Month: October 2015

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News

October surprise: Lunsford faces lawsuit over FOIA request

Commonwealth’s Attorney Denise Lunsford contends a pre-election FOIA lawsuit is politically motivated. Staff photo

Albemarle Commonwealth’s Attorney Denise Lunsford, in a hotly contested race for reelection, faced additional heat October 29 when Richmond attorney Matthew Hardin filed a lawsuit against her for creating a “barrier to transparency” in her response to a Freedom of Information Act request issued earlier this week.

The FOIA request asked for information on Lunsford’s credit card usage, reimbursements she received from the county and correspondence about convicted former supervisor Chris Dumler, overturned abduction-conviction defendant Mark Weiner and Albemarle police officer James Larkin during the period of January 2012 and December 2013.

“We were curious whether she paid for [personal business] trips on personal funds or with taxpayer money. Of course correspondence was requested to see what standards her office was using as regards more controversial cases,” Hardin explains.

Lunsford responded by saying she would need $3,200, as well as five additional weeks to produce the requested documents.

“It’s an incredibly high number and it impedes access to the records,” Hardin says. “It’s more than an average Charlottesville citizen pays for health insurance.”

Hardin acknowledges that Lunsford is allowed to charge a reasonable fee in response to the request, but says that by insisting on reviewing the records herself, Lunsford unnecessarily increased the fee.

“She’s the highest paid employee in the office,” he says, “We believe that her assistant commonwealth’s attorneys could review these at a much lower cost and we believe when that’s available, that’s what the law requires.”

Alan Gernhardt, staff attorney at the Virginia Freedom of Information Advisory Council, says the costs do not surprise him and that he has seen similar fees in the past. Gernhardt specifies that depending on what the search involves, Lunsford’s $3,200 could be a reasonable amount to charge.

“There’s tons of practical and technological questions involved,” Gernhardt says, “Just searching through the mass volume of e-mails can be time consuming.”

Gernhardt adds that the time delay also is not surprising and it’s “not out of the realm of possibility” that Lunsford would require that amount of time to retrieve all of the records.

Hardin stresses that he’s not trying to cause trouble for Lunsford. “It might turn out that everything she’s done is completely correct and honest and I hope that that’s the case,” Hardin says, “but the problem is that without the records I can’t tell.”

The lawsuit falls at an inconvenient time for Lunsford, who runs for reelection November 3. Hardin, who filed the lawsuit on behalf of Tyler Pieron, denies any political motivation in the requests.

“We’re not interested in the elections,” Hardin says, “I will happily drop the lawsuit if the records are produced in a reasonable way at a reasonable time.”

Denise Lunsford did not respond to CVILLE’s e-mail requesting comment, but in other media accounts, she has called the lawsuit “politically motivated.”

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Arts

ARTS Pick: Mock Stars Ball

Halloween night finds Erin Lunsford walking into spiderwebs for her impersonation of Gwen Stefani at the Southern’s annual Mock Stars Ball. Photo: Publicity photo

A frighteningly talented lineup of local groups recreate the songs and styles of five legendary bands at the Mock Stars Ball. This version of the annual Halloween tradition finds Erin & the Wildfire performing as No Doubt, The Secret Storm rocking out as Guns N’ Roses and Lord Nelson slaying the audience with tunes from The Band, as well as collaborators covering ELO and Hall & Oates.

Saturday 10/31. $10, 9:30pm. The Southern Café and Music Hall, 103 S. First St. 977-5590.

Categories
Living

An arm and a leg: The basics of animal anatomy

Photo: File photo

The leaves are crunchy beneath my feet, the comforter is back on the bed and every single thing on the menu has been ruined with an overdose of pumpkin spice. Must be autumn. This is also the unusual time of year when we hang skeletons from our front doors. If you’re a normal person, they make you think of Halloween. If you’re me, they make you think of anatomy class.

Naturally, there are a lot of anatomic differences between people and their pets, many of which are invisible at a glance. Dogs and cats will never have to worry about appendicitis, for instance, because they don’t have an appendix. And we, mercifully and for similar reasons, don’t have to deal with our anal glands clogging up. Score one for being human.

You’d think that differences in skeletal anatomy, being on such overt display, would be easier to pick out. Anyone can see that our spines stop at our hips, while theirs carry on to form a tail. But some things aren’t what they seem, and it’s time to recognize that our four-legged friends don’t really have four legs at all.

