Monday 5/2
Jordy / Miki Ratsula / Lauren Sanderson at the Amsterdam – TICKETS
Inspired by pop staples such as The Spice Girls, Michelle Branch, Avril Lavigne, and contemporaries such as Troye Sivan and Lauv, JORDY’s songs blend the glimmering, bouncy 90’s pop sound with sincere, vulnerable, and conversational songwriting. He released his debut album Mind Games in November 2021, along with a companion acoustic EP in February. Check out his discography HERE (1.2M+ monthly Spotify listeners).
JORDY’s heart-on-his-sleeve approach to modern pop music has also resonated with fans nationwide, as his standout single “Long Distance” blew up the TikTok charts and led to his national TV debut on THE TODAY SHOW. Most recently, JORDY and pop duo Loote joined forces on a captivating new song, “Friends,” which is bound to be a staple on summer playlists this year. Listen HERE.
MIKI RATSULA’s i owe it to myself is a testament to self-love and a gift to anyone seeking the same, and sees Miki at their most vulnerable and fully realized. They use their platform to candidly document their life: from coming out to getting top surgery to their mental health journey. It’s the kind of storytelling that listeners, especially young queer kids, crave and deserve. “I just want to be the artist I needed growing up,” says Miki, and that’s exactly who they’ve become on this heartfelt and impressive debut record. Throughout the record, Miki effortlessly floats between R&B slow jams and acoustic numbers laced with sensual groove, and some of the album’s more powerful moments exist in the soft, nostalgic spaces in between, which often deal with the pain that lives behind closed doors.
Tuesday 5/3
Necronomicon at the Skyway Theater – TICKETS
Canadian blackened death metal horde NECRONOMICON will be co-headlining an extensive North American run along with THE CONVALESCENCE and touring in support of 2019’s opus, ‘UNUS.’ The tours starts TOMORROW, April 29, in Kalamazoo, MI and will then will circle the country and conclude on June 4 in Chesterfield, MI. The full run of dates can be found below. Tickets are on sale now!
NECRONOMICON mainman Rob the Witch comments: ” I think I don’t need to mention how hard these last years have been for everyone, and it’s about time that we get back to a healthy music scene. We are more than happy to be back in U.S. We really hope you guys will come and support us as we bring you ‘Vivus Verum’ on this run. Hail to all of you”
Thursday 5/5
Restless Road at the Fine Line – TICKETS
Made up of three different but complementary voices, country band Restless Road is “one of the most intriguing and exciting acts of the year” (Wide Open Country). Praised by People, Taste of Country, Billboard, and more, the trio’s powerhouse harmonies and soul-baring lyrics put them on numerous 2021 “Ones to Watch” lists, as members Zach Beeken, Colton Pack, and Garrett Nichols continue to rack up millions of streams. As NBC’s Today Show host Hoda Kotb put it, “That harmony…you feel it in your soul.”
Since Zach and Colton joined forces after meeting on a singing competition (where they met future collaborator Kane Brown), Restless Road has stood out as one of the genre’s premier vocal forces. When Garrett came onboard in 2015, they knew they had something special.
In February 2020, the trio unveiled their debut self-titled EP, which includes “Take Me Home,” featuring Kane Brown. A short year later, they dropped their track, “Took One Look At Her Momma,” which American Songwriterpraised for its “captivating melody and lyrics that those in a relationship could benefit from hearing.” They recently released their tracks “Bar Friends,” “Hometown Tonight,” and“Headlights.”
Susanne Vega at the Dakota – TICKETS
Vega emerged as a leading figure of the folk-music revival of the early 1980s when, accompanying herself on acoustic guitar, she sang what has been called contemporary folk or neo-folk songs of her own creation in Greenwich Village clubs. Since the release of herself-titled, critically acclaimed 1985 debut album, she has given sold-out concerts in many of the world’s best-known venues. Known for performances that convey deep emotion, Vega’s distinctive,“clear, unwavering voice” (Rolling Stone) has been described as “a cool, dry sandpaper-brushed near-whisper” by The Washington Post, with NPR Music note that she “has been making vital, inventive music” throughout the course of her decades-long career.
Bearing the stamp of a masterful storyteller who “observes the world with a clinically poetic eye” (The New York Times), Vega’s Songs have tended to focus on city life, ordinary people and real-world objects. Notably succinct and understated, her work is immediately recognizable—as utterly distinct and thoughtful as it was when her voice was first heard on the radio over 30 years ago.
Carach Angren at the Cabooze – TICKETS
Symphonic horror metal masters CARACH ANGREN will be making a triumphant return to North America in support of HYPOCRISY! The band will be supporting 2020’s critically-acclaimed release, ‘Franckensteina Strataemontanus.’ The band’s trek will start TOMORROW, April 29, in Brooklyn, NY will conclude on May 28 in Pittsburgh, PA. The full run of dates and tickets can be found below!
Last year, CARACH ANGREN announced their collaboration with DC comics for the new series “Dark Nights: Death Metal.” The first episode is out now and features the band’s new song, “Skull with a Forked Tongue,” which is taken from ‘Franckensteina Strataemontanus.
Friday May 6
KRAWG (opening for Malovent Creation) – Studio B – TICKETS
Ancient Sumerian legends speak of a vile creature that was believed to be comprised of little more than evil and blood lust. Their stories describe a mystical beast responsible for devouring entire villages after systematically stalking and murdering all of it’s inhabitants.
