Concerts

A woman cradling a little black dog like a baby, its head on her shoulder, danced alone at Ristau’s Roadhouse (2035 South Sheridan Boulevard), while another woman, a middle-aged blonde, sang a karaoke version of Patsy Cline’s “Crazy.” (Yeah, I know that Willie Nelson wrote the song early in his…

Based on song titles alone, you’d think Cougar Legs (due at the hi-dive on Saturday, September 19) was some kind of wiseacre Marcel Duchamp-esque joke perpetrated by pretentious artists. The act’s music, however, is more like that beautifully post-apocalyptic dirge that somehow ended up in a horrible science-fiction movie like…

Post-grunge keyboard ballads don’t exactly fulfill the grunge-comeback prophecy whispered by music journalists over the past few years. And yet Chicago’s Oh My God is about the most viable revivalist of mid-’90s sturm und drang around today — due mostly to a vocal style that growls and thunders like a…

The pedigree of Autolux reads a bit like the alternative-rock should-have-beens: Guitarist Greg Edwards was in the influential space-rock band Failure, and drummer Carla Azar was in the pop-rock outfit Ednaswap, whose song “Torn” became a hit when covered by Natalie Imbruglia. With Autolux, Edwards and Azar, along with bassist…

Although now based in Los Angeles, Mayer Hawthorne (born Andrew Cohen) grew up in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Instead of following the route of proto-punk rock bands like the Stooges or co-opting the latter-day bluesy garage rock of the Dirtbombs, Hawthorne embraced the soulful sounds and perfect melodies produced under Berry…

“You try and you try and you try again/But you can’t try enough,” Stephen Kellogg sings on “Shady Esperanto and the Young Hearts,” a key track from The Bear, his latest recording — and that pretty much sums up his worldview. Through much of the album, he comes across like…

There’s no denying just how derivative and calculating the music of the Airborne Toxic event is. And while it would be easy to loathe the band out of hand — as Pitchfork did with its infamous 1.6/10 review of the act’s self-titled debut — the fact remains that The Airborne…

At the decade’s dawn, transplanted Georgians Andy Ard and Rachel Simring established themselves in these parts as an acoustic duo cleverly dubbed Rachel & Andy – but while the subhead of a 2001 Westword profile declared that they lived “in perfect harmony,” the truth was more complicated, as it usually…

Christian Seith moved to Denver from Washington, D.C., two years ago. After playing on his own for a bit, he teamed up with several Lamont School of Music cohorts to form Bemused. Seith, who wrote all of the songs on the act’s debut, is a decent writer and has a…

There are tons of local bands that claim indie rock, yet most don’t have a trace of the quirkiness and urgency that once made indie a haven for the lonely, the wimpy and the pissed off. But even among this city’s douchebags and fashion victims, there’s still a place for…

Tackling the concerns of adulthood with more lyrical maturity and originality than most bands, Quillion proves it is possible to express one’s pain and disappointment without a vulgar display of melodrama. To the Hilt’s opener, “Take a Bow,” is a disarmingly delicate number with bell tones accenting the rhythms and…

Spoke Shaver’s description on its MySpace profile reads “Progressive/Post-Punk/Country.” But unlike many bands’ deliberately absurd mix of genre classifications, Spoke Shaver is mostly serious about its three choices. Not that it feels bound by them. Over the past few months, the Denver-based group — singer/keyboardist Kristin Garramone, guitarist Rich Haven,…

The term “emo” didn’t always have a negative stigma attached to it. What was once shorthand for music that was emotional and heartfelt has since been marginalized and applied to mainstream acts like My Chemical Romance and Fall Out Boy. Seattle’s Sunny Day Real Estate was at the vanguard of…

DJ Satoshi Tomiie (due at Vinyl Saturday, September 19) is a truly distinctive voice in house music. The Tomiie sound is built on tribal percussion circling crisp, steady beats — driving, but not too pushy. Track selections lean toward the dark and brooding: moody slices of dance-floor euphoria haunted by…

Dear, metal heads, prepare to be stoked: Slayer has unveiled the artwork for its forthcoming album, World Painted Blood, which is slated for release on Tuesday, November 3. While the music is sure to be dependably bludgeoning, the enticing aspect of this album is the fact that it will be…

Just got word that Mike Freeman, frontman of Gina Go Faster, died of brain cancer yesterday morning. Freeman had been battling cancer for a couple of years and this is a great loss not just for his friends and family, but for the Denver music scene as well. Freeman’s fiancee…

Um, yeah, this kind of speaks for itself. No words, just tears. Thanks, Ralphie…

Okay, if you’re like us and were up at Red Rocks for Monolith this past Sunday night watching the Mars Volta confound the audience with its spectacular over indulgence or — depending upon your perspective — dazzle the crowd with its awe-worthy musicianship, you missed 3OH!3’s thirty second long, blink-and-you-missed-it…

Next month, the Fresh Breath Committee will be releasing their debut album, CPR, at the Fox Theatre on Thursday, October 8. In an effort to get folks hyped for the release, the crew just dropped their first single “Save the Day,” featuring the legendary Masta Ace, who will be on…

Local thash metal titans Havok, who’s in the midst of an extensive cross country tour in support of its Candlelight Records debut, Burn, had to cancel its show in Minneapolis last night due to engine problems the band experienced with its bus after a show in Lincoln, Nebraska this past…

As the Guy Who Sits in the Media Tent and Updates Our Live Music Fest Coverage, there are two perks to my job: 1. Proximity to free food. 2. Opportunity to pick which photos we use in our slideshows and live-review blogs. Monolith, like Mile High before it, served up…