W♥M (Archive)

W♥M135: The Golden Age of Minnesota Music

W♥M135 (47 mins)

Your hosts are Lara, Kate, and Vu.

Is Minnesota experiencing a new golden age of music? MPR and The Current seems to think so.

In the current music Minnesota scene, there are a couple bands that's really blown up nationally, even overseas.

Hot Minnesota bands at the moment:

• Doomtree (all the Rhymesayers artists, including Atmosphere)
• Trampled by Turtles
• Poliça
• Howler
• Motion City Soundtrack

The majority of the show is about Semisonic and Dan Wilson. The band doesn't regularly release music or go on tour, but once in a while, Wilson and company will play a show here and there. They recently played in Mound, Minnesota (5/19/12).

Opening up for them was The Twilight Hours, featuring Dan's brother, Matt Wilson. We also discuss a little about Trip Shakespeare.

Song of the show is Semisonic's "Closing Time".

PLUS:
Soul Asylum has a new album called Delayed Reaction, coming out July 17th, 2012, via 429 Records.

They are doing some random shows this year:

Jun 1 Friday LIVE! at the Factory Charlotte, NC
Jun 2 Balloon & Wine Festival Temecula, CA
Jun 23 Safeway Barbecue Battle Washington, D.C.
Jul 13 Common Ground Music Festival Lansing, MI
Jul 20 First Avenue Minneapolis, MN

BONUS:
• Spearz, the all-male Britney Spears cover band, will be playing at The annual Pride Festival in Loring Park on June 23, opening up for Kelly Rowland.
• Har Mar Superstar wrote songs for Britney Spears, but some of those songs were rejected by Britney Spears' management. He recorded those songs under his 2009 album, Dark Touches.
• Rock the Vine 3: June 9th in Stillwater, Minnesota. We preview some artists on the lineup, and mentioned Lynhurst, the band used to have their dad as the drummer under the name The Abdomen.
• Cults, the "forgettable appearance" at NXNE in Toronto, Canada .
• Zooey Deschanel's "New Girl" is an awful show. Adorkable boy/girl/twee cute music will make Kate and Lara want to stab themselves.
• Minneapolis beat Seattle/Portland for the "mostiest" hipster state. We have more bike trails, and we have Caribou Coffee vs Starbucks.

W♥M Radio is available on iTunes, please subscribe!

Subscription Options
Subscribe on iTunes
Subscribe via RSS
Add to Google
Add to Yahoo
____
Archive of this show at archive.org. More information on podomatic.com

vu () ♥ weheartmusic.com ♥ podcast.weheartmusic.com ♥ twitter.com/weheartmusic ♥ +W♥M

She & Him and Chapin Sisters at First Ave, Minneapolis (06/05/10)

Tour Dates 06/09/10 Sound Academy Toronto 06/10/10 House of Blues Cleveland, OH 06/11/10 Bonnaroo Music Festival 07/01/10 House of Blues Boston, MA 07/02/10 Great Plaza Phila, PA 07/03/10 Nateva Music Festival Oxford 07/04/10 The Beach  Governors Island, NY 07/06/10 Terminal 5 NY 07/07/10 9:30 Club Washington DC 07/09/10 Atlanta Botanical Gardens 07/10/10 Sloss Furnace Birmingham, AL 07/11/10 Forecastle Festival 07/18/10 Hollywood Bowl CA 08/26/10 Pioneer Park Salt Lake City, UT 08/29/10 LouFest St. Louis, MO Read More The Chapin Sisters http://weheartmus... THE CHAPIN SISTERS Let me start off by saying how much I love their cover art of Lake Bottom LP...

I couldn't tell you how excited I was to finally see the Chapin Sisters live last Saturday at the sold-out show for She & Him at First Avenue in Minneapolis. You see, two years ago, I was quickly charmed by the depressing harmonizing vocals of three sisters with their album, Lake Bottom LP.

The Chapin Sisters - Digging A Hole

Two years later, and finally I got to see them and it's everything I had expected: beautiful, wonderful harmonizing songs. Since they are minus one sister (Jessica Craven), they mostly did recent songs, like from recently released EP, Oh, Hear The Wind Blow. Songs like "Palm Tree" and "Digging A Hole", are a treat to hear live. For an "old" song, requiring a third voice, they did get a help from Zooey Deschanel (the She in She & Him).

Unfortunately, the Chapin Sisters did a brief setlist of about six songs. They starting off with bare minimal instruments and harmonizing, but are quickly joined by the She & Him band, providing rhythm guitars and percussions.

