Meet the Minnesota rock band most likely to break big

It’s a pivotal point in every band’s life: When members can quit their day jobs to go to work night after night around the country. She’s Green is on that precipice this summer. But they haven’t yet crossed over. “We’re in that zone trying to navigate our minimum-wage jobs with going on the road for several months,” guitarist Liam Armstrong said with a hint of exhaustion during a rehearsal last week in Minneapolis.

Singer Zofia Smith recounted a co-worker’s reaction when she said she’d been up late packaging pre-ordered vinyl copies of the new She’s Green EP for delivery. “She told me, ‘Beyoncé doesn’t have to do that,’” Smith said.

Smith and her four young-dude bandmates have picked up a manager, booking agent, publicist and record label with national-level prominence over the past year. No, they don’t have a Queen Bey-level team behind them, but they can see the other side of that career precipice through the clear packing tape on their vinyl pre-orders.

A whirringly noisy but lushly melodic shoegaze band — those sleepy expressions in our interview match their music’s dreamy soundscape qualities — the Minneapolis-based quintet performs Friday at the Fine Line to celebrate that day’s release of their new EP, “Chrysalis.” Then they hit the road for several months.

One of several flourishing alumni from First Avenue’s Best New Bands of 2023 showcase, She’s Green has fall dates around the country, opening for two other young American bands that have crossed into indie-rock stardom, Blondshell and Slow Pulp. Then the group heads out on its first UK tour in November, paired with Canadian duo Softcult. That’s after it spent a lot of the spring touring with Glixen and then playing a few small festivals this summer.

Not bad for a rock group that started only three years ago — and did so maybe only because two of its members didn’t have thicker walls in the house they shared near the University of Minnesota campus. Smith lived in a room next to Armstrong when he was learning his humming guitar techniques.

“I’d always have to tell him to turn it down,” said the singer, who had been working on a folkier, more acoustic style of songwriting at the time.

“We were competing with our noise levels,” Smith said, “and then one day it was like, ‘Well, why don’t we just try working together?’”

Like a lot of music fans in their 22-26 age range, the members of She’s Green had been soaking up the wave of rediscovery for 90s bands that fit the “shoegaze” name tag — rockers who famously stared down at their guitar pedals while performing — including My Bloody Valentine, Slowdive, Ride and the Cocteau Twins.

The latter band’s more serene sound from singer Elizabeth Fraser’s ethereal vocals — see also: Beach House and the Sundays — is another discernible influence on She’s Green, in the way Smith sings over the thick bed of guitars.

Smith said she likes having all that guitar behind her. “I’m a pretty nervous person by trait,” she said. “We all kind of are. So when we get on stage it’s sort of like we’re in our own bubble.” Another sign of the times for young musicians reviving the shoegaze styles: All the technical, gear-headed know-how once required to make a wall-of-guitar sound (guitar pedals, amplifier usage, etc) is easier to come by nowadays.

“I learned most of what I do on guitar by watching YouTube videos,” Armstrong admitted. The band’s other guitarist, Raines Lucas, and bassist Teddy Nordvold also absorbed online instructional videos. Originally a drummer, Nordvold learned to play bass on the fly when, he said, “the band found a better drummer” in bandmate Kevin Seebeck. Lucas thinks their technical/nerdy way of playing guitars creates an extra creative element.

“It’s always fun making your guitar sound not like a guitar,” he said. “Like when you can make it sound like a synthesizer, it sounds more soulful than an actual synth. You can bend the notes and do things you can’t do with a more static keyboard.”

Tribune News Service