Concerts

UMS Travelogue, Night One 07.22.10 | Baker District, South Broadway A guy with a pint of hooch in his back pocket was stumbling and struggling to make it across street toward Famous Pizza. After he made it across the street, he paused for a moment and leaned up against pizza…

UMS Travelogue, Night One 07.22.10 | Baker District, South Broadway The first day of the UMS festival, a Thursday, was what you might expect in terms of attendees — mostly other people in bands or those who are clued into the fact that there is plenty of great music coming…

Freeway & Jake One • Mane Rok 07.22.10 | Bluebird Theater The evening began with a soulful performance by longtime LIFE Crew ambassadors, Mane Rok and DJ Tense, who performed tracks off of Mane’s first solo effort, The Ugly Truth, as well as a few throwback tracks from his earlier…

Lords of Acid • My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult • Blownload 07.21.10 | Ogden Theatre These days, it would be easy to dismiss a band like Blownload, whose music sounds like so much of that late ’90s industrial metal and its ilk. But instead of trying to prove…

Okay, so apparently we need to buy a 2010 calendar or something. In an effort to be all proactive and whatnot yesterday, we updated our recent 3OH!3/Walmart blog item, alerting you to the fact that the act would be on Leno last night. Uh, yeah, check that, dudes are actually…

Alright, get an eyeful of this picture. Take it all in. Notice anything wrong? Look closer. What about now? Right. Exactly. There’s nothing wrong. In fact, the building in this photo has ample curb appeal, wouldn’t you say? Precisely. And that’s what has us dismayed…

Mark Mallman is a completely different person on stage and off. “I always say there’s two of me,” he explains. “There’s him and there’s me.” The “him” Mallman is referring to is an on-stage character that he’s been developing for the past fifteen years. As those who’ve seen him perform…

After his days at New York’s famed Limelight in the ’90s, Superstar DJ Keoki went on to spin around the world. But now, after a stint in Los Angeles, he’s returned to his home town of Denver. And when John Bogard heard that Keoki was coming back, he quickly recruited…

In an era where most of us are scrambling just to get by and otherwise conditioned by modern life to warp our psyches to fit into the dictates of commercial efficiency, the music of Pollination Population is a gentle reminder to derail the madness. At least for a little while…

Ten years ago, it would have been just about impossible to fathom a successful collaboration between Rhymesayers, the Minneapolis-based, backpacker-fed label, and a former Cash Money and Roc-a-Fella rap star. But that’s exactly what’s happening here with Jake One, an indie veteran who can be considered hip-hop’s golden child, with…

Past Liars albums have typically been greeted with copious chatter about the newest radical stylistic shift the band has made — from dance punk to murky drone to percussive tribalism to cheeky Jesus and Mary Chain ripoffs — but Sisterworld, the band’s excellent fifth album, feels like the completion of…

It only makes sense that Silversun Pickups hit it big at the end of the aughts. The Los Angeles band, after all, is a faceless, hollow rehash of just about every overhyped trend of the past ten years, from garage rock to post-punk to indie rock. Toeing the center line,…

Take one part religious iconography and one part overt sexuality, top it off with the trendiest pop production available, and you’ve got a recipe for multi-platinum success. It’s a formula Madonna knew all too well, and nobody since has done it with more precisely honed instincts than Lady Gaga. Of…

Bad Weather California’s three-day residency with Akron/Family at Quixote’s in May is still panning out. Not only is the eminent avant-folk band taking Bad Weather on tour later this month, but its members make a guest appearance on Live Jammers, a new, live Bad Weather EP released just in time…

A sample from the 1940 film Colorado, starring Roy Rogers, opens this album before it warps off into the distance, replaced by a song that sounds like it’s borrowed liberally from modern hip-hop and an oddly Frank Zappa-inspired psychedelic funk — like ’70s-era Kool & the Gang riding high on…

While Nick O’Connor is only 21 years old, the breadth and scope of his solo debut, Lady in Pink, has the feel of an album made by someone a good decade or two older. Although O’Connor, whose voice at times recalls that of Cat Stevens, has a solid roots and…

If the Mars Volta carried on the hyperactive, experimental legacy of At the Drive-In while Sparta, the original four-piece’s other half, simplified into plain old straightforward rock, the Say So is a band that comes close to splitting the difference. Insistently poppy on first listen, Something Like Wild, the group’s…

Ken Keifer and Karl Haikara have been writing dark and abrasive yet atmospheric music since 2006. With lyrics culled from Keifer’s extensive notes on ideas that occur to him on any given day, the average song from their band, the Silver Cord, delves into corners of the human psyche most…

When the guys in Gaslight Anthem were working on their new album, American Slang, guitarist Alex Rosamilia says, the initial goal was to try to come up with their own ideas rather than borrowing. “This record is us trying to stand out on our own.” While American Slang is a…

The clanking, shifty rhythms and cool, prickly textures of techno auteur Bob Rogue’s work are awash in contradiction. Despite sounding like a transmission beamed to Earth from a distant star and tuned in by SETI’s massive telescopes, his music is typically both pretty and impossible to resist dancing to. Creating…

We’re number two! We’re number two! Yeeaaaahhhh! Coming in second in a music quiz may not seem like something to cheer about, but considering our desultory sixth-place finish in our own fucking quiz a few weeks back (a finish so lame I felt compelled to make up a list of…