The Year in Music – Concerts and Albums

Milwaukee was the site of many memorable concerts last year and musicians, local and national, continued to release great music.

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Concerts

Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds brought showmanship, high energy and gospel fervor to the Miller High Life Theatre in May. Testifying and roiling the audience you wouldn’t be wrong for believing by the end of the night Cave would be laying hands on the lame and they’d walk again.

Cave’s epic “Tupelo” remains one of the best interpretations of Southern Gothic America vis-à-vis the mythology of twin brothers, stillborn Jesse Garon and Elvis Aaron Presley. The song’s bombastic stomp took flight with the gospel voices, allowing Cave’s transformation as Old Testament prophet channeling John Lee Hooker.

Later that month, taking a final lap, Gang of Four did not go gentle into the night at Turner Hall Ballroom. Appropriately, they raged. Throughout the show, a revolving backdrop included historic images of the baby-faced band and familiar handbills. Interspersed were also and stark messages including BE THE RESISTANCE, WOMAN LIFE FREEDOM, MAKE GOOD TROUBLE and HANNAH DUGAN.

Violent Femmes played a pair of dates in October at the Riverside Theater, performing their debut album from 1983 and the follow-up, Hallowed Ground (1984). On Sunday (the second evening) the group wisely began the concert performing the sophomore album, with the band decked out in t-shirts displaying the album’s cover art by Mary Nohl. Leading with “Country Death Song” Gordon Gano plucked a banjo and Brian Ritchie strapped on a striking Big Johnson acoustic bass—beginning an evening of bass workouts that moved from brisk walking lines to freakouts. Decades before Americana became a genre nodding to American music, the Femmes warped take on filicide and suicide was a musical version of Flannery O’Connor or William Faulkner. The band’s entry in the old, weird America sweepstakes still holds up.

By the time the group launched into “Sweet Misery Blues,” it was boasting a throwback New Orleans sound with Blaise Garza on pocket trumpet and Mike Kasprzak on soprano trombone. The arrangement turned out to be a warmup for “Black Girls” and the Horns of Dilemma. The horn section which varies from city to city included a history of local music with players Sigmund Snopek III, Dale Kaminski (Liquid Pink), Brian Miller (Paw Paw Lawton and His Jigsaw Band), Silas Ritchie, as well as Jeff Hamilton, Garza and Kasprzak all breaking into a jam that would make Sun Ra smile before Sparrow brought things back to earth with a drum solo that included his Weber grill.

Paul Simon’s empathy for humankind as evidenced in his lyrics seems as vibrant as ever, creating a strong rapport with the audience. Michael Muckian reviewed the concert, writing, Backed an 11-member band plus Simon’s wife vocalist Edie Brickell, the troupe delivered a relatively new work as well performed many of his earlier songs, including some less familiar ones that the artist himself chose specifically because of what they meant to him. None of those choices were off the mark. The first half of the two-hour performance was devoted to “Seven Psalms,” a 33-minute acoustic composition divided into seven interconnected movements inspired by the Book of Psalms and reflecting on themes of faith and mortality.

Just when it seemed like every other person at Summerfest was sporting a brand new Stetson or skintight Daisy Dukes, DEVO swooped in to save the day. This was not a typical New Wave oldies show but a Top-40 art project that posed more questions than answers. “How many here believe devolution is real?” Mark Mothersbaugh rhetorically asked the capacity crowd. He didn’t need an answer, he just needed to look at the multitudes, many of whom sported the band’s trademark red energy dome hats. “The truth is all around us,” he said.

In July, Ben Slowey took a road trip to Madison to review Coldplay’s only Midwest stop at Camp Randell Stadium. The sold-out show comprised aliens, puppets and cheeseheads. Introducing Coldplay was Middleton couple Beth and Peter Rahko, who revealed that their son Bill is Coldplay’s sound engineer and a crucial member of their behind-the-scenes production. Chris Martin would later give a shoutout to Bill Rahko during the band’s encore, spotlighting Rahko on the Jumbotron while he was hard at work beneath the stage.

Slowey also ventured to Chicago’s Soldier Field in September for Oasis’ first U.S. show in 17 years. It was one of only five North American dates. Oasis finished the night’s set with transcendent anthem “Live Forever” and irresistible-to-jump-to banger “Rock ‘n’ Roll Star.” “Wonderwall” ignited an ocean of phone lights across Soldier Field and the band concluded the night with “Champagne Supernova” against the backdrop of a vibrant sunset over the sea.

