God only knows what anyone loafing around Arlington, Virginia-based Inner Ear Studios thought upon hearing playbacks of Jets to Brazil’s just-released second album, Four Cornered Night. This space has been the recording home to bands such as Fugazi, Bluetip, the defunct Jawbox (whose former frontman, J. Robbins, has produced both…
Despite rock music’s errant attempts to broaden itself with the branching — and stemming, and twigging — of different variations of sound, its evolution is pretty regressive. Particularly with the hybrid music of today, whereupon hip-hop meets metal, metal greets classical, and classical introduces melancholia to improvisational jazz and roots…
The main difference between these discs is that one doesn’t suck nearly as badly as it ought to, while the other does — and then some. In the mondo-suckage category, Bon Jovi’s latest proves nothing other than that the purveyor of some of the most delectable ear candy of the…
The third CD from this pioneer-spirited Canadian fivesome, hand-delivered via the rudimentary indie methods of Pony Express and word of mouth, is just now showing up on a midget’s handful of radio playlists months after its official release date. But who’s counting? “It’s a long climb down from obscurity/So cancel…
Rock music, to no one’s great astonishment, has had a longstanding relationship with pornography. But only recently has this pairing received anything resembling critical attention. Two events in particular prompted this: Kid Rock’s brief-but-public romance with porn star Midori, and Oglio Records’ 1998 album Porn to Rock, which featured the…
Things seem a bit peculiar over at nobody in particular presents, the local promotions house you no doubt recognize from all of those ticket stubs on the floor of your car. Last week, Russ Austin, who was then serving as NIPP’s local booking agent, was informed that his services were…
Elastica, Sunday, September 24, at the Bluebird Theater, with the Meat Puppets, debuted on these shores in 1995 with a self-titled disc/guilty pleasure that had very little to do with what was going on musically at the time. Whereas fellow Brits like those in Oasis and Blur were embracing 60s-and-beyond…
If you frequent upscale coffeehouses or shopping malls or listen to a lot of public radio, its possible that you have heard the music of Darren Curtis Skanson — Friday, September 22, through Sunday, September 24, at FlatIron Crossing — without even realizing it. The classical guitarist, who formerly served…
Go ahead — bite the apple and head to the Garden of Eve Fashion Show, Thursday, September 21, at Sevilla at the Icehouse. The LoDo tapas bar will be transformed into a vine-covered version of Paradise, complete with beautiful women clad in snakeskin pants (and other clothes) from Eve, a…
I hope this doesn’t sound too weird to you,” says local country artist Dustin Bogue, “but if I ever do make it, I want to make a movie about my life and all that I’ve been through. I know this is just the beginning, but my road has been amazing.”…
In this great Era of Irony, when everything is safely played for the underlying joke, it’s refreshing to encounter a literalist. On Four Cornered Night, Jets to Brazil’s second release, singer-songwriter Blake Schwarzenbach attempts to swim upstream against the current cultural phenomenon. He boldly puts himself, and his direct music,…
Mythology tends to obliterate hard work. The progress of John Coltrane through the popular imagination — tenor of his time, transcendentalist, martyr — often fails to acknowledge the agonies of his development. As the troubled saxophonist (Dexter Gordon!) in the exemplary jazz film Round Midnight tells us: “You don’t pick…
Vission’s nickname suggests an old-school hip-hop connection, but there’s nothing remotely Digital Underground-like about this rising DJ’s Humpty dances. As the man charged by Madonna to make “Music” — her latest single — club-friendly, he’s one of the mixologists of the moment, and Shut the Fuck Up shows why. The…
At first blush, Tim Rutili’s five-song EP about disaster, grace, dumb luck and fear of machinery might seem like a cynical prayer for peacenik John Lennon. Consider the hollow, resonating piano of the disc’s opener, “Electric Fence,” and its narrator’s vocal resemblance to the Fab Four’s often acid-tongued martyr: “Jesus…
Christian missionaries have long believed that of the many requirements that must be met on the road to salvation, converting the savage masses is pretty high on the list. Slim Cessna’s Auto Club — whose lyrical preoccupation with the Good Book can be viewed as either a stern insistence on…
Apoptygma Berzerk, Tuesday, September 19, at the Gothic Theatre, with VNV Nation and Noxious Emotion, is proof that Norway has a sinister side thats barely hinted at in all that Viking lore. Bearing a moniker that translates to dead man moving,: the abrasive, beat-heavy industrial band springs from the prolific…
Although theyve played only a handful of gigs to date, the Cool-Rays, Saturday, September 16, at Seven South, with the Down-N-Outs, have nearly perfected a hard-rockin guitar-driven sound thats chock-full of distortion, yet pleasant in a pop sort of way. With influences that include the Ramones, the Kinks, Iggy and…
Those performers who toiled in vaudeville and burlesque circles after the turn of the century knew you had to have a gimmick — hence the introduction of battery-operated lingerie and fetishism to striptease. Around the World in 80 Girls, Saturday, September 16, at the Gothic Theatre, continues the tradition by…
It’s 3 o’clock in the afternoon. Isaac Brock, lead singer, guitarist and lyricist for Modest Mouse, wakes and wipes the sleep syrup from his eyes for the second time today. After a morning spent drinking beer and a mid-afternoon nap, Brock has awakened to discover he has a strange, unattributable…
The Haywoods have one obvious connection to the Front Range music scene: Their debut release, Drinkin’ Cryin’ & Moanin’, appears on Wormtone Records, the Denver label run by rockabilly impresarios (and husband-and-wife team) Kurt and Karen Ohlen. But for Haywoods frontman Chad Silva, the connection to Colorado goes far beyond…
Okay, it may be more than a leeetle hard for most people to believe that the forthcoming album by the Hate Fuck Trio represents a new level of maturity for its members. After all, their latest is called Good Songs to Fuck To, even though, as singer/guitarist/provocateur Sam DeStefano concedes,…
The secret is out. After two years without an American record label to call its own, 16 Horsepower is releasing Secret South on the New York-based major-minor Razor & Tie on Tuesday. Though the release has been circulating and selling well in Europe since April — shortly after David Eugene…
