12 Rods

with special guest Launder

Ticket | Information

Doors at 7:00 p.m. | Show at 8:00

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The Current is pleased to offer a ticket giveaway to this concert. Enter by noon (CDT) on Monday, April 22 for a chance to win a pair of passes to this concert. ONE (1) winner will receive two guest list spots to 12 Rods on April 27.

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12 Rods

When Ryan Olcott, songwriter and frontman of Twin Cities’ iconic indie rock band 12 Rods, found unfinished Rods demos during lockdown, he was surprised. When he realized they were good, he was shocked. He quickly set to finishing and recording the compositions, which became If We Stayed Alive, the first 12 Rods album in twenty-one years. “These are songs that I forgot about,” he explains, “but upon finding them, I thought, ‘Wow, these are actually okay.’” That was the easy part. Reacquainting himself with twenty-year-removed craft and technique took some getting used to -- some parts longer than others. He recorded all the instruments in a week, but vocals took a bit longer. “Oh my god!” he laughs, “it took a couple days to get my voice back with that range and that power, but I could do it.” Any cobwebs that needed dusting are long gone. If We Stayed Alive is everything longtime fans have wanted, and the perfect introduction to what some called “America’s Radiohead" and what others have called one of the best indie bands of the ‘90s.

Despite these songs being written twenty-two years ago, their sound, themes, mood are evergreen. Lead single, pop nugget “My Year (This Is Going To Be),” is both the appropriate ticket to a new era and a souvenir of the past, gussied up in self-awareness, humor, and perhaps the faintest bit of hope. “Cause with all my calculations/Everything looks so, so clear/This is going to be my year.” Which of us didn’t watch the dawn of 2020 thinking the same, only to have confused stellar light with nuclear flash? Everything magnetic in vintage Rods -- pitch-perfect, Beach Boys-esque harmonies, clean, rhythmic guitar, grooving bass, steady drums -- and that clear, plaintive voice invoking our deepest, silliest wish: that everything’s going to be okay.

And that’s only one of the album’s seven bangers. From album opener “All I Can Think About,” with its subdued inner monologue musings that meander from world-weary to awestruck, to the grunge-indebted “Comfortable Situation,” to the smooth, loungey “The Beating,” it’s clear that Olcott isn’t just picking up where he left off, but having fun while doing it.

“To be honest,” Olcott says, “I think it’s the best material I’ve had to offer so far.” If you had asked me a few years ago whether the reunion 12 Rods album could be their best, I don’t know how I would have answered. But if you had shown me videos of UFOs cruising the globe and told me an Air Force general didn’t rule out extraterrestrial responsibility, I would have called shenanigans on that. 2023 is weird as hell. And it’s about to get weirder. What else can I say? It’s 12 Rods. It’s new. It’s everything we’ve waited for.

Launder

After nearly three years and sixty demos, Launder's full-length debut is Happening. In 2019, Orange County-raised, Los Angeles-based musician John Cudlip signed to Ghostly International to build his recording project, developed out of casual sessions with friends Jackson Phillips (Day Wave), Soko, and Zachary Cole Smith (DIIV). Launder's music had seen unexpected attention, with Stereogum placing it "somewhere at the intersection of '90s lo-fi and shoegaze," and Gorilla vs. Bear noting Cudlip's "serious knack for the kind of wistful, soaring choruses that immediately make you feel like you've known these songs forever."

With live shows paused in 2020, Cudlip immersed fully into writing and arranging an overflow of ideas. He also embraced sobriety, redirecting his once-destructive addictive tendencies into studio craft — all his thoughts consumed by melody and texture, all his resources lobbed into gear, every buzz, hiss, and hum of this record became his entire world. The resulting set sprawls across a double LP release, which sees release in summer 2022. Through its thirteen songs, Happening is timeless, grappling with something bigger than just melody, the cathartic and the tender, indebted to indie rock greats while informed by modern and prudent self-reflection.