Vile leaves lo-fi for a new high

 Known for his moody songwriting and in-concert guitar workouts, Kurt Vile is equal parts reflective singer-songwriter and noise rocker à la Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth. Vile, along with his backing band the Violators, will demonstrate that curious combination on Saturday night in the Fillius Events Barn during the first IMF concert of the semester. The atmospheric indie band Lord Huron will open the show.

Since 2008, Vile has released three moody albums of homespun lo-fi recordings, culminating in his 2009 album, Childish Prodigy, before the release of the cleaner, more polished Smoke Ring For My Halo this past summer. This fourth album highlights Vile’s careful composition and his ear for melody, something that his earlier, lo-fi recordings did not fully accomplish.

Second City sketch comedy group returns

If you want to see how the stars of The Office, 30 Rock and The Colbert Report got their start, Saturday’s performance by The Second City is your chance. The Second City is an improv group with companies in Chicago and Toronto, as well as several national touring companies. In addition to their performances, The Second City also trains future comedians and actors in the art of sketch theater, many of whom, including John Belushi, Steve Carell and Tina Fey, among others, have gone on to serve as regular cast members on Saturday Night Live.

Storytellers gather in Opus for WHCL's Hamilton HUM

“I am going to share something tonight that I have not shared before,” Genevieve Nierman ’13 confessed into a mic at Opus 1 on Wednesday, Sept. 7, before launching into an honest and hilarious series of vignettes about summer camp. Hamilton HUM, hosted by WHCL, featured students from every year and one faculty storyteller. At many points in the night, every couch and table at Opus was occupied. The event was recorded for a later broadcast on WHCL.

HUM was inspired by NPR’s Moth Radio Hour, which invites individuals from any and all backgrounds to tell their personal stories in front of a live audience.

Longley boasts a Berklee shine

Romantically, at least, it seems to be a dangerous but productive world for singer-songwriters.

Each artist during last Thursday night’s Acoustic Coffeehouse show in the Fillius Events Barn boasted their share of sob stories—boyfriends who moved on too quickly, barely-remembered alcoholic encounters—but, one might argue, even though the stories were sad, both women at least ended up with some killer tunes.

Thanks to the romantic content, Allison Weiss, who played a solo set to open the show, struck somewhat harder than headliner Liz Longley, who shared the stage with her boyfriend Gus Berry. Despite the emotional resonance of seeing Weiss alone on the stage, her songs clearly lacked some bluster.

Forty years later, printmaking presses on

 Printmaking is a fascinating art. One might even offer that it tends to the opposite of reality.

“What you get is the reverse of what you see,” said Amy George Buchholz ’80 to the dozen Kirkland and Hamilton alumnae, parents and other guests in attendance at the intaglio printmaking workshop on Saturday afternoon in List.

“It’s like looking at yourself in a photograph,” Buchholz added, commenting on the somewhat otherworldly notion of thinking about seeing the opposite of the world while trying to set it down on a copper plate.

King Lear shakes up the Glen

On a sunny, warm, late-September day, the Root Glen proved to be the perfect location for the staging of Shakespeare’s King Lear. Performed by the student group Shakespeare in the Glen, the play was co-directed by Peter Oliver ’12 and Mike Bickal ’12.

One of the Bard’s most well-regarded tragedies, the play tells the story of King Lear, an aging English monarch who decides to retire and bequeath his kingdom to whichever of his three daughters best demonstrates her admiration, love and obedience to her father.

Album Review: The Whole Love - Wilco

Wilco fans are often too lovey-dovey to hate anything the band puts out. Those who drank the punch long enough ago for it to have worn off were rightfully repulsed by the Chicago-based crew’s last release, Wilco (the Album). We feared the thing would be a tombstone. In a return to familiar style, Jeff Tweedy and the whole gang clawed their way out of the grave with their new release, The Whole Love, without making it look difficult.

Hardwick laughs it up on the Bicentennial weekend

 Amidst the hurricane of dry academic lectures and historical walking tours occurring this weekend, CAB has thrown a curveball into the long-winded Bicentennial schedule in the person of Chris Hardwick, who will headline CAB Comedy’s second show of the year on Sept. 24 at 9 p.m. in the Fillius Events Barn.

Best known as the host of the popular “The Nerdist” podcast, Hardwick has created what amounts to essentially a comedic empire over the past 20 years.

Emerson Gallery opens time capsule along with two historical, bicentennial exhibitions

Last Thursday, surrounded by a crowd of students and faculty taking pictures on their iPhones, Associate Professor of Russian Frank Sciacca and Emerson Gallery Associate Director and Curator Susanna White sawed open a lead box containing papers, brochures and a woodblock print left by the class of 1871.

Part of a nineteenth-century tradition to assemble and bury time capsules, the box was one in a series of six (the other five remain unopened) showcased in the current Emerson Gallery exhibit, “Time Capsules and Cornerstones: 200 Years of Collective Memory at Hamilton.”