Hallucitania - Pre-School Post-Post-Its  (Underground Pine Studios) Hallucitania continue to make some of the strangest music in the Twin Cities. It's not quite folk (I mean, there is a violin), it's not quite punk. Even still, it doesn't toe the line quite perfectly enough to be neatly labeled as "folk-punk." Some songs on their new EP emphasize one side over the other but they never leave the other behind. The punk side comes off a little stronger.  Pre-School Post-Post-Its  is only one minute longer than 2018's EP  but has nearly double the tracks; only one song outlasts the three minute mark ("I'm Singing") and ironically it's the most aggressive. Griffin Thiel shreds his lungs with even more of the tongue-in-cheek lyrics one expects from Hallucitania before sinking into a violin outro. The mournful strings are an anchor, dragging the band to the bottom of the nearest of 11, 842 lakes. The other shorter songs alternate between guit...

The Twin Cities' foremost dream-pop project returns with their first single of 2019, "Benny Boy." For a little while, Dreams We've Had has been playing with the idea of going stadium-sized, of bridging the gap between the synthetic, gauzy nostalgia of Dear Friend  and the colossal open-hearted pop of mid-period of M83 (especially on latest single " Perfectly Out of Place "). It all finally connects on "Benny Boy." With a self-referential title, Bennett Blumberg takes the riff from "Myth" and melds it to the transcendent synth & drums of "Wait." The anthemic chorus - "Please / please don't leave / Please / Come back to me" - is minimal in its word choice but loaded with more emotion than a John Green novel. Musically, it plays out like a stereotypical summer "night to remember:" a pensive build, a heart welling up, an ascension into a sky-piercing denouement, a sudden drop-off, a hazy comedown, ...

New year, new column! Not really. I just figured I should probably actually start my columns again. If 2019 is anything like 2018, it will be the worst   there will be a lot of great local music! Since we're only three days in, I'm going to cover some music from the tail-end of 2018 that I missed out on at first. I can only hope and pray that my motivation lasts long enough to achieve my lifelong dream of having a modicum of consistency in my publishing schedule. Various Artists -  Brace Cove Presents (Vol. 1)   This tasty compilation EP came out a few weeks before the year's end and features some of the best lo-fi indie rock/punk bands in the Twin Cities. niiice. kick off the release with the heavy, downtrodden "Sweaty Hands." Chugging guitars motor along beneath cheeky vocals, then a guttural scream of "BUT WE'RE NOT GETTING BETTER" breaks everything off. The mixture of sweet lyricism and vicarious screams encapsulates the emotions of th...

From the ashes of one column rises another! Welcome to the inaugural Local Music Round-Up (tentative title)! In this column, I write about local music that I discovered this week with an emphasis on recent releases. But hey, if I find a great underground punk single from years ago, I'll shout it out here. I hope you check out the bands mentioned here and continue to read this column as it proceeds into a (probably not) fruitful future! Dreams We've Had - "Makeout" Dreams We've Had is a Minneapolis dream pop band, and "Makeout" is their new single. Besides being a fantastic song, it marks a notable development for the band - it is the first single with project mastermind Bennett Blumberg on lead vocals. It may be a slight change of pace from the group's recent album, Dear Friend  (also worth checking out), but "Makeout" sets an exciting precedent for any forthcoming music. The song personifies yearning in a hazy, beautiful mann...