Thursday, June 5 #MPLS Album-Release Show Fine Line Music Café, Minneapolis 7:30 p.m., $10 adv/$15 door, 18+ With a little funk, a little R&B, a little rock, and a lot of influence from the founders of the Minneapolis Sound, #MPLS offer a fresh take on soulful party music on their debut album, HELLO. Sample the…

The Heliotrope Festival is an annual event spotlighting underground and experimental music in Minnesota; this year, the festival celebrates its tenth anniversary with a three-day lineup (Thursday-Saturday, June 5-7) that includes dozens of artists. I spoke by phone with Richard Barlow and Erik Wivinus, who were among the festival’s founders and continue to serve as…

Duluth has always had an active music scene, but in the past few years the city seems to have it going on. The Homegrown Festival grows a little bit larger every year, new talent seems to be springing up left and right, and albums recorded in the North Country are consistently ending up on year-end…

Fans of The Daredevil Christopher Wright, a ten-year-old Eau Claire band that’s won many fans in the Twin Cities, are familiar with the emotive performances of vocalist J.E. Sunde. (Hear the band perform in our studios in 2012.) With the upcoming album Shapes That Kiss the Lips of God (July 15, Cartouche Records), Sunde ventures…

For the first in three sold-out nights at the Cedar Cultural Center, Dan Wilson dove deep into the songs on his new album and a few other fan favorites for a show titled “Words and Music.” True to the title, Wilson eased into his mini-residency by weaving his set together with detailed stories about different…

Mall of America‘s fourth floor is temporarily home to the bass drum Ringo Starr played on The Ed Sullivan Show and John Lennon’s first pair of yellow-tinted spectacles, but the most eye-popping exhibit for many Minnesota music fans will be the sign painted on the wall across from Cantina #1: a giant blue-and-white 400 Bar logo,…

It is not surprising that Minneapolis, the largest city in a state known for its Swedish immigrants, was the first of many First Aid Kit shows to sell out this tour season. Something about the Swedish duo’s Americana sound is clearly appealing, and their show at Dinkytown’s Varsity Theater was packed to the gills with…

Bruce Springsteen’s album Born in the U.S.A. was released 30 years ago today: June 4, 1984. Here are some facts you can drop when the anniversary comes up around the water cooler. The album is Springsteen’s most successful, selling 15 million copies. That number puts it in the company of the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack, Journey’s greatest hits,…

Bob Mould: Beauty & Ruin “Bob Mould‘s new album Beauty & Ruin may very well be the most epic emotional rollercoaster ever pressed into 36 minutes,” writes the Current’s Mary Lucia in her review of the album that’s released today. “Well into his fourth decade as a singer-songwriter, Mould is as relevant, ferocious and poignant as he…

Now that June is here, at the Current we’re thinking about the songs of the summer. Not in the sense of perennial summer songs (Beach Boys, Mungo Jerry), but in the sense of this summer’s songs. What songs will be the must-have selections on BBQ playlists and road trip mixes? What songs, when you hear them…