Wampire makes deft use of Casio-style keyboards on Curiosity (Robbie Augspurger)

Wampire

Curiosity

Grade: B+

Rocks like: Jim Reid started an 80s synth band

On its debut album, Curiosity, Portland, Ore.-based Wampire treats listeners to nine tracks of keyboard-induced bliss. The music is loaded with a soft, slightly poppy ambiance and the simple, subtle songwriting harkens back to shoegaze roots and archetypal pop mechanics.

Wampire uses Casio-style keyboards in ways that are both creative and oddly nostalgic. The band’s sound calls to mind memories of beat-up old keyboards strewn throughout basements across the United States and features a carnival-like resonance with tones to choose from. Curiosity features plenty of these idiosyncratic keyboard sounds and does so very well — if not completely tastefully — without coming off as trying too hard to be avant-garde. 

There’s an old quote from George Bernard Shaw in which he says that he finished his first book 76 years before it was published. He claims to have sent it to “every publisher on the English-speaking earth” that he knew of. Fifty years later, he said, the same publishers would produce anything with his name on it. Publishing a book without the name recognition of an A-list literary VIP is difficult. It was laborious in Shaw’s day, and it still is today. The only difference is that now, entrepreneurial writers can bring matters into their own hands by publishing their own work, cutting out the middleman and taking control of the publishing process.

Case in point: Alexander Rigby.

Exuding poise and confidence, DiCaprio played the role of Jay Gatsby in the beloved novel's newest adaptation. MCT Campus

“The Great Gatsby”

Directed by: Baz Luhrmann

Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Tobey Maguire, Carey Mulligan

Grade: B

Click here to see a trailer of the film

Sharing their first on-screen dance, surrounded by a blurred yet tightly choreographed backdrop of confetti, butlers and New York City debutantes, Daisy Buchanan asks Jay Gatsby, “Is all this made entirely from your own imagination?” The vast opulence of her environment is commensurate only with wild fantasies, just as any rendition of “The Great Gatsby” should be.

Director Mark Anthony “Baz” Luhrmann posits cinematic stimuli as the spearhead of his adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s venerable novel. The massive and sprawling CGI shots alone result in near sensory overload, and the pot practically boils over when the visuals are coupled with the star-studded soundtrack.

But that’s a good thing.

Thursday, May 9

Steel City Medley, Solo Show by Jay Ressler

Make Your Mark Artspace and Coffeehouse, 6736 Reynolds St., Point Breeze

6-7:30 p.m.

Admission: free