Merrill Garbus

Twin Shadow at First Avenue, 5/31/13

Twin ShadowWith ElliphantFirst Avenue, MinneapolisFriday, May 31, 2013For the majority of Twin Shadow's stage show at First Avenue on Friday, frontman George Lewis Jr. looked charmed and freely flashed his glistening smile. Commanding a red guitar and some dizzying effects pedals with authority, he ... More >>

Thao & the Get Down Stay Down

Best Twin Cities concerts 2012

The Gimme Noise crew attended a lot of concerts, festivals, events, gatherings, and what have you this past year. As is the case with every year in live music in the Twin Cities, the cacophonous noises etched history into the walls of our storied venues and into our minds. There were a lot of firsts ... More >>

Twin Cities Year in Music 2012

From P.O.S. to Prince to Polica, 2012 was a golden year in Minnesota music

Summer Set, Bonnie Rait, Murder by Death, and more

THEESatisfaction

King Tuff's Kyle Thomas: I don't want any boundaries

After gradually catching the music world's attention with underground groups like Feathers, Happy Birthday, and Witch (with Dinosaur Jr.'s J Mascis), Kyle Thomas has now chosen to focus his creative efforts on King Tuff. Thomas' second album under the King Tuff moniker has recently been released on ... More >>

10 gorgeous GIFs from Rock the Garden 2012

Related:Review: Rock the Garden at Walker Art Center, 6/16/12Slideshow - Rock the Garden 2012: MusicSlideshow - Rock the Garden 2012: People/ScenesGimme Noise decided to add something different to the usual slideshow song and dance for Rock the Garden's 2012 running at Walker Art Center. Perhaps it ... More >>

Rock the Garden at Walker Art Center, 06/16/12

Rock the GardenWith the Hold Steady, Trampled by Turtles, Doomtree, tUnE-yArDs, and HowlerWalker Art Center, MinneapolisSaturday, June 16, 2012Related:10 gorgeous GIFs from Rock the Garden 2012Slideshow - Rock the Garden 2012: MusicSlideshow - Rock the Garden 2012: People/ScenesReverence for the Twi ... More >>

Rock the Garden 2012 weather forecast: 30 percent chance of mud

Related:Rock the Garden Festival 2012 lineupAs Saturday afternoon's Rock the Garden at the Walker Art Center approaches, ticket holders have already had plenty of time to brush up on the 2012 lineup, so what's left? Weather preparations are a must.As mentioned on the RTG Facebook page, "It looks lik ... More >>

Maps & Atlases, the Weeknd, Jimmy Cliff, and more

Rock the Garden

Rock the Garden Festival 2012 lineup

The tenth installment of Rock the Garden, the Walker Art Center and 89.3 the Current's yearly outdoor music festival, is coming on Saturday, June 16. And the lineup is now officially public!Updated: The tickets are all sold!One of the notable acts this year is the wild and oh-so-colorful Merrill Gar ... More >>

Lollapalooza 2012 lineup announced, and it's a good one

Related: SoundTown 2012 lineup announced River's Edge Music Festival 2012 at Harriet Island lineupYet another festival lineup came hurling toward the concert-going set late last night and it's a good one. This year's Lollapalooza performers include a bevy of top-tier Billboard-charting acts -- start ... More >>

Five songs for the bleak, midwinter blues

​Winter's kind of awesome -- at first. Well, for a couple weeks, anyway, until Christmas and New Year's are over and it quickly becomes apparent that there's nothing else to look forward to, in terms of the season, besides blizzards and black ice and cold snaps and low, glowering expanses of sky t ... More >>

Chuck Klosterman irks tUnE-yArDs' fanbase, while likely enlarging it

via Instagram @centralalley​Some people are mad at hair metal 'n' NBA critic Chuck Klosterman at the moment. This has to do with "The Pitfalls of Indie Fame," published yesterday on ESPN-offshoot commentary site Grantland regarding the Village Voice's Pazz & Jop 2011 album of the year, Tune-Ya ... More >>

Howler at the Triple Rock, 01/14/12

​HowlerJanuary 14, 2012Triple Rock Social ClubAfter setting the U.K. ablaze with both hype and hyperbole in 2011, Howler returned home to Minneapolis to try and do the same thing to the sold-out Triple Rock on Saturday night. While the groundswell of support for the quintet has been slowly buil ... More >>

Best nationally released albums of 2011

​It's a good thing we waited until the last week of 2011 to publish our final best-album lists, since a few bands managed to eke out stellar releases just this December (the Roots' undun and the Black Keys' El Camino in particular made their way onto a few staffers' lists). With only a few da ... More >>

Artists of the Year 2011

Alan Moore, Louis C.K., Bethany Larson, and more

Artists of the Year, Northeast's Pearl Studio featured in this week's City Pages

Photo by Emily UtnePearl Studio owners Zach and Noah Hollander​With the year-end review season in full swing, this week marks the publication of our annual Artists of the Year issue, which pays tribute to 15 local and national artists whose voices rose above the din in 2011. 

