Arts & Culture

UC Davis world music aficionados have reason to rejoice this spring. On Apr. 8, Senegalese singer Baaba Maal will embark on his first United States tour in four years, making a stop in Davis on Apr. 15. Tickets are on sale for the concert, to be held at 8 p.m. in the Mondavi Center’s Jackson Hall.

While students were busy cramming for finals and ignoring the world outside of their heavy books and notes, the Richard L. Nelson Gallery was busy preparing the opening of three new exhibits.

A jester on a pig. Aerial views of rivers, grassy fields, countryside. The Davis Amtrak Station, depicted in brushstrokes. Wetlands. Step foot into Davis’s Aioli Bodega tapas restaurant on 2nd Street, and an ambiance of refined dining, wining and scenic art awaits you. Aziz Bellarbi-Salah, waiter at Aioli Bodega and family member of the restaurant owners, said that the owners of Aioli have a good partnership with the John Natsoulas Gallery. As a result, they display many of the paintings from his art gallery collection.

MUSIC Student Chamber Ensembles Today, 12:05 p.m. and 4:10 pm, free Room 115, Music Building Head on over to the music building today at noon for a free concert by student chamber ensembles. For more information, visit music.ucdavis.edu. Happy Thursday: Black Cat Bone Today, 4:00 p.m., free Rominger West Winery, 4602 2nd St., Suite 4 If you love the blues and live music, you’ll love the Black Cat Bone. This four-piece combo consists of a harmonica, bass, guitars and drums. All that music might make you hungry, so order a glass of wine and some appetizers while you’re at it. Hefty Thigh: Fem Fest DJs and Bands Friday, 7 p.m., $5 general, all ages TCS Building (formerly the Art Annex) Come party and spread the fem-love with KDVS 90.3 FM and the Davis Feminist Film Festival ’til two in the morning! Enjoy performances from Inca Ore to A Sunny Day in Glasgow, along with some great DJs. Check out the KDVS Events Facebook page for more information about the bands.

When most people go to a garage sale or thrift store, they see practical items sold for bargain prices. But sculptor and UC Davis Master of Fine Arts Ron Baron looks at those castoff objects and sees a work of art. Today, artists, aspiring artists and fans of art alike are invited to attend a free lecture given by Baron as part of the Art Studio Lecture Series. The lecture will be held in the main room of the Technocultural Studies Building from 4:30 to 6 p.m.

In their debut, Montreal-based alt-rock group Chocolat produces a creative and alluring soundscape that integrates hints of folk, pop and blues into psychedelic garage rock. Singer Jimmy Hunt’s Dylan-esque croon sails over feverish guitar riffs, strains of intricate bass lines and a frenzy of walloping drums. Chocolat EP is clearly indebted to many of Chocolat’s influences, such as the Kinks, the Yardbirds, the Pretty Things and Jacques Dutronc. The content of the seven songs are centered around the rock ‘n roll lifestyle – that is to say the songs are generally about sleeping with your best friend’s girlfriend, funding a party with your girlfriend’s paycheck, Johnny Depp, groupies and watching the one you love get fat.

It’s hard to imagine a concept behind a triple album as anything other than abstract and inaccessible, but at just over two hours, Joanna Newsom accomplishes just that on Have One On Me. Framed by the trills of her harp and the eloquence of her lyrics, Have One On Me chronicles romance and heartbreak in a way that is tempestuous, whimsical and painfully honest.

Two Door Cinema Club’s debut LP, Tourist History, is a neat and tidy collection of their past Kitsuné singles and a handful of new ones. Simple lyrics are tacked onto simple pop melodies, which clasp onto even more simple rhythms and beats. The album mainly consists of unornamented and straightforward compositions, but the sincere and charming lyrics seem to pick up the slack. If Tourist History were milk, it would probably be non-fat – in the sense that extra sugar was added to make up for the lack of nourishing substance. Listening to the entire album is like eating a $1 microwave dinner from Safeway. Sure, it gets the job done, but there are definitely better things out there.

Not much is known about Little Big Adventure, a.k.a. Vladimir Vasilyevich Markovnikov, except that all of his songs are about hate and that he loves his Casio keyboard. Throughout The Hateful Eye, Markovnikov skillfully combines many modern soundscapes and inserts anamorphic transitions from one to the other in an original and unconventional manner. Though the EP consists of only five tracks (and was released May of last year), it nicely captures LBA’s eccentric pop sound of past releases and evokes feelings of self-pity, shame and melancholia – very fitting for the transition from winter into spring. The Hateful Eye is worth a revisit or two.

If you haven’t heard already, Band of Horses is playing at Freeborn Hall on May 27. Students can purchase pre-sale tickets at the Freeborn Ticket Office for $25.50 with a student ID tomorrow beginning at 10 a.m. That’s pretty cool. This is all in addition to the upcoming Passion Pit show, which is still scheduled for April. 14. Tickets for that show are $15 (go figure). Let’s see if they pull a Crepeville-and-run like Bloc Party did last year.

The UC Davis Art of Regional Change’s upcoming exhibit is giving youth a chance to express themselves and influence change in their surroundings. Art of Regional Change is a new, joint initiative between UC Davis Humanities Institute and the Center of Regional Change. It uniquely brings together a range of scholars with students to work with community organizations on media arts projects. Art of Regional Change teamed up with the West Sacramento Youth Resource Coalition (WSYRC) to create Youth Voices for Change – a social media project where about 15 urban teens collaborated with UC Davis scholars and artists to document and present the change youth hope for in their neighborhoods.

Artist and former UC Davis art professor William T. Wiley has been honored by the Smithsonian Institution with a collection of his former works. The exhibit, entitled “What’s It All Mean: William T. Wiley in Retrospect,” will feature approximately 85 of his works from the late 1960s to the present, borrowed from public and private collections as well as from the artist. The exhibit will provide a serious overview of Wiley’s career while exploring important themes and ideas expressed in his work. On Mar. 20 at 10 a.m., NELSON ARTfriends members and students will have a unique opportunity to have a guided tour of the exhibit by Renny Pritikin, director of the Richard L. Nelson Gallery and Fine Art Collection. Student tickets are $20, and there is a limit of five students for this tour.