Concerts

So before its show last night with the Freeze and Pitch Invasion at 3 Kings Tavern, Nardcore legends Dr. Know played an especially sweaty, late afternoon, show gratis in the back room of Wax Trax. We stopped by and as you can see from the picture above of Brian Hagman…

On the 2002 album Circle Meets the Square, Kevin Devine included a song titled “Protest Singer,” and the tag has stuck to him ever since, despite his lyrical confession that “I’m only protesting myself.” But while plenty of his subsequent compositions have grappled with societal injustice and other crimes against…

When he opened Owsley’s Golden Road (2151 Lawrence Street) last year, Jay Bianchi gave me a whirlwind tour of the spot, showing off the venue’s multiple rooms and its massive patio, the only patio in the Bianchi brothers’ empire, which includes Cervantes’ Masterpiece Ballroom (2637 Welton Street), Quixote’s True Blue…

The latest in a long line of noteworthy bands from the unlikely creative breeding ground of Greeley, The Don’ts and Be Carefuls (due at the Meadowlark on Thursday, May 21) have been making their mark on audiences since spring 2008. Putatively a dance-punk band, these guys have gone beyond that…

Taking its name from something crazy Gary Busey said during his short-lived television series, I’m With Busey, Iwrestledabearonce doesn’t bother fitting into a specific musical genre. On the surface, the members of this sextet from Shreveport, Louisiana, are heirs to the spastic, experimental grindcore/death-metal hybrid that was the Locust. Singer…

The NIN/JA tour isn’t supposed to be an exercise in nostalgia, despite the presence of two ’90s icons (joined by Street Sweeper Social Club, buzzsaw king Tom Morello’s latest project). But one of the headliners avoids this trap more convincingly than the other. The two Jane’s Addiction tracks on a…

Decemberists main man Colin Meloy must have a dandy record collection. The influences throughout the band’s latest opus, The Hazards of Love, are enough to make older prog heads glow with sweet nostalgia. Love is a suite, each track leading into the next, its narrative told via an engaging mixture…

“We’ve never wanted to go out and blow our own trumpet, really,” Doves drummer/vocalist Andy Williams told Westword back in 2002. “We want the music to do the talking, and if people like it, that speaks volumes.” In the years since, Williams and his cohorts (twin brother Jez and bassist/vocalist…

Death Vessel is the brainchild of Brooklyn-based experimental folk artist Joel Thibodeau, the likes of whom we’ve heard from before. With a penchant for hushed electronic atmospherics serving as a backdrop to well-written, largely minimalist guitar melodies and earnest vocals, Thibodeau possesses a soprano singing voice that lends his introspective…

Does saying that an album sounds as slick and professional as major-label fare constitute faint praise or the real kind? In the case of Glyphic, which hosts a Friday, May 22, CD-release party at the Gothic Theatre co-starring Random Hero, Fulcrum, Cypher and Four to Go, it’s a little of…

Listening to this EP makes me wonder if I’m not missing the gene for liking the kind of music you hear on the radio. I mean, I can identify that these melodies are appealing, that the sound and vibe are contemporary and that this would sound right at home playing…

Although the Omens still show a strong Cynics influence here, there are marked departures from the formula. For one, this is probably the best-sounding work in which singer Michael Daboll has been involved. All of the instrumentation has beautifully orchestrated separation, allowing the songs to breathe more while coming together…

Take Una Volta-era DeVotchKa, subtract Nick Urata’s Morrissey croon and replace it with the sometimes-Ani-DiFranco, sometimes-Sarah-Vaughan vocals of Alana Rolfe, add a little more flair for weird noises, and you might get something that sounds like this Fort Collins-based act. The band’s violin-based pop bears a broad range of influences,…

Paramore lead singer Hayley Williams needn’t wonder if she’s having an impact on her audience. Odds are good that every time she looks into the crowd at a concert, she’ll see a veritable ocean of tween and teen girls wearing her hair color of the moment and their best approximation…

There’s a disease spreading through our generation of twenty- and thirty-year-olds, a malady we inherited from our parents that’s rendering us culturally stagnant. It’s sapping our identity. Perhaps, most tragically, we are welcoming this plague into our homes, cars and iPods — even our karaoke parties. This cancer is called…

Supergroups aren’t just for bloated ’70s rock stars. In the world of techno, Apparat and Modeselektor are both top-tier acts in their own right. Together they’ve joined forces to become Moderat (due on Saturday, May 23, at Beta) and produced something special. The process of recording the threesome’s first collaboration…

Are you a reggae ambassador or do you just play one on TV? We’ve got great news for you then, mon. Our pal Byron Shaw, the ever affable frontman of Judge Roughneck and the Byron Shaw Projex (and the Jonez, if you’re old school), just informed us that the 3-D…

Just received word of a cool new initiative to empower girls and get them involved with music called Girls Rock Denver. It’s a non-profit volunteer group running a summer camp to teach girls an instrument, help them form bands and write songs and play a show at the Mercury Cafe…

While the rumored Ground Zero Movement reunion is still rumbling around town, one member continues to make moves. Sid Fly, who has been hosting Out Tha Box TV for the last couple of years, is finally returning to the studio to put in some work on the music side of…

If your ear’s to the streets, by now you’ve heard that the esteemed Jason Heller has resigned his current post (though he’ll still be freelancing for the national section of that paper) and will be returning home to this fishwrap in just two weeks. We’re beyond stoked, as I’m sure…