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Cate Le Bon - CYRK (Control Group)
The most notable Le Bon in music since Simon. His last name was pure fashion; Cate might not consider herself The Good, but she certainly comes across as musically devout.
4 December 2011Weekend – Red (Slumberland)
Thought experiment: What if Weekend was the first band you’d ever heard?
22 November 2011Mazzy Star – “Common Burn” b/w “Lay Myself Down” (Rhymes Of An Hour)
How can ghosts have gravitational pull?
9 November 2011Discotays – Concealer (Holy Page)
Concealer is one of those exercises in minimalist aesthetics that betrays a deeper well of talent, an understanding of the process of subtraction and the importance of what’s left out.
28 September 2011Veronica Falls – Veronica Falls (Slumberland)
Being mostly a comparison of the two versions of “Stephen.”
25 September 2011Twin Sister – In Heaven (Domino)
The In Heaven we have, not the one we dreamed, ends up more likely than Screamadelica to head for inner space, more eager to come down than to come together.
9 August 2011The Rosebuds with Other Lives – 7th Street Entry (Minneapolis, MN) – Tuesday, July 19, 2011
We always hope that a band will have the inherent gravity needed to overcome the fracturing of its individual parts, but not all bands are as committed as The Rosebuds.
1 August 2011Ken Stringfellow – Brit’s Pub (Minneapolis, MN) – Thursday, July 21, 2011
“What’s more popular here these days, ice sculpture or butter sculpture?”
1 August 2011Holcombe Waller – Into the Dark Unknown (Napoleon Records)
This collection of twelve songs, culled from a theatrical folk concert first staged in 2009, is all interiority and bed-ridden body-pondering, rarely suggesting a dramatic component and cohering beautifully without it.
13 July 2011Bill Callahan with Hidden Ritual – Cedar Cultural Center (Minneapolis, MN) – Friday, July 1, 2011
Suddenly, it’s as if Bill Callahan belongs to us on some cosmic level.
1 July 2011Bob Mould – Dakota Jazz Club (Minneapolis, MN) – Wednesday, June 15, 2011
His description of the genesis of Zen Arcade led to a sort of heartbreaking admission that the album means more to others than it does to him, that he had outgrown the feelings it documents by the time they’d been written down and recorded.
29 June 2011Gruff Rhys with Y Niwl – Triple Rock Social Club (Minneapolis, MN) – Wednesday, June 8, 2011
Confuse your contemporaries.
18 June 2011The Cars – First Avenue (Minneapolis, MN) – Tuesday, May 17, 2011
All art is abstract art. The Cars are fairly artful and surprisingly abstract.
23 May 2011Devon Williams – Euphoria (Burger Records)
Williams’ magnificent 2009 single “Sufferer” becomes Euphoria’s centerpiece, unchanged but even more potent amidst eleven more songs of the same shaky, yearning flush.
23 May 2011Jeremy Jay – Dream Diary (K)
Jay is a strummer of great intensity, but I think it requires some extended attentive listening to hear the unaccountable heaviness of his playing, muted scratching between full blooms of pure, unchased electric guitar.
7 May 2011Hunx & His Punx with Shannon & The Clams – 7th Street Entry (Minneapolis, MN) – Sunday, May 1, 2011
He emerged like a half-remembered American nightmare: striped tights over black Speedo, leather jacket, cap and bowtie, “Hunx” scrawled in pink lipstick across his chest, penciled-on mustache à la John Waters and pitch-black hair…
3 May 2011The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart with Twin Shadow – Triple Rock Social Club (Minneapolis, MN) – Monday, April 25, 2011
A perfectly balanced double bill, almost too much for the strongly beating heart.
1 May 2011Pixies – Roy Wilkins Auditorium (St. Paul, MN) – Sunday, April 24, 2011
Fun fact: Kim Deal mentioned she has a sister who lived in St. Paul for nine years, on Grand Avenue. Could she have meant equally rad sis Kelley?
20 April 2011Wire with Arcwelder – First Avenue (Minneapolis, MN) – Sunday, April 10, 2011
A sound with no extra fat, and its embodiment in the frighteningly muscled arms of Robert Grey (formerly Gotobed), the Clint Eastwood of drummers.
17 April 2011Cut Copy with Holy Ghost – First Avenue (Minneapolis, MN) – Saturday, April 9, 2011
Something transcendent was implied, I believe, in the night’s most interesting visual element, more transfixing even than all the bright lights: the slow soaking with sweat of Dan Whitford’s button-down shirt, turning dark outward from the armpits until no dry spot remained.
4 April 2011Diamond Rings with PS I Love You and Aaron & The Sea – Triple Rock Social Club (Minneapolis, MN) – Sunday, March 27, 2011
Five men, three acts, the cold north, and the Friendship Principle.
3 April 2011Trash Can Sinatras – Cedar Cultural Center (Minneapolis, MN) – Saturday, March 26, 2011
I suppose it was inevitable that I would someday soon witness the iPad keyboard app used live in concert, and now I have, the Trash Can Sinatras being the unlikely conjurers of the winds of change.
24 March 2011Mark Kozelek - Cedar Cultural Center (Minneapolis, MN) - Monday, March 14, 2011
Gosh, he even took an early break, in lieu of a break before the encore, for his explicitly stated “need to pee,” and then came back to the stage and continued to play with a purity that had no memory of bodily functions.
