Concerts

It’s about damn time this year ended. But before it does, we’re taking a look back at your favorite stories of 2009. Here, the ten most popular concert reviews from the Backbeat blog…

It’s about damn time this year ended. But before it does, we’re taking a look back at your favorite stories of 2009. Here, the ten most popular concert slideshows…

Update: By now, you’ve probably heard but just in case you haven’t, Epilogues took home this year’s Hometown for the Holidays crown at Andrew’s On Lincoln this past Friday night. Beyond bragging rights for the next year, the act won three days of recording time at the Blasting Room in…

See more photos on the slideshow page. 3OH!3, Meese, The Photo Atlas, The Pirate Signal Saturday, December 19, 2009 Fillmore Auditorium Better than: Sampling the diversity of Denver’s homegrown musical styles at four different venues. Anyone looking for an in-person illustration of the range of the Mile High city’s musical…

The Legendary River Drifters w/Tin Horn Prayer and Broken Spirits Friday, December 18th, 2009 Old Curtis St. Bar, Denver Better Than: A show where everyone was trying too hard to get that Americana sound. A judgmental person might see Tin Horn Prayer and think, “Oh boy, another band of punkers…

And the Christmas songs just keep cropping up from the scene. Over the past week, we’ve spotlighted a pair of original holiday-oriented tunes from the Mansfields and Dressy Bessy. This one’s a cover from a newer act out of Loveland called The Nurses doing a faithful version of the standard…

We would hate for you to miss out on all the awesome that happens every weekend in our fair city, so we’ve decided to run down three of the best shows in one easy-to-swallow post, with video and audio. Tell us — and the rest of the world — what…

Dismembered: We’re guessing that Swollen Members tour manager BJ smith and the three other crew guys he was traveling with earlier this week are no doubt breathing easy today after surviving a freak accident in Colorado Springs that could’ve been fatal. Smith and company were in the Springs making their…

I have to stress,” Patrick McGuire offers, “that I have great Christian friends, and the last thing I want to do is say that their faith is invalid. But I think sometimes in this country we take Christianity in like we buy new cars.” This sentiment is something the Flashbulb…

For the past decade, Ami Benari has run Tarantula Billiards (1456 Champa Street) with a simple business plan: Make a small profit by encouraging long-term relationships. Amenities like free pool have helped attract a loyal following, he says; some customers have frequented Tarantula pretty much since it opened in an…

An all-local bill at the Fillmore is so rare it’s practically apocryphal. Transforming from something of a joke between college buddies into one of the hottest acts in the country, 3OH!3 is one of the few recent local acts with the draw and clout to put together such a show…

Before Desperate Hours, Matt Turner and Todd Seres played together in Arizona indie-rock band FiveSpeed, of which the former is still a member. That band recalls the poppy, melodic punk rock that came to define emo in the late ’90s — before it began its prolonged dive into self-parody. With…

Aja Volkman is the pretty face, beating heart and screaming soul of Nico Vega. On stage, it is possible to underestimate her as delicate for about three seconds before she bares her teeth, sheds the smile and cuts loose that voice. She’s head-cold smooth on the soft stuff and sort…

While Kentucky-based Ben Sollee is a classically trained cellist, he’s also steeped in the vintage soul of guys like Otis Redding, Wilson Pickett and Sam Cooke. On last year’s excellent Learning to Bend, in fact, Sollee took Cooke’s “A Change Is Gonna Come” and twisted the lyrics a bit, put…

Like a lot of people, James Pants is mining early R&B-inflected synth pop and hip-hop for sonic inspiration. But for all his heisting of tricks from Afrika Bambaataa, Grandmaster Flash, ESG and Liquid Liquid, Pants takes what some might consider a retro sound and reworks it using modern technology that…

On this three-song EP, the Getdown! — made up of singer/bassist Dustin Lawlor and drummer Tom Nelson — literally wears its influences on its sleeves with two covers by bands that helped inspire the duo’s fuzz-drenched garage sound. Lawlor and Nelson take Thee Milkshakes’ “For She,” strip out the original’s…

This is the eleventh release of the year for Alphabets, aka Colin Ward. With a release corresponding to each month, Ward explored whatever musical ideas came to mind, with varying results. Nov09 is among the strongest of the 2009 releases. Hashing together white noise, abused electronic noisemakers, melodic synth lines…

Take a guitar part that sounds so clean it might as well be a synth. No need for the actual thing, though, because next you dab on some aching piano tinkling, written by someone not just classically trained, but classically inspired. Stick those in the plateaus between walls made of…

More than three years after releasing their self-titled debut, the Trampolines return with Between the Lines, a solid album that finds the band completely reinvigorated. The seamless vocals of Chris Stakes and Mark Sundermeier again take center stage, but this time around, the Tramps inject a little more jangle into…

Shortly after Suzanne Magnuson and Olivia Quintana formed Malas Semillas (“Bad Seeds” in Spanish) three years ago, they brought in Cyrus Greene, a naturally good blues guitarist who used to play in the punk band PBR Street Gang, and Curtis Wallach, who’d played drums in the Taints. When the group…

Starting out as the musical equivalent of an interlude from the Boulder-based noise-rock band Mansfield Ghost, Gangcharger is helmed by its lyricist and primary songwriter, Ethan Ward. Upon first hearing the band, comparisons to Sonic Youth, Mission of Burma and Set and Setting-era Bardo Pond might seem obvious. Even as…