying, and the band plays the Crown with New Jersey’s Pine Barons and Nicky Smith, whose recent Universal Precautions finds the local indie auteur in a New Zealandish downer-pop mode; also at Crown: DJ James Nasty spins at the Sauce Party (no cover, no jerks). No, Please, EN’B, and Little Rib play acoustic sets for the For Our Fellow Babes: A Clothes Swap Fundraiser at the Undercroft. A batch of cover tribute bands–of Panic at the Disco, All Time Low, Blink-182, Fall Out Boy, Sum 41–play the Emo Show! at Baltimore Soundstage and no, no, no, no, no. Down in Washington, D.C., local experimental filmmaker Margaret Rorison collaborates with improv vet Audrey Chen as the opening set for Us, Today, Colla Parte, and Baltimore improv group Rest at Rhizome DC.
DJ Technics (stolen from Bandcamp)
SUNDAY 02 Sept. The Collective Minds Festival started up back in 2002 as an annual picnic for house music heads in the area; now in its fifteenth year it is one of the best free local music festivals of the summer. Local legends Teddy Douglas and DJ Technics celebrate house music at this year’s installment, taking place at the Baltimore Polytechnic Institute from noon-7 p.m., with DJ Speedy and Utopia, Quietboy and Househead, DJ Chris Brooks, and DJ Rudy Raw.
Also: Veteran local DJs and promoters Mike Crosby and Kenny K spin the “Official Baltimore Club Reunion” at Cancun Cantina in Hanover along with Sean Marshall, Marc Henry, DJ Jamal, DJ Titan, and DJ Dontae.
TUESDAY 04 Sept. Philadelphia quartet Empath leveled-up its pinwheeling punk on its recent EP, Liberating Guilt and Fear (Get Better Records), a bliss-inflected blast of uncontainable emotions, spiraling guitars, and political anxiety that’s kinda/sorta a noisier, poppier extrapolation of Ponytail’s Kamehameha. Unregistered Nurse presents Empath tonight at Joe Squared with the fucking great Joe Biden and Pinkwrench, whose Bruise EP is worth checking out. Also: Local bassist Mike Gary II’s quartet–drummer Allen Branch, alto saxophonist Dauda, and pianist Salem Kamalu-makes its monthly stop at An die Musik.
Algiers (from Matador Reocrds)
COMING SOON Atlanta’s avant rock&B outfit Algiers will absolutely tear up the Creative Alliance at the Patterson Sept. 14. High Zero celebrates its 25th anniversary with festival tour stops in Chicago (Sept. 14 and 15), New York (Sept. 19 and 20), and Baltimore Sept, 28 and 29). Saxophonist Carl Grubbs leads his annual John Coltrane tribute concert on Sept. 22 at a venue to be determined, featuring keyboardist Eric Byrd, bassist Blake Meister, drummer John Lamkin III, and percussionist Eric Kennedy. And down in D.C. on Sept. 14 and Sept. 15, the Black Cat celebrates its 25th anniversary with a mess of bands, including Ted Leo, Des Demonas, Ex Hex, and the Hurry Up.
THE WEEK
WED29AUG: The Baltimore Comedy Festival kicks offs tonight at the Motor House, and really gets rolling Thursday through Monday with a mix of free and ticketed shows at nearly a dozen local venues, including Atomic Books, the Coven Carriage House, the Crown, the Sidebar, Windup Space, Zissimos, and more. I’ve spent virtually no time following the surge of local comedy nights that have popped up around town over the past five years; this fest is a great opportunity to catch some of the people curating and hosting those evenings.
THUR30AUG: Sound Garden Presents High Fidelity and Empire Records in a double feature at the Parkway Theatre. The local record store celebrates its 25th anniversary with a pair of record-store set films, and while I’ll own up to completely missing out on how the anodyne Empirebombed and then became a cult hit, I have to say the appeal of Fidelity‘s manipulative d-bag nice guy remains a mystery. (High Fidelity screens first, 7 p.m.)
FRI31AUG: The second annual cm.ball at the EMP Collective. Kotic Couture hosts an evening featuring performances from Blaqstarr, Dyyo Faccina, Them Animals, and more, along with a bunch of other local artists, food vendors, and more. 6 p.m.
SUN02SEP: The Baltimore Hip Hop Bar Crawl the 3 Peat hits the Depot, Montego Bar and Grille, the Windup Space and the Crown with DJs Rocky Styles, Mike Jointz, Saucee, Cuzzin B., Harvey Dent, and Uncle Al spinning at each stop. Starts 4:30 pm.
MON03SEP: Josh Aterovis holds a book release party at the Crown. Local author Atervois celebrates the release of A Change of Worlds, the fifth installment of his Killian Kendall series that has followed the titular sleuth’s journey from coming out as a teen on Maryland’s Eastern Shore to becoming a private investigator. 7 p.m.
TUE04SEP: The Windup Space holds a comedy benefit to help out Hashtag LunchBag Baltimore, featuring a mess of comics doing short sets. Free, suggested donation $2.