Sure, their hind legs are very much like ours with a ball-in-socket hip joint and a knee topped by its eponymous cap. It would be easy to presume that the front legs are put together in the exact same way, but that isn’t the case. Those front legs are, in fact, arms. Dogs dig in dirt, cats destroy the couch and people post to Snapchat with the exact basic set of bones. They have the same evolutionary origin, but have been repurposed in different species. This is called homology, and you can see it well beyond your own pets. Whether it’s a bat’s wing or a penguin’s flipper, it’s the same limb with a few tweaks.

From this, it should be clear that dogs and cats (and countless other animals) don’t walk around with four knees. They’ve only got two, and they’re always in the rear. Now it does look like our pets have knees in the front, but those are actually wrist joints. Below that, their weight is balanced on the very tips of what would otherwise be fingers. And that’s not the weirdest thing about your pet’s front legs. While our arms connect to our skeletons by a collarbone, dogs and cats have nearly lost theirs entirely. Their forelimbs aren’t attached to the rest of their skeleton at all, except by muscle.

The hind limbs almost make familiar sense. The parts are the same as ours, but anatomists changed all the names to make it confusing. So while your pet does have a proper knee joint back there, someone decided it should be called a stifle instead. And the joint below that—the one that juts out sharply like an elbow—is technically their heel. But we don’t call it either of those things. Maddeningly, it’s a hock.

Why is that? I haven’t the slightest idea, but it’s enough to make any sensible person wash their hands of it all. Or their feet. Whichever.

Dr. Mike Fietz is a small-animal veterinarian at Georgetown Veterinary Hospital. He received his veterinary degree from Cornell University in 2003.

Categories
Arts

Flower power: Could Sally Rose be the next musician to step out of C’ville?

Sally Rose keeps her eyes on the road ahead with Gotta Be Gold. The Sally Rose Band hosts a record release party at the Southern tomorrow. Photo: Publicity photo

Stop me if you’ve heard this before. A local singer-songwriter with a country twang and indie-rock edge is gaining momentum. She’s playing progressively larger venues, moving up from the Blue Moon Diner to The Southern Café and Music Hall to the Jefferson Theater to the Pavilion. Now she’s looking to step onto the national—or at least regional—stage.

I’m guessing you’ve been trying to stop me.

Sally Rose’s story isn’t necessarily unique among the bustling songwriter set in Charlottesville. But maybe that doesn’t matter. Her music is as good as almost anyone making it around here—personal preferences aside—so why couldn’t she be the one to emerge from the crowd and make it big?

That’s certainly Rose’s goal with Gotta Be Gold, her second album on local indie label County Wide, and her first effort that’s had the backing of a big-time producer. When she releases the album at the Southern on October 30, the audience will get a chance to hear the full complement of tracks and find out what that effort has wrought.

An initial listen shows Gotta Be Gold as edgier than the first record she made with The Sally Rose Band (she had previously made three solo records), and Rose says that was the intent from the start. Despite going into Richmond’s Sound of Music Studios for the first time with John Morand, who Rose says freely offered suggestions to make things more layered and interesting, she didn’t want Gotta Be Gold to turn out overproduced.

“I had never had someone doing that before,” she says. “I told him straight out in our first meeting, ‘I want to make a rock record and I think I have the songs for it. But I don’t want it to sound like a Clear Channel [radio station] record,’ and he completely understood that.”

In addition to the new sound, Rose says she’s changed her songwriting approach. Where before she would bring finished songs to the table, she’s worked closely with guitarist Pete Stallings to write several tracks and included the rest of the Sally Rose Band in fleshing others out.

That’s probably a good call if for no other reason than maintaining the familial harmony. Rose’s mom, Catherine Monnes, brings decades of experience to the string section, alternating between cello and electric fiddle.

“She has been in just about every genre of band you can imagine,” Rose says. “She isn’t actually [classically trained]…but people assume that because she plays cello. She started calling her style ‘rough water cello’ to set it apart.”

Rose’s brother-in-law, Benjamin Jensen, is a rhythm section swing man, recently moving to bass from drums when the band brought on a new percussionist, David Jacobs.

The result of the songwriting and lineup changes is an album that’s full of thick, grungy jams such as Rose’s favorites “Pop My Balloon” (written mostly by Stallings) and the title track, which Rose says has “pretty much been my mantra this past year, which has been filled with ups and downs. We’ve all worked through some struggles, but we keep chugging forward.”

