Critic's Choice

Ask Alice Gilbert what gets his rocks off, and he'll tell you: pop music. More specifically, underground, independent pop music, the stuff that makes Modest Mouse look as pretentious and impenetrable as Proust. One such unassuming outfit is Bad Weather California, which just put out a self-titled, split EP with Philadelphia's A Boy Named Thor on Gilbert's own imprint, Best Friends Records. Bad Weather California -- a local boy/girl duo that turns xylophones, toy pianos, acoustic guitars and fetchingly bleated heartache into uncontested pop perfection -- will play at the hi-dive this Friday, May 28, as part of the Best Friends Records Concert Showcase. The event is a benefit to raise funds for the label's next three releases -- full-length discs by the Dinnermints, Landlordland and the one-man ambient-terrorist cell known only as Nervesandgel. These acts, along with the Breezy Porticos and Gilbert's own wimp-rock sensation, the Maybellines, will be ripping it up with B.W.C. in celebration of all that is catchy, odd and humbly spectacular in Denver's music scene. To that end, Gilbert will also march his troops to Georgia this August to represent the Mile High City in the Athens Pop Fest, the de facto Summer Olympics of indie pop. Help Coach Gilbert and his team of Best Friends go for the gold...and give yourself a sweet-toothed, sweater-clad warm fuzzy in the process.