There's a Riot Goin'...Somewhere

"I guess the first band we really looked to in the local scene was the Hopefuls," says Mike Schwandt. "[Erik] Applewick and Darren [Jackson] really helped us understand how to record. How to get the album out there. How to make connections in the scene. They really introduced us to this whole world."

Still, as Christenson states (and his band silently concurs), the training wheels are off—and while Atomism isn't a great departure, it might be the first step in the reinvention of a hopeful bunch of Minneapolis pop scholars.

Nick Vlcek

White Light Riot will beat it out of you, if necessary

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More About

• Joe Christenson
• Erik Applewick
• The Beatles
• Mike Schwandt
• Mark Schwandt

"We liked it," says Christenson of the band's one-and-a-half-month stint recording Atomism at Pachyderm Studios. "I think it was a relished change, because everything that anybody wrote about us at first was, 'With the helping hand of Erik Applewick, blah, blah, blah,' and we were like, man, we can make such a good record on our own, we think, and we really want to move beyond that and show that we can do it ourselves."