Yep, it's another double column, to make up for lost time. And in response to reader suggestions, I'm trying to let you know when you can catch my local picks live in the near future. Sorry I don't love yr new indie rock boyfriend.
LOCAL PICKS
FULL PLAYLIST HERE
Absolutely Yours, “Flight Simulation”
Bridget Collins says she wrote this love song while musing on Baudrillard and watching her boyfriend play video games, but don’t let that scare you off. Like the rest of the band’s latest, Desire Path, this is dream pop that lingers as much as it beguiles. I guarantee that you’ve never heard “Burn it all down and do it again,” sung so sweetly. Their next show is at the Varsity on November 18 as part of the Front and Center Local MN Artist Showcase.
Bugsy, ”Drip Dry”
Emily Schoonover is down bad here, waiting with patient abjection, proclaiming, “Tell me what you need to hear/Cause I would say anything.” The music is suitably claustrophobic, with Griffen Desai’s guitar racing up and down a fragmented scale as the crisp thud of Shannon Maroney’s low end and Al Noonan’s slapping drums set the song’s parameters. A new album, I Become Lake Water, is due November 10, with a release show at the Fine Line coming December 12.
A sequel to his 2017 album, American Reverie, the jazz guitarist’s latest album, American Reckoning, reinterprets a selection of American pop and folk songs, some as familiar as “Amazing Grace,” some as timely as “Masters of War.” Here he shows how much you can accomplish by just letting the melody go about its business, at times lagging behind the beat a touch to lend additional wistfulness, and thus earning the improvisatory detours that always lead us back to the main route. Harris is at the Hi Hat tonight, October 30, heading up his trio.
On the title track of an EP Kaatwalk dropped in (when else?) June, Kathleen Campbell pouts about a bad day—no “purse with a painted-on horse” at the thrift store, painkillers after a wisdom-tooth yoink constipating. There’s Mitchellisms a-plenty here, but it’s a less-traveled path, the lighthearted Joni of “You Turn Me on I’m a Radio.” Campbell’s gigging plenty on the bar ‘n’ brewery circuit, including a Halloween show at Freight House at Stillwater.
Nur-D never fails to rise to the moment, though it’d be nice if we had fewer moments here in Minnesota for him to rise to. “END OF THE WORLD,” which I’ll leave in all caps to drive home just how much he means it, is a highlight of his latest album, Hell. Released last week, this banger updates “1999” for a 21st century with a broader array of future fears than just nuclear winter —“I’m-a do my dance when the flashbang hits,” the rapper boasts, inviting you to put your body “right on my apocalypse.” He's at Bleu House in Rochester tonight, October 30, if you're down that way.
Charlie Parr, “(What’s So Funny) About Universal Healthcare”
Rooming House, Parr’s latest full-length, is “conceptual folk opera” that introduces us to an endearing cast of occupants who are short on resources but long on character. Here a cash-strapped fella tires of relying WebMD and home remedies and devises a plan to secure government healthcare. He'll hand a bank teller a note that says “Give me a buck/And call the cops,” then head for the slammer. Call it a protest song, why don’t ya? Parr will be at the State Theatre tonight, October 30, with Dave King drumming.
Spit Takes, “Saw You On… (Tinder)”
“I’m five-foot-five/Like to pee outside/Never skydive/Got a race car sex drive,” Vanessa McKinney chants exuberantly to lead off this swipe-worthy musical profile, a spare track that Monet Wong spikes judiciously with guitar noise, ending on a fretful group chorus of “Are you a flake?”
Producer Josh Fagin, a recent Minneapolis transplant from St. Louis, reworks the ominous stutter of UK garage (shades of Burial haunt the disembodied vocals) for half the duration of this track, which then ebbs into reverbed guitars and endures miscellaneous sound effects, until the producer brings the beat back. If you dig this, check out his newish full-length Tactile, which ranges even more wildly.
There are essentially two kinds of songs about liars: songs about calling out a liar and songs about being a liar. Local punks Visual Learner tackle the latter kind here. With slashy guitars and revved up beat, this is no-frills punk that doesn’t consider tunefulness a frill. And b-side “Stench of Calm” is just as hot. They'll be at Memory Lanes on November 9 with Yuasa-Exide, Makin' Out, and Darkling I Listen.
Wren + Wilde, “Serial Dreamers”
The title (and closing) track from this countryish folk (folkish country?) group’s debut album is kind of a mission statement. Hillary Yoder fesses up to life as one of the “chronic believers” without being a drip or a naif about it. Sings really pretty too. Catch 'em at the White Squirrel on November 14 or 331 the following day.
NON-LOCAL PICKS
FULL PLAYLIST HERE
Phoebe Bridgers, “The Governor’s Waltz”
I’ve already said plenty about Bridgers and how her most recent album, Lost Weekend, helped me overcome my reservations about a commitment to pessimism she’s apparently outgrowing. But one of my favorite songs on that album is a bummer, albeit one painted in lighter shades of gray. “I was the belle of the Governor’s Ball/Hiding in the bathroom/Like Shelley Duvall” is how she begins a lifespan-of-a-relationship overview that an able screenwriter could probably adapt into a Paul Mescal weepie. Everything floats along smoothly until she shuffles some of the chords in the chorus to provide unexpected turbulence. And though I’m not a big chanson à clef fella, I still snicker at how Bridgers blesses Gracie Abrams’s heart toward the end.
Swamp Dogg feat. Gary U.S. Bonds, “Waka Waka”
The fecund cult genius named his latest album Swamp Dogg Contemplates the Afterlife, and let’s hope his contemplation has led him to postpone heading there as long as possible. Here, Jerry Williams Jr. teams up with Springsteen fave Bonds (still twistin' at 87 and good for him) and threatens to “terrorize your jaw” over a high-stepping front-line beat.
Wendy Eisenberg, “Another Lifetime Floats Away”
Though Eisenberg is known for her experimental bent, her latest album is, no mistaking it, a singer-songwriter album, right down to its plain title: Wendy Eisenberg. This collection of childhood memories (“My mother makes breakfast, she keeps me alive”) will remind you of your own mortality in a way that’ll make you content to be mortal, with all the limitations and possibilities that suggests. And it sounds like the Roches, whose singer-songwriter records were plenty experimental in their own way.
On her latest album, Reckoning, this gay, southern recovering alcoholic recognizes that this is no time for subtlety: She outright compares ICE to Nazis and prophesies defeat for the forces of evil on a six-minute title track. Yet her singing remains conversational and understated, particularly on this indelible rumination on history from the perspective of an old man (perhaps Black?), a co-write with Vince Gill. He recalls the turmoil of ye olde ’60s, laments that “These days guns are everywhere/Lord, they shootin’ everything,” and saw January 6 coming. Gauthier will play the Parkway on November 5.
Margaret Glaspy, “Michigan”
Glaspy’s sixth album, I Am Both, is her best, an inconvenient fact in a novelty-hungry market that I hope hasn’t moved on. Her voice stark against gently arpeggiated guitar and brushed drums, she’s shivering triumphantly here with new friends in rural Michigan, pursued by an ex who jilted her. “You said you didn’t need me/But who’s standing in whose driveway?” She’s got you there, bro.
Human Hearts, “Still in Error”
Maybe the theme for this edition of Playlists is “getting better with age”? Franklin Bruno has really settled into a midlife groove with his Human Hearts, and for this memorable jolt of jaunty guitar pop he adopts the perspective of a fella trying to do his best not “dissolve his folly/Into melancholy/And terror.” Click the link—that’s an order, not a suggestion—to watch an adorable video in which 57–year-old Bruno learns to ride a bike.
Kaliii, “GIRLS WANT BOYS WHO STFU”
It’s the return of the foul-mouthed truth-teller who boasted of the wide geographical range of dick she had on call in “Area Codes” a few years back. Over a beat that Corey Hart would love to brood over, she chants the title (sans SFW abbreviation), offering good advice to any fellas who are willing to get their feelings hurt to learn true facts.
Richard is a wide-ranging polymath with a catalogue that includes intricately proggy R&B and slamming electronic dance music. But she can just write a damn song when she wants, and on her new album, Creole Culture, she's nowhere more effervescent than on this pledge of devotion. The sex is so hot she's making some lucky breakfast for an indeterminately gendered you, with a snippet of Sister Nancy bom-bomming in the distance, and the Katalyst Collective bounding in with a horn fanfare.
Nothing against Steve Lacy, but if you ask me, everyone got worked up about the wrong member of The Internet putting out a new album this year. Syd's latest album, Beard, is sultry enough for bedroom music but hooky enough that you might lose focus on the business at hand. This is the album's closing track, and hence possibly the last one you hear before you drop into postcoital snooze.
“2 On” was 12 years ago now, and our girl’s been struggling to navigate an industry that didn’t know what to do with her ever since. But she found her footing with "Nasty" and "No Broke Boys," and her latest, Popstar, is the Tinashe album we’ve wanted for years. On the verge of tearing shit up, here she struts and flirts and boasts with a clear goal in mind: “I just need to get my energy right.”
WORST NEW SONG
Cameron Winter, "Emperor XIII in Shades"
Geese is fine, just the kind of band that folks flailing for seemingly meaningful, zeitgeist-defining rock latch on to when they're feeling adrift. But the world does not need a straight Rufus Wainwright impersonator improvising new lyrics to "A Long December" over solo piano. Or at least I don't.
Wanna get a local song considered for the playlist? To make things easy on both of us, email keith@racketmn.com with RACKET PLAYLIST in the subject header. (Don’t, as in do NOT, DM or text: If I’m in a good mood, I’ll just ask you to send an email; if I’m in a bad mood I’ll just ignore it.)
