Truth in advertising: Alright Alright. Indeed. (Photos by Tom Murphy). I Was Totally Destroying It, Alright Alright Wednesday, July 9, 2008 hi-dive Better Than: You might expect from a mid-week indie rock show. I missed Hunter Dragon and Fridge Magnet, because, the hi-dive, as it turns out, sometimes, sensibly, starts…
The birth of my youngest child. Witnessing my son and daughter take their very first steps. Hearing them utter their first words. Seeing them off to school on their first day and feeling a dull ache in my stomach, wondering and worrying if they were going to fit in. And…
“We met in a gay bar,” says Martin Schmidt, one-half of experimental electronic duo Matmos, of Drew Daniel, his partner. “Drew was on stage; he was go-go dancing. He was wearing a fish, a plastic fish. I put a dollar in his fish. A guy I was with at the…
Canada’s Leslie Feist, for whom one name has proved more than enough, loves to travel — but after six years of near-constant gigging, even she’s had it. “I think there’s something to be said for everything in moderation, and I haven’t done anything moderately,” she points out. “I’ve just been…
Mash-up maestro Gregg Gillis, aka Girl Talk (due at Boulder’s Fox Theatre on Friday, July 11), is hopping on the bandwagon and letting fans set the price for his latest LP, Feed the Animals. The Pittsburgh DJ’s fourth album blends everything from Hot Chip to Ice Cube into one seamless…
Nels Cline got an electric guitar when he was twelve years old, but he wasn’t really serious about trying to play, and he admits that, at the time, he didn’t know what he was doing. “I played with two fingers until I was sixteen,” Cline confesses with a laugh. “I…
If you ask a teenage boy why he’s learning how to play the guitar, there’s a good chance he’ll reply, “To get chicks.” Sure, he might say something like “To be cool,” but even then, he’s really hoping that some guitar chops might help him get laid. In fact, a…
Here Comes Everybody, The Veronica Project (Refrigerator Records). On its tenth release, the pleasingly twee and remarkably erudite duo of Michael Jarmer and Rene Ormae-Jarmer makes polite, piano-driven pop with a hint of humor. Though the pair occasionally veers into cliché (“Hang Up and Live”), its most original moments make…
The grandeur and cosmic intensity of a band like Bright Channel are both nearly impossible to live up to. But somehow, Jeff Suthers and Shannon Stein have assembled an unwieldy group of eleven people to write and perform songs that make them excited to be creating music again. Many acts…
Dance music might not be the first thing that springs to mind when you think of Canada — hockey, socialized medicine and “about” pronounced as “aboot” take those honors — but our Great White Northern neighbor has quietly become a force in the international scene. With the world-class MUTEK festival…
If you love the ’80s, you’ll love the Epilogues. The players, who introduce their new EP on Saturday, July 12, at the Marquis Theater, with the Photo Atlas, don’t offer an update on that decade’s ringing guitars, minor keys and angsty singing. Rather, they deliver what sounds for all the…
The latest release from A Shoreline Dream is an exploration of broader sonic vistas than those of the dream-pop wunderkinds’ three excellent previous efforts. Essentially a single with two remixes, Neverchanger is a collaboration with noted German composer Ulrich Schnauss. The original track is a work of breathtaking depth that…
With emo becoming a justifiably maligned quantity in recent years, especially in the flush of odious subgenres, it’s easy to forget that there used to be worthwhile bands that mined that territory. The members of Warwick, New York’s Pictures in Braille may not embrace a particular genre, but they’ve clearly…
With their instantly recognizable tunes, Dear and the Headlights make music you swear you’ve heard a million times before, as if the melodies had been stolen from somewhere. But you haven’t, and they weren’t. It’s almost like sculpture, where the artist simply frees the art from its stone prison: Dear…
In the past decade, a thriving noise scene has emerged in direct aesthetic opposition to the tanned, fake pretty faces most often associated with the city of Los Angeles. HEALTH burst from that experimental-music maelstrom in 2005 with a vengeance. Furious tribal beats, generally off-kilter rhythms and a collage of seemingly disparate…
Although Supergrass (on tour with Foo Fighters and Year Long Disaster) sprang from the early-’90s British invasion period, the group never conquered much territory in the U.S. — and it’s tough to figure out why. All of the albums to date by the Coombes brothers, Gaz and Rob, and their…
Sometimes it’s nice just to call a spade a spade. Low provides just that sort of truth in advertising, easily earning high marks in the “slowcore” hall of fame. Through nearly fifteen years and ten albums scattered across half a dozen labels, the band has managed to remain true to…
On his third album, Mugison has fully embraced his rock-and-roll demons. The award-winning Icelander (born Örn Elías Guðmundsson) sounds like he sold his soul to Robert Johnson, Jimmy Page and the devil on tracks like “The Pathetic Anthem” and “Jesus Is a Good Name to Moan.” Eschewing the glitchy laptop…
Katy Perry’s capable of remaking herself for any promising target demographic. In her teens, she delivered achingly sincere contemporary Christian fare that didn’t turn out to be achingly sincere after all, and her One of the Boys persona — flirty, snarky tart — feels equally phony. The production, by a…
Today’s marks another bummer day for the Denver music scene. We were just informed that Wu Fei, a master of the guzheng (a traditional Chinese stringed instrument) that has worked with John Zorn and Cecil Taylor, is preparing to move to New York after living in Denver for the past…
Blind Pilot 3 Rounds and a Sound Expunged Records 01:00-01:45 of “The Story I Heard”: “The Story I Heard” proves that the only difference between some indie-rock and commercial pop music is the fact that the indie bands just don’t get signed quick enough. This is the same crap that…
Looks like the 3OH!3 homies are proving to be hotter than July. On the heels of being pimped on the front page of MySpace a few weeks ago, followed by an insanely successful stint on the Denver stop of this year’s Warped Tour (check out footage from that gig after…
