Concerts

If you haven’t downloaded the Pirate Signal mixtape, Of Gods and Gangsters, Vol. 1, yet, then you are truly missing out. We recently gave it a Best of Denver nod, which should tell you all you need to know. If you still need some convincing, though, you won’t after watching…

Call it math rock. Call it progressive rock. Hell, you can even call it rock instrumentation with momentary hints of shoegazing if you like (which is how the members of Peña describes themselves), but for God’s sake, “Just don’t call us a fucking jam band!” says Aaron Ray, guitarist and…

Remember that scene in Animal House when Otter, Flounder, Pinto and Boon pick up those girls from Emily Dickinson College and then drive by the Dexter Lake Club, where they spy an Otis Day and the Knights banner hanging outside? Since the band had played one of their frat parties,…

If you’ve been reading the Backbeat blog, then you know that the Denver scene is en fuego right now, muchachos. Muy caliente! The amount of attention that’s being paid to our city is kind of stunning. And it’s coming from across the national media, with a different act getting face…

When you call your band “The Bull of Death,” you have to excuse people for thinking you play some variety of metal-core. This Colorado Springs quintet is almost as far removed from that kind of thing as possible — except that a couple of these guys were once in heavy-as-heavy-can-be…

Perhaps too cleverly named, this Glasgow-based band had fans among the likes of Lisa Marie Presley and former Creation Records head Alan McGee before releasing a proper record. Superficially, Glasvegas sounds like a lot of atmospheric rock traversing the world these days. But there is a grace and gorgeousness to…

From the moment Lily Allen surfaced on the pop radar, she seemed destined to be a short-lived phenomenon. The daughter of a comedian who came to fame with a big assist from MySpace and hails from England, home to the most fickle music press on the planet? If she held…

It’ll probably take Mastodon fans a while to warm up to Crack the Skye. The band’s latest trades some of the brutal crunch associated with albums such as 2004’s Leviathan in favor of an artsier, more intricate sound. Producer Brendan O’Brien, who worked most recently with Bruce Springsteen, pushes the…

Bruce Springsteen is one of a handful of rock musicians to have aged gracefully while also growing as an artist. Instead of burning out and fading away, Springsteen had a remarkable fourteen-year streak of eight great albums, starting with 1973’s Greetings From Asbury Park, N.J. What has made him special…

A crew of Digital Age composers, the Republic Tigers pass around song files like intraband demos, loading them onto ProTools rigs and sculpting massive creations from the initial song chunks. Starting with the hard elements of rock — guitar, drums, bass line, melody — the Kansas City band stacks vocal…

Listening to the Hollyfelds’ Black Heart Blue makes me wish my grandpa was still alive. See, we were always close, but I never gave his music — Hank Williams, Patsy Cline and other classic country, a little bluegrass when he was feeling spry — a chance until he was gone…

On its debut, the Bronze sets itself apart from the other bands drawing similar inspiration from the fusion of sludgy, heavy rock and thrash. Mixed in with the undeniable bite of these songs is a playfulness that suggests these guys are as much into having fun as they are into…

Danny One Shoe and Deep Rawk Dave, this Council’s members, come by their old-school sound honestly. They’ve been making Mile High hip-hop since 1989, and instead of mimicking the latest production flavor, they stick with what they know and love. Example: “Movement of Thought,” which opens with wiki-wiki scratching and…

It might have taken Bonnie Lowdermilk a little more than a decade to release the followup to her previous album with the Fred Hersch Trio, but Up to Now was well worth the wait. With help from some of the area’s finest players, including Mark Simon, Ken Walker and Greg…

Among the first original songs penned by Black Kids frontman Reggie Youngblood were birthday tributes meant to impress girls who’d gotten a rise out of him, so to speak — but, he admits with a laugh, “that method has never worked for me” when it came to hooking up. So…

This year marks drummer Bill Goodwin’s fiftieth as a professional musician. During the past 35 years, he’s performed with, recorded with and produced albums for legendary alto saxophonist Phil Woods in addition to working with Bill Evans, Dexter Gordon, Gary Burton and Keith Jarrett. Goodwin also played on Tom Waits’s…

Techno has experienced a fantastic resurgence in the past few years, with new movements within the genre and new artists pushing the previously neglected style to the forefront of the dance-music world. At the vanguard of that movement is Gui Boratto, a Brazilian-born superstar, who’s making techno history and changing…

As pointed out in yesterday’s Record Store Day preview, which focused on Vetiver, Sub Pop Records has kept the art of the jukebox 45 alive for two decades-plus — generally with assistance from actual bands. As for Flight of the Conchords, the duo is sort-of actual, sort-of not. But the…

Recognize the dudes pictured above? If you do, then you’re probably pretty stoked right now. That’s right — Built to Spill will be headlining this year’s Showcase. Hold on. There’s more… you know we always have more than one act on the mainstage, right? Well, how about some Mudhoney? (No,…

The Auraria Students Against Poverty have partnered with Denver’s Road Home and the Denver VOICE for “Heading Home,” a benefit concert featuring Colorado artists. The show, which is slated to take place on Thursday, April 30, at the Oriental Theatre, features hip-hop trio 3 the Hardway and Achille Lauro (who’ll…