Pink Hawks

With a name like Pink Hawks, you'd be forgiven for thinking the band was some kind of acoustic-punk duo. But Pee Pee's sax man, Yuzo Nieto, and a rotating cast of bandmates shred the conventions of music as well as your expectations of a live band. When performing, Nieto's aim...

By Tom Murphy

September 27, 2007

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With a name like Pink Hawks, you'd be forgiven for thinking the band was some kind of acoustic-punk duo. But Pee Pee's sax man, Yuzo Nieto, and a rotating cast of bandmates shred the conventions of music as well as your expectations of a live band. When performing, Nieto's aim is to engage as many senses as possible, including painting and performance art; during one show, ice cubes with odds and ends inside them were passed around the crowd. The music is improvised at each show, which means no set is ever the same. Within Pink Hawks' rich pageantry of sound, you can hear echoes of Sun Ra's melodically off-the-rails piano playing, Jimi Hendrix's irreverent warping of blues to otherworldly realms and the languid, sonically adventurous atmospheres of Yo La Tengo's And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out. As much artistic revolutionaries as musicians, Pink Hawks (due at the Lion's Lair on Friday, September 28) bring the struggle for a more interesting world home to roost.

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Tom Murphy is a writer, visual artist and musician from Aurora, Colorado. He was a prolific music writer for Westword and a documenter of the Denver music scene.

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Twitter: @simianthinker