7 February 2011Liz Phair – Fine Line Music Café (Minneapolis, MN) – Thursday, January 20, 2011
In the realm of back-catalog-heavy concerts by veteran artists, this definitely fell under the category of “nostalgia trip,” but some unresolved questions linger.
24 January 2011Ryan Rebo – The Lonely Scientist (self-released)
Lonely Scientist arrives as silvery and hushed as its evocative cover art, peering through the windshield and wondering which came first, the big empty landscape or man’s bemused and lonely reaction to it via acoustic guitar.
15 December 2010Superchunk – First Avenue (Minneapolis, MN) – Wednesday, December 1, 2010
Superchunk make music about the pleasures of hard work, and they wouldn’t have returned for any other reason.
13 December 2010The Replacements Tribute Show: 25th Anniversary of "Tim" – First Avenue (Minneapolis, MN) – Friday, November 26, 2010
Martin Devaney, The Mad Ripple, Sons of Gloria, Ryan Paul, glorious things of ragged rock ‘n’ roll beauty and the spirit of ’85.
9 December 2010Mavis Staples – Cedar Cultural Center (Minneapolis, MN) – Sunday, November 28, 2010
She’ll take you there, and you’ll know what that means when she does.
23 November 2010Retribution Gospel Choir with Zoo Animal and The Starfolk – Hennepin Avenue United Methodist Church (Minneapolis, MN) – Friday, November 12, 2010
Rock ‘n’ roll laid claim to the vertical, and allowed its audience to look heavenward.
10 November 2010A Sunny Day In Glasgow – Autumn, Again (self-released)
A merely good album that still manages to put me in greater awe of its creators, as it makes more apparent than ever the slippery and mercurial nature of their writing and recording process.
8 November 2010Belle & Sebastian – Write About Love (Matador)
Does Write About Love promise not just the status quo, does it slyly allude to a degree of revelation we’ve never seen in the work of Belle & Sebastian before?
4 November 2010Glasser – Ring (True Panther Sounds)
A remarkable debut from a woman who is just beginning to discover how much she has to say.
3 November 2010Deerhunter with Real Estate and Casino Vs. Japan – Fine Line Music Café (Minneapolis, MN) – Saturday, October 23, 2010
He stopped frequently to smell his armpits and channel their rock ‘n’ roll energy, shouting “Fuck yeah!” before starting the next song.
20 October 2010Teenage Fanclub – First Avenue (Minneapolis, MN) – Thursday, October 7, 2010
More praiseful prose and phlattering photographs: the Teenage Fanclub lovefest continues.
29 September 2010Laura Veirs & The Hall of Flames with The Watson Twins – Cedar Cultural Center (Minneapolis, MN) – Saturday, September 25, 2010
She can really play it, she can really lay it down. Not a household name, but she’s been in your head all day. It would be so cool to be like Laura, Laura Veirs.
27 September 2010Weezer – Hurley (Epitaph)
A ten-song album with five (mostly) unqualified successes, Hurley is, by this math, at least half fresh, maybe better.
25 September 2010Arcade Fire with Calexico – Roy Wilkins Auditorium (St. Paul, MN) – Wednesday, September 22, 2010
A big, big rock ‘n’ roll show, just the right size in fact, not so big that the band’s personality diffuses in the arena air before it reaches the back row.
15 September 2010Pavement with No Age – Roy Wilkins Auditorium (St. Paul, MN) – Sunday, September 12, 2010
A second consideration of the Pavement reunion tour, but mostly an excuse for some excellent photos.
15 September 2010Sun Kil Moon – Admiral Fell Promises (Caldo Verde)
Mark Kozelek’s fourth album under the Sun Kil Moon moniker is by far the most sparsely arranged, but to call it simply a guitar-and-voice album is misleading, given the fullness of his singing and playing.
11 September 2010Billy Bragg with Darren Hanlon – Cedar Cultural Center (Minneapolis, MN) – Wednesday, September 8, 2010
You can always expect a sing-along at a show by any musician who recorded a great song in the year 1984, but this one’s opening lines (“I was 21 years when I wrote this song / I’m 22 now but I won’t be for long”), and simple, permanent arrangement made it quite a bit more transcendent than the average.
27 August 2010Lou Barlow & The Missingmen with Wye Oak and Young Man – 400 Bar (Minneapolis, MN) – Wednesday, August 25, 2010
Lou was Lou, Wye Oak killed, and Young Man are on their way.
19 August 2010Procedure Club – Doomed Forever (Slumberland)
This new noise pop duo may have been raised in a boarding school secretly operated by Slumberland Records, where the only classes are rudimentary music lessons and the only homework is the complete recordings of Black Tambourine.
4 August 2010Perfume Genius – Learning (Matador)
I spent a somber week falling under this album’s melancholy spell, and then found reason to rejoice. Melody, human emotion, a finely wrought story: all is right with the world.
24 July 2010Deerhunter – “Revival” b/w “Primitive 3D” 7-in (4AD) | Panda Bear – “Tomboy” b/w “Slow Motion” 7-in (Paw Tracks)
Deerhunter and their friend Panda Bear release lovely new singles in advance of forthcoming albums. They dub these “7-inches,” though both are available digitally.
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