Best Sunday Church Service Without the Church

Reverend Leon’s Revival calls to those who believe that the Sabbath day should be reserved for peace, quiet, and reflection…in order to recover from Saturday night’s hedonism and the inevitable hangover. The Revival offers a wicked, campy combination of sin and salvation that hasn’t been seen since the days of…

Best Band That Sounds Like a Vacuum Cleaner

Picking up influences from My Bloody Valentine and Swervedriver, Bright Channel plays the kind of music that was once called “shoegazer”: melodic guitars buried under thick, swirling drones of digital effects and noise. Echoes swell and static rattles throughout every song, sounding for all the world like an orchestra of…

Best Country Act

Think Denver’s twang torch-bearers can’t cut it next to those of, say, Texas? Pardner, soak up a set by the Dalharts and see the error of your ways. Singer Les Cooper and his mates are the best of Colorado’s kingly country crop, a honky-tonk/Western-swing act that can rule alongside the…

Best Band Name

Faster than a nose-diving stock quote, able to leap plummeting interest rates without crying like a diaper baby, the Alan Greenspan Project sounds like the last of the big spenders. In fact, you can have ’em for a song…

Best White-Trash Jukebox

As novel as it is to see a jukebox full of Nick Drake and Modest Mouse, sometimes you just want to go to a bar and drown your coolness in a steady stream of bottled Bud and sweet classic rock. When that feeling hits, the Lancer is your oasis. Decorated…

Best Jukebox

In the era of digital boxes networked into 100,000-song libraries, mood is half the battle, and sadly, some places just don’t have that good jukebox vibe. But the beer-soaked, retro aura at Don’s is a perfect match for the music in its box, with discs ranging from the Beatles’ “Abbey…

Best Local Recording

Electronic alchemists Resurrector and Patch enlist an impressive crew of Denver and Boulder-based artists — Apostle, Wailer B., Elon, Stero Lion, Vill, Totter Todd, and DJ Hot Daddi 36-0 — to create a shamanistic wall of hip-hop dubtronica that aims to topple the foundations of modern-day Babylon. The analog mix…

Best CD Title That Sounds Like a Primary-School Joke

The Czars have long specialized in dreamy, abstract, melancholic music, and the inspiration for their album titles over the years seems to come from an equally surreal place. Now comes further proof that the Czars are simply playing with us: Witness the lighthearted wordplay of X Would Rather Listen to…

Best Recording by a Newcomer

After a few years of toiling in the music shadows, Dixie transplant John Davis has finally treated the local music consciousness with his unique take on American roots music. Dreams of the Lost Tribe is a lush, layered masterpiece of deep-fried Americana that’s equal parts Flannery O’Connor, deep-bottom blues and…

Best Spinoff Album

David Eugene Edwards is the grandson of a Nazarene preacher, and like a chip off the old block (or in this case, brimstone) he offers up his solo debut side project Wovenhand. The presentation sounds as though it has gathered some dust, probably because it is largely derivative of his…

Best Compilation

No matter how mainstream and mall-ready punk rock gets, there’s always a new batch of bands lurking in dirty bars and warehouses tearing out the type of hot-wired, four-chord rock that launched the genre almost thirty years ago. On Undead in Denver, compiler Timmy Gibb and producer Bart McCrorey have…

Best Classical Recording

Under the leadership of music director Marin Alsop, the Colorado Symphony Orchestra released a new CD this year through the Naxos imprint. Recorded live at Boettcher Hall, the disc offers a unique take on two of Tchaikovsky’s more popular symphonic compositions. So far, Naxos has distributed 4,500 copies to retail…

Best Internet Success Story

Despite their collective name, the members of Accidental Superhero have worked hard in their seven years, making their own success instead of waiting around for a record-label deal. The Internet-savvy Colorado Springs outfit racked up close to a million downloads through MP3.com, repeatedly edging past radio-saturating bands and onto that…

Best Local-Music Web Site

The minds behind HigherListening.com — Dan Vigil, Kelly Beckwith, Nate Weaver and Trish Baird — have done a fine job in the past few years, moving from a mere message board to what is now a comprehensive online resource for those interested in local performers of all stripes. Offering a…

Best Music Software

Louisville-based UltraCo Inc., once a darling of the Boulder-area high-tech economy, has since fallen on harder times. Founded in 1999, the company rebuffed a few acquisition attempts, only to see its business model fizzle after the dot-bomb. But UltraPlayer media software, with its customizable appearance and the versatility to play…

Best Animal Encounter

At a show that recast the Flaming Lips as a backing combo for Beck, bandleader Wayne Coyne enlisted nearly thirty local fans to join the band on stage, cloaked in full animal-suit regalia…

Best Concert

The Ogden Theatre isn’t exactly a quiet room. On most nights, the music is loud and so is the crowd, the members of which angle for position, and cocktails, on the floor and in an upper balcony. But when the Icelandic dreamspace outfit Sigur Rós performed for a sold-out show…

Best Children’s Tea

Tea and Harry just seem to go together, like frogs’ eyes and newts’ toes. And nearly 200 million books sold worldwide doesn’t hurt, either. So Oak & Berries Tearoom owner Roxanne Mays hosts Harry Potter teas each November for kids of all ages to get together over a cuppa to…

Best Place to Soak It In

The Dushanbe Teahouse rarely needs to coerce anyone to sip or dine there. With its folkloric Tajik craftsmanship, the teahouse is a magnificent place to sit, especially when it’s open to the summer breezes like an airy, sun-filled tent. And once it year, it’s even more enticing with its wonderfully…

Best Coffeehouse With a Player Piano

This coffeehouse opened last May and quickly became the social epicenter of the Curtis Park neighborhood. The building has seen many uses since it went up in 1885, including as a Prohibition-era speakeasy and a 1950s vanilla factory — hence the name. Today the coffeehouse has plush sofas and funky…

Best Outdoor Folk Bash

Swallow Hill’s annual picnic is a glorious celebration of all things acoustic. The 2002 event featured a high-flying collection of the nation’s best singer-songwriters and performers in a wide range of genres. That these electrifying and, typically, electricity-free artists are showcased outdoors in the rustic, rural setting of Four Mile…

Best Free Entertainment

Dude! There is nothing cheaper than free, and free is one concept that truly befits the sport of skateboarding, which, at its best, has no rules — except, perhaps, those agreed upon by the boarders themselves. And that’s exactly how things work at this 60,000-square-foot, city-built facility, which opened to…