With an arm often outstretched and an occasional leg kicked in the air, Caroline Polachek worked through many of her “Pang”-era songs in an impressive set on Tuesday night at First Avenue.

Polachek leaned heavily into goth aesthetics for her Heart is Unbreaking tour design. Ants line the sleeves of her recent promotional photography and the background design consisted of ominous black gates, smoke and lightning bolts.

Polachek’s long, dark hair and skin-tight black clothing meshed well with the overall vibe, creating a mise-en-scène similar to that of The Hex Girls.

Of all the visual choices, Polachek’s eyes were what truly stole the show.

Raised eyebrows, forlorn stares and sassy rolls enhanced the rest of her physicality as she performed emotions that ranged from boredom to fear, exhibiting the kind of “final girl” material that should catch the attention of horror movie directors.

After all, the cover art for her single “Bunny is a Rider” gives total Hollywood horror. The song, which came into play near the middle of Polachek’s set, held special importance after indie tastemaking website Pitchfork crowned it as the best song of 2021 the day prior, an honor she acknowledged via Twitter within hours.

The 36-year-old Connecticut-raised singer-songwriter began her rise to indie royalty during her sophomore year at University of Colorado-Boulder, as part of the synth pop band Chairlift. The group started out as just another millennial pop-timistic group soundtracking the recession and iPod Nano commercials, à la Passion Pit and MGMT. As a couple years passed, Chairlift steadily gained steam, moved to New York and eventually made songs with Beyoncé for her decade-defining self-titled album.

In 2017, Chairlift finished up their final tour together and Polachek embarked on her solo career, collaborating with A.G. Cook, Charli XCX and Danny L Harle in a series of moves that pushed her towards the PC Music frontier.

The critical success of her debut solo career single, “Door,” and the accompanying album, “Pang,” solidified Polachek’s artistic future.

On Tuesday, Polachek performed “Door” to an adoring audience after the encore: “Back in the city, I’m just another girl with a sweater,” crowd members sang back at the stage during the performance.

Despite Polachek’s brushes with the more energetic flavors of pop music, the crowd on Tuesday was turnt down at times. During opener Oklou’s performance, conversations were hushed by the people standing near them, as if the small talk could drown out First Avenue’s industrial-grade speakers.

In the spring, Polachek will be back in Minneapolis, across the street from First Avenue at the Target Center, opening for Dua Lipa’s nu-disco stadium romp. It’s hard to imagine any hushing will take place at that concert.

Nevertheless, Polachek, who has been touring for weeks, brought enough energy on Tuesday for everyone. Sporting hairy pits and possibly-choreographed moves, Polachek moved her way through the set with ease.

Backed up by a stylish two-person band that included a head-banging guitarist and a drummer with a Dua Lipa-esque platinum haircut, Polachek paused at one point to say, “My voice is breaking so much, I’m giving you the yodel remix.”

Honestly, the voice breaks must’ve gone over my head. All I noticed was an experienced artist fully in control.

The three giant cast-bronze bulls that lounge on the St. Paul’s campus lawn constitute the area’s artistic centerpiece.

The untitled sculpture piece was originally installed in 2001 by Peter Woytuk, ranging from 10 to 13 feet long, and has come to define the University’s St. Paul campus, representing the agricultural legacy of the neighborhood.

Woytuk first conceived the idea while visiting the Minnesota State Fair, located adjacent to the St. Paul campus, according to the Weisman Art Museum’s public art website.

Amazed by the large size of the bovine creatures, Woytuk realized the similarities between the bulls’ muscled backs and rolling hills landscapes while working at his studio in northwestern Connecticut. From there, the vision took shape and the statues were sculpted.

Craig Amundsen, the Weisman’s public art curator, says the sculptures are some of the most popular in the collection but they have especially struck a chord with one demographic: “The younger children love them almost too much,” Amundsen said.

Little kids from the University’s nearby Community Child Care Center often climb all over the statues, resulting in a need for color restoration every two to three years, according to Amundsen.

