Once more I have listened to some songs. Once more I have selected my favorites. Once more I have listened to a full Morgan Wallen album. One of these things I will not do again.
Local Picks
Andrew Broder, “Surveillance”
The versatile producer follows up 2024’s Acceptance with another three-track album, Dignity. This track emits a Morse code of synth that’s layered over with ripples before a house kick drum punches in. And from there it lets loose.
Beebe Gallini, “Run Run Run”
Fewer neo-garage bands do retro right than advertised, but from racing drum fills to quietly clamorous guitars to the coolly cruel vocals of Miss Georgia Peach, this cover of Mankato’s the Gestures’ claim to history nails it. They're celebrating the release of their new album Begged, Borrowed & Stealed at Barely Brothers' tonight.
Field Hospitals, “Ethel Green”
When a band cites its influences, they’re either so obvious you wonder why they bother or so beyond their abilities you wanna say "nice try." But this crisply jangly new group does not mention the Feelies, the Go-Betweens, or Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever in vain. The title track of their six-song EP Ethel Green is the standout, which is probably as it should be.
Matthew Schufman and his crew really do new-wave synth pop right. Maybe because they love it for its anticipatory earnestness rather than its jaded cool.
This state suffers no shortage of Americana or roots rock or whatever you wanna call it, but this crew puts their distinct stamp on the style or genre or whatever you wanna call it. Maybe it’s Shaun Donovan’s boasts of “my useless conversation and my inability to read a room.” Maybe it’s the sax. From their upcoming album Poor Company.
A woozy Afrobeat track that doesn’t so much emanate the heat of the night as sway to the beat of the hazy morning after, marked by a slick atmospheric saxophone. You’ve heard this member of the Nigerian-American Ozone Creations collective on these playlists before, and I suspect you’ll hear him again.
Makin’ Out’s latest album has a gripping backstory: Bandleader Caitlin Angelica’s boyfriend was August Golden, the DIY rocker murdered at the 2023 Nudieland punk house shooting. “I joke this is the only love song I've ever written, which is not entirely true, though it is the only one August was alive to hear,” Angelica writes, as she sings with joy barely touched by mourning. Go in with none of that knowledge and "Sunflower Song" rings out as something special just the same.
River Sinclaire, “Bring Me Down”
What began as Daniel Hughes’s solo project has blossomed into a real band, and its new album Four Friends Say Nothing leads off with this moody track, synthing up garage-rock’s bad attitude with all sorts of clever touches.
Samia, “Bovine Excision”
The indie-esteemed Samia Finnerty was an established quantity before she relocated to the Twin Cities, drawn here by collaborators in the Hippo Campus camp. Her songwriting really clicks on the new album Bloodless, with a lyrical grimness (“pickin’ leeches off white underwear”) underneath her stylized vocals and smooth rock. I mean, bovine excision is nasty stuff. Just look it up.
White Boy Summer, “Lady Justice (I Gotta)”
Thomas Abban’s virtuoso 2017 debut album A Sheik’s Legacy powered him to a Picked to Click win, but he dropped out of circulation shortly after that. Now he’s back with bigger riffs and a more defiant attitude: “If you’ve still got American dreams then you’re asleep,” for instance. He's also got the Twin Cities’ best drummer, L.A. Buckner, indulging his hard rock side, and the ironic band name of the summer.
Non-Local Picks
Fiona Apple, “Pretrial (Let Her Go Home)”
Hearing plenty of aesthetes murmuring “sure it’s important but what’s its replay value?” as though the chorus of “wouldn't let her go home” isn’t as hooky as anything on Fetch the Bolt Cutters. Not every “political” song has to get your fist pumping, you know.
Ominous synth slabs descend over a complexificated reggaeton beat, as the producer tarts about with staccato flair on some “high femme shit.” Not sure what the title means—maybe some kid in sixth-grade Spanish class could help me?
Julien Baker & Torres, “Sugar in the Tank”
And why shouldn’t two queer recovering Christians make a country record? Especially when their two voices—Baker’s pert, Torres’s rough—complement each other so smartly. Softie that I am, this Baker litany of how-she-loves-you’s (“sleeping on my dead left arm,” “swimming upstream in a flash flood,” “strung out on the drying rack.”) is my fave from Send a Prayer My Way. And yes, I hope it’s about Lucy.
The Beths, “Metal”
My appreciation of this band’s craft is well-documented. “And I know I’m a collaboration/Bacteria, carbon and light/A florid orchestration/A recipe of fortune and time” reminds me of the Chills’ Martin Phillipps in the best way.
Gina Birch, “Causing Trouble Again”
This alumna of postpunk godmothers the Raincoats returned in 2023 to stir things up with I Play My Bass Loud, and as she approaches 70 (it’s the new 60!) she's no less cantankerous, listing plenty of other countercultural godmothers in her support during the song's coda.
My fave nepo baby can kick your fave nepo baby’s ass. Ever so gently, of course.
Julian Mark, “Bob Dylan's Entire Discography But It's Just The Word ‘Blood’”
Now this is what the internet is for. Not to give too much away, but highlights include when the backup gals chant “blood” on “Saved,” the splurts of “Blood in Your Eyes,” and the emphatic, vampiric delivery on “Pay in Blood.”
The difference between an OK PinkPantheress track and a great one is hard to puzzle out at first. You have to let it soak up your attention, like one of those compressed sponges that becomes an animal after you drop it in water. So let’s just say this one eventually pops. As for the lyrics, “The narrator flirts with and makes sexual advances toward a crush.” Thanks, Wikipedia.
Tune-Yards, “Heartbreak”
The incredibly unfashionable Merrill Garbus returned last week with a characteristically excellent new album, Better Dreaming, that will be largely overlooked again. This lead track showcases the power of her vocals: Maturity has sanded away some of her idiosyncrasies, and she’s more straightforwardly soulful, but she still sings like no one else. Not even like the backing harmony voices she records herself.
I adore this huge-voiced West Tennessee Black hippie country gal, and she flaunts both her good spirits and her spaciness on her latest album, Owls, Omens, and Oracles. I grin foolishly every time she drops down playfully into her lower register here. By the way, she’ll be at the State on May 31 with Chastity Brown—a pretty ideal pairing.
Worst New Song
Morgan Wallen feat. Hardy, "Come Back as a Redneck"
Out of a misplaced sense of professional duty, I exposed myself to all two hours of product that the biggest country star in America slopped onto streaming services last week. Yet why should I bother to critique it, when the best thing that this mean, sullen alcoholic has to say for himself over 37 tracks that roll past with the frictionless ease of a TikTok feed is that he's so good in bed women sometimes tolerate his presence when he's got his jeans on? Still, as gross as songs like "Kiss Her in Front of You" can be, at least they capture the pettiness that the barhopping 20-somethings of both sexes who make up his fanbase can identify with. And Post Malone does him a solid with "There's a lot of reasons I ain't Jesus, but the main one is that I ain't comin' back."
But I get picky when it comes to Big Statements, like when "Mr. City Man" looks down on working man Wallen's "beat-up truck" and the star wishes the snob would be reincarnated as a good ol' boy. As though there aren't rednecks who own car dealerships and drive top-of-the-line F-150s. As though cities aren't filled with working people. As though substituting regional resentment for working class solidarity wasn't the oldest trick in the U.S. power elite's playbook. So close to class consciousness... and yet so far.
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.)
