Music Reviews of concerts, musical performances, and both new release and older albums.
Reviews of concerts, musical performances, and both new release and older albums.
Aug 28 2026
Bizhiki Provides a Soundscape for the Natural World at the Walker Art Center
On August 20, the Walker Art Center presented the 2026 installment of its Sound for Silents film screening series. These events combine live musical performances with films from the Walker’s Ruben/Bentson Moving Image Collection as well as contemporary motion picture work. This edition featured…
Aug 22 2026
The Crane Wives Fill First Avenue with Radical Positivity
On August 15, the Crane Wives played a sold-out show at First Avenue in downtown Minneapolis. While the indie folk band was new to me, they were very well known and loved by the more than 1,500 loyal fans in the enraptured audience. I have to say it has been a while since I’ve had to wait in a line that…
Jul 15 2026
WTF! Fest Takes Over the Hook and Ladder for Year Two of Punk Love and Rage
On July 11, the Hook and Ladder Theater and Lounge in Minneapolis hosted the second edition of WTF! Fest (“Women, Trans, Femmes and Allies to the Front!”) across all of its indoor stages. The focus of the event was to support queer, trans, and femme punks in the Twin Cities area and to act as a fundraiser…
Jul 09 2026
Novulent Defies Categorization at the 7th St. Entry
The independent music world loves few things more than subcategorizing artists at an almost atomic level. Perhaps this is due to the college rock origins of the legacy acts. Possibly it is a desire to discover new forms and claim them before they are a “thing.” Just as likely, there is so…
Jun 26 2026
Kim Gordon Brings Her Sonic Ecstasy to Minneapolis
I am at the point in life where I can talk, with all the conflicted emotions involved, about the “music of my youth.” And for better or worse, I am happy to be able to claim many of the same artists and their past work as the “music of my now.”
Kim Gordon’s former project, Sonic…
May 28 2026
Spit Takes and Whiplass Records Bring the Twin Cities Queer Punk Noise
Local punk group Spit Takes have been propelling themselves across the Twin Cities and beyond since 2023. Band members VansAnn/Vanessa McKinney (vocals), Monet Wong (guitar), Angie Reed (bass), and Charles Gehr (drums) all have extensive roots in the local music scene and enough experience to…
May 13 2026
ICYMI: A Look Back on Caterwaul 2025
Caterwaul is both a music festival and a community gathering. Driven by the tongue-in-cheek slogan “Loud bands play terrible music,” this weekend-long extravaganza of noise rock returns to Minneapolis on June 5–7, 2026.
Caterwaul began in 2022, created by Conan Neutron and Rainer Fronz. Neutron…
May 01 2026
GWAR Strikes Back at First Avenue
On April 7, GWAR returned to First Avenue for the sixth time in their long career. My own personal history of seeing independent music is only slightly longer than the band’s 35-year history, but I am pretty sure this is the first time I’ve seen them live and in the bloody flesh.
I’ve…
Apr 30 2026
Onslaught Summons the “Force from Hell” for an Easter Sunday Turf Club Show
One of the pleasures of the Twin Cities Geek rock beat is that I often find myself covering bands I am not necessarily a fan of but have an appreciation for. There’s a lot of music out there and only so many minutes one can dedicate to giving music its due. This is why Onslaught and Warlord with Haunter at the…
Mar 26 2026
Netflix’s New Red Hot Chili Peppers Doc Shows the Unbreakable Bonds Among Outcasts
Every so often I start watching a movie at midnight thinking I’ll just check out the first 10 minutes to see if it’s worth watching later and then I become so engrossed with it that I end up watching the entire thing. That was my experience with Netflix’s new music documentary, The Rise of the Red Hot Chili…