Music

Though criminally underappreciated, Meshell Ndegeocello, who appears Wednesday, October 30, at the Bluebird Theater, with DJ Sundance Kid, helped lay the foundation for current neo-soul sisters and brothers such as Jill Scott, D’Angelo, Erykah Badu and Floetry. Her latest CD, Cookie: The Anthropological Mixtape, shuns the lush orchestration that defined…

Blind Harvest’s recent CD, Drop the Bomb on Me, blasted the band to the tips of tongues in the local scene, and its live shows have kept people talking. Led by former New Yorker Ken Karnisky and full of foot-stomping funk and gentle jazz jive, the Harvest is a “sensitive…

Goldfish never belonged in the heels of platform shoes. Period. They’d slosh around like poor, lost souls, seasick in tiny drunk tanks of flashing strobe lights, pummeling low-end frequencies and too much loco-motion. At least it was a miserable condition the little fishes shared with their evil captors, the oblivious…

At one point in its history, it was entirely possible that Imperial Teen would forever be associated with the 1999 film Jawbreaker, given the fact that the band is best known for contributing the creepy, stalkerish “Yoo-Hoo” to the movie’s soundtrack. The fact that the group dropped off pop culture’s…

A profile of your average Maybellines fan: thick glasses, cardigan sweater, scuffed-up thrift-store shoes, a back pocket full of half-melted candy, and a record shelf stacked with 45s by Stereolab, Tiger Trap, Heavenly and the Modern Lovers. The Maybellines stick Casio organ tones into buzzy guitar riffs like cards into…

Still Small is an awfully modest title for this disc, which serves as a de facto introduction to one of the most promising acts on the Denver scene. Main Yellow man Scott Kerr is a former member of Five Iron Frenzy, but the music made by him and his fellows…

Red-haired and musically ambidextrous, Marcy Baruch has pole-vaulted into the inner sanctum of Denver-area singer-songwriters. Her debut recording, Clearly, suggests she’s paid the dues to be there. It’s easy to imagine much of the material on Clearly co-opted by aspiring Faiths and Shanias, artists who toil in the gray stylistic…

Funky, jazzy, tribal, swampy. While it’s difficult to hang a tag on the Motet, one thing is clear: The band is enthusiastic. Recorded during a 2002 spring tour, Live begins the same way many of the Motet’s shows kick off, with wow drums and a percussion jam that would feel…

Singer-songwriter Steve Watson crafts clean, concise electric folk-rock ballads that should appeal to fans of Jackson Browne, though it’s the high and dry lonesome prairies of Wyoming that provide inspiration, rather than any crowded stretch of Southern California. Somewhere above the wires, outside the radar and beneath the sonar, the…

Music lovers with an allergy to jam bands can be excused for assuming that they’ll have an adverse reaction to this CD, a live recording cut in Colorado and Oregon. After all, the closing medley of two songs — one of which is played twice — clocks in at a…

Before the ideas of “pop” and “punk” were grafted in unholy union, there were bands that didn’t know there was ever a difference. Add the Hacks to that list. Influenced by the gruff, Oi!-tinged punk of Channel 3 or Sham 69 and the almost conceptual sloppiness of Crimpshrine (whose “Fucked…

Biggie Smalls and Tupac Shakur have been in the news more often recently than they were during their heydays as East and West Coast rap stars, respectively. A Los Angeles Times series and a new movie — each presenting different theories as to who killed Shakur in September 1996 and…

“True love is a blessing/True love is a curse,” begins one song on Johnny Dowd’s latest disc, The Pawnbroker’s Wife, and even though Dowd addresses the highs (largely in past tense), he’s more comfortable scraping emotion’s depths. A discomforting collection of tar-toned tunes, The Pawnbroker’s Wife explores a decaying relationship…

Since the demise of the late, great Foreskin 500, most of Dave Kerr’s appearances before local audiences have found him standing behind a turntable deck and donning a pair of headphones. He’s had informal “residencies” at the Lion’s Lair and the 15th Street Tavern, gigs that were more likely to…

In an interview with Rolling Stone published in June, Taalib Johnson — known to the world as Musiq Soulchild until earlier this year, when he dropped the second half of his nom de plume — was asked if he had groupies even before he made music. “Actually, no,” he replied…

For a long time, Austin-based Spoon was considered one of the most underrated, underappreciated bands working. There are many theories as to what brought about that sorry state of affairs: label neglect, lack of opportunity in a city that brags about its music scene, and the band’s failure to write…

I think it’s hard to pull off actually having feeling in aggressive rock,” says Chris Sorensen, guitarist of the pigeonhole-dodging Denver group Vaux. He and his bandmates were once known as Eiffel, a clean-cut, emo-scented combo that somehow went horribly wrong. Instead of sticking to meek melodies and humble ambitions,…

My friends were skeptical when I told them we’d be spending Saturday night watching a musical about an East German transgendered rock-star wannabe with platinum spaceship hair. It took some not-so-gentle persuasion — not to mention a couple of steins of Hefeweisen at Cafe Berlin — to assure them that…

With public displays of affection all but outlawed in Japan, it’s little wonder that cultural deviance infests the Empire of the Red Sun. Take vending machines that sell pre-worn girls’ underwear, for example. Or ATM machines that greet customers with coy baby talk. Then there’s the complete Japanese antithesis to…

Boulder’s McCloskey Brothers Band crafts a sound that’s apropos of falling leaves, mountain streams and good times at high altitude. Composed of brothers David (banjo) and Todd (mandolin) McCloskey, bassist Steve Roseboom and drummer Dan Menchey, TMBB opens for Strangefolk on Saturday, October 12, at the Bluebird Theater. The outfit…