Of course Gotta Be Gold has its outliers. “Do Ra De” is playful, folksy—a throwback—and Rose admits it doesn’t fit with the rock ‘n’ roll edge she wanted to bring to the LP. “Tired” is a ballad on which Rose sings to a bare drum track; it’s the final song on the record, a chance for her to say her last piece without interruption.

So how does Rose plan to push beyond C’ville? It won’t be easy as she balances touring and promoting with her day job at Trager Brothers Coffee in Nelson County and intensive martial arts training in oh do kwan, on which she spends at least six hours a week.

But Rose insists she’s prepared to put in the work. “I still consider my full-time job as a musician,” she says. “I’m either on the phone doing interviews, designing flyers, designing new merch, or we are on the road and I am working on my equipment. It never ends, and if you don’t love the madness, you’re going to get burned out.”

Rose says Charlottesville’s non-competitive music community has been the perfect place to hone her craft. She credits The Secret Storm frontwoman Lauren Hoffman as one of her biggest female artist idols while growing up, and points to the many local collaborations she’s done over the years. Indeed, when The Sally Rose Band plays the Southern, Erin Lunsford (of Erin & The Wildfire) will join for a track, as will Hoffman and another local legend whom Rose is keeping under wraps.

What Rose isn’t keeping a secret are her plans for the future.

“Eventually I know I will have to move to a different, bigger city,” she says. “And I’m sure it’s out there in other cities, but that sense of working together and not shit-talking about other people, it’s hard to find.”

But maybe—just maybe—Rose will be the one to find it.

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News

Gubernatorial invite: Will McAuliffe visit pipeline foes?

Nelson County may soon welcome Governor McAuliffe for a tour of the pipeline's proposed route. Photo: Prensa Internacional/ZUMAPRESS.com

While many out-of-towners plan tours of Nelson County to learn the land by way of winery and brewery, Governor Terry McAuliffe has been extended a much more somber, or rather, sober, invitation.

Over 1,200 Virginia residents signed Friends of Nelson’s request for McAuliffe to join locals and business owners on a tour of the Atlantic Coast Pipeline’s proposed route through the county. McAuliffe outwardly supports the development of the pipeline.

“I am aware that you pride yourself as being a business-minded individual,” the letter said. “We believe that you have been severely misinformed about the situation here and that a visit would give you the first hand experience necessary to respond clearly and truthfully to your constituents here.”

Some concerned citizens, including Kathy Versluys of Nellysford, signed comments with their names. Versluys, who has run an inn in Nelson for 28 years, wrote: “I can assure you that guests don’t come here to see pipelines and the related ugliness of a new industrial corridor. Our county and numerous business leaders have been creating Nelson’s bursting tourism industry for decades. Dominion’s pipeline threatens our economy and the health and safety of all of us. Let’s talk!”

Along with jeopardizing the economy, which depends on agricultural, tourist and recreational dollars, the letter also cites the threat a 42-inch, high-pressure natural gas pipeline poses to the mountains, watershed and overall livelihood of Nelson County.

Schedulers at the governor’s office did not immediately respond to multiple calls about whether or not McAuliffe will accept the invitation.

Categories
Living

Seafood gem: Public Fish & Oyster charms Virginia’s first lady

First Lady Dorothy McAuliffe supports the second annual Virginia Oyster Month at Public Fish & Oyster. Photo: Rammelkamp Foto

I lucked out and married into an oyster family. My wife’s grandfather was a Virginia oysterman, her brother founded a Virginia oyster company and for decades, her family has rung in each November with a spectacular oyster roast. To me, November means oysters.

Now that association is official. Under an order by Governor McAuliffe last year, November is Virginia Oyster Month. It’s part of an effort to showcase the outstanding oysters of the commonwealth and make them synonymous with our state, as crabs are to Maryland. After nearly vanishing, the once-proud industry has surged over the last decade, increasing from 23,000 bushels in 2001 to an estimated 539,000 bushels last year.

In Charlottesville, there is no better place to enjoy Virginia oysters than at Public Fish & Oyster. And, there may be no better companion for it than First Lady Dorothy McAuliffe, the commonwealth’s most prominent supporter of agriculture and aquaculture. McAuliffe almost chose a Virginia oyster for the insignia on her official business card, before deciding on an image from Mount Vernon that more broadly honors the commonwealth’s bounty.

When McAuliffe joined me at Public, she was a fan from the start. It’s no wonder. Walk into Public, and the bright, airy feel of the restaurant, recalling a New England oyster bar, portends good things. “Rustic, but modern,” says McAuliffe. “Beautiful, yet relaxed.”

Owner Daniel Kaufman, a lifer in the food-and-drink industry, opened Public last year to fill a void in Charlottesville dining. “I saw an obvious lack of seafood options,” says Kaufman. After quickly parting ways with his opening chef last summer, Kaufman snagged Donnie Glass who trained at Johnson & Wales University’s College of Culinary Arts, and was a cook at Fossett’s and sous chef at The Local before joining Public. A year in, Glass wins praise from top chefs around town, who often visit on their days off.

We started our meal with oysters, of course. The large selection changes daily, and part of the fun is comparing oysters from different areas. To highlight the nuances, the Virginia Oyster Trail was created, identifying oyster regions and their distinguishing characteristics. “It’s always a treat to compare the flavors of our oysters from Virginia’s seven different oyster regions across the Chesapeake Bay,” says McAuliffe.

First up were Great Wicomicos, from Little Wicomico River, whose sweetness and low salinity make them great for beginners, says Kaufman. Next were Mobjack Bays, just slightly brinier with a meaty body and mineral finish. These, says Kaufman, are ideal for dressing up with Public’s house-made mignonette or cocktail sauce. And, finally, my favorite of the bunch, Sewansecotts from Hog Island Bay, with that briny burst that transports you to the ocean.

Those unfamiliar with Virginia oysters may be surprised by their quality and variety. Glass, who cooked for years in New England, was a skeptic at first. “Now that I’ve tried a lot more varieties,” he says, “I’m wicked impressed.”

But there’s much more to Public than oysters. After we slurped ours down, we were treated to Glass’ current favorite dish on the menu, warm cauliflower salad. Glass roasts cauliflower in African curry powder, olive oil, orange and lemon zest, salt, pepper, golden raisins, shaved shallots and garlic. After chilling it, he heats it in the oven with chopped kale, dresses it with coriander-lime vinaigrette and then tosses the whole thing with pomegranate seeds, cilantro, toasted almonds and aioli. “I loved it,” says McAuliffe. “The perfect salad for a fall day.”

We finished our meal with Kaufman’s favorite dish: PFO pan roast. “Most raw bars in New England have their own version of a pan roast,” says Glass. For his version, Glass adds tomato paste and curry powder to a velouté of lobster stock. He then sautés mussels, clams, shrimp and oysters with garlic, shallots and haricot verts. After deglazing with white wine, he finishes the dish with some of the velouté, butter and a splash of cream. Glass loves the humble nature of the dish. “The oysters taste like oysters, the mussels taste like mussels and the lobster sauce complements everything,” he says.

If you’re not fond of food from the ocean, Glass has a way with land creatures as well. McAuliffe’s executive assistant passed on the pan roast in favor of steak frites and proclaimed it the best steak she ever had in her life.

Public’s success recently led Kaufman to open a second, more casual, location in Crozet. If it’s anything like the original, the first lady might want to visit that one as well. “They do such an amazing job” that to dine at Public, she says, is “inspiring.”

That’s high praise from high places.

Categories
News

Judge will consider bond for psychic

Sandra Marks’ psychic reading business on Seminole Trail was raided in June 2014, and she was arrested a year later in New York. Staff photo

Sandra Marks, aka Psychic Catherine and Catherine Marks, had a bond hearing October 22 in U.S. District Court and Judge Glen Conrad said he would consider it if she and her attorney can come up with an acceptable plan for her release.

Marks, 41, has been in jail since her July 23 arrest in New York for 34 counts of fraud—31 wire fraud, two mail fraud and one money laundering—and is accused of bilking clients for more than $3.5 million. She’s now being held at Central Virginia Regional Jail.

At an August 28 hearing in New York, the judge denied bond, citing concerns that she was a flight risk because she left Charlottesville right after a raid on her Seminole Trail place of business in June 2014, and because of missing funds.