STAGE
Wasted at Center Stage’s Bernard Black Box. This intimate 99-seat space has been the site of Center Stage’s most adventurous performances since it opened in 2017, and writer/director Kat Woods‘ Wasted, an exploration of how a young man and woman colliding on a night out can veer into an uncomfortable blackout-drunk encounter, promises to continue that streak. Opens Sept. 1 and continues Sept. 20-22.
VISUAL ART
Depth of Field opens at UMBC’s Albin O. Kuhn Library Gallery Aug. 29, featuring about 100 pieces acquired over the last decade years by UMBC’s Photography Collections.
Hateful Things opens at the Reginald F. Lewis Museum of African History and Culture Aug. 30 with a free 6 pm reception (RSVP required), a traveling exhibit curated by the Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia at Ferris State University that documents more than 150 years of racist and anti-Black imagery and material culture. Through Oct.. 14.
Christine Stiver‘s How Many Nipples Does a Horse Have? opens at St. Charles Projects Aug. 31., with a 6-8 p.m. reception. The Baltimore-based artist creates an immersive mural painting for her debut, local solo show.
The Atomic Café at the Parkway Theatre Aug. 29. This newly restored 1982 kinda/sorta documentary collage about Cold War-era nuclear anxiety grows more chillingly comical with every passing year, especially when there’s a thoughtless rage-Tweeting wannabe autocrat sitting in the White House. 9:30 p.m.
Dope Body: The End at the Parkway Theatre Aug. 29. A documentary about the local noise-rock quartet that released a string of solid LPs on Drag City before calling it quits in 2016. The screening is followed by a Q&A with director Michael Faulkner, whom Brandon Weigel chatted with over at the Baltimore Fishbowl. 7 p.m.
The Big Lebowski at the Senator Theatre Aug. 29. Who cares what the Dude abides if his “fucking nihilists” costar is gonna go full racist Roseanne Barr apologist. 7:30 p.m. Also: Sept. 2, 10 a.m.; Sept. 3, 1 p.m.; and Sept. 4, 9:30 p.m.
Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery at AVAM’ Flicks on the Hill Aug. 30. The late ’90s comedy in which a relic from SNL‘s early ’90s heyday lampoons misogynist James Bond films and swinging culture of the ’60s and ends up with something that’s a combination of slapschticky fart jokes and maybe even a toothless parody of spy flick’s desperate masculinity. 9 p.m.
Footloose at interactive movie night at the Creative Alliance Aug. 31. For everybody who’s burning, yearning for somebody to tell you that life ain’t passing you by. 8 p.m.
RBG screening and #StopKavanaugh postcard writing campaign at Joe Squared Aug. 31. “People ask me sometimes, when–when do you think it will it be enough? When will there be enough women on the court? And my answer is when there are nine.” — The notorious RBG, Georgetown University, 2015. 7 p.m.
2001: A Space Odyssey opens at the Parkway Theatre Aug. 31. Part of the theater’s Kubrick 90 series. The trippy 1968 sci-fi flick imagines a, now past, future where corporations brand space, man seeks to colonize the cosmos, and artificial intelligence becomes a sentient threat—but not even the great Stanley Kubrick foresaw the sociopolitical dumpster fire we call “social media.” 7 p.m. See website for other times.
The Crooked Tune: An Old Time Fiddler in a Modern World and Heel on Red: The Life and Photography of Sam Holden screen at the Theatre Project Aug. 31 and Sept. 1. Local filmmaker Charles Cohen (disclosure: I worked with him at the City Paper) screens two of his documentary films. Crooked is a postrait of old-time/bluegrass fiddler and luthier Dave Bing; Heel a short snapshot of the late local photography and City Paper contributor Sam Holden. Crooked screens Aug. 31, 8 p.m.; Heel screens Sept. 1, 8 p.m.
The Last Movie at the Charles Theatre Sept. 1. Dennis Hopper’s 1971 fever dream—a loopy, experimental anti-Western possibly about the failed making of a Western—remained one of 1970s New Hollywood unseen legends for nearly two decades; I didn’t see it until buying the VHS copy in 1993 from the now defunct United America Video. Arbelos Films gave it the full 4K restoration treatment (see trailer here), and the film is being given the “essential” cinema and “misunderstood” masterpiece treatment during its current reparatory release that I’m not quite sure it earns. Yes, if the trailer is any indication, the restoration has gorgeously revived Lazlo Kovacs’ cinematography. And, boy howdy, I don’t think a major studio (Universal Pictures in this case) before–or since–has ever released a film as obstinately defiant of commercial film language, standards, and expectations. Whether or not Hopper the auteur and star fully articulates the film’s existential critique of cinematic reality, colonialism, and American masculinity, or merely documents one drug-sniffing film crew’s failed rebellion against that, remains open to discussion. 11:30 a.m.; also Sept. 3, 7 p.m. and Sept. 6, 9 p.m.
The Week This Week 