Music

Good vibes abound on ambitious, collaboration-heavy “Surf”

June 5th, 2015

Hyped by hip-hop wunderkind Chance the Rapper since last October, Donnie Trumpet & The Social Experiment’s debut album “Surf” was quietly made available as a free download on the iTunes store late last week. Sprawling, ambitious and stuffed to the gills with guest collaborators, “Surf” is an immediately arresting record, sure to go down as one of 2015’s quintessential hip-hop releases.

Chance’s pervasive presence on “Surf” is telling enough. The 22-year-old could’ve…

Veeder fever: North Dakotan singer-songwriter releases Nashville-produced record

June 3rd, 2015

“Northern Lights” will shine bright at The Stage at Island Park this Sunday for Jessie Veeder’s CD release concert.

The Watford City, N.D.-based Americana musician has been singing, writing music and performing since her teenage years. The now 31-year-old has released five full-length albums and has toured the country playing music. Her experience, along with her cherished talent and loyal-to-the-area song content, has led her to become one of the most important modern-day…

Cleveland unplugs for front-porch reverie on “Oh Man, Cover the Ground”

May 27th, 2015

Billed as “12 songs about dark rooms, water, wind, stoned afternoons, sun in your eyes, sex, hair, snacks, death, & the beach,” Shana Cleveland’s solo debut, “Oh Man, Cover the Ground,” sounds appropriately like a slacker soundtrack. Beneath its lowest-key exterior, however, the album is a patient, homespun tribute to a particular set of misfits in folk music’s history.

In 2012, as her Spector-esque surf rock outfit, La Luz, was just beginning to make waves, Cleveland…

‘Mutilator Defeated’ a triumph of consistence for Thee Oh Sees

May 20th, 2015

In a musical landscape ever-hungry for the Next Big Thing, artistic consistence is a severely underappreciated quality. The listening public, that fickle beast, wants bigger and better with an artist’s every passing album, but its back turns quickly when an artist moves faster than it can keep up. It’s an ugly game with few winners on either side of the stage.

With a gaggle of rock-solid studio and live albums, EPs, split-sevens and one-off compilation tracks tied to its name over…

The Weather Station stays loyal to folk tradition

May 13th, 2015

“Folk” has always been a nebulously defined genre descriptor, its quaint tag encompassing everything from Lomax-era plantation blues to the beatnik strumming of Greenwich Village, and its meaning has been muddied further as an umbrella to ignorantly lump together regional, or “world,” music. In the 21st century, the sounds of the South have apparently all been collected and protest songs are more likely to feature a big-name rapper than a harmonica.

Our conceptions of folk music…

The scoop on Spoon

May 13th, 2015

Bassist Rob Pope, also of the The Get Up Kids, discusses new record and tour

American rock ‘n’ roll band Spoon will visit Fargo for the first time ever this Tuesday. The veteran group from Austin, Texas has been around for 20-plus years. It has gained strong fan support, especially among alternative and indie music followers, for its stimulating and tasteful soundscapes, rhythmic patterns and melodic ideas that are balanced with charming, expertly crafted songwriting.

Perhaps known…

Q&A with Monica Martin of Phox

May 13th, 2015

Look “Phox” up on YouTube. Watch and listen. There, that should be enough to convince folks to attend the up-and-coming indie/artsy pop band’s concert Wednesday night at The Aquarium.

It’s lead singer Monica Martin’s glorious singing voice. It’s the band’s rich back-up harmonies. It’s the titillating instrumentation accompanying Martin’s memorable main melodies. It’s the amalgamation of all those things, and then some, that’s turning Phox into everyone’s favorite…

Volbeat: The New Voice of Heavy Metal

May 10th, 2015

When Michael Poulsen sings, his distinctive voice and vocal range are like nothing you have heard from a heavy metal band before and probably never will. One of the reasons this heavy metal / rockabilly band are making a mark on the heavy metal /thrash band scene.

A couple of months ago my buddy Leon called to say that Volbeat, Anthrax and Crobot where coming to Grand Forks at the Ralph Engelstad Arena, tickets were purchased so now all we had to was wait for May to roll Around. Leon and…

Behind the scenes with P.F. Sloan

May 9th, 2015

Songwriter behind the number one hit “Eve of Destruction” to perform in Fargo

It all started with a guitar lesson from Elvis Presley in 1958. Songwriter P.F. Sloan, who will perform in Fargo for the first time on May 16, was just 12 years old at the time.

“He showed me the chords to ‘Love Me Tender’ and talked to me for about 30 minutes about life and what love is and what are the important things in life,” Sloan remembered. “Basically, it was the closest I had come to…

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…