Bishop Allen at 7th Street Entry, Minneapolis (28 Sep 2014)

Ancient Mariner

Local band, by the way of Denver, Ancient Mariner started the evening off. The trio (Gabriel Jorgensen, Connor Davison, and Dan Stewart) played tracks from their In Solitude EP, but throwing in some new material, like "Brother". The band seem really happy to have been invited to play for Bishop Allen.

New York's Bishop Allen are essentially the friendship and musical collaborator between Justin Rice and Christian Rudder. After Grrr… was released in 2009, the band disappeared and only recently resurfaced for their new album Lights Out (Dead Ocean), which came out earlier this year.

So naturally, the band's been playing some rather old material from their previous albums, including the title track from Charm School, "Click, Click, Click, Click" from The Broken String , "Oklahoma" from Grrr…, etc.

Making up the rest of their set were new tracks from Lights Out. Based on hearing the new songs live, it's like Bishop Allen never left and continued to write these incredibly upbeat and catchy songs.

Singer Justin Rice mentioned how they had such a long drive to Minneapolis and how vibrant downtown was on a Sunday, to his eyes. Then he looked up and saw the skyway and thought, "Yeah, there's the winter thing." Let's just say I'm glad they aren't touring in the winter here…

Darbie Rice

For their encore, they had a rare vocals from keyboardist Darbie Rice, who softly sang us out to "Butterfly Nets".

Bishop Allen's first new album in over five years, Lights Out is out now on Dead Oceans, a sister label to Secretly Canadian and Jagjaguwar. Check out the band on these remaining tour dates: