Concerts

LADY GAGA Monster Ball Tour, with Semi-Precious Weapons 7.28.10 | Pepsi Center, Denver, CO Before last night’s show, I wasn’t a fan of Lady Gaga. I liked her, mind you. I enjoyed her bizarro-world take on pop, her outlandish videos, the way she she combined all of that and her…

First there’s the noise — the random, free-form fiddling musicians do at practice, waiting for everyone to get set up, dial in their tone. Bassist Dave Lierman slaps out a funk line while drummer Victor Acquilla pounds out a few rolls and adjusts a pedal. In terms of cohesion, it’s…

Fusing electronics with rock music is hardly the most original thing a band can do these days. But Sunset Curse does so with a complete immersion in both musical realms. The insistent beats are straight out of dance music, but the forceful rhythms and soaring guitar leads sound like these…

“Weird Al” Yankovic’s zany parodies of hit songs like “Beat It” (“Eat It”) and “Like a Virgin” (“Like a Surgeon”) catapulted him to infamy in the ’80s, back when pop culture was in dire need of some deflation. He never got critical props for his oddball iconoclasm, though, and after…

Originally based in Phoenix, Arizona, Miniature Tigers relocated to Brooklyn in the past couple of years. The band’s charmingly confessional debut full-length, Tell It to the Volcano, is full of catchy pop songs clearly influenced by post-“White Album” Beatles and the Beach Boys. On the outfit’s latest release, Fortress, the…

With 1995’s Rubberneck, the Toadies became radio mainstays across the country and hard-rock icons at home in North Texas. But somehow they couldn’t keep the attention of label Interscope Rec­ords. As was the plan, the band went into the studio, but the Interscope higher-ups didn’t approve of Feeler, the disc the…

Bands like Tokyo Police Club are drastically changing the definition of the term “indie rock.” Sure, the group possesses the shrill, lightly distorted guitars and cutesy nice-guy vocals that have become synonymous with the genre, but when you’re a band as big as this one, the term “independent” really no…

A good chunk of Paper Bird’s new album has already been released. In the Internet age, this may not seem uncommon, but in the case of Paper Bird, it’s because five of the songs on When the River Took Flight (due to be issued on Friday, July 30, at the…

Chie Imaizumi knows a few things about new beginnings. After studying piano in Japan, she studied composing at Berklee College of Music, assisted legendary Miles Davis/Thelonious Monk producer Teo Macero, spent time in Denver, and recently moved to Los Angeles to work with hero and mentor John Clayton. So it’s…

They come a dime a dozen: singer-songwriters, toting acoustic guitars and an array of well-worn clichés. Fortunately for Weather Maps, leading man and singer-songwriter Jimmy Stofer is working from the same palette as some of the best in his game. Bearing the clear influence of Bon Iver, particularly in his…

A combination EP and video, Quality! is something you wouldn’t play in your car unless you had a DVD player. “Jovian,” the first video, starts off like a late-’90s party-band video, but as the song goes on, it’s clear that it’s about the ways in which we ritualize and rationalize…

Although the names Nahum, Soul Bender and the Bedraggled are probably lost on most people familiar with the work of Reverend Deadeye, from the early ’90s until 2003, Brent Burkhart played in those dark, experimental rock bands before launching his solo side project. Casting off former pseudonyms like Saint Absinthe,…

Female DJs and producers are always accused of getting ahead on their looks. For a lot of them, there’s a grain of truth to that. But let’s get something straight: You’d like Miami-based Sydney Blu even if she were a 350-pound man with skin problems and a bad comb-over. It…

Emerging with a sexy brand of hip-hop, intent on dispelling any lingering stereotypes about what Latino music is supposed to be, the members of 20:12 (The Juice, Role Pl-A and DJ R 2) first earned their stripes in the twelve-person act Devoted Union. The three eventually parted ways with the…

Andy Thomas is bummed. Can’t say that we blame him. See that beautiful black resonator he’s playing here? She’s a beauty, yeah? Well, “was” a beauty is more accurate. Seems some unscrupulous jerk apparently swiped it this past weekend after his set with Tin Horn Prayer at the Irish Rover…

Eclectic taste I may claim to have, but my favorite tunes usually fall into a category I like to call “cry rock” — if it’s likely to make me stare wistfully and pensively out of a coffee shop window while I hack away in my metaphorical Livejournal, I probably love…

Parts. That’s the name of the new Gamits record. This is the artwork for the new platter, which we just learned will be co-released by Suburban Home Records and Paper + Plastick, the imprint owned by Vinnie Fiorello of Less Than Jake, sometime in October. While we can’t say for…

From the possibility of the Nathan & Stephen reunion becoming more than just a one-off proposition to former Speakeasy Tiger frontwoman Kyle Simmons making her debut with her new band Boys, we heard several intriguing rumors and were made aware of quite a few new developments this past weekend. None…

When SP Double signed with Digital Dollar, a record label run by Brian Hutcheson out of Orlando, Florida, it appeared as though he was gone for good. SP moved his whole operation out to the Sunshine State, and got right to work, perfecting tracks for his new album, Loyalty, Honor,…

It’s all Pinchers all the time around here. In case you can’t tell, we’re all sorts of giddy about this pair of reunion shows happening next weekend. Hell, we’ve only been waiting for these gigs to take place for, what, like, eighteen years or so? And we purposely (well, some…

As you probably read in our earlier post, there is a ton of non-music stuff to do at Mile High Music Festival on August 14 and15. But what may garner the most attention — at least at first, is the 26-foot tall statue of Anubis, the Egyptian god of the…