Little Fevers, with Call Me Spinster and Union Suits, at Cloudland Theater, Minneapolis (23 May 2024)

Local new wave indie pop Little Fevers (not to be confused with Philadelphia’s Little Fevers) just headlined the Cloudland Theater, in Minneapolis, on Thursday, May 23, 2024.



The Minneapolis group is fronted by songwriter Lucy Michelle, who you may remember as the band leader for Lucy Michelle and the Velvet Lapelles. After seven years with the Velvet Lapelles, they broke up and decided to reform under a new name, Little Fevers. Lucy explains, “When we were in our twenties, we had more money to go on the road and release records because we didn’t have as much life responsibility. Little Fevers has been our passion project.”

Little Fevers (21 Nov 2015)

We caught the band when they debut their album Field Trip, which came out in 2015 and wrote, “Little Fevers played to a packed house on Saturday night at Amsterdam Bar & Hall in Saint Paul. They were the first of three local bands to take the stage and wowed the audience. Little Fevers is a twee pop band from right here in the Twin Cities. Their debut album, Field Trip was just recently released. It was recorded with Matt Boynton (Beirut, MGMT) and mastered by David Gardner (Black Lips). After seeing these guys live, it makes sense why such big names are backing this band. Singer Lucy Michell has one of the most amazing voices I have heard in quite some time. It’s beautiful and calm but powerful at the same time. You can hear all types of influences when Lucy starts singing. There are times when it sounds like Bob Dylan in female form and then other times when it sounds like something you could heard on the radio.”



At the Cloudland show, as you can see from their setlist, they were focused on newer songs from a new, forthcoming album.



According to the band, they’ve been working at Pleasure Horse’s Timothy Evenson’s studio and were excited to showcase their new songs. The first single they’ve released is called “Waiting Place” (which was played mid-set).



The show was really for Chattanooga’s sister trio Call Me Spinster (Amelia, Rachel and Rosie) who was second on the lineup at Cloudland Theater. For their live shows, the sisters is joined on stage by guitarist Alfredo, Rachel’s “Baby Daddy”.



The sister group just released their debut album Potholes via Strolling Bones Records, and proceeded to play songs from the record.

Spoiler alert, the highlight of their set was a weird mashup of Blondie’s “Call Me”, Carly Rae Jepson’s “Call Me Maybe”, and Drake’s “Hotline Bling” in a song they called “Call Me Triptych”. It takes portions of each of those songs and medley it together to a cohesive song… as if Carly Rae just morphed into Debbie Harry midway in the song. Those songs shouldn’t belong together, but it works with their arrangement and composition.



They mentioned that the song was quickly put together because they were attending some “Telephone Party” and had to come up with the “Call Me” theme. What is a telephone party? Is it a party line? Maybe they meant it was some song contest.



“Here You Are” is described by the band as the first song that they’ve ever written together. Then opposite of that is “Saturday Morning”, which was a brand new song.



The sisters were in good spirits, explaining why it took so long for them to get on the road to promote their EP and album. “Big sister” Amelie joked, “People kept having babies!” alluding to their growing family, and with Rosie and her baby on the way.

The group ended their set with another catchy song, “Burn the Boxes”, which had some audience participation, singing back the chorus.



Minneapolis (by the way of Wisconsin) The Union Suits opened the show. They’re a country and western band, but describes themselves as rockabilly. They seem to have brought some family, friends, or fans, and promised them that they would end their set with “a fast one” called “After You’ve Gone”. The song is an old standard for the group.