Concerts

Watching DeVotchKa take the stage at Monolith on Saturday night in front of a half-empty Red Rocks Amphitheatre was a bit deflating. But by the third or fourth song, my disappointment had turned into indignation, and I felt like I’d gotten a brass knuckle junk punch from my best friend…

Punk rock hit the musical world like a bomb in the mid-’70s, and the reverberations of that artistic eruption were felt even in places like Aurora, Colorado. In 1978, Aurora was an incredibly boring town, so it comes as no surprise that a few pioneering young men put together a…

The members of Cocktail Revolution, who’ll celebrate their new disc’s release on Saturday, September 20, at Jazz@Jack’s, didn’t pick up their instruments yesterday. Saxophonist Jon Hegel and drummer Zach Pietlock are part of Judge Roughneck, Chad Aman plays keyboards for Byron Shaw Projex and Artie Moore, one of three contributing…

It’s refreshing to hear a band that’s not trying to be clever or more innovative than its peers. That said, the straightahead power pop of the Fire Drills (featuring former Westword scribe Jason Heller) is a breath of fresh air. Cheap Lies, with its bouncy rhythms and sharp riffing, disproves…

“I think I’ll drink myself into a coma/And I’ll take every way out I can find/But morphine, codeine, whiskey they won’t alter/The way I feel now death is not around.” Those lines, from Spiritualized’s latest, Songs in A & E, pretty well sum up the two topics England’s most heralded…

Few of those who attended Phantom Planet’s June gig at the Fillmore in support of Panic at the Disco probably expected much from the band. The combo’s known — if it’s known at all — as the group that once featured Rushmore star Jason Schwartzman on drums (he left the…

Black Tide, appearing with Bleeding Through and Bullet for My Valentine, is almost literally a baby band: Guitarist/singer Gabriel Garcia doesn’t even qualify for a driver’s license yet, and none of his bandmates has reached legal drinking age. Still, they’re old enough to know better than to venture too far…

Chrome was one of the most influential experimental bands, presaging the harsh, angular, mechanistic songwriting that would become industrial music. The act’s paranoid vision of a dystopian world expressed itself in sounds that recalled the late-’60s psychedelic rock of the 13th Floor Elevators shot through with a dark, sinister electricity…

For a buzz band, Blitzen Trapper is extremely modest. Instead of trying to overwhelm listeners with their awesomeness, singer-songwriter Eric Earley and crew create casually adventurous tracks that draw from American music in ways that seem both familiar and fresh. “Sleepy Time in the Western World” opens the album with…

No one really knows what to do with CSS. Not Sub Pop, not Apple, and certainly not proponents of, uh, “nu-rave.” I guess we’re supposed to dance, guiltily. “Let’s Reggae All Night” has a nice locked-in squelch to it, but I wish the line I heard as “Let’s break the…

Lindsey Buckingham is the creative force behind Fleetwood Mac, a group that remains a big concert draw and a steady seller when it comes to albums new and old. Indeed, Rumours, released in 1977, is among the most popular long-players ever released, with worldwide sales in excess of thirty million…

Alejandro Escovedo has made a career out of taking chances. He started in punk with the Nuns, joined cowpunks Rank & File, and formed the country-oriented True Believers with his brothers before going solo. Even after being diagnosed with hepatitis C, Escovedo’s rock-and-roll lifestyle helped define his music. That is,…

John Digweed will always hold a special place in my heart. It was Digweed who catalyzed my transformation from an electronic-music dilettante to a full-blown dance-scene aficionado, by way of his first Global Underground mix and seeing him at one of the first half-dozen raves I attended. It was his…

The Clash, Live at Shea Stadium (Legacy Recordings). Not many groups can best the Who. Yet that is exactly what happened when the Clash opened for the group in 1993. Wielding socially relevant songs like “The Hammer of Thor,” the band turns in a protesting performance that has not been…

The Chain Gang of 1974, who’s getting ready to embark on a massive two-month long tour supporting 3OH!3, debuted its new video for “We At the Disco.” The retro-leaning clip features departing drummer Adam Halferty and a cardboard robot toting around a vintage jambox interspersed with full on Missy Elliott…

Fresh off of an energetic performance at Monolith this past weekend, the Swayback dudes sent over some more photos of their time in LA with Andy Johns, which we’ve posted after the jump. And if you’ll be anywhere near the radio in the next hour or so, be sure to…

This past Monday, Dan Craig joined the ranks of Reed Foehl, the Trampolines, Redline Defiance, Angie Stevens and a handful of other local acts who’ve had their music licensed to various shows on the small screen. Craig’s song, “Further to Fall” appeared on the latest episode of One Tree Hill…

Lindsey Buckingham in 1992. Lindsey Buckingham, the once and future Fleetwood Mac frontman and solo artist par excellence, gets the profile treatment in the September 18 edition of Westword prior to his September 24 appearance at the Ellie Caulkin Opera House — and he’s also the subject of an absorbing…

Four years after forming, Ten Cent Redemption has come to a rest. According to frontman Rhett Lee, who formed the band shortly after the demise of Carolyn’s Mother, his previous outfit, Ten Cent had simply run its course. “I just haven’t been feeling it, and we’ve become so busy with…

Yellow Elephants, Adventure, Future Islands, Ssion and Pictureplane Sunday, September 14, 2008 Rhinoceropolis Better Than: Just another dance party. Of all the dance parties disguised as a show at Rhinoceropolis, this one may have been the best. Things got started off with the experimental act Yellow Elephants from Denver. The…

Tokyo Police Club started a solid run on the main stage. (Photo by Chad Fahnestock). And it’s gone. Just like that, the gale-force winds of indie rock have come and gone, whipping Red Rocks into a frenzy all day Saturday and Sunday. Missed it? Can’t remember it? Read our Day…