With pop punk having pretty much become a parody of itself these days, it’s difficult to be surprised by anything that anyone playing that kind of music has to offer. So how is it that a bunch of kids from Seattle got together to form a melodic, poppy punk band…
London’s Big Pink borrowed its name from the Band’s classic debut album and set about producing music possessed of vast, swirling horizons and heady dynamics. The record’s introspective, declarative lyrics are like beacons in the hazy early-morning soundscape. In that respect, the Big Pink is reminiscent of British dream-pop bands…
Playing unvarnished, catchy tunes as though there had never been any interruption in the development of that strain of punk called riot grrrl, Lust-Cats of the Gutters (due Wednesday, November 25, at Denver Creative Co-Op Studio, 425 Lincoln Street) sound like the Shaggs without the perversely eccentric sense of melody…
Cannibal Corpse didn’t invent death metal, but it has become one of the genre’s definitive bands. Forming in Buffalo, New York in 1988, Cannibal Corpse quickly came to prominence due to its decidedly brutal music and horrifically detailed lyrics to match. From the beginning, Cannibal’s album covers were a source…
Six Months to Live, deadbubbles and Dario Rosa Saturday, November 14, 2009 Meadowlark Better Than: The second big snowstorm of the season outside. Opening act deadbubbles set the pace for the rest of the show with an energetic set of rock and roll full of more than its fair share…
Isaiah “Ikey” Owens is better know these days as the keyboardist of the Mars Volta. His versatile and creative musicianship, though, was honed in the ’90s when he played with Sublime and later Long Beach Dub Allstars. Ikey first played with Omar Rodriguez-Lopez and Cedric Bixler-Zavala in the dub project…
Having released three albums in four years, Six Months to Live has been one of the most prolific of poppy rock and roll bands out of Denver. Formed by former members Mr. Tree and the Wingnuts, Six Months’ membership has included Mendel Rabinovitch of Cabaret Diosa and Zack Littlefield of…
Free Moral Agents is an experimental pop band led by Isaiah “Ikey” Owens, who’s better known these days for being the live keyboard player in the Mars Volta. A veteran musician, Owens has been a member of Sublime and the Long Beach Dub Allstars, and his diverse talents have led…
Nightmarishly fragmented noise rock wracks the six tracks of Hot White’s debut. Clearly taking some artistic cues from the likes of Lightning Bolt, Chinese Stars and 31G artists in general, this album might sound like thornily organized chaos. Darren Kulback’s powerful and creatively precise drumming grounds each song even as…
Memphis songwriter Rich Crook used to be in the Reatards, and Lover!, his latest outfit, reflects a bit of that group’s synthesis of electronic music and rock. But with Lover!, it sounds like Crook and company have learned a great deal from Scottish power pop, ’60s psych-garage and Big Star…
Vital Remains, from Providence, Rhode Island, has been around for twenty years. As pioneers of death metal, these guys aren’t often among the first to be named by fans of the genre. However, the band’s signature mixture of melodic yet punishing music blurs the line between death and black metal…
In its awkward early phase, it was hard to tell if Six Months to Live (due at the Meadowlark on Saturday, November 14) was an Eric Clapton parody or the real thing. The bizarre publicity photos (see above) that made the band look like the star students of a multi-level…
Hearts of Palm, To Be Eaten Friday, November 6, 2009 hi-dive Better Than: One of the best bands of recent years quietly slipping into history. To Be Eaten probably seemed like an odd pairing for this first of two final Hearts of Palm shows, except this band plays its music…
Hearts of Palm started out in the winter of 2006 as a pop song writing collaboration between former Roper and Black Black Ocean guitarist Stephen Till and longtime friend Nathan McGarvey. Within the following year, the project expanded to eight plus members and the band’s sound went from a spare…
Jonny Woodrose & the Broken-Hearted Woodpeckers started out as a solo for writer Jonson Kuhn. His lively, wiseacre perspective on relationships and trying to get by in this world attracted attention early on, and he was ultimately joined by the band’s current lineup, including guitarist Charles Kern, bassist Brian Payne…
Snuggle puts in two tracks of snarly, refreshingly unpolished, melodic punk with the archly defiant “Commercial” and the edgy and almost spooky “Aces.” No High Fives to Bullshit’s “Drawing a Blank” is a dense and dynamic slab of melodic hardcore. But the real gem here is No High Fives’ “Colt…
Skinny Puppy started in 1982 as a side project of cEvin Key’s old band, Images in Vogue. With Puppy becoming a full-time concern in 1986, Key and collaborators Nivek Ogre, Dwayne Goettel and Dave Ogilvie spent the next several years putting out seven landmark releases, including Rabies and Too Dark…
When the critically acclaimed dream-pop band Absinthe Blind broke up in 2003, four of its members started a band called Orphans that would ultimately become Headlights. Under its current moniker, the foursome largely departed from the drifty, melancholy sounds of its previous project. Retaining the glittery grandeur that made Absinthe’s…
When Hearts of Palm started out as Nathan & Stephen — a collaboration between Stephen Till of Black Black Ocean and longtime friend Nathan McGarvey — no one would have guessed that those spare songs would take on a new life once the project more than tripled its membership roster…
In the short time Jonny Woodrose & the Broken-Hearted Woodpeckers have been together, the outfit has grown from being a bit of a joke band vehicle for singer Jonson Kuhn’s humorous storytelling into one of the most engaging and fun Americana bands in the scene. The project’s early shows consisted…
The Siren Project Sunday, November 1, 2009 The Church Better Than: The Project has been in a long time. Having a show at the Church is a bit of a losing proposition not because it’s not that a cool place to have a show — although it’s a beautiful building…
In the early 1990s, Andre Lucero, Doug Seaman, Tony Morales and Elizabeth Rose formed the popular experimental-rock band Sympathy F. Seaman later went on to a brief stint in Worm Trouble, and Morales played in the Kalamath Brothers with Kevin Soll of 16 Horsepower. Lucero and Seaman also performed as…