Neil Young and keyboard player Spooner Oldham surrounded themselves with musicians young enough to be their grandchildren at BMO Pavilion but if there was a generation gap no one saw or heard it. In fact, Young gave as good as he got for the 17-song set; when Neil Young and the Chrome Hearts played a brand new song “Big Crime,” it pulled no punches, directing his ire at the current sitting president. In September Marc Ribot’s performance had the intimate feel of a house concert. “Map of A Blue City” featured a beautiful and melodic ride out filled with as much grace as anyone playing a solo piece for guitar could summon.

In October, Peter Holsapple returned to Shank Hall opening for Steve Forbert. Holsapple played the club with the dB’s a year earlier and this time he’d also play an in-store matinee at Irving Place Records. How is his mindset different when he plays a solo show? “I don’t have anyone to turn around and blame when there’s a bum note! But seriously, I like solo performances because I have to try to make sure that all the elements of a fully-tracked (bass, drums, overdubs, harmonies) are at least represented in the one-guitar/one-vocal situation,” he said. “My former brother-in-law Bob Cowsill’s solo performances over the years was a master class in making that happen.”

Albums, EPs and Singles

As has been the trend, streaming overwhelmed the way many of us consume music. Yet artists still release CDs, vinyl LPs and 45s; these formats are hanging on as evidenced by Milwaukee’s fine record shops. Outliers like cassettes and 8-track tapes even show up as hipster fetish items.

But streaming giants continue to rip off artists, paying pennies on the pound and continuing the long tradition of record companies fleecing artists. All indications point to AI as another tentacle positioned to favor corporate interests in whatever is left of the music biz.

But how can you convince someone to stop making and release music? You can’t. As consumers, our best option is to buy direct from artists at live performances, local shops or from their websites.

Here is a sampling of another year’s avalanche of releases.

The sitting president of the United States captured the leader of another country with charges of narco-terrorism, but in 2025 Trapper Schoepp took aim at the American family who made billions of dollars in profits in the ongoing decades-long opioid crisis. “Satan is Real (Satan is a Sackler)” builds on a drum machine, the robotic beat echoing the cop-shoot-cop routine of addicts. “I know the truth so I blame it on a Sackler,” he spits, aiming his lyrics at shareholders who got rich thanks to marketing that claimed OxyContin was nonaddictive.

 The title of Schoepp’s new album Osborne is a nod to both Ozzy Osborne and the Minnesota rehab facility Schoepp resided in dealing with chronic pain brought on by BMX accidents in his youth.

Channeling Black Sabbath, Suicide and Springsteen, he sings his truth against a backdrop of vintage drum machines, synths and distorted guitars. “It was recorded live to tape using drum machines and vintage synths in a California church basement,” Schoepp says. “It’s the most raw and honest record I’ve cut.”  A “unique pairing” Schoepp has been playing a Flying V guitar, with Daniel Wolff (Dead Horses) on upright bass. “The instrumentation differs but the spirit is still there,” he says.

Always moving through different exploratory phases as an artist Schoepp says it’s all one big patchwork quilt of songs and stories. “I wrote many of the songs there during my stay [in rehab]. The themes may be a bit heavy, but I hope the spirit of the music is uplifting.”

Trolley’s  A Carnival of Grey & White, the Milwaukee band’s first album in a decade gave pop fans reason to celebrate. But it was bittersweet. the lengthy lapse between albums was caused by factors beyond the band’s studio perfectionism, as Dave Luhrssen wrote. Covid intervened, along with family health problems and the death in 2021 of a key member, guitarist-vocalist Mike Perotto.

“We weren’t only lifelong friends. Mike was our sonic architect,” says vocalist-bassist Terry Hackbarth. “Working with Mike was great. There was no pressure. We recorded in his home studio, maybe two hours on Sunday and three hours on Saturday,” says vocalist-guitarist Paul Wall.

Carnival was half finished at the time of Perotto’s death and contains several of his songs. With three songwriters and three vocalists, Trolley’s sound was a coherent composite whose common denominator, Wall says, is “1966,” that peak moment when rock broke free of its roots without exceeding its boundaries. The songs by Trolley’s heroes of ’66 were as concise and ordered as sonnets but contained new echoes—new ways of hearing the world.

The road to Paul Cebar’s self-titled album collects sessions with a variety of players including Tomorrow Sound’s players Reggie Bordeaux, Mike Fredrickson and Bob Jennings. The album began before the pandemic and was gut-punched by other life events.

Yet Cebar leaned into his art. Late evenings at home, Cebar would pick up a guitar in an open tuning, strumming quietly and a chord sequence came about. Cebar’s notebooks, digital and otherwise, are filled with ideas. One never knows when an idea from 25 years ago will surface as relevant to project.

The spare, haunting “Sunday Ride” was inspired by the day after a gig in Detroit a quarter of a century ago. Cebar describes the first day of fall, still in summer’s thrall. Detroit’s giant Uniroyal tire, and a vivid recollection of a pair of motorists set the scene—a poised place in time.

Call him an exhibitionist, Mike Fredrickson juggled showing his paintings at The Daily Bird and Beans and Barley with playing bass with Paul Cebar Tomorrow Sound and fronting his own band. He has released well over a dozen albums with The Mosleys and under his own name. He’s also played with Robbie Fulks and The Spanic Boys. Fredrickson’s latest is Sunken Treasure. Think of the new album, a baker’s dozen songs, as yet another chapter from the story of one of Milwaukee’s most prolific songwriters. Breezing by at quick pace, lyric matter ranges from slice of life vignettes to interior monologues looking to take flight. The songs groove and bound—catchy, danceable tunes grappling with the modern world.

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“Fortune Teller” requests answers, “Take Me Down” builds on an instrumental hook and glances back wistfully, “Reinvent Yourself” takes comfort in each new day’s promise. Throughout the album Scott Ligon’s lead guitar breaks offer tasteful solos.

The musical evolution continues, with Fredrickson retiring the name Bristlehead this year in favor of reviving The Mosley’s moniker, this time with guitarist Rob Gjersoe who returned after spending a long stretch with The Flatlanders.

As the third leg of a local triangle, John Sieger has a long history with Cebar in the R&B Cadets and with Fredrickson in El Supremo. With his own John Sieger Combo, he plays live dates and releases regular music and artwork on his The Song a Week Club.

The Quilz and Guerilla Ghost paid homage to The Clash. Milwaukee has a long history of electronic duos, starting with the original twosome lineups of Colour Radio and Dark Façade in the early ‘80s. This century, The Quilz have kept the concept going with visually inventive performances and a series of recordings. The Quilz self-explanatory Clash Covers, is a carefully curated EP of songs written by or associated with “The Only Band that Matters”—as the circa 1980 hype put it. Becky Heck’s cooly, matter-of-fact take on “London Calling,” accompanied by Sage Schwarm’s reverberant electronics, transforms the anthemic rock song into a liquid soundscape. Heck greets the apocalypse with even-tempered resolve.

Guerrilla Ghost’s new EP The Future is Unwritten was released in time for the annual Strummerfest show. “Nate Rader (who passed away in August) asked us to play three years in a row and we finally had enough time to make it happen,” says Guerrilla Ghost producer Martin DeFatte.

The messages in the songs are still relevant, unfortunately. “I also chose songs that felt thematically relevant to the kind of messages Guerrilla Ghost has always centered: resistance, accountability, unrest,” he said. The five song EP includes versions of “Police & Thieves,” “Guns of Brixton,” “Know Your Rights,” “Bankrobber (ft. Mad Static)” and “Police on My Back.” “I've got a dub-centric way of mixing sets at shows, so I tend to gravitate toward the dubbier Clash tracks,” DeFatte explained. Guerilla Ghost would also release an intense album, The Fool.

Characterized by a rolling, Calypso sound, steel body resonator guitar, E. B. Albeit’s Debutante EP adds to a low-key, growing discography. His “Broke on Xmas” single with Old Pup lays claim to a familiar holiday dilemma.

Driveway Thriftdwellers’ latest album, the Bakersfield country inspired Hi Top Van. Lyrically there’s plenty mentions of motorvatin’ (“Girl With a CDL” and “Ballin’ the Jack”), sense of place—Baltimore and San Rafael get namechecked. “Happy Place” whisks by at a bluegrass pace, “If Daddy’s Gonna Drink, Mama’s Gonna Dance” reeks of vintage country and mentions songwriter Derek Pritzl, “Thinking About Not Thinking About You” is a shuffle that lyrically splits the difference between Willie Neson and Nick Lowe; the DTs even lean into Springsteen via the occasional sax solo and organ riffs.

 But it is the songs that are left turns here that grab the listener’s ear. “Dance With You” opens with a starkly familiar beatbox before soaring into pop stratosphere, while “7 & 7” finishes the album with a brilliant, moody throb—if this is country, I’m Sam & Dave. Is it a minimalist afterthought or the shape of things to come?

Eric Blowtorch, Dean Schlabowske and Jim Warchol crossed paths decades ago in bands The Laytons and Modern Values. Reunited as Lincoln Arcade Singers, their 7” vinyl record opener “Got Your Back,” careens along with high energy while “Can’t Break Us” downshifts to a groove, setting its sight on arm-in-arm-in-arm resistance. The streaming version adds a nifty extended mix of the B-side. The tunes don’t sound like a project assembled in parts; this sounds like band of sagacious not-so-youngsters, still punching above their weight.

Julia Blair’s album All of My Important Things was another chapter in Appleton’s Crutch of Memory Studio and the universe of the band Dusk. Blair’s vocals and melodies just slightly twist and warp with imagination. The end of “Be My Friend” collapses on itself like aluminum garbage cans taking the stairs instead of the elevator. “Cancelled Our Plans” employs wobbly, studio trickery trailing off on an ecological warning note –that pair of songs effectively and purposely are the yang to the yin of Blair’s songwriterly pop tunes. Randy Newman’s “I Think It’s Going To Rain Today.”

Is it the desire to document, an egoistic notion of revisionist history or the temptation to cash in? Maybe it is not that simple. Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska ’82 set includes the album Electric Nebraska. There are those of us who think Nebraska is Bruce Springsteen’s best album. An alternate version with the E Street Band is a fine bit of archaeology that serves to show he was best to trust his gut in the releasing the original, a stark lo-fi masterpiece.

Peter Holsapple wasn’t looking back as so much taking an honest look in the mirror. His album The Face of 68 addressed aging and mortality. It was recorded in three and a half days--produced by Don Dixon and features the hooks and sonic touches you’d expect from a lifelong music fan.

Improvisational guitarist Bill Orcutt’ first solo album in eight years is a live set. Another Perfect Day is at turns brutal and melodic. Tasteful filigrees conclude numbers that swing for the fences. Had Karl Wallenda played a four-string telecaster this is what he’d sound like. The trio album, Orcutt Shelly Miller features cover art that is a tribute to the bootleg label Trade Mark of Quality. It is the kind of album that some listeners hoped drummer Steve Shelly’s old band Sonic Youth had made. Shelley, Orcutt and bassist Ethan Miller recorded the album with limited preparation—the material is the first time the trio played together in public and has moments of Motorik bliss. There is a crucial sense of listening as the musicians play off each other.

Way back in 1979 Neil Young proclaimed it was better to burn out than fade away, yet 46 years down the line he’s failed to do either. Young released two albums in 2025, the solo Coastal: The Soundtrack and Talkin To The Trees by Neil Young & The Chrome Hearts. As should be evident after all these years, solo Young doesn’t necessarily mean acoustic. “Song X” from the Pearl Jam collaboration gets a noisy workout as an electric sea shanty. The haunted hoodoo “Prime of Life” is Young at his most harrowing. Conversely, at 58 seconds long, “Don’t Forget Love” is Young singing the song’s title six times and concludes. “That’s the whole song right there.”

Travel, transportation and technology are still on Young’s mind on Trees. Both “Silver Eagle” and “Let’s Roll Again” borrow that familiar melody from “This Land is Your Land.” The former is an acoustic tribute to his bus—a natural fit for a guy who once wrote a song about his hearse. The latter is a jacked up, full-band call to arms—a request for U.S. automakers to catch up with the rest of the world’s clean energy vehicle production. “If you’re a fascist then get a Tesla … if you’re a Democrat then taste your freedom,” he sings. Notably, Young’s 2002 song “Let’s Roll” was a refence to the 911 attacks. “Big Change” has Young recycling his own tune “Big Time” (from Broken Arrow). On albums like this one, Young’s longtime voice of reason producer David Briggs is missed. He might have guided a different animal. Yet with Young, the seemingly tossed moments, give us far mor than most artists deliver.

Perhaps the best Neil Young album last year wasn’t even by him. The December issue of Uncut magazine included the CD The Gold Rush – The Songs Of Neil Young. A new generation of artists took a personal glance at songs that have been around for decades. J Mascis and Kurt Vile Feat. The Sadies rise above a bumper crop, while Tired Eyes (Low’s Alan Sparhawk and friends) inhabit the stomping darkness of “Words” that will bring a knowing smile to listers who packed  the Cactus Club in June of 2024.

Memento Mori – A Partial List

Milwaukee

Sam McCue, Dean Lea, John Kuester, aka Kid Millions,

Steve Wahlen, Salvatore Purpora and Chuck Meyer.

Beyond

Garth Hudson, Brian Wilson, Beej Chaney, Steve Cropper, Raul Malo, Marianne Faithfull, Roberta Flack, Sly Stone, Todd Snider, D’Angelo, Ozzy Osbourne, Eddie Palmieri and Jack DeJohnette.