Howler, Big Quarters, Buildings drop new music videos

Courtesy Big Quarters​Minnesota artists are releasing music videos at such a fast clip these days that we can barely keep up with posting the best ones. Just yesterday, three separate videos from Twin Cities artists were lighting up our Twitter feeds and Facebook pages, and one was even debuted by ... More >>

Howler release new single 'Back of Your Neck'

Photo by Erik HessHowler at First Avenue last weekend​Twin Cities' surf rockers Howler released the first single, off of their forthcoming album America Give Up, set to drop in January of next year from Rough Trade. The song, "Back Of Your Neck,"  trots across the band's familiar rocky s ... More >>

tUnE-yArDs and Howler at First Avenue, 11/12/11

Photos by Erik Hess​tUnE-yArDs and HowlerNovember 12, 2011First AvenueMerrill Garbus sure is one idiosyncratic musical dynamo. After well-received local shows at the Cedar Cultural Center and Entry, Garbus took her traveling tUnE-yArDs musical carnival to the big stage at First Avenue and not onl ... More >>

Weekend Checklist: tUnE-yArDs, Deer Tick, Lykke Li, Guns N' Roses

​ This weekend is brought to you by the number 1.

Lykki Li, Deer Tick, the Civil Wars, and more

tUnE-yArDs

Howler's debut full-length out on Rough Trade January 17

​In an opening sentence that simultaneously manages to name-drop the Replacements and the Strokes, a new press release by Rough Trade is trumpeting the release of Howler's first full-length record, America Give Up, due out this January. 

tUnE-yArDs and the Roots melt brains on 'Late Night With Jimmy Fallon'

Photo by Erik HesstUnE-yArDs at the Cedar earlier this year​The Late Night With Jimmy Fallon show, which is musically hosted by groundbreaking live hip-hop crew the Roots, has made a habit out of bending the rules of typical late-show musical performances and allowing artists to perform whatever - ... More >>

Titus Andronicus and Craig Finn cover the Replacements' "Kids Don't Follow"

​Last night, the biggest indie scenesplosion ever rattled the Bowery Ballroom in Manhatten as contemporary bands like tUnE-yArDs, St. Vincent, Ted Leo gathered to pay homage to Michael Azerrad's 2001 book Our Band Could Be Your Life on its 10-year anniversary. Among the highlights posted on Pitchf ... More >>

tUnE-yArDs at the Cedar, 5/8/11

Photos by Erik Hess​tUnE-yArDsMay 8, 2011Cedar Cultural Center, MinneapolisThere's something about tUnE-yArDs. Led by talented multi-instrumentalist vocalist Merrill Garbus, the now-quartet has been touring relentlessly for the past year and half, and it shows; while Garbus's live looping techniqu ... More >>

tUnE-yArDs' Merrill Garbus talks puppetry, playfulness, and learning to use her voice

​I'm positive that Merrill Garbus didn't answer her phone the first time I called because she wanted me to hear her voicemail greeting. "Thi-iS iS m-m-E-rr-ilL l-E-a-V-e A m-esS-age," a creaking voice insists, while bounding up and down amidst an octave's worth of notes.

tUnE-yArDs

SXSW 2011: Five nights in Austin

Highlights from Gimme Noise's recent trek to the festival

Yoko Ono and the Plastic Ono Band close out SXSW, Sean Lennon professes his love for tUnE-yArDs

Photos by Erik Hess​You know it's time for SXSW to be over when even a Yoko Ono show is full of pushy, angry people and there's a riot happening just outside. The iconic professor of peace did her best to reach out to the tired audience, peering out over a pair of dark oval sunglasses to peer ... More >>

James Blake lives up to the hype at Central Presbyterian show

Photo by Andrea Swensson​James Blake is easily one of the most buzzed-about artists at this year's SXSW festival, so I jumped at the chance to head over to the Central Presbyterian Church for a 1 a.m. performance by the rising artist. I'm a fan of Blake's album and my expectations for the show wer ... More >>

tUnE-yArDs make aural assault enjoyable at the Entry

Photos by Erik Hess​Though clanging pop duo Xiu Xiu were the headliners in the Entry on Friday night, it was clear that a good portion of the audience turned out to see tUnE-yArDs, an avant garde tribal folk group who has been a favorite of this blogger since seeing them open for Dirty Projectors ... More >>