Music

If any performer has an excuse — make that multiple excuses — to be bitter, it’s singer-songwriter Garland Jeffreys. For more than three decades, Jeffreys has made challenging, innovative and consistently satisfying music characterized by Ghost Writer, one of the great lost records of the ’70s. Unfortunately, the idiosyncrasies and…

I was a little bit self-conscious after everybody dubbed our last record a road record,” confesses Limbeck singer/guitarist Robb MacLean. “We didn’t intend for it to become a concept album or anything like that.” An unintentional concept album? Doesn’t sound too likely. But oxymoron aside, Limbeck’s 2003 opus, Hi, Everything’s…

If what happens on New Year’s Eve is any indication of what’s ahead for the next year, then we’re in for more great music and drunken debauchery. I kicked off the night around 7:30 p.m., breaking bread with Jeff Arnold (El Jefe at the Velvet Underground) and the Supersuckers at…

Scratching the surface Seattle’s Donald Glaude was playing gigs in Denver long before clubs like the Church (where he’ll be on Thursday, January 6) catered to dance music. Glaude established his national rep as an elite, cutting-edge house DJ at underground warehouse raves in the early ’90s and quickly became…

A child prodigy who’s been playing the piano since age five and attended college at sixteen, John Legend played with Lauryn Hill, Alicia Keys and Janet Jackson, among others, before Kanye West noticed his talent and took him under his wing. On Get Lifted, his debut disc, Legend runs the…

Nas’s ambitious double disc would have worked better as a single album; there are too many misfires here to warrant 24 tracks. Even so, Nas shows why he is one of rap’s premier lyricists on cuts like “These Are Our Heroes,” in which he takes on Kobe Bryant and the…

Judging by these discs, the video-game industry is currently a lot healthier than the music business. Whereas songs were once used to attract video-game buyers, record execs are now using video games as bait in the hopes of selling CDs. The three-disc Grand Theft Auto package features an introductory DVD…

I’d say that the Go-Go’s must be rolling in their graves, but since they’re still alive, I’d have to say that they’re probably wondering if one can sue for breach of cliche. With the ’80s-rock revival quickly reaching a point of pure regurgitation, it’s not surprising that this kind of…

The original punks claimed to be non-conformists, but that didn’t stop many of them from mimicking each other, just like the squares they scorned. The men of Wire, in contrast, were too pissy to modulate their behavior to fit any trend, and their stubborn individualism pays off on Box, a…

There’s a kind of tiredness that slinks up your legs and into your stomach, tendrils of fatigue that twine around your spine before plunging deep into your midbrain. It’s along this same path that Okkervil River flows. Sleep and Wake-Up Songs is a gorgeous five-track somnambulation through watercolors and Star…

Reno Divorce (due at the Starlight Lounge in Fort Collins on Friday, January 7, and Whiskey Bill’s on Saturday, January 8) wears its punk ‘n’ roll influences on its tattooed sleeves. Fans of TSOL and Dag Nasty love Reno’s smart, swaggering take on bar-room punk, but the real elephant in…

Casual brilliance is one thing, but Fort Collins’s Drag the River seems to spit up country-rock genius in the split second between slipping off the barstool and hitting the floor. Hey Buddies . . . is a crudely played and recorded EP that doesn’t bother with the niceties of extensive…

Ever find yourself missing the word “alternative’ as a concept, a signifier, a lifestyle? Nowadays, any dudes-with-guitars collective either has to do the Creed butt-rock thing, the whine-incessantly-about-your-ex-girlfriends emo thing, or the get-beat-up-incessantly-by-your-ex-girlfriends indie-rock thing. It’s harder and harder to find the best aspects of each combined: the fist-pumping intensity…

It’s difficult to survey the hip-hop of 2004, more bloated and self-referential than ever, and not imagine the mythical AOR wasteland of the mid-’70s. Like rock before it, hip-hop has easily won a cultural acceptance once unthinkable, and our reward is a parade of Jadakisses and G-Unit solo projects, preaching…

Sales-wise, at least, 2004 was the year Nashville got its groove back. Heavy hitters such as Tim McGraw, George Strait, Kenny Chesney, Keith Urban and Shania Twain all dropped platinum records, but what has the city more excited than it’s been in years is the fact that it finally managed…

Britney got married. Ashlee was caught lip-synching. ODB died. Congress continued to wring its hands about the legality of downloads, which flourished anyway. Conservative groups condemned sex in popular culture, while Usher’s sultry Confessions shot to No. 1. A major label signed a guy who can’t sing, can’t dance and…

The sight of six makeup-clad Norwegian satanists on the Ozzfest main stage this summer was a great sign for metal, if not the makers of Max Factor. During recent outings, metal’s biggest event of the year has been plagued by rote rap-rockers like Crazy Town, Papa Roach and Linkin Park,…

In 2004, the line between indie and mainstream rock disintegrated even faster than Britney Spears’s quickie Vegas marriage. Vinyl obsessives mingled with white-hat-wearing fratheads at Modest Mouse shows, Taking Back Sunday debuted at No. 3 on the Billboard charts, and Death Cab for Cutie earned O.C.-sanctioned buzz and a major-label…

For hipsters, the coolest things are to be found twenty years ago, the most dreadful things ten years ago. So starting a few years back, we were deluged with ’80s electro and synth-pop, and we pretended to forget jungle ever existed. Electroclash, the first naive sortie by dance music into…

Everyone knows all of Usher’s Confessions by now; everyone went to see Prince play “1999′ for the very last time. Everyone knows all about Lil Jon and his penchant for hollering “Yayy-uuhhh!’ With everyone paying attention to these superstars, a lot of other talented folks got drowned out, and not…

From its launch in the 1970s until well into the ’80s, Firefall released a steady stream of hits that included everything from “You Are the Woman” to “Just Remember I Love You.” By fusing equal parts country and pop with laid-back rhythms and a soft-rock style, the Colorado band found…