Ben Nichols @ The Turf Club, St. Paul, Mn 6/5/16

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Ben Nichols @ The Turf Club, St. Paul, Mn 6/5/16

In the slums of St Paul I found Paradise.  Okay that’s an exaggeration on both ends. But The Turf Club is a nice old bar located in a rather shitty part of the the Twin Cities that feels pretty comfortable inside and pretty dangerous just a block in either direction. It’s truly a rough local…….




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Houndmouth | From the Hills Below the City

I just heard about Katie Toupin leaving Houndmouth and I gotta say, I’m pretty bummed.  I mean, I’m not devastated. I just started listening to them a couple months ago and its not like she’s dead. But her presence in this band, especially her soulful voice will be missed.  Apparently she’s going to go make…




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Sturgill Simpson | A Sailor’s Guide to Earth

I’ve given this album a little time before writing about it to see if I had any changing thoughts but no I’m pretty much settled on it: this album is weird.  Not in the sense that the songs are weird, just that I’m not sure what this album is trying to be or even if it’s…




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Chuck Ragan | The Flame in the Flood

Chuck Ragan recently created a soundtrack for a video game.  Yeah,I thought it was weird too.  I’ve been thinking about video games a lot lately. I was reading an article about the official end of Xbox 360 (the current console I have) and I’m wondering if this is the end for me.  I’ve never been…




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Elephant Revival | Petals

It’s been cold, rainy and windy here for a few days.  Really gloomy stuff. And not just because Prince left us.  Well, maybe.  His legend is still growing post mortem to the point where I may have heard about his ability to change the weather with his confident, post-guitar-solo, self satisfied grins.  Regardless of the origins…




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Houndmouth | Little Neon Limelight

Prince is gone. Just the other day I was laughing about that candid photo taken of him on a bicycle.  And the week before about his basketball playing on Chappelle’s Show.  Yeah, I’m pretty sure it was really him. Especially since moving to Minnesota I feel like Prince comes up in my life pretty frequently. Which…




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Weezer – The White Album

For a band that I like Weezer has made a lot of truly awful songs.  I mean for awhile there in the 2000s nearly every album that they released was entirely trash. I must have been a masochist to have dug through dozens of shitty synth indulgences and top 40 gimmick tracks to find 1 or 2…




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Sturgill Simpson | Metamodern Sounds in Country Music

Outlaw Country Musician Sturgill Simpson is getting a ton of buzz lately in anticipation of his upcoming new album, A Sailor’s Guide to Earth.  Even as someone not particularly connected with the country music scene it’s been hard to miss the fact that Sturgill is suddenly an “it” artist when he’s being discussed everywhere from…




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The War on Drugs | Lost in the Dream

Back in 2014 when Ryan Adam’s self titled album came out I gushed about it not sounding like anything in two decades. After listening to The War of Drug’s Lost in the Dream again recently, I would like to amend that statement to read “it sounds like nothing else recorded in two decades, except this…




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Brian Fallon | Painkillers

Normally I’m behind on reviewing an album when it comes out because I compulsively revisit the band’s back catalog before jumping into the new material. In this case there was really no need with this being Brian Fallon’s first record and The Gaslight Anthem being the only band that I listen to constantly. Now I know…