Music

Basement’s Best: My Morning Jacket breaks hearts and waves on “Waterfall”

May 7th, 2015

In the four years since the release of My Morning Jacket’s last album, “Circuital,” bandleader Jim James stretched himself awfully thin. He lent himself fully to two collaborative tribute albums (the Dylan-indebted “Lost on the River” and the Guthrie-saluting “New Multitudes”), wrote, recorded and released an excellent solo debut and toured extensively with MMJ and on his own.

Sparing little time upon washing his hands of these various side gigs, James and the rest of My…

A few questions for Caroline Smith

May 4th, 2015

HPR asked popular Minneapolis-based artist Caroline Smith a series of questions and we saved the best answers for our readers.

Smith, a native of Detroit Lakes, Minn., performs in Fargo at least once or twice a year. She’ll return this Thursday, May 7 and this time is bringing along an opener, Ashley Dubose, also a Twin Cities-based pop/R&B singer-songwriter.

High Plains Reader: You’re a big city musician with small town roots. In what ways are you still in touch with those…

Jack White’s surprise performance gets Fargo love

April 29th, 2015

Local music lovers have rock and roll spiritual experience

What musical act would you stand in line for four to six hours to see? It’s a question many in Fargo found themselves grappling with when, mere hours before the gig, Jack White finally announced the last of his five-state acoustic performances to end his Lazaretto World Tour and begin a live-show hiatus of an undetermined amount of time.

My social media feed was filled with debate about whether or not Jack White was worthy of…

Basements Best: Alabama Shakes move outward, upward on “Sound & Color”

April 26th, 2015

Though its preceded by the title track, Alabama Shakes’ sophomore album, “Sound & Color,” doesn’t truly begin until about the 40-second mark of “Don’t Wanna Fight.” Steamrolling frontwoman Brittany Howard finds an open spot in the thistle of razorwire guitars and swaggering drums and emits a lemon-tart yowl, sucking all the air out of the room. For just a moment, the world pauses.

She exhales, spitting out the pounding backbeat and humbucked guitars with gale force. If one…

Basements Best: “1st Bath” a baptism in the name of pop music

April 16th, 2015

For a debut album, Avid Dancer’s “1st Bath” plays more like a confident string of hits from a “best of” collection than a document of a young musician searching for his voice. Brimming with nods to pop from every crevice of the previous half-century, Jacob Summers’ project is the sonic equivalent of a kid in a candy shop, and has the sweet-toothed enthusiasm to match.

The attention deficit of “1st Bath” can be chalked up to Summers’ backstory. Raised almost entirely on…

KNDS hosts Twin Peaks

April 16th, 2015

The annual KNDS Block Party is bringing up-and-coming hit rock band Twin Peaks to The New Direction on April 25. Supporting the Chicago garage punk rock band is Minneapolis artist Suzie and local rockers Panda Bandit.

The past block parties have included four or more bands but, according to KNDS general manager Cydney Berlinger, this year they took a different direction and focused on one main band to make it more like a typical concert. The change happened because the alternative…

Basement’s Best: ‘What For?’ a strong left turn for Toro Y Moi

April 10th, 2015

In the music biz, there’s an understandable element of danger in a visionary hard left turn. Time and time again, artists have followed their muses down the charts when their too-high flights of fancy glided on the momentum of their Last Big Thing.

Usually the gamble is a “bigger they are, the harder they fall” ordeal, and countering every electrified Dylan is a soul-patched Chris Gaines. Luckily, as musical attention spans have shortened, artists have begun separating their…

HPR’s Music Festival Guide: 2015

April 8th, 2015

Moondance Jam / Photo courtesy of the staff

By Diane Miller and Kayla Culver

Pump up the outdoor jams, festival season is coming.

We’ve compiled a list of the best music festivals within reasonable driving distance from Fargo. Whatever your tastes are -- dubstep, country, rock, folk, blues, hip-hop, Christian or jazz -- one of these music festivals is bound to suit your groove.

Tickets are about as cheap as they get at this time. So plan ahead and save some money this season.

Please note that most music festivals are welcome to all…

Basement’s Best: Ryley Walker anything but green on ‘Primrose’

April 2nd, 2015

From the dawn of drum machines and samplers to the neat grids of GarageBand and ProTools, the creative process for solo musicians has been greatly augmented by technology.

Stars are born from viral videos, and entire albums are recorded in bedrooms across the world, intangibly contained on hard drives without a single note leaving the creator’s headphones.

While this technology boom has effectively dismantled the once forbiddingly expensive studio complex down to a few keystrokes,…

SXSW scales back

March 25th, 2015

Annual festival still provides many memorable moments

After years of complaints that SXSW was getting too big and a tragic accident that lead to four deaths in 2014, the 2015 annual music, film and interactive festival in Austin, Texas attempted to go back to its roots of artist development and discovery with a more scaled-back feel.