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Arts & Entertainment

In Like a Lion

March begins strong.

It is finally March, and just a few weeks until spring. Soon there will be rain replacing the snow. But so long as I'm not wearing gloves, I won't complain. Yet, that is.

Regardless, there are a lot of things coming up this month: the Anti Hipster Festival, NOVO Festival, Neil Hamburger, A Place to Bury Strangers, and the Pretty Reckless, which will be more of a novelty show, but more on that later.

This first week of March sees the NOVO Festival at the Wind Up Space concluding this weekend. The five-day festival started Tuesday and features mainly instrumental music, most notedly Baltimore's own Big in Japan, who will play Friday night along with Caverns and Do You Need the Service?

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If you're into bands like Microkingdom, or if you have any prog rock leanings, this is the time to indulge them. Baltimore does many things well, and one of them is think outside the box. If you listen to anything that's not your simple structure power trio or four-man band with guitars, drums and a singer, the second-annual NOVO Festival is something to check out.

Mobtown Studios is putting on the festival again this year to give attention to the avant garde side of alt rock, voiceless bands that get lost in the music instead of themselves, which is nice in and of itself. Saturday night the Dead Drums play, a side project of Lands and Peoples, along with Teenage Souls and Ooomo Oomo. The Windup Space has passes for the entire festival for $20, or tickets at the door.

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NOVO or No NOVO, there's still plenty to do. Also on Friday night, Indiana band Native comes to the Golden West, along with Massachusetts' Caspian and North Carolina's Dream Theater Metal-esque Chiaroscuro. You won't escape NOVO with the instrumental band Caspian, but not to worry. Native calls to mind Minus the Bear, Bosch, even (to me) early Refused, and they are far from silent. Their live shows are intense and it's always nice to support so many out-of-town bands.

This weekend is also a big one for local filmmaker Matt Porterfield, whose sophomore film Putty Hill had its Baltimore debut at the Charles Theater on Friday. The indie film focuses on the Baltimore suburb of the same name, following a group of people remembering a recently departed friend while shining a light on all the socio-economic stuff that goes on in films like this. From all accounts it's done extremely well and there's an after-party at the Metro Gallery on Friday and the Ottobar Saturday. Celebration will be playing upstairs at the Ottobar on Saturday to celebrate (ha) the film's opening. And whenever Celebration plays, people show up, so get there early.

If movie premieres aren't your thing, then the Golden Gurls, The Courtesy Tier, The Yes Way, and TJ Kong and the Atomic Bomb are playing the Hexagon on Saturday night as well. There definitely won't be any industry people there, unless drunk 20 and 30-somethings trying to avoid eye contact with the woman asking for change outside are what you think of when I say “industry people.”

It's getting sunny and staying light later! Go out and celebrate!

  • Friday at the Ottobar: Murder By Death, Fake Problems, and Buried Beds. I miss Murder By Death music compilations. C'est la Vie.

  • Saturday at CCAS: This is Hell (oh my), Incendiary, Turnstile, Punchout, and Soldiers. Incendiary huh? Someone knows how to use ctrl F7!

  • Sunday at the Windup Space: Mondobaltimore. It's that time.

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