It’s killing methods varied from victim to victim and, frighteningly enough, so did it’s appearance. Eyewitness accounts claim to have seen the creature manifest itself into everything from gigantic snakes, bears, and wolves to swarms of insects, and in some cases the dead ancestors of the villagers themselves. Seemingly the only contestant nature of the beast was that it left next to no one living and the corpses would all vanish, leaving only puddles of blood as evidence of the slaughter.
Modern day scholars have theorized that many stories, such as werewolves, vampires, skin walkers, and even biblical plagues can be attributed to this single being. Interestingly enough, the Sumerians refused to name this entity. They largely believed that whatever this evil was, it fed on their fears and that naming it would only enable it grow stronger. While this nameless horror seems to be beyond belief, our guitarist Brian once had a Savannah monitor named Krawg and that seemed metal enough for us.
Hovvdy at the Entry – TICKETS
Last year, Charlie Martin impulsively wrote T-R-U-E L-O-V-E in all caps across the top of what would become the title track of his and Will Taylor’s fourth Hovvdy album. The on-the-nose instinct encapsulates the LP’s elemental look at relationships – familial, romantic, friendly – and that desire to capture them in a bottle. Since the creation of their last album, both Charlie and Will have married their partners. Will became a father.
A nod to their roots and a reach for more, True Love maturely embraces the best of the duo’s hyper-genuine, chin-up qualities developed over the past seven years. Charlie and Will first met at a baseball game while touring with other bands, both as drummers. Back home in Austin, the pair connected over shared sports-centric upbringings in Dallas and, most prominently, likeminded batches of solo songwriting. The interlocking tracks would become 2016 LP Taster, introducing a comforting sonic push-and-pull continued in the innate melodies of Cranberry (2018) and the propulsive storytelling of breakthrough Heavy Lifter (2019).
Saturday 5/7
Erodica at the Entry – TICKETS
ericdoa is from what he describes as a “small ass farm town” in Connecticut, certainly not known for its artistic output or community. Without many like-minded kids at school, he spent most of his time on the internet growing up and met nearly all of his closest friends and collaborators online via platforms like Discord and Twitter. Eric grew up around a music-oriented family and was exposed to “raw pop artists” like Rick James, Earth Wind & Fire, and Teena Marie at a young age. When he started making music around 14 years old, these influences meshed with the music he heard online, and Eric taught himself to record and produce his own material.
As time went on, this bedroom-based operation developed a humble but engaged following on SoundCloud, where Eric released his debut project, Public Target, in 2020. On the heels of the project, and with several of Eric’s friends and collaborators beginning to grow followings of their own, the online community began to circulate. The music they had been making via Discord calls since their younger teenage years was beginning to buzz, and was soon coined “hyperpop,” even receiving its own Spotify editorial playlist to underline the attention.
Iris DeMent at the Cedar Cultural Center – TICKETS.
It was by pure chance that Iris DeMent opened the book of Russian poetry sitting on her piano bench to Anna Akhmatova’s “Like A White Stone.” She’d never heard of the poet before, and didn’t even consider herself much of a poetry buff, but a friend had leant her the anthology and it only seemed polite that she skim it enough to have something interesting to say when she returned it. As she read, though, a curious sensation swept over her.
“I didn’t feel like I was alone anymore,” remembers DeMent. “I felt as if somebody walked in the room and said to me, ‘Set that to music.'”
So she did. The melody just poured out of her almost instantly. She turned the page and it happened again, and again after that, and before she even fully understood it, she was already deep into writing what would become ‘The Trackless Woods,’ an album which sets Akhmatova’s poetry to music for the first time ever.
Sunday 5/8
mxmtoon at the Varsity Theater – TICKETS
The world first met Maia when she was a 17-year-old singer with a ukulele and a now-famous screenname: mxmtoon. In 2017, and from the guest bedroom in her parents’ California home, the high-school student began posting covers of pop favorites and her own catchy confessional musings, tunes that spoke frankly of her setting’s assorted tribulations — dates and a lack thereof, online socializing and offline loneliness. A queer kid of mixed Chinese, German, and Scottish ancestry, Maia sang songs that expressed an interiority of the underrepresented with honesty, understanding, and hooks that could not be forgotten. mxmtoon became a streaming sensation, her teenage ditties defining a new era of what it meant to make bedroom pop. Stepping into the studio proper for her 2019 debut, the masquerade, mxmtoon became an avatar for the new bloom of representation and inclusion in American pop. When “prom dress” became a hit, Maia was still a teenager.
In truth, only five years have passed since Maia’s self-made songs and videos began shaping a new sort of star through mxmtoon. But at least two of those years have, of course, passed like decades, each packed with enough worry and woe and loss and hope to catalyze aging at large. And so it goes with rising, mxmtoon’s bold and compelling and wise second album, a 12-song set that looks at the hardest lessons of these recent dark days and opts to surge forward through triumphs of pop-and-disco confessionalism. Though wrought as always from personal experience, mxmtoon extends these glittering and moody tunes — the impatiently waiting jangle of “mona lisa,” the frustrated but persevering electrofunk of “scales,” the incandescent and unforgettable bounce of “dance (end of the world)” — as acts of communal solidarity. Maia knows this has all been hard, so she wants to sing it out, together.