Although the sisters exit the stage, they soon appear, singing back up for She & Him. I'll have to say that seeing Zooey, standing next to Matthew Ward, that she's a very small person. Ward rarely sings, he's mostly doing that "guitar god" thing (and he's actually pretty good at it), while Deschanel does most of the heavy-lifting on the singing part.

They did a lot of songs. Like a lot of songs. As you can see from their setlist, it's twenty-four songs. There was a break on the set, where the band left, and it's just "she and him" on stage. Those songs are quieter, but I did prefer when they are at their best: jamming on "Over It Over Again" and "Why Do You Let Me Stay Here?".

Since M Ward and Zooey made it blatantly clear that no photographs were to be taken (Zooey asked fans to put away cameras and turning off the flash twice during the show), here are some photos of the Chapin Sisters.

 06/07/2010 23:01:44 ♥ vu () ♥ sheandhim/myspace ♥ thechapinsisters/myspace 

(500) Days of Summer

Meaghan Smith - Here Comes Your Man Meaghan Smith See More Old Stuff! The Smiths http://weheartmus... The sound quality is really good, it seems to have been taken from a radio broadcast. The origin... The Pixies http://weheartmus... Someone recently asked me who the Pixies were, which really surprised me, because they are one of... Simon & Garfunkel http://weheartmus... This song was a huge hit for the Cyrkle in the 60s. It's a very pop song/jangly song, and I lo...

(500) Days of Summer is a romantic comedy movie that was released on limited screens in the US a few weeks ago. Although based on the trailer (yes, I am judging a film by its commercial), it looks very indie and very chick-flicky... I'm sure I'll love it, but it seems like I will be renting this a heart-warming love story and secretly crying to myself in the dark instead of in public.

(500) Days of Summer is a movie about love, sure, but it's also a movie about music. These songs build bridges between Tom and Summer and they tear them down. They can make you dance and they can make you cry. They describe how we feel and express emotions that just couldn't get out any other way. Music is the soul of this movie.

- director Marc Webb

The Smiths-There Is a Light That Never Goes Out

You know, they had me at The Smiths, who appears on the soundtrack with two songs (plus a bonus Smiths cover by She & Him). It definitely sparked my interest. I'm happy to report that I have the album for review, and it seems to be a great mixture of 80s modern rock with, er, 00s modern rock.

Of course, I'm familiar with all bands on the soundtrack, most of these songs I already have on various albums. Particularly, I'm keen on the old stuff. I mean who can say no to Hall & Oates' "You Make My Dreams" as you picture Daryl Hall's legs flapping. Or just give into Morrissey as he whines "Please, Please, Please, Please, Please, Pease, Please, Please, No Really Please Let Me Get What I Want". Or reflecting on a time of innocence with Simon & Garfunkel's sweet and harmless "Bookends".

If there is a theme on this soundtrack, it's that these are all love songs. While as usual, the more established alternative acts (Regina Spektor, Feist, Wolfmother) does a great job with their love songs, the unknown artists (at least to me) on this compilation actually does a great job introducing themselves to me. I was particularly impressed with "She's Got You High" by Mumm-Ra (are they named after the Thundercats' arch-nemesis? If so: AWESOME).

As a cover lover, I noticed there are two on the album. As I previously mentioned, "Please...." by She & Him does an excellent job with the cover, although it sounds pretty much like the original. Singer Zooey Deschanel does not bother changing the lyrics from a male's perspective (and there's no hint of desperation in her vocals) and M Ward does his best Johnny Marr jangly guitar. No problem here, it's just that I've heard this before.

Pixies - Here Comes Your Man

My absolute favorite is The Pixies' "Here Comes Your Man" by Meaghan Smith (official/myspace). She re-interpreted the song as a slower-based song with male backup singers. There's just something really sweet about the song when it's slowed down from the original.

The really weird wild-card in this bunch is current-spouse of French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Italian model-turned-singer, Carla Bruni. To be fair, she's been releasing music since 2002, and her acoustic-folk French song, "Quelqu'un m'a dit" does a nice job as a break between all the English-based songs.

It should be interesting to see where the soundtrack play in the movie, so let me know if you see (500) Days of Summer. The romantic comedy movie is currently playing at selected theaters near you, while the soundtrack is available now via the great Sire Records. There's always Amazon and iTunes (iTunes version includes the actors singing "Sugar Town", "Here Comes Your Man" and "At Last").

Trivia: The movie will be released in Australia on October 1^st, where the soundtrack actually have two Aussie bands: The Temper Trap and Wolfmother.

 08/01/2009 22:16:06 ♥ vu () ♥ foxsearchlight.com/500daysofsummer