Concerts

YONDER MTN. STRING BAND at RED ROCKS | 8.20.11Wowzers, what a difference a single night makes, eh? In stark contrast to the soggy set from Atmosphere the night previous at Red Rocks, Yonder Mountain String Band played a hometown set with Railroad Earth to the sheer delight of a considerably…

STIFF LITTLE FINGERS at SUMMIT | 8.20.11″This is an old Irish folk song,” announced Stiff Little Fingers frontman Jake Burns before the very last song of the show. After an entire set of some of the band’s best material, it could only be “Alternative Ulster,” and as the song began,…

ATMOSPHERE at RED ROCKS | 08.19.11In case any further evidence is required to bolster the notion that Rhymesayers Entertainment is indeed bigger than guns, behold Exhibit A: the fact that this Red Rocks performance purportedly sold out, and that despite the persistent hovering rain clouds, which soaked the capacity crowd…

AWOLNATION at SUMMIT MUSIC HALL | 8/18/11If you were at the Awolnation show last night and you didn’t have fun, you are dead inside. The band played in shorts, for fuck’s sake. Shorts pretty much always mean fun. The band brought its A game from song one — opening with…

When copyright law was revised in 1976, there was a provision that gave artists control of their work after 35 years, provided they applied two years in advance. The law didn’t go into effect until 1978, but now artists like Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan, Tom Waits and Loretta Lynn can…

Taking its name from a Colorado pop culture behemoth like John Elway could be a blessing or a curse for a band. But Elway, making an appearance tonight at the Hi-Dive with Michael Dean Damron, St. Fall Apart and The Holy Mess, gets the joke, and fans do too. Besides,…

We love this city, because when it comes to dance music, there’s always something fresh going down — and this weekend is no exception. Whether you’re a bass-head or a house-lover, we’ve got somewhere for you to get your dance on! Keep reading to see what’s on this weekend’s Dance…

Tapes ‘N Tapes (due at the Bluebird Theater tonight with the Chain Gang of 1974) may have initially snagged some recognition outside of its Minneapolis home by way of the obligatory music blog circuit, but the quartet has long outlived the hype. The band’s jangly sound has grown bigger and…

Bobby Smith of the Mighty 18 Wheeler that a new band is afoot. S.L.U.T., as the new outfit has been dubbed, features Smith and his TM18W bandmate, Bob Rupp, a scene veteran who has played with too many bands to mention, Chris Cheiffo of Dirt Poor Kings, and back from being a face on a milk cartoon, the illustrious Mr. Jeff Black of the similarly monikered Jett Black

In a press release last week, Century Media announced it would be pulling its music from the streaming music service Spotify. The metal-centric label is certainly not the first to express its distrust of streaming services, and it probably won’t be the last. As fans and consumers have been pushing…

If you’re a rapper, what’s better than being on the cover of XXL? Um, yeah, not much, actually. Well, maybe being the centerpiece of a mural and still being around to appreciate it — that has to come pretty close, right? Ask Mane Rok and Es-Nine, whose mugs were recently…

Bowling for Soup (due at the Bluebird tonight, with the Dollyrots and Sunderland) tapped into the perfect formula for pop-punk success in 1994 and hasn’t changed much since. But the quartet’s songs about wieners, booze and girls suit fans just fine, and this year the band celebrated the release of…

Celebrating the release of its first full-length offering, Sineater, Snake Rattle Rattle Snake throws down at Twist & Shout today during an early-evening in-store performance. Though the band has only been around since 2009, it’s made up of some established local-music veterans, with members hailing from past groups like Monofog…

The Pioneer Inn has made a lot of history — and music — since it opened in Nederland four decades ago. During the heyday of the Caribou Ranch, a recording studio that ran from the early ’70s until it was damaged by fire in 1985, musicians in Colorado for recording…

Before some of us knew that Drew Englander made music, we knew him for his beautifully mysterious visual art. His imagery seemed to play around with fantastic homegrown mythologies of the type that children use to people their daydreams. That sort of creative outlook informs Englander’s music, which he makes…

Starting out in Minnesota with no specific agenda, Tapes ‘N Tapes effectively absorbed the DNA of much of ’80s underground rock and’90s indie pop to create the kind of music that seems both fresh and familiar. Friends of the band sent songs off to blogs, and Tapes ‘N Tapes inadvertently…

Belfast’s Stiff Little Fingers were teenagers who played mostly traditional rock-and-roll fare in the late 1970s before they discovered punk. The Fingers combined punk’s unrestrained, id-fueled energy with classic pop sensibilities to create music that was a cousin of sorts to what the Buzzcocks had already started the year before…

Boldly seizing a moniker his mother hung on him when social anxiety held him back a year in nursery school, Scott Hutchinson leads a Northern Scotland quintet called Frightened Rabbit that plays earnest, self-searching paeans ringing with the sonorous indie-pop echoes of the Vaselines, Orange Juice and the Delgados. Signed…

There is probably no voice in hip-hop more distinctive than Young Jeezy’s. Once he exploded onto the scene with his brand of “cocaine rap,” inspired by very real life experiences, he quickly rose to the top of the charts with his gravelly, raspy voice. Those looking for beats, rhymes and life need…