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Masters of the slow buildup, these downbeat Duluthians seem to have finally reached a point of catharsis on their seventh album. Compared with their previous shades-of-gray works, “The Great Destroyer” is kaleidoscopic in range, showing off the trio’s considerable songwriting chops and blowing a big hole in its reputation for sonic somnolence. (Read more in this month’s Over the Coals.)

If Happy Apple’s brand of loud, fast, and bursting music—a little electronica, a little Coltrane, a little Cobain—hasn’t single-handedly restored Minnesotans’ interest in new jazz, it has, at the very least, attracted a new crop of listeners to the form. This trio of composers and multi-instrumentalists, who moonlight with rock bands and countless other side projects, are still at their best with their genre-bending, internationally beloved home band. Happy Apple’s live shows are far-out affairs, fed by almost supersonic compositions that feel playful and freewheeling but are too closely choreographed to be improvised. Too many notes? Ha! 416 Cedar Ave S., Minneapolis; 612-338-2674; www.thecedar.org

In her essays, memoir, and novels, Gordon is not one to shy away from either the deeply philosophical or the overtly feminist. Her latest novel revolves around Pearl Meyers, a twenty-year-old American student in Dublin, who has chained her emaciated body to a flagpole, protesting the violence in a land where religion and politics are matters of life and death. Maria, her mother, arrives from New York to try to prevent Pearl’s totafamesuicaedist—suicide by famine. Hopes for Pearl’s salvation, like Ireland’s hopes for peace, give way to philosophical contemplation about forgiveness, compassion, sacrifice, and other big ideas.

The fortunes have smiled widely upon Evelina Chao. Gifted with both music and poetry, this violist for the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra has written a memoir, “Yeh Yeh’s House,” that carries readers to China, where her ancestors endured the cruelties of the Cultural Revolution and also enjoyed a land of beauty. In 1987 Chao traveled to China with her mother, a stoic figure (often infuriatingly so) who nevertheless showed her the stories and faces that make up her family’s history. In visiting her grandfather Yeh Yeh’s house after his death, Chao found answers to many of the questions familiar to people of divided heritage, who feel the pull of faraway lands. Galleria, 3225 W. 69th St., Edina; 952-920-0633

What is home? To M.J. Andersen it’s a warm cup of tea, a blazing fire, and a quilt sewn by hand, all nestled together in Plainville, a South Dakota township. In “Portable Prairie: Confessions of an Unsettled Midwesterner,” quiet landscapes slow the fast-paced writer, now settled out East, in a large Victorian with her husband. But New England life is not what she imagined. Musing on Tolstoy’s works and her own early-childhood Christian values, Andersen connects the meaning of home with South Dakota, reviving small-town ideals in a compelling way. Steeped in the complexities of prairie life and imminent self-discovery, Andersen’s memoir was reportedly poignant enough that it got Garrison Keillor blinking back tears. 870 Grand Ave., St. Paul; 651-646-2665

Receiving snail mail from loved ones is always exciting, simply because it’s such a rare form of intimacy. That sense of closeness is bound to bleed over onto the stage with the Literary Friendships series. The first two writers paired up for an onstage conversation are Robert Bly (pictured here) and Donald Hall, friends and critics of one another’s work who have exchanged frequent letters for more than fifty years. They will share what they have learned from each other about love, life, and the liberty of the pen—and there’s bound to be some more casual chat, too. Fitzgerald Theater, 10 E. Exchange St., St. Paul; 651-290-1221

Ah, the magic of globalization. Thailand, once known for its tiger-filled jungles and ancient, deeply spiritual culture, has become the promised land for trust-fund hippies wearing Patagonia underpants and business travelers cruising for underage prostitutes. In this gripping collection of short stories, twenty-five-year-old Thai-American writer Rattawut Lapcharoensap spys on the tourists and eavesdrops on the locals as they confabulate over their perplexing new environment. Lapcharoensap’s gorgeously evocative voice rolls out odd romances, intergenerational bonds stretched to the ragged edge, and electrifying glimpses of an old land coming into a strange new order.

Piggybacking on the success of “Carmen,” Jeune Lune serves up a second spicy, Spanish-flavored opera—one that also stars the now-famous Baldwin sisters (who played the title role and Micaela in “Carmen”) as desirous but unattainable divas. This time, Dominique Serrand and company have chosen a little-known piece, perhaps a preemptive move to disable opera traditionalists who scoffed at Jeune Lune’s bare-bones instrumentation of the usually full-forced “Carmen,” as well as its previous tamperings with Mozart operas. The rest of us, however, are quite at home amid the minimal orchestration but larger-than-life singing that make a Jeune Lune opera. Forget the fat ladies! Jeune Lune feasts on passion and lust, reclaiming the sexiness, immediacy, and relevance of opera one production at a time. 105 First St. N., Minneapolis; 612-333-6200; www.jeunelune.org

Lee Blessing is best known for the Tony Award-winning “A Walk in the Woods” and, recently, “Thief River” at the Guthrie Lab. He calls his Two Rooms “a play about devotion.” Written circa 1988, the story centers on a woman whose husband has been taken hostage in Beirut. Flanked by reporters and government officials, this “hostage wife” weighs her options. If she tells her story, will it help bring her husband home? Or should she keep mum? In an effort to connect with her spouse, she also constructs a cell in their home, trying to re-create, from imagination, the place that holds her husband. Retreating there, she can grieve and “talk” to him, despite all that lies between them. The dialogue that takes place there—in those two, similar rooms—is gut-wrenchingly sad, but, ultimately, beauty comes out of this crisis. 245 Cedar Ave., Minneapolis; 612-333-3010; www.theatreintheround.org

German playwright Bertolt Brecht famously said that a theater without beer is just a museum. So he must be looking down upon America’s theater houses with great distress, because most have become Tennessean “dry states.” Just try to bring some Merlot to your seat and watch the ushers tsk-tsk you. To counteract the damper that theater etiquette puts on theater, a collective of writers and performers have begun serving up their newest works at Joe’s Garage. At a bar! In their bid to make theater more spontaneous, they’re inviting folks over to the Garage every Monday evening to sample a new selection of “playlets,” bite-sized shows to be enjoyed with your dinner or, better yet, over a few cold ones. 1610 Harmon Place, Minneapolis; 612-904-1163; www.joes-garage.com