Minus the Bear / Beach Slang / Bayonne at Fine Line Music Cafe, Minneapolis (04 Apr 2017)

Minus the Bear Setlist

Beach Slang Setlist

Opening up the show was Austin’s Bayonne, the stagename for one-man-band Roger Sellers, with a brief 30-min set. Armed with headphones and using various loops and pre-recorded beats, combined with raw vocal performances and sometime live instruments, Bayonne was able to recreate some unique songs. Some of the songs sounded like what Thom Yorke (Radiohead) would create with his experiments.

It only took fifteen minutes for Philadelphia’s Beach Slang to come on stage to play a 45-min set. The last time we saw them, it was just singer James Alex on his solo tour. The story behind the “solo tour” was that their guitarist Ruben Gallego was fired from the band just days before their tour, so James Alex and bassist Ed McNulty decided to do a solo tour.

Anyway, this time around, James Alex and Ed McNulty has a full backing band, which included new guitarist Aurore Ounjian from Mean Creek, and drummer Cully Symington from Cursive.

Singer/guitarist James Alex was happy as a clam at the Minneapolis show, because he’s just met Slim Dunlap (the “replacement” Replacements guitarist) hours earlier. Of the three times we’ve seen the band, this was possibly Alex’s most glowing and talkative show.

It really got obviously off-script halfway into their set when they started just playing Santana’s distinctive intro riffs from ‘Smooth’. Alex joked that of all the things that has been written about them, the words “professional” and “Santana-like” has never been used.

There’s also a running joke of “if Angus Young and Harry Potter had a baby”, it would look like Alex. On tour, they started collecting other names, like Jack White, Steve Buscemi, “That Dude from School of Rock” (Jack Black), etc.

After their cover of The Pixies’ ‘Where Is My Mind?’, Alex quickly started playing The Replacements’ ‘Alex Chilton’. It didn’t last long, only the first few lines, before Alex stopped and said that their set time was almost over, but he didn’t want to leave without paying respect for the ‘Mats. Then a drink and some ‘Give It Away’ notes and lines, the band ended their set with their finest song, ‘Atom Bomb’.

According to Alex, Beach Slang will be returning to Minneapolis for a headlining show at the Triple Rock Social Club in the fall (probably around “Rocktober”?)

Although we saw Minus the Bear in 2014, for their 10th anniversary of They Make Beer Commercials Like This, the truth is, the band hasn’t released any new music since 2012’s Infinity Overhead (Dangerbird Records). That all changed with their return to Suicide Squeeze Records for Voids.

With the new record, some critics was worried that with their original founding member and drummer Erin Tate, that the band has lost their “hip hop” groove, but personally speaking, I don’t think that is what Minus the Bear is all about. Still, the departure of the drummer suggests that it wasn’t amicable.

The band was obligated to play some Voids songs (‘Last Kiss’, ‘Give & Take’, ‘Call the Cops’, etc), but the set wasn’t Voids-focused at all. Which was fine as far as the audience was concern, as they were more than happy to clap and cheer for the older songs.

Remaining tour: