Some of the baby bands in this year’s Picked to Click class don’t remember City Pages, let alone its annual survey of local music. Christy Costello’s knowledge of the Twin Cities scene runs much deeper—for better or worse.
“Good,” she laughs after being told she placed in this year’s contest, but didn't win. “That means my band won’t break up like my last one did.”
Costello is well aware of the Picked to Click Curse, which may or may not have claimed her surfy punk group Pink Mink, which finished No. 1 in 2010 and, a few years later, called it quits.
The native Iron Ranger has been in and out of bands since moving to the Twin Cities as a teen in the ‘90s, making her appearance on this list of new artists a bit surprising. But back in January the 48-year-old veteran of Pink Mink, 2003 P2C finisher Ouija Radio, and Detroit rockers the Von Bondies did indeed release her debut solo album, From the Dark.
"I was surprised too, [Picked to Click] sometimes feels like it's for the kids," she says. "There is a songwriter in me as much as there's a gigger in me—every time I play with someone else I’m dropping that element.”
Costello focused on parenthood after having her daughter in 2013, though she did take on bass duties for yet another Picked to Clicker, 2020 finalist Monica LaPlante. Then, as you might remember, there was a pandemic. While hunkered down, Costello taught herself digital home recording and began assembling all of the "little branches and stems" of songs she'd been recording to cassette tapes since Pink Mink's final LP.
"I didn't know what kind of record I wanted to make. I was working four jobs—cleaning service, teaching yoga all over town, bartending, and booking shows at Dusty's—and all of sudden I didn't have anything to do," she says. "I was in the basement, being a lab rat, all night and day. The songs came out of nowhere."
The resulting 12-track blitz, From the Dark, timelessly splits the difference between the Shangri-Las and Riot Grrrl amid bouncy bursts of garage rock. While the lyrics are informed by the darkness of the pandemic/Trump/racial reckoning/tech dystopia era, she notes that the album is intended to balance darkness and lightness: "From tragedy comes comedy, ya know?"
Costello adds, "I'm glad the record did well, and I think it still has some life to; I need to work it on the road." After that? “I'm going to write my next one during the deep freeze, and then really push From the Dark this spring and summer.”
Explore the entire Picked to Click class of 2024 below.
