Weaving through Denver Music, Art, Culture, and Life
Rev. Peyton’s Big Damn Band kicked off their tour of the American West last Saturday night at the Larimer Lounge fresh and full of their characteristically furious country blues spirit, and added some punchy humor to the mix, to boot.
Leave it to Slim Cessna’s Auto Club, who have put on one of Denver’s best live shows for more than a decade, to be the only band that could outdo their own reputation. That’s what happened last Wednesday at the Bluebird in the first of two New Year’s Eve celebratory shows. The six-piece not only proved their consummate showmanship, often sardonically tongue-in-cheek, but also a grasp of drama, playing as the cast of the classic cartoon Popeye. And they added some new tunes to their set — the first in more than three years.
For the first 25 minutes of their set at the Bluebird Theater Monday night,Melt Banana blasted the crowd with a melange of noise and darkness — pierced only by the members’ head-mounted lights — that felt like my imagination of shock therapy, without the benefit of that thick piece of rubber they shove in your mouth to keep you from biting through your tongue. Never have I been so impressed by the venue’s sound system, nor have I ever felt the need to don earplugs so badly. And yet I, along with the smallish, half-capacity (at best) crowd, loved every ear drum piercing minute of it. So much so that when the four piece settled into more accessible, 30- to 90-second pieces with recognizable rhythms and chords for the remainder of their set, we all seemed to miss the cacophony.
It’s no shock that DBCs are gaining a following, and quickly. As Banker said in a recent interview: “We want to play music that is crazy fun, but also has some substance to it. We want people to have so much fun they shake where they stand.”
If you were a young adult anywhere near the “alternative” music scene in 1989 when the Pixies’ “Doolittle” album was originally released, you remember its buzz. This was no “ordinary” record, and it came from a decidedly un-“ordinary” band, at least for their time. Its significance has more than survived the test of time, which is exactly why the band was at the Fillmore Auditorium on Monday night to perform the whole damn thing — along with some subsequently released B-sides from around the same time.
You might think that Mason Jennings’ decision to become a member of Jack Johnson’s Brushfire label family would be an iffy move for the fiercely independent singer-songwriter that he is, and whether the association would soften his style. I did, until I saw him play at the Bluebird last Friday night. I was certain I would be subject to a too-clean, pop-folky string of bouncy, happy tunes, the ilk of which build up the majority of Johnson’s oeuvre. Not so. Jennings remains a strong, almost surly and unabashedly political songwriter, with more in common with Paul Westerberg or Elliott Smith than the lighthearted crooner.
Argos’ stage persona, always confident and mumblingly hilarious, seemed to continuously morph. He channeled Mark E. Smith, Lester Bangs, John Lydon and Joey Ramone — sometimes all four at once — in front of the constantly wild antics of Catskilkin and Future. All of it was backed by the rhythm section formed by Feedback’s raucous bass and Breyer’s pounding drums.
Lead singer Valient Himself, as wild and provocative a character as you’re likely to find across the metal spectrum, carried both the crowd and the band with his over-the-top antics and supercharged metabolism, screaming to the head-banging mosh pit about conspiracies behind the government, endless partying and the eventual rise of an army of partially robotic and undead police, destined to take over the state if we don’t maintain a vigilant watch every second.
