By: Kristine Lambert
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Five bands, $2 pints, and a free CD as you walked in the door. It all brought a fairly good draw for the Twin Town High: Music Yearbook, Volume 8, 2006-2007 CD release show at the Turf Club last Friday night. It’s a good thing, too, because a variety of musical energy was exactly what I needed to break the melancholy that arose from the fact that I could see the beginnings of the leaves changing and that it was eight o’clock in the evening and already getting dark.
I grew a little more excited when I got my free copy of Twin Town High. I immediately tore it open and read the inside. I was no longer sad that I don’t live in a place with eternal summer and pay-to-play bands. Here is what Pulse of the Twin Cities music editor and producer of Twin Town High, Vol. 8, Steve McPherson, had to say in the liner notes of the new disc:
Our lives are lived in rehearsal spaces. They’re lived in coffee shops, clubs, bars, backstage, on stage, on tour, in vans, in bedrooms, on four-tracks, on ADATs, between jobs, between paychecks, in the wee hours of the morning, in the best way we know how. And they’re lived here, in Minneapolis and Saint Paul…
Here, in your hands, is the product of thousands of hours of work by hundreds of musicians. I say hundreds because the music herein is not just the product of the artists whose songs made it; it’s the product of the whole local music scene. Between the lines lie former bands, side projects, shared bills and the constant back and forth that enriches every creative endeavor. When the lake rises, all the boats are lifted. Hundreds of musicians working in the studios, in the middle of the night, in the dark of winter or the heat of summer, in the hopes of being heard in these Twin Cities.
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Al Bergstrom of These Modern Socks - Photo by Caballero Grande (click for larger) |
McPherson later explained to me that there were approximately 95 tracks submitted for the record from 45 different bands. Narrowing it down to 22 was a difficult process. Twin Town High, Vol. 8 could easily have been a double disk.
Beight started off the night promptly at 9:15. They went on right from their sound check, as lead singer Brad Senne announced that, “okay, we’re ready.” Senne on acoustic and lead vocals, Brian Just on lead guitar, Andre Leroux on bass and Josh Lemonine on drums proceeded to feed us a steady and well-practiced set that could have come straight out of Silverlake. Mid-set they eased into the lulling stand-out song “Dizzy,” the track off Twin Town High. Senne made his ‘ooh hoo ooh’s’ and ‘la la la la’s’ sound like they came right out of Webster’s complete with full definition.
For some reason, before hearing Middlepicker, I thought they were some kind of folk-rock band. Thankfully, I couldn’t have been more wrong. When they took the stage, the crowd immediately became more raucous. The two dollar pints had apparently begun to take hold. Someone in the back next to the juke box screamed “MUSTACHES!” (an outburst that definitely referred to crazy-Elvis-legged guitar player Bill Zastera and fellow guitar player Kyle Kosieracki, who were both sporting modified Fu Manchus). Sandwiched between the guitars stood bassist Kristin Anderson who, front and center, emphasized the female vocal harmonies.
Middlepicker’s second song, “Bank,” was kinetic as it started off sounding a bit like Modest Mouse except that Anderson’s solid bass line and Justin Lawson’s all-over-the drums complexity would make the Mouse pull all of their music off commercial radio and crawl into a corner.
Next, Big Quarters announced that they were, “Doin’ it up for Minneapolis, Pulse, and Twin Town High.” Guys in the group include Medium Zach, Brandon Allday and Noam the Drummer. In “Song for Brown Babies,” the hip-hop trio rapped about the polarization of the classes and the races. Mellow and with a fat beat, this song made the audience listen to the lyrics. “Same day legislators came to visit you, they cut the funds for a new middle school / I don’t want to know who you blame, bloodshed blood but all the same / and I don’t accept death in vain.”
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Building Better Bombs - Photo by Matthew Jenkins (click for larger)
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These Modern Socks lightened up the mood a bit with eight gentle and dreamlike songs that had several very jammy moments. TMS is comprised of Corey Palmer on lead vocals, guitar and synthesizer; JT Bates on drums; Arron “AL” Bergstrom on bass and back-up vocals; Park Evans on guitar; Nick Tveitbakk on keys, samples and back-up vocals; and Adrian Suarez on percussion. Crowd favorites were “Bird in the Bathroom” and their final song, the Tears for Fears cover “Head over Heals.” The many instruments were layered in a surprising and syncopated manner, which allowed a lofty texture. I felt surrounded by sound as I sat near the stage on the other bands’ gear, sipping my dry cider.
Hardcore speed-punk band Building Better Bombs finished up the night by accosting us with what they dub “audio terrorism.” Loud, fast and strong, they (Stef Alexander [aka P.O.S] and Isaac Gale on guitar and vocals, Ryan Olson on bass, and Drew Christopherson on drums) sounded like a modern-day MC5-type Dead Kennedys. By this point in the evening, most of the crowd surrounded the stage and hung on every down-stroke. With a name like Building Better Bombs in an era when a traveler can’t even bring Gatorade on an airplane, and with songs titled “Deathships,” “Body Bag,” and “Safehouse Lament,” I asked the band if they considered themselves political. They simply replied: “We don’t play on airplanes, we’re just a band that plays songs in a political world.”
Location Info:
The Turf Club
Artist Info: Beight, Big Quarters, Building Better Bombs, Middlepicker, These Modern Socks
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