Tag: Reverb

The UMS is rockin’ – Here’s DenverThread’s list for Day Two
July 22, 2011 Off

The UMS is rockin’ – Here’s DenverThread’s list for Day Two

By Billy Thieme

Day one’s in the books, and it looks as if the 11th Annual UMS is off to a roarin’ start!

But – if you thought last Thursday night’s activities were brilliant, epic, miraculous – or tragic, melancholy, maudlin – hold on to your pants. The momentum’s just beginning!
Friday is the New Black

Here are our toppers for Friday, July 22 – and we’re happy to say that it was a damned tough job boiling the lineup down! The first few are our predictions for Friday night’s owners of the UMS. Scroll on down for a listing of the rest of our recommendations, in chronological order (still just a fraction of all the action!).
Friday’s UMS Lineup is owned by …
Colourmusic –
3 Kings Tavern – Sailor Jerry Stage @11PM

Oklahoma seems to be fertile ground for a sort of bombastic optimism. Or maybe it’s a heightened sense of existentialism that leads artists to just say “Fuck it! I’m partying!” And then watch everything in their lives happily begin to fall into place. It’s chaos at its most beautifully complex, and most hilariously sublime.

Cue Colourmusic.

‘Nuff said. Go see them.

SRSLY.

The 11th Annual UMS Starts Today – So do DenverThread’s lists – here’s day one
July 21, 2011 Off

The 11th Annual UMS Starts Today – So do DenverThread’s lists – here’s day one

By Billy Thieme

It’s here! And it’s definitely THE highpoint of Denver’s summer music season! A full Red Rocks schedule, the Warped and other festival tours, multiple nights of Widespread Panic – even the monster U2 show in Invesco Field at Mile High – all pale in comparison to the magnitude of this weekend’s pinnacle. The 11th Annual Underground Music Showcase (UMS) starts this Thursday evening, and will dominate a few square miles of South Broadway for the following three nights.

This year’s show features close to 300 bands, comedians , singer songwriters and other talents, and will be housed in a huge number of venues, restaurants, bookstores, skateboard shops and t-shirt shops along South Broadway (here’s a handy listing, with a MAP!) – including two major outdoor stages – from 6th Avenue at the top to Cedar at the bottom.

Needless to say, the choices for live music abound – heck, they’re pretty overwhelming. Let’s face it: there’s no way anyone can possibly see all that the UMS has to offer, and it’d be a miracle to see everything you’d like to see. So let us at DenverThread take a little of the pressure to decide off of your shoulders, with our daily preview lists for this year’s festival.

Through the weekend, we’ll be listing our choices of the best things to see – for a lot of reasons. Whether your tastes run into the sludge-stoner-metal quagmire, meander through dreamy twee-pop or get hypnotically lost in psychedelic shoegaze, we’ll get you where you want to be, and make sure you’re catching something you’ve hopefully never seen before while we’re at it.

Live Threads – Reverb: Wye Oak at Larimer Lounge, Saturday, April 2, 2011
April 4, 2011 Off

Live Threads – Reverb: Wye Oak at Larimer Lounge, Saturday, April 2, 2011

By Billy Thieme

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 up into Montreal before they get a night off.

This apparent exhaustion, however, didn’t seem to make any difference in the duo’s performance.

A more valid reason the two should be tired, in fact, was the fury and passion they poured into an hour-long set. Often lumped in with indie or folk rock bands, presumably due to a tendency to alternate between screeching distortion and sparse minimalism on record, the pair was anything but mere folk that night. Wasner wailed meditations on solitude, love and aloneness and masterfully wrangled her guitar, while Stack covered the rest. Stack’s ability to multi-task the entire balance of such a huge sound — playing a trap set with both feet and his right hand while pounding on keyboards for both bass and melody with his left — was stunning to watch.

Live Review: Kate Nash @theOgden, November 6th, 2010
November 9, 2010 Off

Live Review: Kate Nash @theOgden, November 6th, 2010

By Billy Thieme

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 to the final, giggling post-encore farewell.

On record, Nash is comparable to the Cranberries’ Dolores O’Riordan, at least vocally, and her songs tend toward over-wordy, romantic pop. Live, she’s a different story.

Last Saturday night she was more like Poly Styrene, the frantic lead singer of the early punk band X-Ray Spex, than a light-hearted, soft spoken folk singer. She brought a definite, mature and sexy riot grrrl aspect to her songs as well, reminiscent of a young and brash Liz Phair, and positively bled Morrissey influence from time to time, sans all the whining and dour phraseology.

HeyReverb! Live Review: Sonic Youth @the Ogden – 10/04/10 – on a BRAND NEW Reverb site!
October 5, 2010 Off

HeyReverb! Live Review: Sonic Youth @the Ogden – 10/04/10 – on a BRAND NEW Reverb site!

By Billy Thieme

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 most vapid? Of course, we could agree that the members of this group of musicians – more a family than a band, really, after nearly 30 years – are intuitive charlatans, well-versed in manipulation of guitar strings, effects, anti-rhythms and atonality, but also steeped in the pop ethos that breeds automatic acceptance – or intrinsic danceability.

But then, you’d also have to explain short lives of other bands that sprung from that same NYC, post-post-punk, “no-wave” noise scene that attempted to espouse that same musical ethos. The truth is, Sonic Youth has proven they’re not only the only surviving band from that movement – but that they’re the most deserving.
They’re the only band that mastered the ability to turn pop sensibility on its ear, wrestle it through dissonant filters, and still know how to present the outcome in an irresistibly accessible way, without giving up any of their D.I.Y., no-wave roots.

September 25, 2010 Off

Reverb: Nuns of Brixton, Gestapo Pussy Ranch @Bender’s Tavern, September 24th, 2010

By Billy Thieme

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 litany of the best tunes from the Clash. Yelenick fronted local quintet the Nuns of Brixton (a Clash tribute band) last night at Bender’s Tavern and put on a simultaneously heroic and hilarious show — all in full convent uniform.

The Clash, a.k.a. “The Only Band That Matters,” has forever topped my live dream list. I’m a bit skeptical of tribute bands, so I was prepared to take in a mediocre show at best, but I knew I’d enjoy just being a part of the nostalgia.

Reverb: Live Review of Bobby Bare Jr. @ the Hi-Dive, and Bobby’s reply. . .
September 17, 2010 Off

Reverb: Live Review of Bobby Bare Jr. @ the Hi-Dive, and Bobby’s reply. . .

By Billy Thieme

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 and easy to talk to. What concerned me was that he seemed just a little pissed at my review – because I pointed out that this show was a little “morose,” in comparison to past ones.

Here’s an excerpt:

“Bare’s been through Denver a number of times in the last six or so years, usually with his band the Young Criminal Starvation League. He consistently entertains full houses with a show bursting with energy, smiles and laughs and filled with hopelessly catchy tunes and brilliant lyricism. While the lyricism and catchy tunes haven’t changed, Wednesday night’s performance was much heavier, more morose. He used to play barefoot, howling impossibly quaint stories that inspired giggles more than sympathy from behind an unwieldy mop of sweaty curls, out of a mouth always bent from recent laughter.

But on Wednesday he wore a dark blue jacket and slacks, a white cowboy hat and shoes. His hair was still a wild mass with a mind of its own — it’s gained even more independence over the years — but it wrapped a lined face adorned with sensible glasses. And his mouth inspired a visage of Joe Cocker crooning amidst considerable pain, rather than ebullience.

He looked and performed more like a later-in-life Roky Erickson than the wonderful and careless Bobby Bare Jr. that has been here before.”