The Current present

Bad Bad Hats

'Psychic Reader' 10th Anniversary Tour

With Smut

Doors: 7:00pm | Performance: 8:00 p.m. | 18+

INFORMATION | TICKETS

Bad Bad Hats

The Minneapolis, Minnesota duo Bad Bad Hats are named after a little-known song from “Madeline,” a beloved children’s book series about a mischievous young girl and her yellow-clad classmates. Founded by singer/songwriter Kerry Alexander and guitarist Chris Hoge, the band traffics in similarly playful concepts and warm scenes of youth. Bad Bad Hats are celebrated for crispy, lived-in melodies, big choruses that stick for days, and an easy musicianship that carries across their eclectic, wide-ranging releases.

The band's lead singer, Kerry Alexander, grew up between Tampa, Florida, and Birmingham, Alabama. As a child, she was a student of the glossy MTV pop that defined the early 2000s, as well as the David Bowie and Tom Petty CDs her parents would play while making dinner. Singer-songwriters like Alanis Morissette, Kim Deal, and later, Michelle Branch, were an early inspiration for Kerry: after discovering songwriting as a profession while watching American Idol, the young teenaged Kerry began filling binders with songs, planning to one day write hit records for stars.

As her confidence grew, Kerry began testing her performance chops at open mic nights, and eventually began sharing demos on Myspace, where she first connected with Chris Hoge, a savvy guitarist and classmate at the small liberal arts school Macalester College. The pair’s chemistry was undeniable, sharing common tastes in songwriting and sound, and they flourished creatively--and, soon, as a couple. They refined demos together and gigged around the Twin Cities, where they received consistently strong responses from friends who’d come to their shows. Soon, Kerry and Chris were assembling their first EP, It Hurts, and catching the ear of local indie labels. After fleshing out the line up with bassist Noah Boswell, Bad Bad Hats was officially born.

Psychic Reader, BBH’s debut LP, arrived in 2015. Led by the ebullient single “Midway,” the album highlighted the band’s cinematic sound, punchy rhythm sections, and Kerry’s heart-aching vocals. With Psychic Reader, the band expanded their audience beyond local Twin Cities venues, as their music spread organically via college radio and shared links. New fans seemed to discover the music daily, their growth coincided with a renaissance in young bedroom musicians via streaming through the 2010s. With their follow-up full-length albums Lightning Round (2018) and Walkman (2021), Bad Bad Hats expanded their sound and look, with hilariously DIY music videos that cast the band as ice hockey players, Elvis impersonators, secret agents, and more. In the years since their initial noodling around St. Paul, Bad Bad Hats have toured globally with peers like The Beths and Hippo Campus, and storied acts like The Front Bottoms and the aforementioned Michelle Branch, who picked them up for her 2022 headlining world tour. It was a full-circle moment for Kerry, one that she made clear on stage at each show.

Last January, Kerry, Chris, and longtime bandmate Con Davison cozied up under frigid winter in Chris and Kerry’s Twin Cities home, writing and recording their latest, self-titled LP. Each day for two weeks, Kerry would make sandwiches for lunch (tuna salad on Tuesdays), and the crew would get to work in the basement home studio, stacked to the brim with gear. The group recorded more quickly than usual, and even incorporated a few songwriting prompts sent in directly from their fans as jumping-off points. Where BBH are typically known for big song topics like love and heartache, Kerry took to smaller ideas this go round—included are songs inspired by parking tickets, scorching Tampa grocery store lots she remembered from her youth, and other autobiographical scenes woven into dancefloor-ready numbers.

Today, Bad Bad Hats are back to their founding duo, and their latest record is the band’s first time self-producing, with a freewheeling, pristine tone and several unexpectedly funky turns. The new album suggests a band still having deep fun creating and playing, inviting listeners new and old to live life to their heartfelt tunes. Bad Bad Hats was released on April 12, 2024 via Don Giovanni Records.

Smut

Smut is the project of lyricist Tay Roebuck, guitarists Andie Min and Sam Ruschman, drummer Aidan O’Connor, and bassist John Steiner. Roebuck, Ruschman, and Min started the band a decade ago in Cincinnati, Ohio. Since then, they’ve played alongside Bully, Wavves, and Nothing. After years in the Cincinnati DIY scene, they made their Bayonet Records full-length debut, How the Light Felt. The record was a revelation. Pitchfork called it “a rigorous, decade-spanning study,” and a “well-oiled spin on late-’80s guitar pop.” Under the Radar called it “pop perfection,” that “blends subtle hooks with wistful lyrics.” It was a record that explored grief through the lens of melancholic dream pop, using drum machines and layered, intricate melodies.

How the Light Felt brought the band to Chicago, a city with more room for their growing sound. They still faced the modern struggles of the working musician, though: instability, objectification, financial precarity. The band channeled this period of touring, personnel changes, and personal upheavals into their latest offering, Tomorrow Comes Crashing.

Tomorrow Comes Crashing, Smut's first record with O'Connor and Steiner, sees the band re-energized and trained on the limitless potential that comes with making music with people you love. Galvanized with a new lineup, Smut focused on creating a record that possessed the same towering intensity as the records that first got them into music: Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge, Relationship of Command. The outcome is ten of their most intense, bombastic, and focused songs to date.

Catharsis bursts through the seams throughout Tomorrow Comes Crashing. “Syd Sweeney,” inspired by the actress, is the record's centerpiece. It's about how profoundly strange it can be to be a woman, to be misunderstood by people who don’t even know you. The song is driven by chugging guitars and big, rolling drums. In other words: stadium rock about perception. Paramore meets Dookie. “She connects to the youth and the girls in the water/All she amounts to is someone’s daughter,” sings Roebuck in one particularly poetic moment. The song comes to a thrashing metal-inspired breakdown. It’s ecstatic.

It is a record interested in capturing those big emotions that come with falling in love with music for the very first time. Lead single “Dead Air” begins with crystalline guitars, fall-air crisp bass. Then Roebuck’s vocals come in. Her voice enters honeyed and dreamy, ala Harriet Wheeler, then turns into a wide-eyed scream. Lyrically, the song describes a break-up: “I heard you say forever,” Roebuck sings, sending a final 'forever' into the ether with a lilting melody.

To make the record, Smut recorded “as live as they could,” alongside Aron Kobayashi-Ritch (Momma) in a studio in Red Hook, Brooklyn, over the course of ten days. “We have so much energy right now,” says Roebuck. Right before they went off to New York, Roebuck and Min got married, with the rest of the band by their side.

The recording was a true labor of love — driving from Chicago with all their equipment, returning from 12-hour studio days to sleep on friends' couches and floors, Roebuck completely blowing her voice by the end. Smut has always been DIY. Because they love it. Because they have to do it– there’s no other option. Tomorrow Comes Crashing is the culmination of that DIY spirit: making a record that completely encompasses the intensity, moodiness, and emotion of their journey so far.