Music

In what has to be one of the most natural pairings we’ve heard about in recent memory, we just received word that the estimable Drag the River dudes, currently on tour in Europe with Austin Lucas and Cory Branan, have been tapped to accompany Lucero on at least nine dates…

WIZ KHALIFA With Yelawolf 10.07.10 | Ogden Theatre Last night at the Ogden Theatre for the Denver leg of the Waken Baken tour, Wiz Khalifa completely set it off. The scene at the beginning of the night was set by throngs of teenage girls in Wiz Khalifa shirts, mixed in…

In 2003, local songwriter Gregory Ego — formerly of the band Ham Hoc War Lox — released a CD called I Want to Be a Billionaire, which included a song with the same title. The tune didn’t get a lot of attention — until now. Earlier this year, Ego began…

While the mice were at play down the street at the Fillmore last night, the cats were, well, they were tearing shit up with reckless abandon at the Ogden Theatre. To wit: The Sword brought its ferocious, corrosive brand of metal to the Mile High City in the company of…

If you haven’t heard (or don’t check Pitchfork like its your Twitter account), Steve Albini is pissed off — again. In a Q&A with GQ.com published this week, everyone’s favorite producer/indie curmudgeon decided to attempt to assassinate Sonic Youth’s impenetrable DIY credibility. Serving up some deep cuts — mostly in…

In a Q&A with GQ posted earlier this week, Steve Albini takes Sonic Youth to task for selling out when they signed to Geffen in 1990. He contends that when Sonic Youth entered the mainstream machine, it encouraged other bands to follow suit. It’s kind of confusing logic if you…

DEADMAU5 With Jonas Tempel 10.06.10 | Fillmore Auditorium view full slide show Deadmau5 brings out the party kids in droves — and with good reason: The light show alone is enough to drag you off your couch to a dance party on a Wednesday night. And when you combine the…

After working as a sound engineer at the Walnut Room (3131 Walnut Street) for nearly five years, the last year as the head engineer, Randall Frazier jumped into the job of talent buyer last month. He has big plans, plans based on his considerable expertise: He wants to bring in…

Migrating from the East Coast and Midwest underground music scenes, Sonya Decman played nervy, aggressive, angular punk with the Symptoms, her first Denver band, an outfit with a pointed yet playful sense of humor. When that band called it quits, Decman joined the ranks of the darkly intense and literate…

Before forming Helmet in 1989, Page Hamilton had been active in the New York underground scene in the ’80s. Partly because of his jazz background and partly because he wasn’t afraid to explore the possibilities of the creative use of distortion with guitar, Hamilton worked with Glenn Branca before joining…

Less than a year after inception, Surfer Blood was high on the hype list — the New York Times sang the band’s praises, and a Reading Festival appearance was on the horizon — but it’s those big steps that often spell disaster for a baby band. Instead of imploding on…

After an almost ten-year break from the Centennial State, Phish in Colorado is becoming a regular occurrence again, with four shows at Red Rocks last summer, two nights in Telluride two months ago, and now three nights at 1STBANK Center in Broomfield. These shows mark the first time the band…

A few oddly brilliant Nintendo cover bands — notably the Advantage — began packing clubs everywhere a few years back with a sound culled from the 8-bit video-game music that saturated our souls a couple decades ago. More interesting than those unabashed musical Zelda and Metroid devotees, however, are bands…

Bret Hertholf — better known around Denver as Halden Wofford — is the author of The Long Gone Lonesome History of Country Music, a book that teaches children about the development of the genre Wofford has devoted much of his life to. But it’d be a big mistake to think…

Feather (slated for release this Saturday, October 9, at Casselman’s) is the first batch of new recordings from Remember May since its debut EP in 2007. Led by the muscular vocals of Amanda Capper, whose voice often recalls Linda Perry, the outfit starts off solid with “Silverplume,” a lumbering rocker…

Listening to Our Slow Decay, Black Sleep of Kali’s latest effort, calls to mind easy comparisons to Torche because of the heavy melodicism and aggressive vocals, while the progressive structures and densely layered, expansive guitar work recall mid-era Isis. Rather than clutter the songwriting by hitting the listener with as…

Based in Brooklyn, the Depreciation Guild made prominent use of the Nintendo Famicom early in its career to build electronic rhythms to underlay founder Kurt Feldman’s luminously melodic guitar pop. Inspired in part by artistically ambitious synth-pop bands of the ’80s as well as experimental, melodic guitar bands like Cocteau…

Catch Lungs is a bright, emerging MC steadily making a name for himself, both as a member of the Fresh Breath Committee and on his own with a pair of mixtapes, 2008’s Food the Famished and his latest effort, Sleeping Pills Scriptape. Born John Morse in Grand Junction, Catch Lungs…

German trance duo Cosmic Gate — Nic Chagall and Bossi — has spent the last decade producing exactly the kind of slick, spacey trance you’d expect from a German trance duo named Cosmic Gate. It’s big, it’s shiny, it sounds best after 2 a.m. with a head full of illicit…