We Americans can be awfully set in our ways. No matter how terrific music from other parts of the globe might be, lots of us like it better when it sounds familiar. Hence these two packages, which aim to make exotic sounds more accessible without destroying what’s cool about them…
Promises are worth about as much as the bullshit they’re written in. Local bands are the worst: They come on all young and passionate but wind up riding their initial spurt of inspiration into the dirt — usually in the form of a lackluster debut. In under a year, Constellations’…
Spinning Pharaoh is apt to give most people a severe sense of dislocation. This particular Project doesn’t seem like something found in Denver, Colorado, during the century most of us presently occupy. Instead, it sounds as if it sprang from an international dance capital in the 1980s, when electronic gadgetry…
Talent in and of itself isn’t a ticket to stardom, but if it’s mixed with a healthy dose of persistence, it can fuel a long and admirable career, as Robert Earl Keen’s experience demonstrates. When record companies proved unwilling to back his first album, 1984’s No Kinda Dancer, he picked…
Robert Schneider has had a year that actually kept up with his head-spinning hyperactivity. Besides releasing 010, the raw, compelling debut by his new group, Ulysses, he recorded a new disc by Marbles, his perennial solo project. Set for release later this month, the expo is a synth-driven, pupil-dilating dose…
A child prodigy who learned piano at age three and cut his teeth professionally at eleven, Ahmad Jamal (born Frederick Russell Jones in 1930) formed several jazz trios throughout the ’50s — back when the quiet and conservative tones of the cool era were evolving from bebop’s radical bombast. A…
From the punk-industrial insurgency of the Beatnigs to the messianic agit-prop of the Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy, Michael Franti has been a relentless enemy of ignorance and bigotry. His outfit of the last ten years, the funk-infused Spearhead, has traveled even further into the realms of groove-locked protest. But this…
Time moves pretty damn fast, no matter what you smoke. For fans of Sublime, the death of Brad Nowell, the trio’s leader, feels like it happened yesterday, but he actually overdosed on heroin in May 1996 — nearly nine years ago. Surviving bandmates Eric Wilson and Bud Gaugh went on…
In his youth, Kingston-bred reggae star Ripton Hilton threw away tons of money at the racetrack, betting time and again on a sorry nag named Eek-A-Mouse. But the one time he decided not to wager on the beloved hay-burner, it actually won — earning Hilton a permanent rodent-type nickname among…
When Kris Kristofferson plays your demo for record-label executives, you know you’ve got talent — and they do, too. So even before Larry Gatlin invited his brothers Steve and Rudy to join him in Nashville, it was inevitable that “Sweet Becky Walker,” a song from Larry’s debut album, The Pilgrim,…
With the demise of ’90s bands like Silver Scooter and Butterglory, the universe was left with an aching void. Indie rock got operatic. Emo got numb. So where does that leave your average devotee of spastic wussiness and crackly pop? In fine shape, actually, as long as Palisades is around…
As tech-house has grown in popularity, scads of DJs have begun to do whatever they can to claim the banner as their own — without really coming up with anything that sets them apart from one another. Christian Smith, on the other hand, is unique. Tightly mixing on three turntables,…
If any performer has an excuse — make that multiple excuses — to be bitter, it’s singer-songwriter Garland Jeffreys. For more than three decades, Jeffreys has made challenging, innovative and consistently satisfying music characterized by Ghost Writer, one of the great lost records of the ’70s. Unfortunately, the idiosyncrasies and…
I was a little bit self-conscious after everybody dubbed our last record a road record,” confesses Limbeck singer/guitarist Robb MacLean. “We didn’t intend for it to become a concept album or anything like that.” An unintentional concept album? Doesn’t sound too likely. But oxymoron aside, Limbeck’s 2003 opus, Hi, Everything’s…
If what happens on New Year’s Eve is any indication of what’s ahead for the next year, then we’re in for more great music and drunken debauchery. I kicked off the night around 7:30 p.m., breaking bread with Jeff Arnold (El Jefe at the Velvet Underground) and the Supersuckers at…
Scratching the surface Seattle’s Donald Glaude was playing gigs in Denver long before clubs like the Church (where he’ll be on Thursday, January 6) catered to dance music. Glaude established his national rep as an elite, cutting-edge house DJ at underground warehouse raves in the early ’90s and quickly became…
A child prodigy who’s been playing the piano since age five and attended college at sixteen, John Legend played with Lauryn Hill, Alicia Keys and Janet Jackson, among others, before Kanye West noticed his talent and took him under his wing. On Get Lifted, his debut disc, Legend runs the…
Nas’s ambitious double disc would have worked better as a single album; there are too many misfires here to warrant 24 tracks. Even so, Nas shows why he is one of rap’s premier lyricists on cuts like “These Are Our Heroes,” in which he takes on Kobe Bryant and the…
Judging by these discs, the video-game industry is currently a lot healthier than the music business. Whereas songs were once used to attract video-game buyers, record execs are now using video games as bait in the hopes of selling CDs. The three-disc Grand Theft Auto package features an introductory DVD…
I’d say that the Go-Go’s must be rolling in their graves, but since they’re still alive, I’d have to say that they’re probably wondering if one can sue for breach of cliche. With the ’80s-rock revival quickly reaching a point of pure regurgitation, it’s not surprising that this kind of…
The original punks claimed to be non-conformists, but that didn’t stop many of them from mimicking each other, just like the squares they scorned. The men of Wire, in contrast, were too pissy to modulate their behavior to fit any trend, and their stubborn individualism pays off on Box, a…
There’s a kind of tiredness that slinks up your legs and into your stomach, tendrils of fatigue that twine around your spine before plunging deep into your midbrain. It’s along this same path that Okkervil River flows. Sleep and Wake-Up Songs is a gorgeous five-track somnambulation through watercolors and Star…
