Jimmy Tamborello. While the name might not register immediately, you’ve probably heard his work with the Postal Service, an outfit that also features Death Cab for Cutie’s Ben Gibbard. On his own throughout the ’90s, Tamborello, who plays under the name Dntel (due tonight at the hi-dive with One AM…
Chicago-based singer-songwriter Andrew Bird (performing tonight at the Arvada Center for Arts and Humanities and tomorrow evening at Chautauqua Auditorium) says that since he’s been writing music there’s always a healthy conflict between brevity and indulgence. On one hand, Bird knows all about crafting short, near perfect pop songs, but…
Here’s what’s good in the Mile High City this week: A Band of Horses date was just announced at the Ogden in September, Five Finger Death Punch is coming to the 1STBANK Center in October and Blitzen Trapper is due at the Fox in November. On local radio, the Still…
The 2011 DMC World Championship went down over the weekend at Santos’ Party House in New York City, and after having dominated the U.S. finals last year with nearly half of the competitors hailing from our fine state, we can now officially say that this year’s United States DMC champion…
It looks like Mr. Big (playing at Summit Music Hall tonight with Romero and Quitter’s Anonymous) is brand-new again. The Los Angeles-born band started in the late ’80s, found noteworthy success with its pleasantly listenable hard-rock style in the years following, and, despite a break from 2002 to 2009, have…
“Katy Perry breaks another record” — how many times have we heard that this summer? Not enough, apparently. Perry, whose last two singles, “E.T.” and “Firework,” have both been certified 4x-platinum, may claim yet another chart record title with her fifth single, “Last Friday Night (T.G.I.F.).” For her most recent…
ELLIE GOULDING at the OGDEN THEATRE | 8/8/11On her second North American tour in less than a year, Ellie Goulding filled the Ogden Theatre last night, but at a price: The opening act, Bag Raiders (scheduled to play a one-off at Larimer Lounge this Friday), weren’t quite as captivating, but…
We’ve grown to expect offbeat videos from Pictureplane over the years, but the just-released video for “Negative Slave” officially takes the cake as one of the most subtle yet oddly unsettling videos in his repertoire. While it’s full of insidious and easy-to-miss oddness, if you pay close attention, you’ll possibly…
Spires is a brand-new band, by traditional standards. The band made its debut just after the first of the year, which, in the blogosphere, could be considered a lifetime ago. Regardless, you’d never know Spires was a freshly minted act just from listening to its self-titled four-song debut. The inherent…
Although Celebrity Sports Center closed in 1994 after a 34-year run on Colorado Boulevard, its memory lives on through a number of memorial sites on the Internet. And now its name will be resurrected at the 50,000-square-foot Celebrity Lanes, which will open later this month at 15755 East Arapahoe Road…
Maybe Brian Knab, Brandon Roth and Ryan Murphy wanted to be Laymen Terms back in their days living in Monument and failed at it miserably. But when the trio reconfigured in Denver with bassist Jeff Wiencroft and fused punk-rock spiritedness with a full-bodied, almost orchestral aesthetic, The Still City was…
Artists mining the territory between chamber pop and Americana aren’t exactly a rarity right now — and everyone writing pop music worth listening to has been influenced by the Beatles or, for the slightly more adventurous, the Velvet Underground. The Grownup Noise started out writing songs that draw immediate comparisons…
Idiosyncratic singer-songwriter and painter Joseph Arthur has always been something of an enigma. First, there’s his music: haunting and utterly nocturnal gravel-voiced hymns to desolation, lushly presented with eclectic beats, electronic loops and multiple tracks of his own voice. Most of this is played by Arthur himself, both live and…
Swedish writer Erich Von Däniken is alive and well, lecturing on the influence of extraterrestrial contact on ancient civilizations. His writing, meanwhile, has evidently inspired song titles for this Irish band. Since forming in 2002, God Is an Astronaut has created dense instrumental music in the vein of acts like…
Although gypsy-jazz guitar pioneer Django Reinhardt died in 1953, there’s been a steady stream of players inspired by him over the past few decades. One such player is Robin Nolan, who’s hailed as one of the world’s leading guitarists in the Reinhardt tradition, as well as being a favorite guitarist…
Everyone needs a hobby. I, for example, sometimes enjoy figure drawing, which I am not-terrible enough at to produce people with bodies that are only a little contorted, faces that are recognizable but off-putting, and alarmingly freakish hands and feet that come out looking like withered claws. But what separates…
While it would probably be best to dispense with any sort of wintery metaphors or similes in describing this EP, as they’d be both hackneyed and obvious, they’d also be incredibly apropos. Winter, the fourth and final installment of Houses’ series of seasonally themed releases, is the darkest of the…
Neil Ewing has spent the past several years exploring the odds and ends of experimental hip-hop and experimental electronic music of various stripes. But with this solo project, he takes his creativity to its furthest extent. On this sprawling release, Ewing’s dark-hued pop songs take on a range of sonic…
Although Snake Rattle Rattle Snake has been playing some of the finest dark dance rock around these parts for more than two years, the band has only released a few recordings, including a four-song EP and a two-song seven-inch single. One spin of Sineater, the band’s debut long-player, and you’ll…
Anyone who’s seen Itchy-O knows that the thirty-piece group is a far cry from your average marching band. About half the band is made up of percussionists, so seeing Itchy-O live can be a totally bombastic experience. But while the drums and cymbals can sometimes overpower the other instruments in…
When John Legend first came to Denver — with Kanye West, in 2004 — he was a fresh face with a healthy buzz and tons of talent. Even then, you could tell he was going places. And this was before he and will.i.am crafted the smash single “Ordinary People,” before…
In 1995, Rob Garza and Eric Hilton came together to form Thievery Corporation, an outfit that blends electronica with dub, jazz and bossa nova sounds to create a groovy tribal sound with Middle Eastern and Brazilian undertones. The pair’s mid-tempo music, which falls somewhere between acid jazz and trip-hop, has…
