Love him or hate him, with six Grammys to his name and having sold hundreds of millions of records worldwide, Billy Joel has a pedigree that’s impossible to ignore. Although he’s known primarily for crafting shamelessly catchy pop melodies with an ear for the British Invasion and a fondness for…
Thoreau said that most men lead lives of quiet desperation, going to the grave with the song still in them. It’s obvious that he never met anyone like Guy Clark, a troubadour who’s been penning odes of quiet desperation for more than thirty years and shows absolutely no signs of…
While Gil Mantera’s Party Dream makes more-or-less sincere and angst-filled electro-emo, you’d never guess it from the duo’s live shows. On stage, the brothers from Youngstown, Ohio, dance, prance and make general asses of themselves with giddy, homoerotic abandon and total disregard for any hangups the audience might have. Gil…
It’s a safe bet that all ambient instrumental rock after the turn of the century will inevitably be compared to Godspeed You! Black Emperor and Sigur Rós. Even compelling acts such as This Will Destroy You will be subjected to such lazy comparisons. In this case, the association isn’t completely…
When group members split to form separate projects, the results frequently add up to less than the original sum — but not in the case of Mat Brooke and Ben Bridwell. The pair teamed in Carissa’s Wierd, a sometimes entertaining but often erratic Seattle act, before joining forces again in…
“Eating before practice helps a lot.” With a mouthful of homemade pizza, drummer Sam Spitzer is explaining the secret of the Hollyfelds’ camaraderie. Before each rehearsal, the quintet sits down to a meal at the Spitzers’ home. What started as carryout has evolved to delicious home-cooked meals, compliments of Spitzer’s…
A couple of decades back, U.K. metal acts like Iron Maiden ruled the hard-rock world. Since then, the market for British steel has gone soft — but Bullet for My Valentine lead singer/guitarist Matt Tuck sees signs of stiffening. “It’s something that we think about and are aware of —…
It’s before 9 a.m. when Marie Litton and Matt Bellinger shuffle into Pablo’s at Sixth Avenue and Washington Street. The barista calls out to them by name; they grunt back. It’s like Ice Station Zebra outside, and the shivering Denver couple doesn’t look happy to be conscious — but at…
Bang Camaro Saturday, February 23, 2008 Bluebird Theater On the line: Denver’s rep as a bastion of metal magnitude. (Hint: The Jury’s still out.) It was nearly 10:30 when I rolled up on the Bluebird last Saturday night. Joel Simches, the sometimes JV rocker and once long-time master soundman for…
Here’s a selection of the best of last week’s music blogging from around the Village Voice chain: The ten-year anniversary of In the Aeroplane Over the Sea has arrived, and this live set from 1997, covering several songs from the now-classic release, is as good a way as any to…
The writers may have been back for the 80th annual Academy Awards, held on February 24, but that fact didn’t automatically transform the ceremony into scintillating television. The show still dragged past the three-hour mark, padded by too many interchangeable montages and a speech by 98-year-old art designer/special honoree Robert…
Locals Only: Beatsource launches a “hip-hop iTunes” It’s been the talk of the town for the last several months but Beatsource.com has finally launched and features a few local artists as well. Based here in Denver, Beatsource.com is an online hip-hop music store that targets DJs and features classic and…
Intronaut, Saviours, A Life Once Lost, High On Fire Wednesday, February 20, 2008 Bluebird Theater Better than: Banging your head on the punk rock It’s official – metal ain’t dead. Sure, you can point to a million cases in which metal has been modified – some might say diluted or…
Last Saturday will go down as a historic night for music in the Mile High: We paid our last respects to Planes Mistaken for Stars at the Marquis, watched the Flobots turn in the performance of their young career before a sellout crowd at the Gothic — and heard that…
It’s often said that the greatest geniuses go unappreciated during their own lifetimes. The true brilliance of ancient masters like Michelangelo and Leonardo wasn’t fully grasped until long after their deaths. People even underestimated the talents of Americans like Whitman, Bukowski and Eazy-E while they walked among us. Then there…
Mike Kellogg seems like an unassuming, clean-cut suburbanite who might otherwise pass as a poster boy for middle-class composure. That is, until the Redline Defiance frontman plugs in his Les Paul. Then he’s all sorts of rage — the repressed kind, the type you carry with you into adulthood when…
It’s hard to imagine that a live, largely improvised set from a trio with heavy jazz influences and a Rhodes electric-piano player would go over big with the kind of hardcore clubbers who populate the world’s dance-music super clubs, but Cobblestone Jazz pulled it off somehow. “The first time we…
As rock-and-roll reunions go, the New York Dolls’ get-together is as unlikely as they come. For one thing, two members of the original quintet’s early-’70s lineup (guitarist Johnny Thunders and drummer Jerry Nolan) were long dead before the outfit’s 2004 reformation, and a third, bassist Arthur “Killer” Kane, succumbed to…
Scout Niblett, This Fool Can Die Now (Too Pure Records). Even if the rawness of previous Scout Niblett offerings left you wishing you could claw out your eardrums, her latest effort is well worth a listen. Undeniably beautiful songs, several duets with Will Oldham, a couple of covers and plenty…
True story. When I was in college, a girl asked me to kill her. Right after sex. I’d known her for about three hours (we’d met at an open-mike poetry reading). There was none of that post-coital cuddling for this gal. She said, “I just don’t feel anything inside anymore…
Whether by himself or with his Dirty Laboratory cohorts as a member of Optik Fusion Embrace, the Grimies, Teem Geezus and Creature From the Whack Lagoon, Extra Kool offers penetrating insights into the human condition with every line that passes his lips. Even a casual listen to his songs makes…
The history of dance music tells us that Goldie is an important figure. And Lord knows, you can’t argue with history. To his credit, for a brief moment in the mid-’90s, Goldie reached a level of fame few dance artists achieve. People who had no idea what “jungle” was knew…
