The Chart Show: Bob Mould, Andrew Bird inducted to Hall of Fame
by Mark Wheat
June 02, 2016
Hope everyone had a safe and peaceful Memorial Day Weekend. I was afraid that there would be fewer votes this week than usual, but, we had the highest vote count of the year!
Lots of Cure fans trying to win tickets pushed local artists into the top four spots, which I didn't anticipate either?!
Har Mar made it to No.1 for the first time! He's in Barcelona this weekend for Primavera Festival and performs back in his home state at the Minnesota Zoo on Aug. 20.
Bob Mould is inducted to the Hall of Fame for the first time. Fellow Minnesota music veterans and Local Show guests this week, the Jayhawks, return to the chart at No.4, indicating that both sets of fans are still excited about new albums.
Lizzo slipped from her perch at the top but held her own at Soundset over the weekend, most reviews calling it the best year ever!
Submit your Chart Show ballot this week for a chance to win tickets to the Avett Brothers and Brandi Carlile at the Target Center on Saturday, June 11!
Andrew Bird was inducted for the second time to the Hall of Fame. He'll be a part of the massive lineup for Festival Palomino, another local festival that gets better every year, curated by Trampled By Turtles.
Another festival that we're quite proud of is coming up in a couple of weeks at Boom Island in Nordeast: Rock The Garden! This year's lineup features Nathaniel Rateliff and the Night Sweats (No.7) and Chance The Rapper, who seems to have a new headline every day in the music press these days. He and Donnie Trumpet shared unreleased material this week, and his mentor and collaborator on the No.11 track, Kanye West, had his studio robbed.
Garbage are on our chart for the first time. Formed in Madison, WI in 1993, this is the second "return album" after an eight-year self-imposed hiatus. Strange Little Birds is also being touted as a major return to form. Butch Vig of the band is sick and not on the European stage of their world tour right now, but we hope he's fit again for their Skyway Theater show on July 7.
June 15 will see the Twin Cities live debut of a wonderfully weird collaboration between Sean Lennon — who was at Rock the Garden 2015 with his band Ghost of a Saber Tooth Tiger — and Les Claypool, bass playing maestro and leader of the '90s band Primus. They are brand new at No.20, and their debut album Monolith of Phobos releases this Friday.
Sturgill Simpson continues his rise on the chart to No.14, and A Sailor's Guide to Earth is The Current's Album of the Week. In Mac Wilson's review he calls it "one of the strongest releases of the year" and it "further establishes him as one of popular musics preeminent composers, storytellers and visionaries."