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Though there was love in the air at this pre-Valentine’s Day radio station concert, it was mostly noise (the good kind) that filled a sold-out Fine Line Music Café in Minneapolis as the latest installment of local alternative station GO 96.3’s GO Show starring K.Flay took place.
The eclectic three-act bill started with Atlanta-by-way-of-Africa young rapper Daye Jack opened with a short set, and whose newest release, Surf the Web (Warner Brothers), came out last fall. The experimental Nigerian-born MC was armed only with a sampling beat box and bravely moved from end to end on the small stage, illustrating the weekday job grind on ‘Easy’ and taking more of a R&B/old school hip-hop vibe on the catchy ‘Deep End’.
‘Hands Up’ has become even more relevant with all the inner city violence reports, the album version done with Run the Jewels’ Killer Mike while his ending ‘Finish Line’ found the rapper in a higher pitch, sounding in tone a bit like NWA’s Eazy-E.
In a turnabout in sound, Nashville indie-rock band Paper Route was next, with a forty-minute set of anthemic, spanning songs that started with dim lighting, dry ice, and a backing tape of choir singing. The seasoned band has been around since 2004, but has made waves again, with last fall’s Real Emotions (Kemosabe Records) full-length and a recent appearance on Late Night with Seth Meyers.
The group (JT Daly; Chad Howat; Nick Aranda) is relatively small in size, but sounds much bigger due to their dexterity with multiple instruments and synths, and opened with the new ‘Writing on the Wall’, with singer Daly often moving vocally into a falsetto. Remembering Valentine’s Day was near, ‘Are We All Forgotten’ was prefaced to be a song about “love and loss” and Daly said “this one goes out to all the lovers for a touching ‘Untitled’.
‘Balconies’ (the song they performed on TV) featured a sharp guitar solo incising through a wash of atmospheric synths and before their closing ‘Chariots’, Daly confessed they needed to return more often as it had only been their 2nd or 3rd time in town and offered a final Valentine’s Day message- “all you lovers have a great day tomorrow …all the heartbroken people, have an even better one”.
Fitting that Valentine’s eve brought in the Crush Me Tour, with Kristine Meredith Flaherty a.k.a. K.Flay having the alt-rock versatility of a Swiss army knife, in promotion of her upcoming 2nd full-length, Every Where Is Some Where (Night Street / Interscope Records) due out April 7th. The Chicago area native can sound hard and industrial, rap like M.I.A. or twenty one pilots, or just plain strap on a guitar and rock out, depending on the song.
Sporting the bulky red “Immigrants Welcome” sweatshirt she recently wore on Conan, Flay opened with the bass heavy ‘Everyone I Know’ with ‘Sunburn’ next, which found her rapping against a piercing beat and rise-and-fall rhythm. Ahead of ‘Can’t Sleep’, she mentioned that Minnesota was one of her “favorite places to play” and she is a station favorite as she opened their very first GO Show, just over a year ago.
Following a brooding ‘Hollywood Forever’, Flay stopped to thank the audience for coming back out, as she had played this same venue the night after the elections in November, calling the explosive ‘Black Wave’ as the song encapsulating how she was feeling that night as she previously mentioned the song deals with “facing something immense and menacing and choosing not to cower, but to rise up”.
‘Wishing it was You’ was dedicated to Jane Fonda, who she saw at a recent LA Womens’ March, the new guitar-driven ‘High Enough’ had a sinister Pixies edge to it, and then the vibe turned more electronic as she covered Louis the Child’s ‘It’s Strange’, a collaboration she did with the Chicago future bass duo.
The crowd rose up for the main set ending ‘FML’ with its manic lyric, “I need to stop, I been doing too much, I been running too fast, I been testing my luck” and lead single from the new album, ‘Blood in the Cut’ with Flay pleading on the chorus, “…I need noise” with the crowd singing along with the “na, na, na” bridge.
The encore started with the new ‘President’, a slow burner which again speaks to the state of the world and ended with the dark but pounding ‘Make Me Fade’ with the crowd clapping along and singing the chorus as gently as Flay sang it to them.
Love may have been the air due to the impending holiday, but as proven by K.Flay’s genre-expanding seventy-minute set, noise- “the buzz of a sub” and “the crack of a whip” was what the crowd really came to hear.
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Miles the DJ |
Daye Jack |
Daye Jack |
Paper Route |
Paper Route |
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Paper Route |
K.Flay |
K.Flay |
K.Flay |
K.Flay |
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K.Flay at Fine Line Music Cafe, Minneapolis (13 Feb 2017) |
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