Concerts

Man, if The Northern Way doesn’t break out in a major way within the next year, it’s certainly not going to be for a lack of having radio-friendly songs. This morning, the outfit, formerly known as Set Forth, premiered its brand new single, “Starting Line,” on MySpace. Matching the undeniable…

A while back, Paul Riola gave up his post as program director and treasurer at Creative Music Works to focus on making music with his Bottesini Project. With as passionate as Riola clearly was about the organization during his time there, the decision must’ve been made with much consideration. Before…

Just heard about an sweet opportunity for cello players that we thought we’d let you know about: Imogen Heap is evidently looking for someone local to play the “slightly mad cello part” for “Aha!” with her on stage on Sunday, November 15, at the Boulder Theater during her Etown appearance…

The members of Lola Black don’t consider themselves a supergroup. It’s easy, however, to argue that the band boasts the credentials for such a designation. The sextet’s resumé includes stints in groups like Blister 66, Snapstick Dynomite and the Eight Bucks Experiment, each of which made its own waves in…

I first heard Laura Goldhamer a couple of years ago, when she opened for the Books, the sound-collage band, at the Boulder Theater. She shared the headliner’s endearing quirkiness, and her appeal was augmented by wonderful video animations projected on a screen behind her. Last week, I was just a…

When Hearts of Palm started out as Nathan & Stephen — a collaboration between Stephen Till of Black Black Ocean and longtime friend Nathan McGarvey — no one would have guessed that those spare songs would take on a new life once the project more than tripled its membership roster…

When the critically acclaimed dream-pop band Absinthe Blind broke up in 2003, four of its members started a band called Orphans that would ultimately become Headlights. Under its current moniker, the foursome largely departed from the drifty, melancholy sounds of its previous project. Retaining the glittery grandeur that made Absinthe’s…

Skinny Puppy started in 1982 as a side project of cEvin Key’s old band, Images in Vogue. With Puppy becoming a full-time concern in 1986, Key and collaborators Nivek Ogre, Dwayne Goettel and Dave Ogilvie spent the next several years putting out seven landmark releases, including Rabies and Too Dark…

In the rock world, singing drummers are almost as rare as talking dogs. But Grant Hart, the man who assaulted the kit for Hüsker Dü throughout the ’80s, was more than a novelty back in the day. Besides writing and lending his voice to almost as many Hüsker classics as…

After paying tribute in record to both Don Henley and Black Flag — not to mention collaborating with both David Byrne and Björk — over the past few years, it’s hard to pin down on paper what Dirty Projectors is all about. A listen to the group’s acclaimed 2009 album,…

As modern music goes, you really can’t get that much more with-the-times than Neon Indian’s sun-warped, synth-based, dance-pop sound. It’s a style so current, in fact, that critics are still having trouble settling on a genre name for the music that this band and other blog-adored acts like it are…

Snuggle puts in two tracks of snarly, refreshingly unpolished, melodic punk with the archly defiant “Commercial” and the edgy and almost spooky “Aces.” No High Fives to Bullshit’s “Drawing a Blank” is a dense and dynamic slab of melodic hardcore. But the real gem here is No High Fives’ “Colt…

The music of Fort Collins’s Drag the River has never been short of heartache. But with his debut solo album, Smile Sweet Face, Drag co-leader Chad Price has stripped away the band’s comforting layer of drunken revelry to reveal something far more painful. Bearing nothing but acoustic-folk chords, a whiskey-scarred…

Everything Absent or Distorted had strength in numbers. There were usually at least eight members, which sometimes ballooned to a dozen or more, depending on the show, and together they created some huge, buoyant and joyous sounds, with a wide assortment of instruments. Unfortunately, the guys decided to call it…

It’s a shame that Six Months to Live’s time is up (their final show, a CD release for this album, is Saturday, November 14), since this disc shows them reaching a new level of polish. The group’s sound has evolved to something like Beulah laced with a more cynical They…

Brothers Pete and Sam Loeffler, who formed Chevelle while still in high school, have essentially been performing as a band half their lives. They started writing music when Sam was just fourteen and Pete was twelve, and began playing gigs around Chicago just four years later, in 1995. Since then,…

Jonny Woodrose & the Broken-Hearted Woodpeckers started out as a solo for writer Jonson Kuhn. His lively, wiseacre perspective on relationships and trying to get by in this world attracted attention early on, and he was ultimately joined by the band’s current lineup, including guitarist Charles Kern, bassist Brian Payne…

Dubstep producer/DJ NumberNin6 (aka Nishant Parikh) came to the style by way of trance. That’s an unusual progression — dubstep’s roots in drum and bass are about as far from trance as can be imagined — but he manages to make it work to his advantage. Occasionally, wisps of trancey…

Ever notice just how much more advanced kids are these days? They just seem so much cooler than we were growing up. We were at a barbecue not too long ago, for instance, and heard the wee son of a friend — seriously, the kid hadn’t even hit puberty yet…

Ah, it’s refreshing to know that as frenzied as life can sometimes be, some things remain ever constant. In defiance of fair weather trends, Denver is still a hotbed for metal, and Dave Otero still has a hand in producing some of the best music coming out of here. For…

It’s that time again. Next Thursday night, the Denver Film Festival kicks off. Although the various films are clearly the main draw, by no means are they the only attraction. As in years past, the real excitement takes place after the screenings. For those who are unable to get their…