“This is a really bad idea,” said Stephen King, “especially considering that the band that first had a hit with this song came from Minnesota. Anyone remember the Trashmen?” Some of us remembered the Trashmen playing “Surfin’ Bird” on that very stage in First Avenue’s Mainroom. King dropped his guitar and stepped forward for that […]
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 […]
The Better Oblivion Community Center opened its doors for one night in Minneapolis, and a sold-out crowd rushed in. Better Oblivion Community Center is a collaboration between Phoebe Bridgers and Conor Oberst, both successful rock artists in their own right. Their debut self-titled came out in January of this year. This project isn’t Bridgers’ first […]
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 […]
It’s not often you hear a sold-out Turf Club go dead silent. But that’s what happened before a special “audio presentation” early in the first night of Andrew Broder & PEOPLE’s January 2019 residency, a series that’s become a Turf Club tradition in its third year running. Except for the odd chug of a soda […]
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 […]