A motion filed by her Richmond lawyer, Bill Dinkins, says Marks does not meet any of six conditions that must be met to deny bond: She’s not charged with a violent crime and facing life imprisonment or death; she’s not charged with a crime under the Controlled Substances Act; she’s not previously been convicted of those crimes; she’s not charged with a crime involving a minor victim, firearm or dangerous weapon, and she’s not charged with failing to register as a sex offender.

Dinkins also argues that she doesn’t meet the sixth condition—a serious risk of flight—because when she left Charlottesville, she had not been indicted, was living openly with her family in Georgia in a house titled in her husband’s name and she used bank accounts, credit cards and cell phone service in her own name. Nor did she attempt to conceal her identity when her family moved to New York in December 2014, says the motion.

Her husband, Donnie Marks, now lives in Richmond and works for a cab company and sells scrap metal, according to the motion.

In court, how much bond Marks would need to put up was not discussed, says U.S. Attorney’s Office spokesperson Brian McGinn. “The judge left the door open for bond,” says McGinn.

“Most certainly a plan is in the works,” says Dinkins. “First we’ve got to raise an adequate amount of money for her bond.” He declined to specify what that amount might be.

Marks’ incarceration has been “tough,” says her attorney. “She’s never been incarcerated before, she’s never been charged before. It’s a shock.”

According to the indictment, some of Marks’ victims came to her business for palm readings, candle readings, tarot card readings, astrological readings and spiritual readings, and often they’d suffered traumatic events and were “emotionally vulnerable, fragile and/or gullible.” She met others at the Synchronicity Foundation for Modern Spirituality in Nelson County, where she was an outside consultant, according to the foundation.

Marks would tell her alleged victims they were under a curse and “dark cloud,” according to the indictment, and to be healed, they had to sacrifice cash and jewelry, which she would cleanse through prayer, meditation and ritual.

 

Categories
Arts

Film review: The Last Witch Hunter games the system

Action film regular Vin Diesel stars as The Last Witch Hunter in his self-produced, self-approved gaming fantasy flick. Photo: Summit Entertainment

Just when it was beginning to look like 2015 would not have a better choice for worst movie than The Boy Next Door, along comes the over-plotted, under-conceived and thoroughly charming Vin Diesel vehicle The Last Witch Hunter. Although the negative reviews are sure to be somewhat accurate—Diesel’s performance is too smirky and wooden to be believable in the role, the action sequences are often over edited and disorienting and the plot suffers from a terminal case of who-gives-a-shit—it is still a rare pleasure to take in what is little more than a B movie with far too much money.

Diesel, credited as a producer and no doubt the driving force behind its creation, clearly thinks this brand of fantasy is the coolest thing ever, and letting him do his thing is a breath of fresh air in a genre bloated with tiresome, repetitive epics.

Directed by Breck Eisner, a specialist in the likable/forgettable space (Sahara, 2005’s The Crazies remake), The Last Witch Hunter rightfully rests on the charm of its stars and atmosphere because it knows the limitations of its narrative, which is less of a story and more of a series of visual cues that it wants you to remember for when there’s a twist. Diesel plays Kauldur, a witch hunter in New York City who was cursed with immortality 800 years ago while battling the Witch Queen. Since that fateful confrontation, Kauldur has been tasked with enforcing the peace between witches and humanity with the assistance of a series of Dolans (Michael Caine, who quickly retires and passes his duties to Elijah Wood). Kauldur soon faces his greatest foe, for which he teams up with the law-abiding yet powerful witch Chloe (Rose Leslie from “Game of Thrones”).

It’s the story of a pretty good but not great video game, and it’s no wonder that there are more than a few stylistic similarities between the film and the massively successful game series The Witcher. But this is Diesel’s bread and butter; a noted fan of Dungeons & Dragons and a creator of his own game studio specifically for tie-ins with his movies, his enthusiasm for the material is as infectious as that of a kid in Legoland.

Diesel is a better actor than he gets credit for (Boiler Room, his little-seen directorial debut Multi-Facial), but one with nothing left to prove, so The Last Witch Hunter is his chance to have a good time and share the stuff he thinks is cool. While he spends his time slaying monsters and speaking in arcane riddles, the supporting cast does most of the heavy lifting. Several key dramatic moments revolve around Diesel staring off into the distance, sitting next to Leslie, Caine or Wood, as they provide the emotion required to carry the scene. It’s silly and repetitive, but it works in its own way.

