Concerts

Tuesday, June 2nd, 2009 The Boulder Theater, Boulder Better Than: Most shows going through Boulder these days. Brooklyn’s Black Dice opened this show in what has lately become their typical fashion. Long gone, I suppose, were the harsh, brutally abrasive textures of old, replaced by something more, well, musical. Nonetheless,…

As you’ve no doubt gathered from the weekly This Just In posts that have been accumulating over the past month or so, the summer concert season is almost upon us and is so far stacking up to be a memorable one, particularly at Red Rocks thanks to a rare night…

Camera Obscura, Agent RibbonsBluebird TheaterMonday, June 1, 2009Better Than: A vintage-clothes show without live music. Okay, so that’s a bit mean. But Camera Obscura did bring along fellow thrift-store doyennes Agent Ribbons as an opening act. The bands’ shared love for ’50s dresses is where the comparisons end; Sacramento-based Agent…

Spinal Tap fans, rejoice! At long last, the fabled “Saucy Jack” — the centerpiece to the Tap’s unfinished rock musical about the notorious London serial murderer Jack the Ripper — has been released. And it won’t set you back nearly as much as those long-rumored, impossible to find Japanese bootlegs…

The Dualisitcs have been on something of a hot streak for the past six months. They kicked off the year with a brand-new EP that drew great buzz, a solid review and warranted a feature from us. They followed that up a few months later with a Nirvana cover show…

Just in time for the Westword Music Showcase, Spoke-In-Wordz and his folks put the finishing touches on his newest mixtape Catch the Buzz 3. The mix is a collection of freestyles, collaborations and unreleased material from the last few years. Mixed entirely by DJ Chonz, Spoke-In-Wordz and Playalitical trade verses…

Punk Rocks: Offspring, Alkaline Trio, The Vandals, Street Dogs, Frontside FiveRed Rocks AmphitheaterThursday, May 28, 2009 Better than: Attending a purported punk festival at the Pepsi Center. It was an unlikely forum for a punk show. Red Rocks Amphitheater isn’t the first venue that pops into my mind when I…

Last month, the Fort Collins Music Association hosted the area’s first ever all local music festival, dubbed the Fort Collins Music Experiment (FoCoMx for short). As hard to believe as it is that such an event never existed until this year, it’s not difficult to see that the supply definitely…

No Doubt, Paramore and The Sounds May 27 Fiddler’s Green Not so long ago, major bands in their prime, not past it, would seldom tour without a new album to promote, since recordings represented a — and often the — major profit center. But times have changed. In the age…

Some scars are forever, some fade with time. For the members of the Rouge, who all have matching cigarette-burn scars on their arms, it doesn’t matter how long the mark stays, as long as the feeling of camaraderie that caused them to do it in the first place lasts forever. …

There’s a scene in the Blues Brothers where Jake, Elwood and the rest of the band are playing “Stand by Your Man” at Bob’s Country Bunker. The camera pans across a bunch of loving couples holding each other, then comes to rest on a pathetic guy sitting alone, almost in…

In an era when we’ve all been hit over the head once too often with pop punk, a band like the Fire Drills (due at Bender’s Tavern on Saturday, May 30) can superficially sound like a continuation of that sort of thing. Except with this band, the most cursory of…

The most compelling thing about trance duo Kyau & Albert is the bizarre vibe of their podcast voiceovers: it’s very Dieter-from-Sprockets meets Hans & Franz, and it is hilarious (unintentionally, we presume). Those awkward interludes really liven up the mixes and make the whole thing more fun. The act is…

On its recently released fourth album, My Maudlin Career, Scotland’s Camera Obscura continues to swathe Tracyanne Campbell’s melancholy yet droll lyrics in the warm glow of ’60s pop and classic country, creating one of the year’s most lovable releases so far. On the eve of the band’s Stateside tour, we…

At the end of this month, Tim Pourbaix will leave his home town behind for New York — specifically, the hipster’s promised land of Williamsburg. Before he says goodbye, however, the Denver-based singer-songwriter — who garnered attention as a bassist with Kael Smith’s Bear vs. Larger Bear and Killfix —…

All backward-gazing compilations are exercises in nostalgia to some degree — but the best of the breed eschew sentimentality in favor of a more clear-eyed brand of affection. Exhibit A: Rocky Mountain Low, which captures the vitality, humor and exuberance of a punk and post-punk scene that flourished in the…

It doesn’t seem possible that anyone could put a new spin on the Americana thing, but with this latest offering from Adam Adam, that notion can be put to rest. Part folk, part Americana and part experimental lo-fi, these three songs explore new territories in each. Recalling the bleakest, most…

Maybe it’s bitterness, or creeping cynicism, or simply the fact that every new thing I hear has to measure up to the ever-larger pile of stuff I already know and love, but the older I get, the harder it is for anything to simply blow me away. Bottom of the…

Bobby Walker has been playing professionally for close to four decades, and Git It feels like a document of his time touring around the States, Japan and Germany. In his whisky-soaked rasp, you can hear the miles he’s traveled on this mini-travelogue of the blues, from the funky blues of…

One of the most memorable turns of phrase from the past few years of original rock music has to be “Jesus saves, I spend,” from St. Vincent’s 2007 debut full-length Marry Me. Born Annie Clark, the 26-year old multi-instrumentalist — who has toured as a guitarist with the Polyphonic Spree…