Clem Snide w/ LAAMAR

Sun, Oct 06

5PM DOORS-DRINKS-DINNER // 7PM SHOW START // $20 ADVANCE (+fees) // $27 AT THE DOOR // $35 PREMIUM BALCONY SEATING (+fees) NEW SUPPORT ADDED: LAAMAR LAAMAR is the latest project led by Minneapolis-based singer, songwriter, saxophonist, and composer Geoffrey Lamar Wilson. Former frontman of Brooklyn-based Jus Post Bellum, Wilson is also known for his multilayered looped saxophone performances and catchy podcast ditties (Terrible, Thanks for Asking). On the band’s debut EP “Flowers,” Wilson blends his idiomatic inspirations bridging folk, soul, R&B, and country with a constant ear toward racial and social justice issues and the shared human experience. “In the EP's deceptively sweet and warm title track, he relays a memory of his mother ‘lighting candles and putting flowers on the boulevard’ in memory of another dead man of color. In the standout track getting airplay on the Current, “Home to My Baby,” he relays his personal fears of getting pulled over by police,” writes Chris Riemenschneider of the Star Tribune. Recent acclaim for LAAMAR includes debut single “Home to My Baby” being named KAXE’s “Best Song” of 2023 and a nod as one of First Avenue’s Best New Bands. “With Flowers,” writes Malachy Koons of KAXE, “LAAMAR has crafted a stunning debut that does not shy away from difficult topics. The new EP features four instantly catchy songs, with each taking a different approach to issues of racial and social justice.” The band is working with Nat Harvie (Low, Cole Pulice) on their debut full length, tentatively planned for release this Fall. About Clem Snide “The last ten years have been a rollercoaster of deep despair and amazing opportunities that somehow present themselves at the last possible second,” says Eef Barzelay. “During that time, the band bottomed out, I lost my house, and I had to declare bankruptcy. The only way to survive was to try to transcend myself, to find some kind of deeper, spiritual relationship with life. Once I committed to that, all these little miracles started happening.” ‘Forever Just Beyond,’ Barzelay’s stunning new album under the Clem Snide moniker, may just be the most miraculous of them all. Produced by Scott Avett, the record is a work of exquisite beauty and profound questioning, a reckoning with faith and reality that rushes headlong into the unknown and the unknowable. The songs here grapple with hope and depression, identity and perception, God and the afterlife, humanizing thorny existential issues and delivering them with the intimate, understated air of a late-night conversation between old friends. Avett’s production is similarly warm and inviting, and the careful, spacious arrangement of gentle guitars and spare percussion carves a wide path for Barzelay’s insightful lyrics and idiosyncratic delivery. “I look up to Eef with total respect and admiration,” says Avett, “and I hope to survive like he survives: with total love for the new and the unknown. Eef’s a crooner and an indie darling by sound and a mystic sage by depth. That’s not common, but it’s beautiful.” Named for a William S. Borroughs character, Clem Snide first emerged from Boston as a three-piece in the early 1990’s, and the group would go on to become a cult and critical favorite, picking up high profile fans from Bon Iver to Ben Folds over the course of three decades and more than a dozen studio albums. NPR highlighted the Israeli-born Barzelay as “the most underrated songwriter in the business today, with a sneakily firm grasp on poignancy and humor,” while Rolling Stone hailed his songwriting as “soulful and incisive,” and The New Yorker praised his music’s “soothing melodies and candid wit.”