The Wake

Panda Bear - Person Pitch

Panda Bear, whose real name is Noah Lennox, recently lost his father. The result was Young Prayer an album of soft clapping and wailing mourning, as he fights through his loss with music. “Where are you?” are some of the only discernable words, but if you listen closely, you can put together the …

Read more →

Matt Jennings, sibling of acclaimed singer/songwriter Mason Jennings, moved from Pittsburgh to Minneapolis in high school to play in his brother’s band. His stint as the bassist, and then drummer, didn’t last long. He opted instead to go back to school; upon graduation, he found himself traveling the world. He studied Spanish in Mexico, and then spent some time teaching English in South China and Thailand. When he returned home, he assembled a band and …

Read more →

Same old story, right? Behind a whirlwind of hype and accolades (recently named NME’s Best New Band), these four blokes from the U.K. released their debut album (Myths of the Near Future) on January 29th and are already off on world tours. They’ve even been assigned to and/or accredited with their own genre of music, “new rave.” Having only heard a handful of songs, and though I enjoyed them all thoroughly, I was unsure of …

Read more →

Even with all of our intricately pompous systems of government and technological advancements, certain aspects of human nature remain stubbornly primitive. Take, for example, our fear of and disdain for the unknown. The Wiccan Church of Minnesota is in every way as valid a religious organization as Hillel or Bethlehem Covenant; however, because most people know little about the Pagan tradition, they assume paganism to be something funny at best, or something very dangerous at …

Read more →

A decade after Spice World, Girl Power is raised from its glittery grave.Blonde Redhead, a unique three piece from New York City, may have been the big name on the bill April 15th at First Avenue, but the evening’s success was due in larger part to a wisely selected opener in Midnight Movies. Their equally intransient sounds set a relaxed mood which held strong for the duration of the evening. Another common ground was found …

Read more →

The last time I rode a bicycle before today, I remember,
this was a summer ago, as I remember it,
a summer ago as I remember, I rode a bicycle through photographs
in the Northrop Mall, as I remember it,
riding through photographs on Northrop Mall
posing motion for brochure catalogues, as I remember it,
while I ride, as I remember the contrasts
of the overcast today to the picaresque …

Read more →

Concerning String Cheese
Sweat has made my hair coarse and wiry. The ink-stained 100% cotton t-shirt feels like a burlap sack on my exhausted body. I just returned from a day working at an industrial screen printing factory. Between stacking empty bottles inside boxes and resisting the thought that, through a horrible series of events, this could end up being my life, my entire being is tired. I need to take …

Read more →

Communication in the U.S. today is a problem. Groups of people have trouble communicating with other groups that they work with. One student group is changing that. “Through this group, students learn to break down preconceived notions of other professions and can even become friends,” says Tracy Hanson, student president of CLARION.The student group CLARION was formed in 2002 by two students who wanted a way for medical students and students in public …

Read more →

Living in a dorm feels like being stuck on a huge ocean liner. You’re confined to a stuffy cabin, the winds sound like dogs fighting against your window and since the kitchens already got your money, the food gets increasingly more apathetic. It’s similar to staying at an all-inclusive hotel, where the drinks are watered-down and the fried ice cream is simply a scoop of vanilla stuck in a defrosted puff pastry. By the end, …

Read more →

Today I rushed toward Cooke Hall 308 where the University of Minnesota Vo Lam Kung Fu workout takes place on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 7 p.m. Knowing nothing about the true nature of Vietnamese Vo Lam kung fu, I envisioned bloody boxing matches and street brawls that looked like screenshots from my two favorite fighting video game series, Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter. In point and actual fact, many of the philosophies that I have …

Read more →

So good-ol’ George W. ain’t so good-ol’ no more. Not too popular, as it happens. The public’s general distaste for the war-monger-in-chief has spawned a mega-glorification of the most recent non-Bush Republican president, who happens to be Ronald Reagan. Been following politics? Ever since presidential campaigns started kicking off 30 years in advance, there’s been a wave of Reagan idolatry.“I’m a Ronald Reagan conservative,” says John McCain, over and over again, and again and again. …

Read more →

There have been few symbols throughout the course of history that have become as universally recognizable as the American flag. Though the number of stars on the flag has changed over the last two and a quarter centuries, the message that it conveys has remained unchanged, and the flag itself has become almost synonymous with freedom and liberty. For the past few decades, the issue of flag desecration has become increasingly controversial and has been …

Read more →

“Everything is bigger in Texas;” a cliché that could not be better demonstrated than by the explosive instrumental quartet known as Explosions in the Sky. From ripping apart melodies drowned in droning feedback to quietly plucking a single string, Explosions have mastered a tension that makes for easy and enjoyable listening, even for the lyrically inclined. Starting off barely audible, the band slowly builds up the rhythm, adding guitar after guitar until the …

Read more →

Duluth heroes, Low, have been offering sonic escape to land locked Midwesterners since the early 90’s. Their new album, “Drums and Guns,” is another step in a new direction as they continue to expand upon their trademark, minimalist sound. Breaking to electronic beats, their crashing, ethereal harmonies float into new and uncharted territories. I met recently with the trio in uptown at the Café Barbette to discuss their new album, their popularity in Europe, cake …

Read more →

Learning that 39.5 million people in the world have HIV or AIDS activates one part of your mind, but watching just one sufferer take a cocktail of medications and then retire to the couch with a lemonade will probably engage you completely. It may be a fault of humanity that a statistic alone does little for our sympathies, but by presenting issues of cultural indifference and isolation through stories and faces, art is created. The …

Read more →