Jack's Smirking Revenge brings energetic folk punk to Seventh Circle

Alex Pelissero was one of the people behind the Danger Zone, a short-lived DIY venue in Boulder. In addition to helping maintain welcoming places for people to play, Pelissero, as Jack's Smirking Revenge (due Tuesday, January 15, at Seventh Circle Music Collective, 2935 West Seventh Avenue), also writes wonderfully profane,...

By Tom Murphy

January 10, 2013

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Alex Pelissero was one of the people behind the Danger Zone, a short-lived DIY venue in Boulder. In addition to helping maintain welcoming places for people to play, Pelissero, as Jack's Smirking Revenge (due Tuesday, January 15, at Seventh Circle Music Collective, 2935 West Seventh Avenue), also writes wonderfully profane, politically charged, sometimes scathing but always uplifting and humorous folk songs, performed in a punk style. While the intensity and energy of those tunes could be compared to the folk punk of bands like the Fainting Fansies and Drinking Gourd, their lyrics, which reflect on broken relationships, skew more toward Billy Bragg. Like Pelissero's live shows, his sprawling and inspired 2012 release, Project Arcturus, for which he wrote one song a week over the course of a year, spans styles and moods with aplomb.

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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