Tracing the lineage that Black Sleep of Kali evokes on this record isn’t all that difficult. Listen closely and there’s some of that hard-edged sludginess of Black Sabbath, the razory psychedelia and inexorable sway of Sleep and the progressive drive of Isis across these five songs. But Kali makes it…
Sian Alice Group’s dusky, contemplative songwriting is intense and vibrantly electric, with layers of percussion, non-traditional and otherwise. Although this avant-garde soul outfit borrows liberally from the aesthetics of electronica, jazz and experimental rock, it has crafted a sound all its own — like a band of the recent past…
Andy Monley isn’t exactly a household name, but maybe he should be. He’s definitely made the Denver music scene a lot more interesting for more than two decades. As a guitarist for pioneering local bands Jux County and Velveteen Monster, Monley showed an impressive range as a guitarist and songwriter…
Bryan Adams Saturday, September 26, 2009 Paramount Theatre Better Than: A sonically faithful retro-tour performance. Bryan Adams was definitely a rock star when I was in high school, so I didn’t know what to expect from this acoustic performance. It could have been a ploy to make some cash on…
Reminiscent of noise-jazz-spazz rockers Total Shutdown and the Low Down, Crack Magic also seems steeped in the abbreviated brutality of hardcore and early screamo. Opening with the abrasive “Missed Connections,” the band sounds as though its singer were engaged in some kind of weird BDSM asphyxiation play with a psychotic…
On the surface, the music of Red Wire Black Wire sounds as though frontman Doug Walters grew up on a steady diet of the Human League’s landmark album, Dare! A closer listen, however, reveals roots in Grandmaster Flash-era hip-hop, with an emphasis on fluid bass lines and playfully melodic synth…
Performing in the United States for the first time at the Vendetta Festival in Denver, Luxembourg’s Rome has caught the attention of fans of neo-folk and lushly dark music in general. Jerome Reuter is often compared to Leonard Cohen for his deep, resonant voice and the band to Angels of…
Led by Tripp Nasty and Zach Spencer, Bongo Fury (due at Glob on Tuesday, September 29) combines the fascination that Nasty and Spencer share for traditional Middle Eastern music and the folk music of northern India. Never amplified vocally or instrumentally, this project uses natural sounds and dynamics to weave…
Bryan Adams is on the short list of the most successful and popular of rock singers to emerge in the ’80s. The Canadian-born Adams has had a string of hits in the last three decades, while 1983’s Cuts Like a Knife and 1994’s Reckless are albums that became part of…
Sunny Day Real Estate, The Jealous Sound Monday, September 21, 2009 Ogden Theater, Denver Better Than: Most of the descendents of this style of music have been. Sunny Day Real Estate’s current tour is a bit of a reunion tour for the Jealous Sound from Los Angeles as well. The…
Spoke Shaver, Big Timber and DualisticsSaturday, September 19, 2009 Larimer Lounge Better Than: I would have thought possible. Before this show I never liked Dualistics. All of its stage antics and music seemed contrived and derivative to a fault. But it had been a long time since I’d seen the…
Tackling the concerns of adulthood with more lyrical maturity and originality than most bands, Quillion proves it is possible to express one’s pain and disappointment without a vulgar display of melodrama. To the Hilt’s opener, “Take a Bow,” is a disarmingly delicate number with bell tones accenting the rhythms and…
Although now based in Los Angeles, Mayer Hawthorne (born Andrew Cohen) grew up in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Instead of following the route of proto-punk rock bands like the Stooges or co-opting the latter-day bluesy garage rock of the Dirtbombs, Hawthorne embraced the soulful sounds and perfect melodies produced under Berry…
The pedigree of Autolux reads a bit like the alternative-rock should-have-beens: Guitarist Greg Edwards was in the influential space-rock band Failure, and drummer Carla Azar was in the pop-rock outfit Ednaswap, whose song “Torn” became a hit when covered by Natalie Imbruglia. With Autolux, Edwards and Azar, along with bassist…
Based on song titles alone, you’d think Cougar Legs (due at the hi-dive on Saturday, September 19) was some kind of wiseacre Marcel Duchamp-esque joke perpetrated by pretentious artists. The act’s music, however, is more like that beautifully post-apocalyptic dirge that somehow ended up in a horrible science-fiction movie like…
Brooklyn’s the Depreciation Guild has spent the last few years fusing elements of synth pop, dream pop and experimental electronic music into an indistinguishable amalgamation of the band’s wide-ranging sonic influences. In reviews and profiles of the band, much has been made of the group’s use of an old piece…
Often compared to New Wave bands of the early ’80s — especially the Human League –Brooklyn, New York’s Red Wire Black Wire, uses synthesizers as a primary compositional instrument. Described by the New Music Express as having an icy sound, the immediacy and sincerity of Doug Walters’s vocals helps the…
The Glitch Mob started out as a Los Angeles-based DJ collective that pooled its collective talent to make a more collaborative music with expanded sonic possibilities. As individual artists, Ooah, edIT and Boreta have released solo albums of cutting edge electronic music but it is as a team that they…
Like the Smiths and Teenage Fanclub before them, the Pains of Being Pure at Heart write songs that appeal to the spirit of innocence, exuberance and emotional fragility of young adulthood. The New York band’s sparkling guitar work, headlong pacing and propulsive rhythms recall the music of C86 bands such…
The debut EP from Panal S.A. de C.V. is an all-instrumental affair that blends electronic pop with experimental rock. Recalling the expansive progressions and sunlit melodies of Melrose-era Tangerine Dream from the first track, Cortometraje also contains undercurrents of post-Brotherhood New Order in the keyboard arrangements on tracks like “Linda…
Though often cited as being instrumental in forging the mid-’90s, post-hardcore aesthetic that was the second wave of emo, many of the Get Up Kids’ latter-day critics forget that the band wrote pop songs worth imitating. And it just so happens that the airwaves of the last decade have been…
Ever since Jack and Meg White reimagined the raucous, bluesy two-piece of the pioneering Flat Duo Jets, anyone flying that musical configuration gets compared to the White Stripes. Dustin Lawlor and Tom Nelson, who make up The Getdown! (due at the Larimer Lounge on Thursday, September 10), clearly reach beyond…
