Atmosphere, “A Long Hello” “After a forever of running around the world and making music, we will now take a month off to sit on the beach of our minds,” Slug says in a recent press release. He and Ant (well, a cardboard cutout) wade into the surf as they bid you “A Long Hello.”…

“We wrote the lyrics in, like, 45 minutes,” Lydia Liza told Andrea Swensson this week when she and Josiah Lemanski visited our studios to sing their new version of the holiday standard “Baby It’s Cold Outside.” The two never guessed that their recording would become a viral hit, resonating with listeners around the world who disliked…

Venue news came in the form of a Kehlani show announcement this morning. As the Oakland pop/R&B star gears up to release her album SWEETSEXYSAVAGE on Jan. 27, she rolled out a series of tour dates, including one in Minneapolis on May 6. The venue? “Music Hall FKA Mill City Nights.” Apparently, the Fifth Street space is getting another rebrand; Kehlani’s…

Next Friday, Dec. 16, the Palace Theatre will open its doors to the public for what the City of St. Paul is calling a “sneak peek” at the downtown venue. Mayor Chris Coleman will deliver some remarks and perform a ceremonial unlocking of the doors at 11:30 a.m. Visitors will then “be greeted with hot…

As the Mainroom crowd anticipated Nathaniel Rateliff and the Night Sweats’ encore last night, they must’ve bellied up to the decibel level of the band itself. “Ohhh – whoa – oh!” they sang — hollered, really, as they resuscitated the Night Sweats’ wails from “S.O.B.” Everyone had gathered for The Current’s holiday show, and when the…

I was walking through Manhattan recently, making my way up 5th Avenue to check out all the Christmas displays like a typical Midwestern tourist, when I looked up and realized something odd: I was standing at the foot of the Empire State Building, an instantly recognizable spire that I had been eyeing for blocks. But…

If you could buy stock in musical reputations, Stevie Nicks’s would have been a bargain investment 20, 10, even five years ago. In the ’70s, the behemoth popularity of Fleetwood Mac blinded a lot of too-cool-for-school critics to the fact that the band’s accessible and sonically pristine creations were underpinned by timeless songcraft, while Nicks’s…

This Friday, a choir thousands of singers strong will perform Zach Sobiech’s “Clouds” at the Mall of America for the fourth consecutive year. The performance is intended to honor Sobiech and other young victims of cancer. “If someone were to tell Zach four years ago that the song he had chicken-scratched into his notebook would…

The Lyrics: 1961-2012 by Bob Dylan Just because Bob Dylan didn’t celebrate his Nobel Prize in Literature win, doesn’t mean you can’t. The Lyrics not only showcases classics like Dylan’s 1960s canon and later works like Blood on the Tracks, but continues to record his most recent writings right up through Tempest. Bonus: The Lyrics also includes many of…

One of the many things I learned during my Sunday at Paisley Park is that Prince never referred to his admirers as fans. To him, they were simply friends and family. My time at Prince’s famed facility felt nothing short of a family gathering — and a cool one at that. Staff guided my tour group…