This is a bit of a bittersweet write-up, as this might the Fragile Canyon 's final release.  For those who don't happen to be in the loop, Fragile Canyons is an indie rock quartet whose name (and memes) usually precede the music they make. Earlier this month, it was announced that the band would be going on an indefinite hiatus because vocalist and guitarist Andy Engstrom is moving to Switzerland for the next three years. While the future of the band stays up in the air, they decided to grace us with one final release, Lavender . The release lulls you in with a false sense of security during its title track. "Lavender" feels like how we wanted the summer of 2020 to go. The track's twinkly guitars play with jam band grooves to create a free and easy love song. A midpoint solo is tight but still meandering, keeping everything light. Just as you settle in for a relaxing listening experience, the band switches things up.  Opening with a dissonant clang, Fragile Cany...

There's a reason cutting a record, live on the floor, has the vibe it does, because you are putting lighting in a bottle. So when musician and engineer Colin Loynachan approached multi-instrumentalist Warren Thomas Fenzi about trying to capture that magic, the pair went all out with Fenzi's newest project,  Live in the Atrium . "I wanted to approach this project differently to that of past projects," Fenzi told Ear Coffee. "The main goal being to really capture the human aspect of acoustic performance in all of its imperfect glory." Loynachan, Fenzi, the Kremblems (his backing band), and the Delphia Cello Quartet set out to record the album in the four-story-high atrium of the A-Mill Lofts, where they not only put music to tape but also shot a series of videos that feel less like individual performances and more like film vignettes. Fenzi's knack for storytelling combined with the vision of filmmakers Alex Munro, Garrett Wells, and Charlie Ber...

There is no way to describe the anticipation that built up before Harper's Jar released their debut record. The band had already left an incredible mark on the Twin Cities DIY/DIT community with the Paperhouse that could be felt everywhere. Almost every conversation about local music over the last few months has somehow pointed to  Thank You Ancestor Finger . I was even invited to attend a show by another band on the bill just so I could see what they described as "one of the best bands in Minneapolis." That band, of course, was Harper's Jar. Like everyone else, I'd listened to Harper's Jar debut EP Ode to a Luna Moth  and was instantly transfixed with the band's blend of brooding '80s alt-rock and the cutting side of '90s grunge. When the record's first single "Dandy Golden Blue" dropped last November, I was beyond excited to see what was to come next.  With all that momentum behind them, the trio of Devin Ware, Alex Dunn, ...

Coyote Kid  (formerly Marah in the Mainsail) has been slowly crafting an expansive universe that could easily rival most blockbuster movie franchises. Starting with 2015's debut  Thaumatrope , the band has grown from an indie folk/folk-rock group with a gothic tinge and a healthy respect for murder ballads to the cinematic alt-rock juggernaut we have before us. If you aren't up-to-date on the current Coyote Kid cannon,  Bone Crown   left us standing in a wasteland of a former forest that was burnt by a tyrannical king. Now several years after that apocalyptic event, The Skeleton Man  tells the story of a group assembling to reclaim a dark world that is overrun by these monstrous, flesh-eating creatures. The band wastes no time throwing you into the world with the album's opening monologue, "The New Dark Age." Instantly, you can feel the upgrade in production and vision from previous works. This is now a world you are stepping into and living within ins...

Prince's fingerprints and the "Minneapolis Sound" that he created can easily be spotted within the Minnesota music scene. However, no one has fully embraced that late '70s and '80s funkiness more than  Static Panic . Calling the trio a tribute act would be a complete disservice since the band's 2018 debut EP Chrome  featured dance, electronic, and even dubstep influences. The release of that EP, plus magnetic performances and personalities, landed them spots on First Ave's 2018 Best New Band showcase and at the Basilica Block Party. Even with all that under their belt, Static Panic is back with anthemic new EP Glow . With this new release, the band has really worked to unify their sound and introduced organic elements back into their recorded sound. The band has grown and changed as Ro Lorenzen, Keston Wright, and Eli Kapell come into their own as Static Panic. Where  Chrome  was crystalline and synthetic,  Glow  is warmed up by jazzy guitar flourishe...

For me, instances of discovering a band organically are becoming extremely few and far between. Time and the occupational hazard of working with music make stumbling across an album cover (or in some cases a performance video) that piques your interest a rare occurrence. So imagine my joy when I scroll across the cover of Grogus ' newest record Four Kings , with its necromancer-like figure and illegible typography. I didn't know what I was going to get upon pressing play. I was hoping for crushing riffs, and riffs I did get. The band's 2016 debut  Intuitive Readers and Metaphysical Artisans set the bar high for this new record. Its layered instrumentation and atmospheric additions landed Grogus in the tiny zone in which the circles of sludge, hardcore, and black metal all intersected in this highly specific Venn diagram. The trio pulls pieces from each genre to create something uniquely Grogus. The album's opener "An Oceantomb of Centipedes" knocks you o...