“I was there one day and a whole passel of kids came out from across the street. The kids were climbing all over the bulls and I was talking to their teacher and she said we have ‘bull time’ every single day,” Amundsen said.

Before preschool kids laid their claim, mischievous college kids caused the most bull commotion. In the middle of the night, groups of students would move the bulls around campus and they would be found in various places every morning.

“They probably weigh 300 pounds each but if you get six strong people,” Amundsen said.

The bulls are now anchored to the ground and they have been for years, according to a 2007 Minnesota Daily article’s mention of them.

Woytuk was unable to be reached for comment, but he appears to still be active on Instagram and on the animal sculpture scene. One website lists a Woytuk sculpture of two geese goes for nearly $10,000.

The decision to leave the sculpture untitled may mean that Woytuk did not see a reason to name the bulls; titles generally provide insight into an artist’s vision and help make the art more accessible.

However, it appears that the bulls are already accessible enough to the campus community sans the title: in their 20-plus years they have been embraced as a testament to nature, the St. Paul campus’ agricultural legacy and a play-thing for all ages.

Correction: A previous version of this story misstated the material the bulls are cast in. The bulls are cast-bronze.

If panic defined 2020, then ennui defined 2021.

During the first half of the year, the vaccine rollout had just begun and there was a pervasive idea that 2021 would be a rambunctious year of nightlife renaissance. Well, reality set in, variants arrived and excitement dissipated.

As a result, the biggest pop culture touchstones of the year reflect both the nation’s perpetually deepening divisions and how those divisions encourage audiences to devour pop culture comfort food: celebrity family drama, nostalgia, activities involving excessive screen time, etc. In a year Americans of every background desperately desired the “normal” and “the way things used to be,” here were ten of the biggest pop culture movements:

’00s Revival
As Y2K fashion returned, both Travis Barker and Megan Fox experienced Instagrammable relationship-based renaissances, Bennifer 2.0 graced tabloids, Lindsay Lohan landed a Netflix deal, Paris Hilton’s public image was reconsidered and hyper-pop hyperbolized the ’00s music tropes, nostalgia for the decade hit a fever pitch in 2021.

#FreeBritney
In 2021, the Free Britney movement snowballed into the biggest headline-grabber in entertainment news. The fans who led the movement often spoke of how they grew up with the star, allowing audiences an opportunity to unabashedly revisit the pop music of their early childhoods. Although Britney Spears’ conservatorship has finally ended, the reconsideration of her immeasurable talent and the ripple effects for fellow pop stars’ legacies (Janet Jackson, Justin Timberlake, etc.) will hold influence beyond the end of this year.

Astroworld Festival disaster
Travis Scott, a longtime perpetuator of chaos, now faces $2 billion in fines after nine people were crushed to death in the crowd at the poorly-planned festival he organized. The festival stood out in a year that generally brought an increased focus on the health of concert-goers. Astroworld only intensified the spotlight on every artist grappling with crowd management on top of COVID’s constant threat.

British royal family drama
Early this year, the family drama fired up when Meghan Markle and Prince Harry dropped bombshells in an Oprah interview that encouraged audiences to reconsider the long lasting interpersonal effects of the crown’s racist colonial history. Just weeks later, Prince Phillip died and the public began to think more about the inevitable monumentality of the Queen’s death. Not to mention the gluttony of other documentaries and re-imaginings of the family’s recent history, most notably “Spencer” and “The Crown”

Celebrities “coming out” as anti-vaxx
In May, many thought Americans would look back on summer 2021 as the “hot vax summer.” Instead, an anti-vax movement emerged, the delta variant took hold and chaotic public statements ensued. Whether you were more taken aback by Nicki Minaj’s cousin’s friend in Trinidad or Aaron Rodgers’ questionable use of the word “immunized,” it became clear in 2021 that anti-vax stances had overtaken offensive tweets as the quickest way to tarnish a reputation.

Insurrection Day on Twitter
The events of Jan. 6, 2021, obviously transcend pop culture, now ranking alongside 9/11 and Pearl Harbor as one of the most infamous dates in the country’s modern history. However, it was also the culmination of the most significant social media account ever: President Donald Trump’s Twitter. False statements about the day’s events proved to be Jack Dorsey’s last straw. Meanwhile, memes about the day’s events — unrelated to Trump — spread like wildfire: The confused-looking old lady, the Florida man who tried to run off with Nancy Pelosi’s lectern and the QAnon Shaman’s wild look. One would be hard pressed to find any singular day on social media that mattered more to politics than Jan. 6.

Kimye’s demise
Love ‘em or hate ‘em, the Kardashian Industrial Complex defined ‘10s pop culture. In the early days of 2021, a turning point emerged in the form of Kim Kardashian and Kanye West’s breakup. With “Keeping Up With the Kardashians” off the air and “Donda” critically flopping, the breakup symbolized how pop culture tides may have finally turned against the billionaire power-couple’s out-of-touch persona.

Olivia Rodrigo
With ascent so astronomical it drew quick comparisons to Billie Eilish’s 2019 and Lorde’s 2013, Olivia Rodrigo turned from a nondescript Disney star to the inarguable pop star du jour in spring 2021. As far as teen prodigies go, Rodrigo’s breakout year encapsulates not only her own success, but that of Taylor Swift. As T-Swift embarked on a marquee year of her own, the Taylor’s Versions provided an avenue for listeners to better track the true origin of Rodrigo.

Squid Game
This year’s runaway Netflix hit joined “Parasite” and BTS in a trifecta of South Korean media that boosted the country’s international status as a purveyor of taste. Like “Parasite,” the show examined the violent lengths common people will take to evade exponentially growing economic inequality, becoming the most successful show in Netflix’s history by several metrics.

TikTok established its staying power
In 2020, TikTok was a trend; in 2021, TikTok dictated the trends. Anyone who still describes the social media titan as an app for dancing teens has fallen woefully behind the cultural conversation. Cooking, fashion, music, comedy and breaking news experts now all depend on TikTok’s creators to move the discussion forward. PinkPantheress, The D’Amelio Show, Addison Rae’s movie debut, Emily Mariko’s salmon-and-rice dish, nearly every unofficial theory surrounding Gabby Petito’s disappearance and, yes, several dance crazes all grew out of the constantly changing landscape of the Internet’s new epicenter this year. Luddites can dismiss the site all they want, but the fact of the matter is that pop culture grows from there now and it will likely continue as such for years.

G Herbo, a star in his Chicago hometown and a steady fixture of the drill subgenre, felt out of place during his brief Sunday night show at the Muse Event Center in Minneapolis.

Born Herbet Randall Wright III, the rapper built his popularity on the South Side of Chicago (“Chi-Raq” as he called it in one 2014 breakout song with Nicki Minaj) with the help of exceptional songwriting skills and a cool, confident consistency.

Unlike Chief Keef and King Louie, who pioneered drill’s hard-hitting, nihilistic depiction of relentless gun violence and ensuing tragedy, G Herbo always came across less abrasive and more writerly than his peers. In 2017, G Herbo’s album title described himself as a “Humble Beast” whereas Chief Keef called himself a “Thot Breaker.”

Even though G Herbo is a little less rowdy than his contemporaries, he certainly does still operate on a higher caliber than the venue that hosted him Sunday night.

The Muse Event Center’s website and Instagram brand the venue as a place for the kinds of straight-laced weddings that hire professional photographers to take pictures of the couple with their parents, pet dogs and floral centerpieces — basically the aesthetic opposite of a typical G Herbo song. Especially in comparison to some of the other venues hosting G Herbo on this tour (Iron City in Birmingham, Alabama or Ritz Theatre in Elizabeth, New Jersey, for example), Muse seemed like an ill fit before the sold-out show even began.

Upon arrival, the line moved at glacial pace, security seemed overwhelmed and some presumably well-connected groups skipped the mess by telling the doormen who they knew, or by giving them cash. It immediately appeared Muse was unprepared after all.

Once entrance was granted after waiting in line for two hours, it was another hour before G Herbo took the stage, so those stuck in the long line remained somewhat unaffected.

During his brief set, which lasted all of 35 minutes, G Herbo focused mostly on his most recent album “25,” a July release that peaked in the top five of the Billboard 200. Named after G Herbo’s current age, the work thematically tackled fatherhood and wisdom, often reflecting on the violence he witnessed in his childhood neighborhood and his rise to fame during adolescence. “25” was another solid entry in G Herbo’s dependable discography.

The strength of the music could not save the lackluster, rushed performance, even while revisiting earlier the rambunctious choruses from his career (there was a time when the top 20 hit “Swervo” and Lil Uzi-assisted “Everything” had a gorilla grip on nearly every high school house party playlist in my Wisconsin hometown).

G Herbo did not exactly need to bring the energy though. The crowd shouted all of his dextrous lyrics right back at him, never ceased to dance and generally seemed to be having an absolute blast.

Upon smelling the crowd’s drug of choice, a security guard yelled that smoking reefer was not allowed inside, no more than 30 minutes before G Herbo’s friend rolled up on stage as a girl got carried out of the bathroom in a stretcher.

Obviously Minneapolis is well-equipped to host rap concerts (G Herbo’s close friend and fellow drill progenitor, Polo G, will perform at The Armory on Thursday) but G Herbo’s Sunday night event felt less like a concert and more like a party, the kinds that are romanticized in Drake songs, Shaderoom headlines and Atlanta club promotion flyers, but not in Minneapolis lore.

Maybe Muse really was the best-equipped venue for this kind of event in the Twin Cities. One thing is for certain: G Herbo’s aptitude and hype far outweighed what he showed the crowd on Sunday night. It looked like the weathered father-of-two just did not want to end his Thanksgiving weekend on a work trip in, of all places, Minneapolis.

“Spannungsfeld” leaves an impression on many from the moment they first visit the Twin Cities campus. From the peripheral, one can see “Spannungsfeld” is clearly two figures made of stainless steel: one male and one female, facing each other. That simplicity is upended when viewed from directly behind, one can see straight through the stainless steel slices, a visual trick that plays in its fullest effect when one walks a 360 around the eight foot structure.

Despite its ubiquity in the University of Minnesota’s popular imagination, few on campus know the artwork’s hard-to-pronounce name, let alone the storied background of its Portland-based German artist, Julian Voss-Andreae.

Voss-Andreae, an internationally renowned Hamburg-born sculptor with a prestigious graduate degree in quantum physics, says he was tapped by the University’s public art curator, Craig Amundsen, to create an outdoor piece for University’s Physics and Nanotechnology Building after they met at a 2010 public art conference in London. As a physics-expert-turned-artist, Amundsen said he felt Voss-Andreae was a perfect fit for the project.

In German, “Spannungsfeld” means “tension field,” a term that originated in physics but is used in contemporary German to describe a metaphorical tension between polar opposites — like when you notice a Vikings fan and Packers fan arguing at a sports bar. The sculpture’s two figures represent this opposition but also an interconnectedness. By placing the steel slices on the same plane, the decision to make one figure male and the other female conveys a sense that one cannot exist without the other. Discussions of the oneness within dual opposites are common in both quantum physics and in many Eastern philosophies (think yin yang). Voss-Andreae draws from all of these thoughts as inspiration for his art.

“The faculty within the physics department was very pleased with the representation as he conceived it,” Amundsen said of the sculpture’s complicated meaning.

In fact, Amundsen said that he considers “Spannungsfeld” to be one of the most popular pieces in the University’s public art collection.

Voss-Andreae, who says he has not visited “Spannungsfeld” since its installation in 2014, was completely unaware of its local fame.

“I had no idea, I don’t get this kind of feedback,” Voss-Andreae said.

A scroll through Voss-Andreae’s Instagram reveals that this style of sculpture is his specialty and he is still turning out consistent work from his Portland studio. Currently, Voss-Andreae has been especially pushing himself to learn more about Eastern traditions to help supplement his Western science background, all for the sake of the art.

“I want them all to pronounce the word ‘Spannungsfeld’ perfectly,” Voss-Andreae said with a smile before continuing, “I want them to take away what they want to take away and if they want to get into the physics behind this, that’s great.”

