Photo: Chad Fahnestock visit slide show for more pics Steve Lawler and Audiofly October 18, 2008 Beta Better than: The first/last time I saw Steve Lawler Dance music doesn’t need much to succeed. A steady beat, a killer bassline and something, anything, to serve as an occasional hook and you’re…
Dressy Bessy, the Fire Drills and the Pseudo Dates Bluebird Theater Saturday, October 18, 2008 Better than: listening to it in your headphones When Tammy Ealom started singing about a gal obsessed with the ‘60s in the song “Do You Whisper?” on Saturday night, it was hard not to think…
Relive the weekend’s parties — including Steve Lawler at Beta (above) and other DJ shows — at westword.com/slideshow…
Photo: Aaron Matthews LOCALS ONLY The funny thing about living in Colorado is that you may have superstars right in your own backyard and not even know it. That’s certainly the case with rapper ytCracker. While he’s not widely known in the Colorado hip-hop scene, he’s a beast in “nerdcore,”…
See the slide show M.A.N.D.Y. October 17, 2008 Beta Better than: Most acts with that much superfluous punctuation M.A.N.D.Y.’s entry in the Fabric series has been spending a lot of time on my speakers and headphones, and each listen reveals new reasons to like their style. That can be a…
Conor Oberst and the Mystic Valley Band, with All Smiles and The Like Thursday, October 16, 2008 Ogden Theatre, Denver Better than: Any mystic valley I’ve ever wandered through. First things first: Conor Oberst would like his ring back. The poet laureate of Omaha, Oberst (formerly Bright Eyes) was in…
File under: Whoa! Uh-uh. Really? Cool! Just received word that my good buddy Brian Johnson, who publishes Marquee Magazine and frequently quotes my tossed off line about smoking like it’s my job, has been named as the new publicist for Boulder’s venerable Fox Theatre. Johnson, who will be assuming his…
Photo: James Bludworth Attention distraught, inconsolable fans of the recently departed Breezy Porticos: We’ve just been handed some late-breaking news that might inspire you to stop playing rush hour Frogger in the middle of I-25. It seems the outfit’s erstwhile frontman Andy Falconetti has already begun work on a post-Breezy…
Photo: Sarah Cass Hey, everybody, Chuck Potashner has posted a pair of new tracks on his MySpace page! You might know Chuck from his time in teamAWESOME! — although if you ask us, dude’s just plain awesome, team or no team. While both tunes he’s posted are pretty swell, “Slightly…
Magnetic Fields Boulder Theater Wednesday, October 15, 2008 Better Than: Watching Chihuahuas act in films. While Magnetic Fields’ latest album, Distortion, is coated in layers of reverb drenched Jesus & Mary Chain-inspired fuzz, there was none of that at last night’s show. It was a stripped down acoustic affair, and…
Photo: Jon Solomon Le Loup Stereolab, Monade and Le Loup Tuesday, October 14, 2008 The Gothic Theatre Better Than: Seeing just one Laetitia Sadier project. For whatever reason, my expectations tend to be a lot lower for out of town opening acts touring with national and international bands. Luckily, Le…
Most articles about Dressy Bessy suggest that singer/guitarist Tammy Ealom is as bubbly as the hook-o-rama tunes she pens — and in conversation, her easy laughter and occasional giddiness seem to confirm this impression. But she also displays a steely tone at times, making it clear that despite her fun-loving…
When I was in middle school, I had a Vision Gator skateboard named after Mark “Gator” Rogowski, a superstar skater in the ’80s. The last time I was on that board, I was holding on to the bumper of my friend’s car when I hit a patch of Seventh Avenue…
On first blush, the music these guys make sounds a whole lot like a poppier version of the melodic hardcore we’ve heard in this town for the past decade and a half-plus. One song into the band’s set, though, it dawns on you that what you’re hearing is not just…
Colder Than Fargo has never released a less than excellent record, and Gentlemen Please! is no exception. Displaying a notable level of maturity, the album is marked by songs with surprising depth and inventive textures. Deftly sidestepping subgenres, Fargo tastefully borrows from its influences — particularly on tracks such as…
Robert Betts, aka Recone Helmut, who’s presently splitting his time between Denver and Brooklyn, has been fiddling about with electronics since the ’90s, first with LD-50 and then under the pH-10 banner. But on largely instrumental numbers such as “Serious Delirium,” his formula — heavy grooves interspersed with vocal samples…
Here’s a dirty little critical secret: Many times when reviewers describe an album as being a veteran band’s best since fill-in-the-blank, they remember zilch about the discs that appeared in between. That’s certainly the case for me when it comes to Oasis, which has been stylistically consistent to the point…
You’d be justified in being hostile toward all releases bearing the words “electro-pop” in their description, just for the sheer enormity of hacks working under a genre title that means basically “got ripped in my bedroom and decided I could be an Internet sensation.” But Larytta works the same musical…
Conor Oberst has always been a solo artist despite his reliance upon a handle more suited to a band: Bright Eyes. For that reason, his decision to release his latest album under his name (and to use his moniker for its title as well) doesn’t mean he’s stripping away the…
When her songs first reached the public ear, Kaki King, who shares this bill with the Mountain Goats, seemed on the road to becoming that rarest of birds: a female guitar virtuoso. Albums such as 2004’s Legs to Make Us Longer are built upon complex, primarily acoustic instrumentals in which…
Early on, Matthew Sweet had the good fortune to team up with R.E.M.’s Michael Stipe, as well as with his sister Lynda’s band, Oh-OK. But being a sideman wasn’t really Sweet’s destiny. 1991’s Girlfriend, released at the height of the alt-rock era, made a splash with its superb songwriting, which…
A North Carolina-based outfit intent on keeping the Southern sludge-doom sound of Eyehategod et al. alive, Sourvein hasn’t released a full-length CD since 2002’s The Will to Mangle, but despite revolving-door lineup changes (vocalist Troy Medlin is the only original member left), the band has managed to record three four-song…