(Self-released, 2019) “It’s not over / But I’m getting older / And I just don’t want to be part of the scene anymore.” These are some of the first words on The Happy Children’s second and final album. What a farewell.  The Happy Children are a Minneapolis trio making rock music, working in the punk-adjacent part of the local scene for the last few years. Now, they’re making a hybrid of experimental pop and the math-y sound of prior releases, like if Bon Iver made 22, A Million with electric guitars instead of saxophones. It’s quite the leap of faith. The album sounds like nothing else, even as the band has come to define a certain part of the Twin Cities underground.  The mastermind of the Happy Children is Caleb Gabriel Hinz (who also runs Normal Parents ), the vocalist, guitarist, lyricist, and producer. Can you say polymath? It’s his production that sets Same Dif apart from the band’s debut Self Help Book . That record flourished in complex guitar fireworks, bu...

There is something special about capturing a band's live performance. It has a rawness not often felt when sitting in a bedroom with a four-track recorder or a professional recording studio, but it seems the Minneapolis slowcore act Prathloons have managed to catch, and then bottle that energy, with their second installment in their  Live Loons series. Recorded at Urban Artifacts in Cincinnati, Ohio,  Live Loons: Urban Artifacts 5.19.19  captures everything from the band's overenthusiastic false start on "Jack and Jill" to the crushing climax of "Mallwood." Upon first listen, I was struck by the quality of the recordings. This album isn't a collection of blown-out/lopsided mixes recorded from the soundboard at a random show. It's a showcase of Prathloon's ability to take the introspective, melancholic stories found on their self-titled debut and give them a new sense of urgency. The album isn't fully free of the trappings found on DIY ...

Changing the name of a band is always a bit of a leap of faith. Depending on fan base and name recognition, there is a very distinct possibility of losing everything the band has built, and yet, Ego Death decided to step away from their moniker and forge ahead as the moodier Double Grave . The name change and subsequent album came with a cleansing of their back catalog, and after some time away from their old material, the band decided to release what they describe as an "awkward gap in their identity" with a new compilation EP, Ego Death Forever . As someone who only recently learned about the band, Ego Death Forever serves as a look into their roots as sunnier, pop grunge trio. Their 2017 album New Year's Daydream  is a slower, more dissonant step forward that shows off Jeremy Warden's progression as a songwriter. The pop hooks are still there, but Double Grave moved from its former sunny disposition to a sonic landscape that better represents a classic Minnes...

7000apart is a project born from the budding relationship of Jon Kresin and Amelie Eiding. The now husband and wife met in high school while Eiding was studying abroad in Wisconsin. A music class was what drew the pair together, and the band 7000apart, named after the distance between Greenbay, Wis. and Sweden, kept Jon and Amelie together during their long-distance relationship. For anyone who has done long distance, whether it be another city or another country, it is difficult to hold a relationship together. Tiny cracks can easily become an impassable crevasse. After a couple of singles and an EP, the duo came together to create their debut full-length,  We Are More . The title sort of says it all when it comes to the album's concept - we are more than just the individual pieces. The duo describes themselves as an "organic pop" band, which feels like a bit of an admirable novelty. 7000apart have almost no room to hide within the minimal instrumentation, so ...

The Symptones  are a band that seems to be doing its damnedest to create the next classic American album, and their debut full-length  Irrational Fears / Overactive Imagination  has definitely given them a springboard toward that goal. The band has a unique blend of funk, soul, and folk filtered through indie rock that allows their music to feel oddly familiar yet different.  From the first triumphant notes of the opening song "Fall Guy," the Springsteen-ian need to take your partner and just run is thrust front and center.  Following "Fall Guy" is the album's single "Rosetta," which is another anthem about the familiar daydream of taking your love and running away. "Rosetta" has one of my favorite moments on this album. The breakdown in the bridge is a Beach Boys-styled vocal line mixed with a punk breakdown that should not work on paper. Drummer Steve George hammers on his kit while the guitars play delicate arpeggios and the bass ...

For a state that boasts its reputation as a snow hell fairly proudly, there don't seem to be a whole lot of albums about Minnesota winter. Yeah, there's "Sometimes It Snows In April." But that song is way  too beautiful and sentimental to reflect the depressing heaviness that comes with gallons of snow. Even for people that enjoy snowfall and winter, it just sucks  after a certain point. Minnesotans get used to it, though. They suffer with a wink and joke. I would argue that niiice.'s new EP Never Better  hits the dichotomy of these winters right on the head. The songs may not directly reference the frigid season we pretend to love so much, but the emotions coursing through their veins pay direct respect. Opener "Snowbored" is the thesis statement of the record, if you don't mind me getting all high school English. In an interview with City Pages, frontman/guitarist Roddie Gadeberg summed up the song's sentiments: "The normal depression...

From the first notes of Last Import's self-titled debut full-length, there is a feeling that something different is going on here. The formless and free-flowing nature of "Lunar Rhapsody" acts almost as a palate cleanser for what you, the listener, are going to experience over the next 30 or so minutes. The band's debut EP Songs For Adam was released a year and a day prior to Last Import . Since then, Last Import has been riding a wave of increasing popularity. They received play on radio stations like the Current and Go96, and they've opened for Bastille and Lany at the Palace Theater. Last Import  expands on the ideas explored on their debut EP. To boil down the band's sound, they are a punk-influenced surf rock trio, but this is a gross oversimplification. There is a fire at the musical foundation of Last Import that propels everything that is heaped on top. Staccato guitars, pummeling drums, and fluid bass lines create dynamic performances that add d...