Singer/songwriter/producer Lady Midnight poured out wisdom at the Turf Club last night. She said: “It is far worse to live life on your knees than to be killed standing.” She sang: “Can’t nobody put a claim on/ What you put your name on.” She proved: It is better to take your time on a project […]
The weather was so gorgeous last night, Tame Impala would’ve had to lock Kevin Parker in the tour bus to ruin the mood at Minneapolis’s Surly Festival Field. Luckily, the project’s frontperson/auteur was in no such bind, striding to the front of the stage and staying there while he sang hits from 2015 album Currents […]
My Brightest Diamond has released five albums and played hundreds of shows, but each one is a novel experience. Two of their only constants: Shara Nova’s classically trained voice and her bent toward artsy surprise. In Nov. 2018, she released the My Brightest Diamond album A Million and One, a more electronic, dancey project than […]
One of Beyoncé’s biggest fans had her own homecoming last night. Lizzo, aka the former queen of Minneapolis hip-hop, returned to the Twin Cities for her first local headlining show in about two years. Like the rest of the shows on the Cuz I Love You tour, this Palace Theatre date sold out minutes after […]
After Willie Murphy passed away on Jan. 13, friends and fans hastened to post remembrances of the West Bank trailblazer online. Last weekend, Murphy’s community gathered to honor him in person: first on Saturday at an Augsburg Chapel memorial service, then on Sunday at “Fairytales,” a Cabooze tribute show and celebration of life. The Cabooze […]
It had been months since I saw a good thunderstorm. Snow and deep freezes have swept through the Twin Cities lately, but it’s been a long time without thunder and lightning. Sharon Van Etten put an end to that stretch last night at First Avenue. She summoned angry synths, crashing cymbals, and even windchimes and […]
“I feel like everyone here has been cooped up inside,” Kacey Musgraves told the crowd at St. Paul’s Palace Theatre on Saturday night. After a week of polar vortex-induced blistering temperatures, the St. Paul audience seemed eager to be out of their homes and shoulder-to-sholder with thousands of strangers for the sold-out show. Georgia-based singer-songwriter […]
The Current enters adolescence this year, and part one of the celebration kicked off Friday night with a sold-out First Avenue show. “I got really strong when I was 14 carrying those heavy books,” quipped Kerry Alexander of Bad Bad Hats in a sweet deadpan, “and emotionally strong for other reasons.” The first night of The […]
I have a certain admiration for angry people. As a citizen and scholar of the United States, I’ve read about the provocative suffragettes; the can’t-be-tamed flag-wavers; the defiant revolutionaries. I’ve imagined myself joining their fights. But when I think about the issues threaded through present-day America, I feel numb and/or scared more often than roused. […]
“I like to celebrate [the 26th] every month, because I like to celebrate things,” Bailey “26” Cogan said from under a red cowboy hat at Icehouse last night. Yet this fifth-from-last day of Dec. 2018 was no ordinary 26th. Last night, 26 BATS! performed the final show of the Kremblems’ collective residency and dropped their […]
