Wilco start new label, begin work on new album

When we spoke with Wilco guitarist Nels Cline a few weeks ago for a profile that previewed his gig at Dazzle, we mainly talked about the Nels Cline Singers’ latest effort, Initiate. But right before concluding our chat, we asked Cline about Wilco working on new material. He told us…

Summit Music Hall will soon sound off in LoDo

When Soda Jerk Presents took over the former Bash at 1902 Blake Street, the concert promotion company changed the name to Summit Music Hall and turned the front section into a space where local acts have been playing since May 1. Now Soda Jerk is ready to debut Summit’s main…

Vixens Ball at Oriental Theater

It’s too bad the term “women in music” came to be synonymous with relatively safe mainstream artists of the ’90s. Or, more to the point, that it’s even necessary to point out the presence of women in music. Fortunately, the Vixens Ball (Friday, July 9, and Saturday, July 10, at…

Justin Bieber

It’s a success story fifteen-year-olds dream of: A big-shot producer randomly clicks on your YouTube demo, and — boom — you’re whisked off to Atlanta to record with Usher. While Justin Bieber’s pairing with R&B moguls might be a little strange — seriously, it’s weird to hear his prepubescent boys’ choir…

Prayers for Atheists

Rhode Island’s Prayers for Atheists is a band with incendiary political convictions, the kind that can land dudes in jail. At the 2008 Republican National Convention, vocalist Jared Paul was arbitrarily arrested while covering the convention for quarterly publication The Agenda, and he and the rest of his bandmates have…

KRS-One

KRS-One (aka Lawrence Parker) was the sole constant member of Boogie Down Productions, whose 1987 album, Criminal Minded, is often cited as the record that introduced gangsta rap to an unsuspecting world. But BDP’s raps were always as literate as they were gritty, and the act quickly evolved beyond its…

Austin Lucas

A road warrior who has crisscrossed continents in his quest for true troubadour-hood, Austin Lucas is the rare songwriter who seems buoyed by the road rather than beaten down by it. His intricately picked yet propulsive folk is as accomplished as it is effortless, and Lucas’s rough edges — honed…

Heeler

Somewhere in Denver there’s a backyard barbecue pit full of steak drippings, cigarette butts, smashed beer bottles and a couple decades’ worth of kerosene-soaked charcoal. From those rancid, grimy ashes rose Heeler. The band’s second CD, Release the Snake!, is a meaty slab of rock and roll that tastes as…

Shygone

“Yeti in the City,” this album’s opener, sounds like its authors have been listening to a lot of dubstep, experimental electronic music and underground hip-hop while scoring a really weird episode of Monk. The production might be a bit slick for some, but there’s nothing wrong with technological competence, and…

John McVey

While some people can bang out an album in a weekend, it took singer-songwriter John McVey a decade to make his third solo effort, Unpredictable. In between producing and engineering hundreds of other people’s albums at Boulder’s Coupe Studios, he took his time crafting the songs and recording them. Not…

Bad

In this postmodern age, it’s sometimes hard to tell the difference between a brilliant, faithfully executed parody and the real thing (see: Die Antwoord) — and that’s exactly the case with Bad’s self-titled debut. What is certain is that the album packs such a broad range of rock clichés into…

Lust-Cats of the Gutters have a few new Love interests

Lust-Cats of the Gutters is a band whose roots are planted firmly in the same fertile soil as acts like Bikini Kill, Bratmobile and the Frumpies. Fiercely independent, the band has found itself being touted by Courtney Love and purportedly being courted by a certain Seattle-based record label. Even though…

These Desciples follow their own dread-rock template

The band calls its music “dread rock,” and while the act does pay fairly direct homage to Brad Nowell in the occasional punk-rock breakdown or Big-Muff-shredding guitar solo, Desciples, at its core, really plays straight-up reggae. And from the downbeat, percussion-heavy grooves to the dub-influenced, liberal use of delay, you’d…

Hatcha at Cervantes’ Masterpiece Ballroom

Back in the days before anyone had ever spoken the word “dubstep,” when the nascent genre was little more than a weird trend cropping up on the B-sides of two-step singles, Hatcha was there. As a buyer and, later, A&R man for Big Apple Records, he put some of the…

Candy Claws interview on Pitchfork

Well how do you like that? As we post this, yet another Colorado-based act is getting prime exposure on Pitchfork. That’s what we’re talking about. Within the past month, no less than four local artists — including Pictureplane, Woodsman, Tennis and Candy Claws — have been prominently featured on the…

Wovenhand’s David Eugene Edwards interviewed for Czech radio

Between fronting 16 Horsepower and Wovenhand, David Eugene Edwards has spent a fair amount of time touring Europe. Before opening for Tool recently on seven dates, including Red Rocks last week, Wovenhand was in Europe once again, where Edwards was interviewed on Radio Waves in Prague, Czech Republic…

Matador at 21: Anyone got a spare, oh, $700 or so?

As it happens, we don’t have a spare $700 or so laying around. Boy, if we did, though, you wouldn’t really have to be the betting type to wager where we’d be on Friday, October 1 through Sunday, October 3. No contest: Matador at 21 in Las Vegas. Have you…