Concerts

DEVOTCHKA @ RED ROCKS AMPHITHEATRE | 9/20/12 DeVotchKa played their first show with the Colorado Symphony in February at Boettcher Concert Hall, moving longtime fans and enthusiasts to a state of tearful and awe-inspiring bliss. Last night, the rare and remarkable collaboration played for a larger audience at Red Rocks…

By Leya Lynnette Goldrush Music Festival is the brainchild of Jake Martin, occasional Backbeat contributor Crawford Philleo and Ryan Pjesky. The three friends all knew each other from going to local shows and writing about experimental music on the internet. At some point, they began exchanging e-mails and hashing out…

Greetings, weekend warriors! Ready to get your groove on? Good. The Dance Card is stacked again this weekend with Skylab 2012: Mission Blackout at the Denver Coliseum with Gareth Emery, Porter Robinson and more, the Crystal Method hits Beta, Sammy Bananas drops by TheHundred party at Beauty Bar, the mysterious…

MY LIFE WITH THE THRILL KILL KULT @ BLUEBIRD THEATER | 9/19/12 It comes as a bit of a shock when people slam into you for the first time after a dozen songs. That’s exactly what happened last night when My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult dialed up “After…

TRAIN @ RED ROCKS AMPHITHEATRE| 9/19/12 Train, the San Francisco band that has been the darlings of radio rock for over a decade, played to a capacity crowd at Red Rocks last night, and if the multigenerational audience’s hoots and screams were any indication, the guys will be welcome back…

Cavem Moetavation knows what it’s like to be hungry. Back when he was a boy still known as Michael Walker III, he endured tough times — and he remembers his dad trying to ease the strain of the situation by making him laugh. “I pull this one on my kids…

StaG (due on Friday, September 21, at Deer Pile) formed when its core members were students in Boulder. Somewhat creatively isolated from other musicians in that town, they became friends with the like-minded Fellow Citizens. During that time, StaG’s sound evolved into spare, catchy melodies that seemed to incandesce to…

Amanda Palmer came to prominence in the early 2000s as one half of the Dresden Dolls. While that band was embraced by goths, its aesthetic was, as Palmer has hinted, more in line with the conceptual musical theater embodied by the work of Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill. In May…

First known to hip-hop audiences outside of Georgia thanks to attention-grabbing cameos on OutKast records, Killer Mike has been a steady presence for a decade, mixing Southern street anthems and political consciousness on a handful of records and a laundry list of features. His collaboration with producer El-P, the 2012…

“SWANS ARE NOT DEAD.” That was the post on Michael Gira’s MySpace page in 2010, stating plainly the guitarist/singer/songwriter’s intent to resurrect his old group, which emerged in the early 1980s from the same New York no-wave scene that spawned kindred noise-rock spirits Sonic Youth before disbanding in 1997. Since…

Disgusted with the re-election of George W. Bush, in 2005 Firewater ringleader Tod A left New York — where he’d lived for the previous two decades and where he’d fronted Cop Shoot Cop — and headed out of the country on a three-year journey that took him to the Middle…

CrazyWorld begins like a vivid nightmare. The apocalyptic tone of Grizz’s lyrics, along with the urgency in his voice, immediately raises the stakes of the album. Grizz points out the damning omens he finds around him but provides no easy solutions; it’s a bleak picture. Then, near the halfway point,…

Save for a rousing take on Duke Ellington’s “Caravan,” Leslie Brown’s Tenderly is an unhurried affair — and that’s as it should be, because the singer’s relaxed delivery is suited to songs that are slow and slinky, such as opener “He Must Be in Love” and the gorgeous title track…

With the influx of soulless rap overtaking the airwaves, it’s no surprise that passionate MCs are answering back with deep, soulful interpretations that recall the genre’s golden era. Made Up Minds’ latest release, Of Sound Mind, is the perfect example with its resounding beats, zealous flows and animated wordplay. Zet…

The first release in nine years from experimental jazz outfit Perry Weissman 3, 3 seems less abstract and slightly more organic than some of the band’s earlier music. The dissonance at the end of “Summer Circus” fits in with a possible covert theme suggested in titles like “Nobody Could Have…

Dragonette has been hot on the underground pop scene for years, but it wasn’t until last year that the band came charging onto the radio with global party-starter “Hello,” a collaboration with Martin Solveig. Almost overnight, the outfit — lead singer Martina Sorbara; her husband, multi-instrumentalist Dan Kurtz; and drummer…

Stenchman is one of several monikers that producer, DJ and sometimes MC Jack Carter uses; you might also know him as Henchman, or as half of Suspicious Stench, alongside Suspect. He’s dabbled in dub-style sounds since his early days of production, which involved a lot of drum-and-bass, and his musical…

2CHAINZ @ OGDEN THEATRE | 9/17/12 The moment 2Chainz took the stage, it became very obvious why this show was moved from the Bluebird Theater to the Ogden at the last minute. When the ATL rapper finally placed the mike to his lips and dropped his verse from “Mercy,” the…

The Salty Dog is slated to open in early October in the former Mo’s space, 1037 Broadway, which closed last January after a two-year-plus run. The dog-friendly sports tavern will serve Colorado craft brews and be a Colorado State University alumni bar. Owner Justin Henry says via Facebook that every…

PAPER DIAMOND @ OGDEN THEATRE | 9/14/12 After years of testing out the waters of dance music, Alex Botwin’s solo project Paper Diamond is ready to take it to the next level. At the Ogden Theatre this past weekend, the producer debuted his massive new light show, along with music…

93.3’s THE BIG GIG @ RED ROCKS AMPHITHEATRE| 9/16/12 Future rock stars of America, when they’re doing their homework by watching all the YouTube vids they can find of fabulous frontmen lathering up a crowd, should instead go catch a Hives show to see how it’s done. Like a rock…