Jezy J. Gray

Boulder

Arts and Culture Editor at Boulder Weekly

Arts journalist (derogatory) • culture editor @boulderweekly • Great Plains Magazine Writer of the Year • Hale’s secretary in ‘KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON’

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Articles

Spirited away with Ichiko Aoba

2 days ago | boulderweekly.com | Jezy J. Gray

Follow the coordinates in the title of the spellbinding second cut on Ichiko Aoba’s pristine new album — “24° 3′ 27.0″ N, 123° 47′ 7.5″ E” — and you’ll wind up at a lighthouse on the southernmost inhabited island of Japan. “A lighthouse, by its nature, sort of blinks intermittently,” the 35-year-old musician and vocalist from Kyoto tells Boulder Weeklyvia translator on a recent video call.
Amitis Motevalli: A Portait of the Artist as a Young Rebel

1 week ago | boulderweekly.com | Jezy J. Gray

Walking through the doors of East Window’s cozy digs on North Broadway in Boulder, a collision of innocence and violence greets visitors on the gallery’s west-facing wall. The site of this confrontation is a large-scale wheatpasted photograph of a 4-year-old girl, her brown eyes shining beneath a mop of bangs as she poses for the camera with hands clasped behind her back.
Buddy system - Boulder Weekly

1 month ago | boulderweekly.com | Jezy J. Gray

If you’ve been to a Colorado Avalanches home game in the last half decade or so, you’ve likely belted along with the Y2K pop-punk anthem “All the Small Things” by Blink-182.
Indie road-trip dramedy Daruma dodges disability tropes - Boulder Weekly

1 month ago | boulderweekly.com | Jezy J. Gray

Tobias Forrest on the set of 'Daruma,' available to rent now on various streaming platforms including Amazon Prime Video. Courtesy: Daruma Media LLC Like most of us, Kelli McNeil-Yellen didn’t think much about physical disability until it touched her own life. But after a relative suffered a life-altering injury, the L.A.-based screenwriter began to see things in a new light. “I suddenly noticed the world was completely inaccessible to them.
'In the light of the burning world'

2 months ago | boulderweekly.com | Jezy J. Gray

At first blush, the somber squall of Pacific Northwest black metal duo Ragana sounds like the perfect soundtrack for staring off at foggy mountain peaks and daydreaming of death. But on the opening title track of their latest album, Desolation’s Flower, the band makes a case for staying alive as an act of resistance. “Unending holy bloom that cannot be denied / We hold eternity, they cannot make us die,” co-vocalist Noel Gilson intones in a guttural, glass-busting shriek.
Love is weird - Boulder Weekly

2 months ago | boulderweekly.com | Jezy J. Gray

Courtesy: Troma Entertainment It’s awards season once again — and believe it or not, the alt-cinema goblins at the Dairy Arts Center’s weekly Friday Night Weird showcase know a little something about prestige. Co-curator Shay Wescott says she never imagined the nonprofit’s offbeat film series would overlap with the hobnobbing world of haute couture that is the Academy Awards.
It's getting harder to make a living from music on the Front Range

2 months ago | boulderweekly.com | Jezy J. Gray

Front Range bluegrass staple Big Richard have become a rarity in the local scene by making music their full-time jobs. Credit: Tobin Voggesser Thumbing through the local music section at Paradise Found in downtown Boulder, you’ll find rows of shiny, shrink-wrapped gems ready to change your brain chemistry forever.
Alan Sparhawk learns the language of grief

Jan 14, 2025 | boulderweekly.com | Jezy J. Gray

It’s a bitter 11-degree morning in Duluth, Minnesota, when Alan Sparhawk picks up the phone. Nothing unusual for January in the upper midwest, but it’s a lack of snowfall that has the 56-year-old indie rock legend feeling unsettled. “These last two years have been very weird,” he says of his home state’s uncommonly dry conditions. “The ground is probably 90% bare at this point.”This eerie harbinger of climate change isn’t the only thing that has knocked Sparhawk off orbit lately.
Friday Night Weird at the Dairy Arts Center

Nov 6, 2024 | boulderweekly.com | Jezy J. Gray

'Frankie Freako' screens Nov. 15 as part of the Dairy Arts Center’s Friday Night Weird showcase. Courtesy: Raven Banner Entertainment Shay Wescott wants to clear something up: You don’t have to be a weirdo to get down with Friday Night Weird. The co-founder and programmer behind the longrunning weekly underground cinema series at the Dairy Arts Center says even the most high-falutin culturistas among us will find something to love during this offbeat showcase of all things strange.
The Magnetic Fields mark 25 years of '69 Love Songs'

Oct 23, 2024 | boulderweekly.com | Jezy J. Gray

Halfway through the first installment of the multi-volume magnum opus from Stephin Merritt’s landmark project The Magnetic Fields, a disarming line upends the tenderness of the triple album’s most touching moment. “The book of love has music in it / in fact that’s where music comes from,” the deadpan New Yorker booms in his trademark baritone over a delicately plucked acoustic guitar. “Some of it’s just transcendental / some of it’s just really dumb.”Behold the beating heart of 69 Love Songs.