Mutual Benefit at Turf Club, St Paul (01 Jun 2016)

Northern Darling

Local Northern Darling started the show, playing a 30-min set of new music and some old ones from their self-titled EP. The group is led by singer Liz Davis, with a full band: guitarist James Mouritsen, bassoonist Trent Jacobs, bassist Jeffrey Sugerman, and drummer Adam Mickelson.

Florist

Next up was Florist, their first time in Minnesota, touring in support of their debut record The Birds Outside Sang (Double Double Whammy Records).



The story of Florist was that it was a project that Emily Sprague started with her two friends (Rick Spataro, and Jonnie Baker) in Upstate, New York. Eventually, Sprague moved to New York City, but still kept writing music and using the moniker ‘Florist’. By 2014, after a result of a severe bicycle accident that broke her arm and neck… she began writing songs about recovery, isolation, physical, emotional, pain, nature, death, etc., many of which eventually made it onto her The Birds Outside Sang album. She would resurrect the original trio that started in Upstate, NY.



Songs on their “quiet or extremely quiet” 40-min set included almost everything from The Birds Outside Sang, including the title track and ‘Dark Light’.



After seeing some fans buying their merchandises, and also tipping the band by saying “Keep the change”, the band said that this was “the nicest town!” and it sounded like the trio will make their way back to Minnesota the next time they tour.



Headlining the Turf Club was Mutual Benefit, touring in support of his new album Skip a Sinking Stone. This new album, his debut for the Mom+Pop record label, and is said to be two-part meditation on impermanence that also acts as a portrait of growing up.



Mutual Benefit started his set with ‘Skipping Stones’, which obviously was the song named after the title of the new record. The dreamy track made Jordan Lee think of Radiohead, as he channeled Thom Yorke’s unique singing style.



The rest of his set heavily drew from upon Skip a Sinking Stone, which based on hearing it live, seemed to have this searching, longing, yet warm and familiar, theme to the new record. Songs like ‘Lost Dreamers’, done early in his set, is about taking the train and getting lost… but not really caring where you go, it’s the journey that makes it worth it.



Highlight of their set was actually not a song, but rather a weird “28 seconds of making your favorite animal sounds!” You can hear everything from a bark to a meow to a chirp in half-a-minute of odd noises from the audience. As Lee said, “That was fun!”



Skip a Sinking Stone is out now.