Aside from the fact that all the calendars around us agree, how else can you really tell Rocktober is beginning in full swing? Zombiecrawl is right around the corner, we can smell snow in the air (already!) and Spirit stores are popping up like Starbucks. And, while your heart might be racing at the...
Read more →Seems like this may be the beginning of the season of harvest in music, too - at least here in Denver. This weekend features a few awesome CD releases from local bands, and more! Read on to find out about two back-to-back Hot Congress release nights and an alt-country visit from Brooklyn to the...
Read more →
At the risk of eliciting a chorus of jaded groans: Yes, Peter Hook & the Light, led by the bassist for the influential Joy Division, performed a rousing rendition of the post-punk swan song “Love Will Tear Us Apart” last night at the Bluebird in the first of two encores. Did you think they...
Read more →
Fucked Up – David Comes to Life (2011) Fucked Up’s latest offering is much less an album than a movie, really. Listening to it, it’s hard to avoid imagining complex, high-budget plots and huge swaths of dramatic interplay as the vignette of David – the everyperson – unfolds. The concept album’s story lends itself:...
Read more →
In January, ’95 or ’96 (who can say for sure?), after a Flaming Lips show that (despite the fact that they’d opened for, of all bands, Candlebox) remains one that shaped my world view, my friend and I approached an open side door, shivering and giggling as we continued to find bits of confetti...
Read more →The mighty UMS weekend may be drawing to a close, but it's far from done. The last day brings some of the best of the bunch, and you won't want to miss any of it. All three days previous have been more than spectacular - and have shown off the Denver scene for...
Read more →
Hell – we’d give up our tickets for the aforementioned shows for these, if the economy didn’t already make us feel like grade-H junkies (when are you gonna get the chance to see The Tubes again, right?) Best Bet – Accordion Babes, Sunday night, July 10, at the Lion’s Lair (2022 E. Colfax, Denver -...
Read more →On Saturday, May 28th, Concerts For Kids will be presenting Denver Day of Rock, now in its third year, in downtown Denver. With a slew of bands - both local and national acts - that cross genres from pop/rock to Zydeco, the all-ages event is a perfect opportunity to get everyone in the family...
Read more →
Up close in the tightly packed confines of the Ogden last Wednesday night, the original members of Duran Duran might have looked even better than I remembered them when they were helping to lay the foundations for MTV. And their performance didn’t disappoint, either.
Read more →
This week we offer a look at a few new threads that run the gamut in sound and intention, and we like just about all of it. From a well-deserved (if awfully early in the their life) tribute to Denver’s Deadbubbles, to The Outfit’s indecipherably titled debut – still full of promise, to tUnE-yArDs,...
Read more →At the Larimer Lounge on Saturday night, Jenn Wasner mentioned that she and bandmate Andy Stack of the Baltimore band Wye Oak, were tired. And justifiably so, having come from Salt Lake City that day, and in the very beginning of a 10-day stretch of their current tour that travels through the midwest and...
Read more →If there's one thing we need less of in this world, it's got to be those annoying flapping fingers at the end of swirling hands, and a more worthy cause for war probably doesn't currently exist. And yet, as a country, we're dang near broke. But I already digress . . . ...
Read more →
The Walnut Room provided the perfect flavor of intimacy and concrete last Thursday night to encompass - enthrone - the recording of a local fledgling artist’s second album. The 50-some people gathered to watch and listen to Golden’s Erik Husman were treated to a mix between Merle Haggard and a Pete Seeger that spent...
Read more →One of the more popular new trends lately has been a band’s live rendition of an influential record from their past. It’s a pretty cool thing, too, to see bands like Pixies play albums we all grew up listening to, live, in their entirety. It's not often, though, that we get to share the stage...
Read more →
This weekend’s one night stand will feature some photos from the “My Life” project, but is focused on “The Love Project.” As the Denver Post’s John Moore reported recently, “The Love Project” came out of De Giovanni’s deep desire to “... figure out how to recognize real love,” as a result of her last...
Read more →If you're unfamiliar with Strings & Wood Concerts, and your tastes run towards the more melodic and folksier side of acoustic rock, this weekend may be the perfect opportunity for you to get to know the local promoter and community advocate. Strings & Wood is celebrating their second anniversary in business with a concert...
Read more →Three veteran Denver artists, all previous members of bands that have long since passed into legendary status - and that enjoyed that status off and on during their active years as well - have pooled their talents and love of straight ahead punk/indie rock with a simple aesthetic and an indelible stripe of mischievous...
Read more →What a delight Kate Nash turned out to be at her first-ever visit to Denver for an Ogden show last Saturday night. I expected her to be perfectly satisfactory; what I didn’t expect was to be challenged by and enthralled with this rising Brit-pop sensation, right from the first warbling of her remarkable voice...
Read more →There aren't too many bands that can withstand an entire personnel change and keep going. There are even less that come back stronger for it - but Gangcharger is one that has. Ethan Ward's love child - with huge emphasis on the love - has not only rebounded after being abandoned by virtually every...
Read more →After last Monday night’s show at the Ogden Theater, I’m convinced that Sonic Youth are immortals - beings that refuse to age. What else explains their uncanny ability to remain constantly relevant, prescient - and continuously young - in the face of a culture hell bent on replication of the popular, and often the...
Read more →
Having seen Jim Yelenick in his other bands — the hardcore Pitch Invasion and the hilarious acousti-punk Sputnik Slovenia — I figured I’d seen the gamut of his personas, and loved them all. But none topped his loose adaptation of Joe Strummer in a full nun habit, wildly leading a packed house through a...
Read more →I reviewed Bobby Bare Jr.'s show at the Hi-Dive on South Broadway last Wednesday, September 15, for Denver Post Reverb, and Bobby took the time to comment. I was shocked, and pretty stoked - but not too surprised. I've seen him a number of times, and have known him to be damned personable, approachable...
Read more →Reaching back to the tradition of dancehall, the updated, stripped down and visceral outgrowth of reggae that revitalized that already tired genre, Murder Ranks uses its basic musical tenets to distill a sweet, strong and minimalist - but sickeningly catchy - punk/dub concoction, and layers it upon modified (sometimes completely transfigured) dancehall riddims. But,...
Read more →
Cheerleaders, men in diapers (one of them covered in blood) and a clown with a mohawk making balloon animals. That was the scene on the Gothic Theatre’s stage last Friday night. All of that, and there was also a rock band — Warlock Pinchers, one of Denver’s legendary locals from the late ‘80s/early ‘90s —...
Read more →