The whispery, fairy-tale tone of the Slow Crash’s music is deceptively fey. Akin to the intense chamber rock of famed Fort Collins outfit Matson Jones, the sound is decidedly darker and would never be confused with more traditional indie rock. With a multi-instrumentalist singer who’s an amalgam of Johnette Napolitano…
About fifty activists gathered late last month inside the Four Winds Survival Project building, a former Episcopal church now serving as a kind of town hall for Denver’s Native American community, to plan what they say will be a memorable protest of Denver’s annual Columbus Day Parade. It’s a yearly…
“You know where a guy can find a good drink?” said the guy wearing the T-shirt with the sleeves cut off. The lanky bartender looked at him for a moment, then said, “You don’t ask a bartender that kind of thing.” “Give me a Shirley Temple,” the guy said with…
It’s hard to avoid sexual innuendos when discussing That 1 Guy, the alter ego of Mike Silverman. For starters, he calls his instrument his Magic Pipe, which is made up of two six-foot steel pipes (dude’s seriously packing) wired with a single bass string. The thing looks like a Blade…
Look at the liner notes of the best punk and post-punk albums to come from Washington, D.C., over the past two decades-plus, and you’re likely to find Don Zientara’s name on lots of them. During the late ’70s, Zientara founded Inner Ear Studio in his basement, and since then, he’s…
Magik Markers, originally from Hartford, Connecticut, caught the ear of Thurston Moore, who invited the three-piece to join Sonic Youth on its 2004 tour. After that, Moore released the act’s debut, I Trust My Guitar, Etc… on his Ecstatic Peace imprint. The Markers’ original sound evoked no wave’s tortured, abrasive…
Natasha Khan, who performs under the Bat for Lashes banner, is part of a distinctive sorority — one populated by high-flown warblers with a taste for ornate lyrical fantasies. The style’s tricky to master, since even minor miscalculations can turn potentially quirky and creative airs into something teeth-grindingly coy and…
San Francisco’s Deerhoof must have a magic radio that picks up stations from outer space — or the future, or some kind of off-kilter bizarro world out there where anything goes. This is evident from the way it creates such a distinctive blend of sweet pop goodness and obtuse experimental…
Elvis Costello, My Aim Is True (Hip-O). This is the fifth separate release of essentially the same music recorded by Costello in a 24-hour rush thirty years back using somebody else’s band. Despite “bonus” tracks, the continued enticing of consumers to repurchase foreshadows the final squeal of the corporate-label pig…
As its moniker implies, Light Travels Faster, which recently moved to Denver from Amarillo, Texas, isn’t in a hurry. The latest EP by guitarist/vocalist Christopher Rigel and percussionist Kyle Fuller (recently joined by bassist Todd Spriggs) refuses to rush, championing long-term atmosphere over short-term impact. “A Broadcast of Natural Resonance,”…
Solpowa has put in work in the local hip-hop scene for more than a decade, mostly as part of the RRAAHH Foundashun and as a producer for hire. Now he’s stepping out on his own with his solo debut, Da Ace of Clubs. Expectedly, the album showcases Sol P’s production…
Songs About Girls is derivative, repetitive, insipid, insincere and pandering. Oh, and if that weren’t enough, it also has the worst insert booklet in recent memory: seven pages of will.i.am mugging in a checkered suit. Actually, the first song, “Over,” a lover’s lament featuring a sample from Electric Light Orchestra…
Magic is being hyped as Springsteen’s rocking return to his classic period, and that’s understandable: The album contains lotsa familiar musical totems, not to mention lyrics about driving a highway until the road turns black, and a diner on the edge of town (bet it’s dark there). But while Boss…
How easy is it to manipulate popular culture? Ask Klaxons’ Simon Taylor-Davies. Long before the British guitarist and his cohorts, vocalist Jamie Reynolds and keyboardist James Righton, were musically proficient by his standards, they announced that they’d created a sonic style called “new rave” — and the term quickly seized…
Just as his career as DJ and producer was taking off, Denmark’s Anders Trentemøller made the unorthodox decision to stop making music. “I was suddenly not so much inspired anymore,” he says. “I felt I hadn’t found my own sound, really. I could see myself trying to spend more time…
New Orleans-based Mute Math has traveled a long road to reach the seemingly sudden success of its major-label debut. Vocalist/keytarist Paul Meany, drummer Darren King and bassist Roy Mitchell-Cárdenas have played together for more than seven years. After the demise of their Christian rock group, Earth Suit, King and Meany…
“Did you bring it, by the way?” asks Julie Davis, glancing at Brigid McAuliffe. McAuliffe, sitting across from Davis on the Thin Man’s patio, shakes her head no. “Oh, you suck!” McAuliffe, who sings and plays accordion with Davis in Bela Karoli, recently borrowed her digital recorder. She’s had it…
One of these nights I’m going to blindfold myself, have my wife drive me to some random point along South Federal Boulevard, then get out of the car and start walking. Why? To prove a point, of course. To put paid to my long-held belief that there’s such a profusion…
During my first two years as a Coloradan, I lived in Capitol Hill. Not the Wild Oats or Queen Soopers Capitol Hill; not the Bender’s or Chipotle or Lancer Lounge Capitol Hill; not the Charlie Brown’s or Table 6 Capitol Hill. No, fuckin’ Rent-A-Center, Famous Pizza, Scooter Liquors, Burger King…
Sometimes I ask questions that I already know the answer to — just to make sure the world is spinning correctly on its axis. Why do birds fly south for the winter? Why are bald heads shiny? Why are holier-than-thou conservatives always the ones busted in scandals? So when I…
I am sick of the Denver omelet. My folks were in town recently, and my dad — a willing gastronaut, but never the most adventurous eater when left to his own devices — ate a couple of these atrocities for breakfast at a couple of different places. “Well,” he said,…
On a Saturday night, Cherry Crest Seafood is all business. The menu for this small strip-mall restaurant and fish market lists twenty entrees, not counting pastas or salads, as well as a spread of house specialties and a long board of apps; the chalkboards and dry-erase boards are full of…
