Like its moody contemporaries Nick Cave or His Name Is Alive, upstate New York’s Mercury Rev has taken a bizarre, winding path to its current vision of twisted American music. While Cave has settled post-punk ire into outsider-bluesy balladeering and His Name swings moody hybrids of folk, gospel and ’60s…
“Everything you’ve been listening to lately sucks.” That’s the bold proclamation made by Shane Etter, primary organizer of the first-ever Boulder Unheard Music/Punk Festival (or BUMPfest). The festival, which takes place Saturday, October 20, in the Boulder Bandshell at Canyon and Broadway, is designed as an antidote to the painfully…
The Handsome Family, Saturday, September 20, at the Lion’s Lair, makes roots music that feels like the sonic equivalent to an Andrew Wyeth painting. There are cracks in the walls, despair on the faces that populate the Chicago duo’s simple, rural tableaus. Redemption lies just out of reach, and sadness…
There was a time when James Bond had us believing that espionage involved nothing more complicated than a chilled martini, a nickel-plated revolver and a well-placed telephone tap. Current events have left some of us longing for this Hollywood-movie version of reality, one that would find a perfect soundtrack in…
Like the vast majority of those in the Western world, Ray Davies, the once and future leader of the Kinks, reacted to last month’s terrorist strikes with a deepening sense of despair — and only after hours of sitting at his home in England watching the carnage on CNN did…
It’s a bright, cheery East Bay afternoon, and Miles Kurosky is walking, sunglasses on, talking on his cell phone. The singer, songwriter and guitarist for Beulah has arrived a little late for our interview, but he lingers on the phone anyway, trying to reassure the caller about something. Finally he…
For years, bluegrass was easily one of the most male-dominated musical genres around. All the biggest stars were men, and their bands were all made up of “boys.” Bill Monroe and his Blue Grass Boys, Lester Flatt & Earl Scruggs and the Foggy Mountain Boys, the Stanley Brothers and the…
Steve Smith, chief operations officer for Clear Channel’s entertainment division, does not have talons, or horns. Backwash discovered this last week, when Smith came to town and met with reporters in an attempt to stem the tide of negative press that his company has received in the past year, including…
Soulhat, which performs Thursday, October 11, at the Fox Theater in Boulder and Friday, October 12, at the Soiled Dove, is the type of band that requires listeners to have their neck-bobbing muscles in good shape. Having dance-floor stamina is a plus, too, as Johnny Volgelsang’s low-down, funky Texas bass…
Dusty Drapes & the Dusters, Thursday, October 11, at the Bluebird Theater and Friday, October 12, at the Boulder Theater, have pulled off a comeback that would make Elway envious. The group — the state’s first alt-country outfit, formed in 1976 — initially reunited for a sold-out concert at the…
The first nuance you notice when speaking with Dave Vanian is how soft-spoken he is. He’s articulate, too, and stokes the conversation with droll anecdotes and disarming jabs of self-deprecation. Certainly not what one might expect from an ex-gravedigger known to yodel Alice Cooper’s classics “Dead Babies” and “I Love…
Les Fradkin’s band, Get Wet, plays a brand of instrumental music that mixes old-school surf and classical touches, with the guitar parts played on new-tech gear. So far, the group isn’t familiar to Front Range listeners. But that’s not the case when it comes to Fradkin’s back catalogue. He was…
Death metal armada: The words conjure images of a legion of disgruntled longhairs unintelligibly growling about the horrors of the world, wallowing in the tar behind an impenetrable wall of distortion. The Denver-based trio that is the Bobby Collins Death Metal Armada (DMA for short), however, has more in common…
“No one ever believes me when I say I am Mr. Pacman,” said Avery Rains, the lithe and soft-spoken leader of the three-man technotronic outfit that headlined a baroque bill at Monkey Mania on Saturday, September 27. If those who’d gathered in the newish venue’s dark and beer-splattered parking lot…
When Mystic rolled through town as part of Slum Village’s Family Tree Tour in July, she won the audience over with her conscious rhymes and soulful singing. By the time the then-unknown vocalist hit the first few bars of her first single, “The Life,” she had heads nodding and people…
For several decades now, cultural pundits have been declaring that rock is dead. But Jet Black Joy, who appear Friday, October 5, at Sports Field Roxxx with Black Lamb, apparently didn’t get the latest memo. The Denver-based four-piece rejects the notion that turntables and loops are the future, opting for…
Jacques Cousteau, master of the deep, was intimately acquainted with the oceans that make our planet such a lush home. His realm was the sea and all its complexities; through his photographic expeditions, he handed us sixty years’ worth of mystery and beauty. For him, water was the ultimate symbol…
Three years after they joined forces in Nederland, life is mighty good for the members of Yonder Mountain String Band. But bassist Ben Kaufmann swears that he and his mates can’t take all the credit for their rapid rise in the jam-band universe. “There’s always been this sense of timing…
On September 19, the Rocky Mountain News published a letter from Francois Bellouin of Boulder that began as follows: “Yesterday I was singing John Lennon’s ‘Imagine’ all day long. Following the horror of Sept. 11, I wonder if any of us, almost 20 years after his death, understand and will…
As anyone in marketing can tell you, there’s no better time to repackage and sell a bunch of old stuff than when you’ve got a hot new product with a tie-in to the dated items flying off the shelves. No one knows this better than our friends in the recording…
When an album opens with a cover of Richard Thompson’s dark and brooding “Keep Your Distance,” you know you’d better fasten your seatbelt: It’s going to be a bumpy ride. On their first official album as a couple, Buddy and Julie Miller take us down love’s lost highway, where trouble’s…
If aliens were to arrive in Colorado and request a sample of the kind of music that our mountain dwellers do best, we might do well to hand over a copy of It’s About Time, the just-released fruit of a collaboration between Liza Oxnard (formerly of Zuba) and the String…
