La Cerca at Cloudland Theater (May 30, 2025)

The feeling of summer has descended on Minnesota, with graduations ongoing and school just about finished, lake season in full swing, and the beautifully late sunsets. On a gorgeous Friday evening, Minneapolis’s Cloudland Theater hosted an evening of heavy guitars and a mix of psychedelic rock, shoegaze and related genres centered with the band La Cerca.

With musicians entering the venue at two minutes to scheduled start time, it was clear that things would be running on feel rather than strictly adhering to the posted times. Eventually, the first band up was Squinny. Calling themselves fuzz rock, the Twin Cities based four piece quickly set the mood of the night. Their opening song, The Method, had a long instrumental intro and distorted vocals. The next song put some of the pedal boards into heavy use and as they moved forward, we had the other guitarist take a song at keyboards.

Squinny used those different effects very well, setting up a staticky sounding guitar solo in the enjoyable Gout. The lead singer was extremely busy during this number, with a variety of pedal arrangements used throughout. I do think it would have been helpful for the him to kill the reverb / distortion effect between songs, as his spoken statements were nearly impossible to decipher, but you can’t have everything. A few extra points for the drummer’s intense energy the entire way. A broken string for the lead singer right before the end of the set led to an instrumental jam from the other members of the band and was easily their longest song of the evening. Although not the set they likely imagined, Squinny bounced back with the final two songs, Crazy and the strong Line of Sight, which had the bassist switch to guitar. The band finished on that high note finishing off a fairly long opening set.

La Cerca came to the stage next. As mentioned in our preview, Cloudland often places the out of town band between two local ones. La Cerca, a psychedelic rock band, is a quartet from Tucson, Arizona. They have had a handful of releases over their twenty five years together, including the 2020 album A Nice Sweet Getaway. The set up was two guitars, bass, and drums, with a solo vocalist. A long instrumental opening eventually had lead singer Andrew Gardner’s clear vocals come in, but this was all about the driving guitar work. La Cerca certainly had a lot of effects going on, but that lead guitar work was usually crisp and really was the central through line of the songs.

There’s some really good alt rock songs here, but deeply influenced by that psych / stoner rock. And like most bands that have been together as long they have, La Cerca has honed their sound and has the skills to bring it forward. I really liked Gardner’s singing; it felt like a perfect tone for their somewhat laid back, but still hazy and complicated music. And each time they went into an extended guitar solo, it felt like there was a real purpose for the song and not just a jam moment.

A switch of guitar for the song On the Other Side of This Bluff was introduced as the first song off their album Night Bloom. This had a more vibrant sound and was a high moment in the set. The next number, which I didn’t catch the name of, was noted as being a song that they somehow always play in Minneapolis and that it was the first time they had played it this entire tour. It was a good one, with a pulsating bass riff and an excellent guitar solo from Gardner and was probably the most identifiably psych rock song of the evening. Another guitar switch was introduced with “We’re going to play one more and this is going to be a long one”. They weren’t kidding, and the instrumental worked through almost every pedal effect the band had. It was an excellent slow burn to end on and La Cerca was done.

Muun Bato at Cloudland Theater (Mar 7, 2025)

Last up was Muun Bato, who we last saw at Cloudland in March 2025, opening for Cindy Lawson. Maybe I hadn’t noticed last time, but with all of the instrumentation and boards and the relatively small stage, the quintet was extremely limited on space. With a very similar set list, it was fun to recognize similarities and differences in the performances. Otab Nuum is really a funky psych rock song and the guitar riff is a pretty good ear worm, reminiscent of some Zepplin.

Joe Werner’s vocals were worked through the reverb effect on the microphone, but it worked for the sound they are trying to produce. The third song, Blue Lines, had a hint of The Doors in the interlude. Really, Muun Bato’s songs call up any number of 60’s and 70’s rock bands while still being uniquely theirs. Given the lateness of the hour, the band kept things moving along. Catacomb Cady had a solid drum beat holding the song together. A guitar swap for the song Echoes of the Green (as we noted in March) was their loudest and brightest sounding song. Muun Bato wrapped up with a very efficient and very fun set to conclude the night.