The Legend of the Actual Wolf

There are outlaws, and there are outlaws. Some practice the pose and cultivate the image, though seldom dirty their soft, bourgeois hands with anything actually outside the law. When they do, it is often despicable, irresponsible or just plain mundane. The Actual Wolf, however, is a real outlaw and has pled guilty to it. Between the bust and before the trial AW recorded a pair of EPs, each showing ‘another side of the Wolf’. The first is USA, an everyman’s acoustic album that channels both Woody and Zimmerman on a smuggler’s road trip on the cop-laden corridor of the I-80. The second—Lightning & the Wolf— conjures a 30-something’s symphony to Gawd, a rock EP at times so ethereal that it floats like smoke up into the aether, at others so earthy & grounded you can almost feel the parole. This is not music that pleads for forgiveness—the man has given his freedom as a sacrament at the altar of his beliefs. Rather, these are songs of redemption. Actual Wolf has paid a price, but like many deals with devils, seems to have come out the greater for it.

Actual Wolf Official Website

What’s a man, anyway? It’s the central question at the heart of Minnesota-based songwriter Andy Cook’s new EP Modern Man—a 22-minute indie-rock/Americana ride that stokes twinges of nostalgia with jangly guitars, articulate synth lines and driving percussion. Modern Man is out now on Good Eye Records and is the fifth release from the Brooklyn, NYC-based label.

The EP follows Cook digging into life in this hyper-digital age as the music harkens back to classic American songwriters. Modern Man takes a hard look at the present in its lyric-driven, sonically-rich landscape. “We’re living in a wicked world, where nobody believes anything they’ve heard…just a picture of a pretty face, with lonely eyes and a made-up grace,” we hear over a bouncing guitar line in the lead track “Swirl”—a song reminiscent of Real Estate or Kurt Vile, and that oscillates between pessimism of social media-curated life and optimism that we can be happy in our own shoes.

Andy Cook Official Website

8pm Andy Cook
9pm Actual Wolf

RESERVATIONS WORK LIKE ADVANCE TICKETS
Save your spot right here on our homepage at AsterCafe.com
$8 cover charges on the tab.