When the Emmas played their final show in June 2006, this town lost one of its longest-running, most entrepreneurial and prolific punk acts. Almost immediately, though, singer-guitarist Lisa Cook and bassist E-N Pumpernickel filled the void by forming Turbo Knife Fight. Building upon the Emmas’ raw, simple, elemental punk, Turbo…

What made so many of the rap-rock bands of the past fifteen years so risible is the fact that their music often wasn’t a genuine mixing of genres. In recent years, however, artists like Why? and M.I.A. have employed sounds from a wide variety of styles to craft hip-hop rooted…

Most well-known Viking rock has come out of Scandinavia. Long before Mayhem murderously imploded, though, Poland’s Vader played some of the darkest, most brutally intense death-metal thrash to ever emerge from behind the Iron Curtain. In the early days, the act promoted itself through an underground network of tape trading…

BJ Serekis, former drummer of the Bedraggled and the Skivies, has finally issued the followup to his 2003 release, The Colors Bleed Through. While that record was a disturbing, claustrophobic portrait of a mind and soul consuming itself, Eat My Brain is about reaching out into the world rather than…

Once “Mad” Max Rockatansky became an action-movie archetype of stoic masculinity and righteous anger, some heavy band was bound to reference him in its name. One of the area’s better post-stoner rock bands staked claim to that moniker, only it knocked off the e at the end before claiming it…

Recalling the effervescent lounge of Margo Guryan and the early, breathy songs of Françoise Hardy, Michigan’s Saturday Looks Good to Me has long chased the perfect-pop muse. Spawned in songwriter Fred Thomas’s Ann Arbor basement as a recording project for a label that only released albums by imaginary bands, the…

The Tarmints’ exhilarating dynamism and hysteria-inducing percussive textures have always been their signature, but this record shows that the brutally intense act doesn’t just exorcise the dark side of the human psyche. If anything, Thirteen Dead Cats bursts with vitality and is perhaps the most musical of the band’s releases…

While it could be argued that Canadian post-rock was birthed in Montreal, its artistic ferment resides in Toronto. Whereas Godspeed You! Black Emperor perfected the art of writing sweeping epics of sound and fury set to experimental cinema, Do Make Say Think takes a more impressionistic approach. Mixing electronic, electric,…

Those more used to the blues-rock buffoonery of Machine Gun Blues and the breezy pop-rock leanings of the Laylights may be taken aback by The Horace Van Vaughn (due at the hi-dive this Thursday, November 8). While this all-instrumental outfit shares membership with both of those bands, there is no…

One of the last places you’d expect atmospheric and uplifting music to emerge would be Montrose, Colorado — but that’s where Cody Crump resided until a recent move to Denver. The First Movement is his debut solo release. As a member of post-rock band Edison Gale, Crump honed his ear…

John Vanderslice and Flying Saucer Attack proved that home recordings could be just as layered and rich as anything recorded in a “real” studio. The Helio Sequence’s expansive sound comprises engulfing atmospheres, swirling melodies and propulsive rhythms, and the band’s psychedelic flavorings lend the music a deliciously heady quality reminiscent…

From the opening cut of Wake-Up Time, Iuengliss’s latest effort, the act invokes the feeling of rising on a sunny day in early spring, after the snows have subsided and the burning heat of the summer is still weeks away. Fittingly titled, the disc captivates the imagination while simultaneously refreshing…

The first recorded reference to the silvery cord that connects the physical world to the world of spirits appears in the twelfth book of Ecclesiastes. This unifying of seemingly incompatible essences is also present in the music of the Silver Cord, one of the few bands to make the aesthetic…

The music of Black Moth Super Rainbow seems custom-fitted for a Sofia Coppola film. It has that daydreamy, otherworldly sound favored by acts like Air and Broadcast, with low-end buoyancy propelling sparkly, soaring waves of sound — sort of like Stereolab without the political agenda and driving, droney guitars. And…

On stage, Weird Turn Prose resembles the average post-slacker-phase indie-rock band. The players look relatively clean-cut, despite their informal style. They also seem to have taken the time to actually learn how to play their instruments — so well, in fact, that there isn’t a poorly executed moment. While it’s…

The frenetic pace of hardcore, the combination of outrage and adrenaline, isn’t conducive to longevity. Fact is, most punkers mellow as they age. They take “real” jobs, get married, have kids — in other words, they become the people they hated when they were young and raging. This didn’t happen…

Upon moving to Denver from Detroit in the ’90s, Jim Paul joined the Christines. And when that atmospheric power-pop band moved to San Francisco — where, in true Denver fashion, it broke up shortly thereafter — Paul found himself drawn to New York City. He headed to Brooklyn, a place…

If rap was the new punk in the late ’80s when Public Enemy, NWA and Boogie Down productions came along to give it a real edge, then the latest incarnation of experimental electronic pop may just be the new indie rock. Thundercade (due at the Meadowlark on Friday, October 12),…

The whispery, fairy-tale tone of the Slow Crash’s music is deceptively fey. Akin to the intense chamber rock of famed Fort Collins outfit Matson Jones, the sound is decidedly darker and would never be confused with more traditional indie rock. With a multi-instrumentalist singer who’s an amalgam of Johnette Napolitano…