Richie Hawtin may not be human. His most common alias, Plastikman, certainly seems to imply there’s something inorganic at his core. He looks human enough, but the music he makes moves, pulses and breathes with such an alien, biomechanical grace and precision, it’s hard to believe it’s the work of…
SOUND BITES Adele, 19 (Columbia). Obviously, Adele has the pipes to jump the queue and the comparisons among the crowded pack of Brit neo-soul fillies. But most impressive on this stunningly minimalistic debut is her writing, which suggests a career that may avoid self-destruction or caving in to the image…
Denver’s DeVotchKa headlines Saturday night. Monolith Festival, owners of perhaps the most aflame lineup of bands in 2008, starts Saturday at Red Rocks, and Backbeat will cover it end to end – with reviews, photos, and all the beer-fueled musings fit to print. Check back here on Saturday and Sunday…
Buddy Guy joins former Hendrix sidemen Mitch Mitchell and Billy Cox as part of Experience Hendrix at the Paramount Theatre October 30. Although Jimi Hendrix died nearly four decades ago, he continues to inspire countless numbers of guitar players like Buddy Guy, Jonny Lang, Kenny Wayne Shepherd and Eric Johnson,…
Monolith is this weekend, as you’re undoubtedly already aware. And while there’s a palpable sense of excitement surrounding this year’s edition, there’s also an underlying sense of dread attached to the proceedings for the portly, woefully out of shape, chain-smoking acolytes among us, spurred by the thought of trudging up…
Foo Fighters, with Year Long Disaster September 8, 2008 Red Rocks Earlier this summer, in a review of KTCL’s Big Gig, I confessed to having underrated the Offspring simply because the band’s been so damned consistent and reliable for so long. Ditto that for the Foo Fighters. In my preview…
The younger Dave Grohl. Prior to seeing (and being knocked out by) the Foo Fighters during their September 8 Red Rocks show, I’d only seen the band once: back in 1995, during its first-ever Denver appearance. It’d only been a year or so since the suicide of Grohl’s old boss,…
Mourning Sickness Mourning Sickness and The Silver Cord Saturday, September 6th, 2008 Larimer Lounge, Denver Better Than: Morning sickness, or so I would imagine. Mourning Sickness was a three-piece act with the usual rock arrangement of drummer, guitarist and bassist. But the music this trio played was far from “usual.”…
Mount Eerie. Mount Eerie w/The Tanukis and Young Coyotes Friday, September 5th, 2008 Brooks Center Arts, Denver Better Than: The last time I saw Microphones. The Brooks Center Arts basement space was all but packed with people during The Tanukis’ set. The Tanuki is a mischievous creature of Japanese folklore,…
As if selling out multiple nights at the Gothic and the Fox Theatre, killing it on the Warped tour and dominating airplay on most — if not all — of the modern rock stations in the country weren’t already evidence enough, 3OH!3 is edging closer and closer to ubiquity. In…
Kanye’s new single should be out soon. LOCALS ONLY Two years ago, Ray Maestas and Eppie Deleon of the famed b-boy crew GWT came together to form a new crew called BreakEFX. Enlising the kids they taught at Boulder’s Motion Underground Dance Studio, the crew has been on a tear…
If you’ve been to Rockbar the past few Wednesdays, you might’ve noticed something missing, namely the affable hosts of Jinxed! There’s a good reason for that. Your hosts, Eric Halborg and William Murphy from the Swayback, have been holed up in L.A. for the past week recording with legendary knob…
From Rage to Petty, Westword ranks the 10 best shows we saw (and photographed) in Denver this summer. Think this list sucks? Tell us which shows we missed, and if we’ve got pictures — it’s likely we do — we’ll add them to the slide show…
Four albums in (five, if you’re an eBay-stalking obsessive), Slipknot is having an identity crisis. Frontman Corey Taylor’s side project, Stone Sour, has allowed him to unmask his sensitive singer-songwriter side, and that’s well represented here on “Snuff” and “Dead Memories” — the former a half-acoustic ballad, the latter a…
Rappers and producers who appear on the Game’s third album, LAX, include…everybody. There’s Kanye West, Scott Storch, Travis Barker, Keisha Cole and Ne-Yo, for starters, and Game says he recorded over 220 tracks for the CD. But with the exception of two admittedly lights-out bangers, “My Life” and “Dope Boys,”…
Things seemed to be looking up for Jeff Finlin. The Fort Collins singer-songwriter, the subject of a worshipful 5280 profile by Pulitzer winner J.R. Moehringer (and praise from Bruce Springsteen), saw 2006’s Angels in Disguise, his previous disc, win release by WEA/Korova overseas and Rykodisc stateside. But two years later,…
If there’s one thing that can be said for Lil’ Slugger, it’s that these guys don’t sound quite like anyone else. The closest cousin to Slugger’s side of this split might be Captain Beefheart, if he teamed up with lo-fi Lou Barlow on a comeback record produced by Chris Adolf…
Although Warped Tour lineups differ from year to year, plenty of the acts on them are essentially interchangeable. But not Warped vets Valient Thorr, appearing here with Misfits, Motörhead and Year Long Disaster. The band is from North Carolina by way of outer space (the players have constructed an amusingly…
Is anyone else here astounded that these two groups still have enough cachet to fill amphitheaters? Wait — allow me to revise that question: Is anyone else dumbfounded that Poison can still pack a place the size of Fiddler’s? (Let’s be honest: Bret Michaels and the boys are being charitable…
Dave Grohl, whose throat problems caused the postponement of two Foo Fighters dates originally scheduled for July, has become a reliable professional — a performer who consistently releases product that’s steady and well-crafted. But if he’s never put out a less-than-good album during his decade-plus as a frontman, neither has…
Some of the best rustic music being made today is coming out of Portland, Oregon, by groups such as The Builders and The Butchers, who lend an infectious exuberance to a form of music that’s been performed ad nauseam since before folk was an actual genre. Many bands perform folk…
Texas in June is great. There’s a certain romance to it. By August, though, the romance is gone, and everyone starts getting edgy. A few summers ago in the studio, the heat really started getting to Centro-Matic frontman Will Johnson, inspiring him to write faster, louder and rawer material. “We…
