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The Chart Show: Fame, fortune, all of that will come, now they're back at the top!

Bad Bad Hats perform at First Avenue.
Bad Bad Hats perform at First Avenue.Maddy Fox for MPR

by Mark Wheat

August 23, 2018

What's on the horizon for Bad Bad Hats, returning to Number 1 this week; "Fame, fortune, all of that" joked singer/guitarist Kerry Alexander at the
Local Show session they recorded last week before headlining First Avenue.

Death Cab stay stuck at seven after 7 weeks on the chart. The new album came out last week and Ben Gibbard had another reason to be cheerful as he was a vocal supporter of saving Seattle's Showbox Theater from redevelopment, which the City Council did, re-zoning the 79 year old theater.

Leon Bridges is inducted to the Chart Hall of Fame for the second time. He played the song "Bad Bad News" which was inducted in early June, on ABC at the weekend.

You can see both Lissie at 9 and Lord Huron at 13 this week, along with headliners Trampled By Turtles at The MN State Fair Grandstand on Saturday at our Music On A Stick show. I'll only be out there on the two Fridays this year, with Har Mar Superstar live on the radio this Friday from 4-8 pm.

Recorded recently in Piedmont Park, Atlanta and posted on YouTube by Courtney's record label Milk! is a version of "Charity" the song that is our highest new entry this week at #10.

Mitski is also brand new at 12 after her new album came out to rave reviews last week, 8.8 from Pitchfork! She played a 'home-town' gig at the weekend in Brooklyn, where she mostly discarded her guitar and delved into what BrooklynVegan described as "performance art". She'll bring that to First Ave on Oct 26th.

No stranger to performance art herself, St. Vincent is back at #14. Our friends at NPR are re-evaluating rock history with Turning The Tables, and convincingly argue in this recent essay that Annie Clark is on a guitar vanguard.

And one of the performers who proved recently at The Armory show that he's perhaps the best male rocker of today, Jack White, back in the basement space of our chart, regularly plays one of the guitars that Annie Clark designed.

Submit your Chart Show ballot this week for a chance to The Current's Gary Clark Jr. giveaway at the Surly Brewing Festival Field in Minneapolis, MN on September 8, 2018!