MUSIC REVIEW | The Current showcases mostly local music: Cold War Kids, Dead Man Winter, Hippo Campus and Allan Kingdom

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The Current celebrates their birthday in style but more importantly with great variety. The penultimate birthday event on Jan. 23 night at First Avenue included four bands with four different sounds: rap, pop, Americana and indie rock. And if you dig deeper at all, there were really more sounds within each performance.Cold War Kids are pegged as indie rock—but shave lead singer Nathan Willett’s head (or grow his hair long) and I think you’d see Henry Rollins on stage. The music isn’t as hard as Black Flag but Willett is as energetic; he plays and sings hard – as do the rest of the members. Continue Reading

MUSIC REVIEW | Keeping kids rocking with Bunny Clogs and Guitar Party at the Cedar

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Saturday the morning the Cedar Cultural Center was hopping and toddling with Bunny Clogs and Guitar Party – two bands for kids with members who are well known to a Twin Cities audience.Bunny Clogs is a family project for Adam Levy, also of the Honeydogs. The band includes his daughters Ava (13) and Esther (16) singing and nephew Isaac Levy (11) playing a mean guitar. As well as a lot of good humored and talented adult musicians. The music is part pop, part blues and includes a little rap. It’s a nice blend that will grow on kids and their grownups. Continue Reading

MUSIC REVIEW | Generations of Punk celebrate The Current: Suicide Commandos, Craig Finn and L’Assassins

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Generations of Minnesota garage punk were on stage and in the audience Friday night for The Current’s ten-year birthday party. Craig Finn put a frame on that fact when he talked taking guitar lessons as a kid from Chris Osgood of the Suicide Commandos. “I learned how to be cool,” he explained, by watching Osgood turn up the stereo before he answered the phone instructing Finn “you want people to think you’re having a party.”The Suicide Commandos rocked. It was old school punk – short, loud crashing songs, limited chatter. They started with You Can’t, included Complicated Fun and threw in a lot of surprising covers. Continue Reading

MUSIC REVIEW | Martha Scanlan, Michael Rossetto and Real Phonic Band friends play Classical to Americana at the Hill Library

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Every third Thursday, the James J Hill Library leaves their shush at the door and welcomes Real Phonic Radio. In January, the door opened to sweet sounds of Martha Scanlan balanced nicely with a lot of much lower voices throughout the night.This is the second time Scanlan has played Real Phonic Radio. Last time she played with Amy Helm, this time with Dolorean’s Jon Neufeld. The music was softer this time. Scanlan has a very sweet voice – gentle and warbling at times like a songbird. Continue Reading

MUSIC REVIEW | Girl Germs: An epidemic you won’t mind catching

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Saturday night the Turf Club welcomed the second infestation of local Girl Germs. Like lots of good ideas, it’s a simple theme – local musicians paying homage to women in rock. That might mean Kitten Forever taking a pop icon like Beyoncé and making it their own. It might mean Aby Wolf striking perfect pitch of Kate Bush. There’s something for everyone, which makes the case that women can’t be pigeon-holed – they can rock any genre, any era, any taste.Also worth noting – casting for the event is gender-blind. (Which led to the most amazing performance last time around with Night Moves singing the Cranberries. Continue Reading

Innova Hi-Fi Club: Like a whale swimming in pink

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Monday night my favorite 10 year old and I went to the Innova Hi-Fi Club. It was a cold day and a Tweet from the Secrets of the City that sparked our interest in venturing out for something completely different. Here’s the Tweet that got us out the door…Innova HiFi Club: Bowed Metal Music and Ambient Tuba sounds nuts, but it’s gorgeous.It was an old school record party held at the Landmark Center with a handful of the friendliest people with an incredibly deep understanding of music. There were eight or nine of us in an elegant former courtroom on the fourth floor of the Landmark Center sitting the dark listening to ambient tuba and metal music – not heavy metal, more industrial metal.It started with Tom Heasley’s On the Sensations of Tone. On it he plays the tuba – but not tunes, tones. Continue Reading

Arty birthday celebrations at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts and the Walker: Art and Cake – Yum!

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How can you have your cake and eat it too? That was the conundrum we solved over the holiday break. The answer is many cakes, done differently for two separate birthdays. The Minneapolis Institute of Arts is celebrating their 100th birthday throughout 2015. They started with a birthday brunch and “Master Pieces of Cake” on New Year’s Day. Continue Reading

MUSIC REVIEW | Cool Jazz and more at the Khyber Pass Cafe

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Thursday night at the Khyber Pass Café celebrated New Year’s Day with experimental jazz with Davu Seru on drums, Nathan Hanson on saxophone and Doan Brian Roessler on upright bass.I walked in a little late and I was delighted to hear old school cool Audrey Hepburn (Funny Face) jazz, which delighted me after a New Year’s Eve marathon of Twilight Zone watching, which also featured a lot of Funny Face jazz. It was one of the first times that a jazz show brought back memories, because I’m not a lifelong jazz fan. There was something oddly comforting in the memory and then something even nicer yet when the music went more modern and it didn’t remind me of anything. It stood on its own to make a new memory.The ensemble was a new compilation, although it included three accomplished musicians. I first saw Davu Seru doing a drum duet, which was unusual and amazing. Continue Reading