Perhaps more than anything else released this year, The Last Witch Hunter clarifies the difference between personally liking a movie and considering it good. Full of contagious good vibes and enthusiasm, The Last Witch Hunter is the cinematic equivalent of listening to a cheesy, unfunny joke that makes its teller laugh so hard that it becomes hilarious.

Playing this week

Bridge of Spies

Crimson Peak

Goosebumps

Hotel Transylvania 2

Jem and the Holograms

The Martian

Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials

Pan

Rock the Kasbah

Sicario

Steve Jobs

Woodlawn

Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX
244-3213

Categories
News

Keys to the kingdom: As election day looms, we have issues

With so much going on in the executive branch, it's easy to neglect what's happening in the General Assemblyl as the session hits its . midpoint. File photo.

Hard to believe, but yet another election is upon us, bringing with it the annual deluge of attack ads, yard signs, candidate forums and billowing clouds of special interest money. Per usual, a vast majority of the General Assembly races that will be decided next Tuesday are a foregone conclusion. Thanks to gerrymandering and a bipartisan compulsion to protect incumbents at any cost, we will almost certainly exit this election with the overall composition of the General Assembly barely changed.

The Democrats do have hopes, however, of gaining at least one seat in the state Senate, and thereby retaking control of the chamber (although the breakdown would be 20/20, Lieutenant Governor Ralph Northam would cast his tie-breaking vote for team blue). To find that seat, the Dems are focused on flipping the 10th District seat of retiring Senator John Watkins. They are also working hard to oust Republican senators Frank Wagner and Dick Black in the 7th and 13th districts, respectively, but neither one of those is an easy lift. The elephants, on the other hand, think they have a good shot at replacing retiring Democrat Chuck Colgan with Manassas Mayor Hal Parrish in the 29th District, or perhaps eking out a win over Senator John Edwards in the three-way race for the 21st District.

The question for all of these races is what, exactly, will motivate the electorate this time around? It’s always hard to pinpoint which issues will drive turnout and which ones will either fail to compel or, worse yet, backfire and motivate the other side to come out and vote in droves. With that in mind, here are the issues that seem to be getting the most play leading up to election day.

Gun control

This has long been considered a losing issue for Democrats, but in the wake of the horrific on-air shooting of news reporter Alison Parker and cameraman Adam Ward, some are betting that the issue of stricter gun laws will end up being a net positive. Candidates like Charlottesville’s Delegate David Toscano and Richmond Democrat Dan Gecker are speaking out forcefully in favor of tougher gun laws, and the issue is being given a high-profile push by ex-New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg, whose gun-control group Everytown for Gun Safety is spending millions running an ad featuring Parker’s father, Andy, urging reform. We’ll soon see if Virginia voters are finally ready to back modest gun control measures, or if they are still largely in thrall to the NRA.

Tolls, tolls, tolls

It was a foregone conclusion that Republicans would oppose a Virginia Department of Transportation plan to create “dynamically priced toll lanes” on the soul-crushing wasteland that is I-66 during rush hour. But they have really gone above and beyond, blanketing the airwaves with ads that accuse Governor Terry McAuliffe of proposing an outrageous $17 toll (obviously, and falsely, implying that this amount would be demanded of all drivers at all times). It’s a cheap, if clever, trick, and our gut tells us that it will work as intended, since most voters love to drive, and rarely pay attention to fact checkers or fine print.

Wacky tobacky

Finally, there’s the pro-weed group NORML, which is out pushing its THC-friendly agenda across the commonwealth and actively raising money for Democrat Ned Gallaway in his race against total buzzkill Senator Bryce Reeves in the 17th District. If they manage to pull that one off, it will be high times indeed.

Odd Dominion is an unabashedly liberal, twice-monthly op-ed column covering Virginia politics.

Categories
Arts

ARTS Pick: DVA

Czech duo DVA plays outside the lines of pop music expectations at the Twisted Branch Tea Bazaar tomorrow. Photo: Publicity photo

Bára Kratochvílová and Jan Kratochvíl make up DVA (meaning two in Czech), a worldly duo that’s carved out its own sophisticated version of neo-pop. Employing a unique performance style—at times singing in an imaginary language—the pair charms its audience with an aural collage self-described as “pop for non-existing radios.” Modern folk specter Diane Cluck and avant-garde electronica soloist Kristina Warren round out the triple bill.

Thursday 10/29. $7, 9pm. Twisted Branch Tea Bazaar, 414 E. Main St. 293-9947.