Sophie Allison, better known as Soccer Mommy, is credited with playing the guitar on both of her critically acclaimed albums. No one can truly understand how well-earned that credit is without attending one of her live shows, as proved by her Sunday concert at First Avenue.

Last year, the 24-year-old New York University dropout dropped her second studio album, “color theory,” a much-anticipated follow-up to her 2018 breakout, “Clean.” Soccer Mommy’s debut scored her a spot on line-ups alongside some of the biggest names in guitar music: Kacey Musgraves, Paramore, Wilco, etc. Considering “color theory” only elevated her indie celebrity status, it surely would have done the same and been a festival regular in any year sans COVID-19.

Instead, “color theory” arrived on February 28, 2020, just weeks before the concept of “in-person” disappeared indefinitely. This fall finally allowed audiences the pleasure of nodding their heads along with the album in packed venues, albeit masked and vaxxed against a disease barely acquainted with the world when the music originally hit streaming services.

Nearly every song played on Sunday hailed from “color theory,” though with the pleasant surprise of a little editorializing from the band: two backup guitarists, a drummer, and a keyboardist (who also occasionally played guitar).

After an audible tuning session before the curtain was drawn, Soccer Mommy whipped out “circle the drain,” her biggest hit to date yet, early into the performance.

From there, the Nashvillian would bow her head between every song and spend a minute or two tuning her prized instrument, if not also switching between an acoustic and an electric guitar, one of which was sparkly pink.

Sometimes Soccer Mommy would try to make casual conversation with the crowd, usually just something basic, along the lines of “check out the merch station” or “it’s been awhile Minneapolis.” Upon every delivery of these rote lines, some eager audience member would respond with a, “We love you Soccer Mommy!”

Yet, more often than not, the focus was solely on readying the strings. Once she was prepared, Soccer Mommy would unceremoniously begin her next song, her fingers confidently tearing through the instrumentals. The subdued small talk hinted that she knew the guitar would speak for itself.

Nonetheless, critics often point out Soccer Mommy’s adept songwriting talent in their rave reviews. The way she uses pop melodies as tools to recall universal truths learned from past relationships places her next to contemporaries like Phoebe Bridgers and Snail Mail, in a cohort of indie rock’s moody, young answers to Taylor Swift’s legacy.

Soccer Mommy’s lyrics are so incisive and important to her artistry that it came as a surprise when it was often difficult to make out what words were being sung. Thankfully, it was the virtuosic guitar skills that were usually obscuring the singing. Blasting on First Ave’s gigantic speakers, both Soccer Mommy’s ensemble and her solo bits played much louder than a bustling college bar on gameday, a showing of Dune in theatres or Kesha’s recent performance at The Armory (my main points of reference.)

People-watching in a concert crowd always makes for good fun. Predictably this one brought out white guys in man buns, college girls in Converses and flannel-wearing 20-somethings of every gender.

Scanning the crowd also felt a little more spurred from concern than interest this time. After music fans, especially those around Soccer Mommy’s age or younger, spent their weekends learning more about Friday’s tragedy at Travis Scott’s ill-fated Astroworld Festival, it was impossible not to keep an eye on security guards, safety protocols and crowd control. The fact that all three of which were visibly present should come as no surprise, not only because Soccer Mommy and Travis Scott share very little in common personally, aesthetically or sonically, but also because of the practicality found in the former’s lyrics. Soccer Mommy does not suffer fools.

The penultimate entry was “Your Dog,” a highlight from Soccer Mommy’s debut, known for its blunt opening, “I don’t wanna be your f–king dog.” The line ranks as Soccer Mommy’s most famous and she announced it clearly Sunday night, with the help of nearly everyone in attendance. The same no-nonsense attitude found in that moment’s words typified the evening. Soccer Mommy’s stage presence does not dwell on an overload of audience engagement or any other pomp and circumstance. The guitarist, who also happens to be a talented singer-songwriter, spent her time on stage focused on nothing other than the task at hand: satisfyingly practicing her craft.