Music

Seated in front of the soundboard at his home studio in Castle Pines, Mike Paul Hughes reveals telltale signs of his day job as an engineer. There’s his rapid-fire technical talk about the basic elements of sound and recording — details about megahertz and latency issues. But the signals go…

Update: Chella Negro’s take on “Needle In the Hay” added below. While Elliott Smith perhaps didn’t have the profound cultural impact of Kurt Cobain, his tragic, untimely death was every bit as sad and harrowing as the Nirvana frontman’s. As with Cobain, I can vividly remember where I was in…

Oh, sweet baby Jesus! The search has ended. I think I’ve finally found my soulmate. Isn’t she a beauty? Only problem is she’s a little pricey. Anybody have a spare $10K lying around that they can spot this card-carrying member of the KISS Army? C’mon! Can’t you just see the…

MACKLEMORE & RYAN LEWS @ WESTWORD MUSIC SHOWCASE | 6.23.12 Macklemore and Ryan Lewis came out to chants of “Macklemore! Macklemore!” at the 2012 Westword Music Showcase from the packed and adoring crowd. Once Lewis stepped onto the DJ platform and took the microphone from the stand, the audience erupted…

Every year, for the Westword Music Showcase, we enlist our army of Backbeat wordsmiths to host various stages, and, in addition to their emcee obligations, we ask them to pull double duty (or triple-duty in some cases) and also write up the acts that appear on their individual stages. A.H…

Every year, for the Westword Music Showcase, we enlist our army of Backbeat wordsmiths to write up the acts that appear on the individual stages across the Golden Triangle. Stacy Ward and Cory Lamz split their time at The Church stage, which was graciously hosted by David Barber. Page down…

Every year, for the Westword Music Showcase, we enlist our army of Backbeat wordsmiths to host various stages, and, in addition to their emcee obligations, we ask them to pull double duty (or triple-duty in some cases) and also write up the acts that appear on their individual stages. Brad…

Every year, for the Westword Music Showcase, we enlist our army of Backbeat wordsmiths to write up the acts that appear on the individual stages across the Golden Triangle. Jon Solomon was at the Bannock Street Garage stage, which was graciously hosted by Jim Norris. Page down to read his…

This just in: The 2012 Westword Music Showcase was a smashing success. Despite the heat, the crowd brought out some of their flyest dance moves (and “dance moves”). Let yourself be hypnotized by these GIFs, and take some notes for next time, folks. 5. The “Hopping And Toppings” Fringe benefit…

What makes a championship team?” asks trumpeter David Weiss. “It’s not the best player in the world playing his own game. It’s not everybody trying to get 35 points a night. Weiss says a similar concept applies to the Cookers, a group of jazz all-stars he put together five years…

You couldn’t make up Joe Cheves unless you thought you were being clever and writing some film in collaboration with the Coen brothers about a folksinger from the first half of the twentieth century. Cheves, who fronts Sawmill Joe (due at the hi-dive on Saturday, June 30), looks like he…

Thurston Moore has used the electric guitar in more interesting ways than most anyone else you could name in terms of using and abusing and expanding and transcending the traditional limitations of the instrument. As one of the founding members of Sonic Youth, Moore took what he had been learning…

The country is awash in Americana fever as scores of rock-radio favorites dabble in the sounds of yore. It’s part of a search for authenticity when so much pop is heavily synthesized, and partially a need for the warm, fuzzy blanket of an imagined yesteryear. Though it might be cute,…

Crazy the difference a year and a half can make. In the spring of 2011, Foster the People was a little-known quantity making its first trek to Denver for an intimate show at the Walnut Room. The band returned to the Mile High City for a notably larger gig at…

Fitz and the Tantrums appear to have absorbed whatever was in the water during the time Daryl Hall was rubbing shoulders with R&B legends of the late ’60s. In fact, according to an interview with Rolling Stone in 2010, singer Michael Fitzpatrick was told he sounded like Hall by none…

There is no escape from the slow and inscrutable march of time. The passing of the seasons, the withering of these corporeal chains, the replacing of old malls with newer malls: All things must begin and so must end. Or, as Lord Byron put it, “Time! On whose arbitrary wing…

It’s a good thing metalcore isn’t the metal genre no one wants to admit they like anymore. Metalheads are okay with the subgenre because so few popular bands play it anymore; now deathcore is the object of derision. This is good news for Iconocaust, whose new four-song EP has metalcore…

Despite clocking in at a hefty eighteen tracks, The Owner’s Manual, the new joint from Manifest, makes for easy listening. Working with numerous soul samples and dope beats, Manifest does well with the space and time he has, and his voice is pleasing to the ear, especially when he’s spitting…

If Bad Weather California’s Sunkissed is the summer jam of 2012, then bassist Joe Sampson’s solo debut, Kill Our Friends, will be the model soundtrack for this fall, when your summer fling ends and you stay in while all your friends have fun without you. Not that you should wait…

This album marks a complete reinvention of Safe Boating Is No Accident, starting with opening track “Her New Man.” It’s as though these guys ditched the Americana/crypto-avant-garde songwriting of the past in favor of an unrefined sincerity — like their irony and incisive humor have come full circle to a…

The drama of high school, the heady elation of a recording contract with a major label, the premature death of a childhood friend from a drug overdose — all of these elements have figured into the music of Brendan Hill, who’s served as the drummer for Blues Traveler since the…