Photo by James Mitchell Evans. Jeremy Enigk and Damien Jurado Saturday, May 24, 2008 Fox Theatre The crowd at the Fox Theatre took the bad news stoically. By bad news I’m referring to here, of course, is the simple songs of heartbreak and woe that Damien Jurado and Jeremy Enigk…
Yerkish hamming it up. Denver Art Rock Collective Saturday, May 24, 2008 Toad Tavern Better than: The Des Moines Art Rock Collective. The Denver Art Rock Collective, a group of diverse local bands not easily pigeonholed into safe categories or genres, presented a sampling of the five acts in their…
Photo by Tom Murphy. Swervedriver, the Swayback and Life and Times Friday, May 23, 2008 The Marquis, Denver Better Than: Way too many guitar rock bands of the last decade and a half. With talk of how latecomer tickets were going for upwards of a hundred dollars for Swervedriver’s show…
UmConscious, Rhythm Vision and And Sometimes Why Friday, May 23, 2008 Soiled Dove Underground Better Than: Overblown, corportate hip-hop. By the time And Sometimes Why launched into “Down,” the second song of its set at the Soiled Dove, the act’s aspirations for radio play were clear. Lead singer Mike Berg…
Photo by Dragondeer. The Photo Atlas, The Epilogues, Set Forth Friday, May 23, 2008 Walnut Room Better Than: Staying at home and listening to Kiss FM. I’m not going to lie — I’m a huge fan of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Veronica Mars. Regardless of my love for these…
Bass players and drummers, man. What is it about bass players and drummers? I’ve never been able to hold on to one. Ever. Actually, that’s probably more on me than them, if you want to know the truth. I’m what I would call a perfectionist — and what other musicians…
LOCALS ONLY Rie-Rie is one of the very few female rappers in the Colorado hip-hop scene and among even fewer who consistently puts out albums. In 2008, Rie Rie is trying to do it even bigger by releasing two albums at the same time. One of them, Ms. 5280, is…
Flobots and RJD2 Monday, May 22, 2008 May Day Music Festival, DU, Driscoll Lawn When RJD2 moved a few steps away from his electronics-laden tables to address the crowd after a ten-minute or so “warm-up” last night, his normally blank, at most half-smiling face broke into an unabashed smirk. “Aren’t…
This has been a groundbreaking and altogether interesting election process, but the music, as per usual, is bland – do presidential candidates listen to music? Do we really want to elect someone without knowing their tastes? You could all win my vote if you switched some things up…
The Cure and 65daysofstatic Wednesday, May 21 Red Rocks By any objective measure, the new, economy size Robert Smith is a tepid performer. Onstage during an achingly lovely spring evening at Red Rocks, the Cure’s frontman and reason for continuing existence moved a bit like the Gingerbread Man in Shrek…
The Jealous Girlfriends, The Jealous Girlfriends (Good Fences Records). If the Cocteau Twins had been a rock band, they might have sounded something like the Jealous Girlfriends. Centering on Holly Miranda’s gracefully potent vocals, the New York-based quartet seethes and swirls with just the right balance of menace and melancholy…
Danny Tenaglia is the ultimate DJ, the Platonic DJ form of which other DJs are but pale shadows. His roots can be traced back all the way to the legendary Paradise Garage in New York, where he witnessed the pioneering work of Larry Levan. Tenaglia’s style is wide open, dictated…
Some bands try to throw all of their influences into the mix, and it rarely works. Somehow, Amphibious Jones manages to do it without sounding like it’s trying to pull off too much at one time. It’s also one of the few bands that are funny without seeming like a…
When I was just a kid, I walked into Budget Tapes & Records in Cherry Creek to ask Rusty, my friend’s older brother, for some music recommendations. From behind the counter, he asked me what kind of stuff I was listening to, and I said I was a big fan…
In the liner notes of his debut, Aakash Mittal asserts that every moment can be the start of something new or the end of something old, and that “through improvisation we seek to create something new from the old.” On Beginnings (slated for release at Dazzle on Thursday, May 29),…
During “GD Funk,” Punk Junkies’ concluding track, Demon Funkies singer Ryan Chrys pays tribute to George Clinton and Stevie Wonder — but Wild Cherry is probably a more appropriate reference point. The players, who headline a Thursday, May 29, CD-release party at the Bluebird Theater with Strange Condition and the…
With only two of the eleven tracks on Tokyo Police Club’s brilliant full-length debut crossing the three-minute mark, the Canadian quartet offers the ideal soundtrack for our attention-impaired age. The twitchy dance rock of the group’s much-lauded EP, A Lesson in Crime, has given way to poignantly nervous future pop…
Remember when the Gories stunned Detroit in the late ’80s? No? Well, you’re not the only one. Worry not, true believers: Striking in a new direction from the Gories’ minimalist rhythm section — which featured no bass and only tom-toms — comes the Dirtbombs, led by guitarist/vocalist Mick Collins, who…
When most people think of the early ’90s, they instantly think of grunge. But there was a larger phenomenon of non-mainstream music that often gets overlooked on those TV music retrospectives. Swervedriver emerged from the same loose scene, which included the likes of My Bloody Valentine, Slowdive, Catherine Wheel, Lush…
Cindy Wonderful has come a long way since her days as a lo-fi pioneer in the mid-’90s. From her time with Denver rap-punk legends Rainbow Sugar to her Julie Ruin-esque solo effort, The Double V Album, to today, Wonderful has explored more facets of her musical creativity than most people…
The theatrical nature of the Dresden Dolls, appearing here with Ukulele Loki, tends to be an attribute on stage and a detriment on CD. Since the duo’s 2000 formation, Amanda Palmer and Brian Viglione have specialized in keyboard-driven airs from the Bertolt Brecht School of Dark Irony, presented with dramatic…
Most producers who supervise reclamation projects for aging stars make the mistake of trying to contemporize the artist’s sound — the equivalent of dressing your eighty-something Uncle Jake like a 21st-century club kid. Not so Roots drummer Amir “?uestlove” Thompson, who helmed the Al Green comeback platter Lay It Down…
