Finding dusty record shops that cater to artsy geeks has never been so hard in Boulder, where the city’s eccentric charm has been diluted by a sky-high cost of living and an influx of techies from the coasts. Absolute Vinyl is one of the last spots where the college town’s once notorious weirdness still lingers.
The creative young Boulder trio Grass is indicative of the music being pushed over the last year by ambitious local cassette label First Base Tapes: gritty and experimental but catchy, clever and (while ear-bleedin’ loud) deceptively pleasant.
For the last decade, Riot Fest (a three-day festival that takes place each year in Denver and Chicago) has been the place where childhood punk-rock dreams come true. For instance, two years ago outside Mile High Stadium I got to see the Descendents tear through Milo Goes to College, which…
For almost a decade, it’s been pretty standard for Boulder-born rock bands to relocate to Denver to find regional and national success. That’s at least partly due to Boulder’s lack of a small, music-focused venue that could serve as a bridge between cafes and bar-and-grills and headlining the Fox Theatre…
Local rock scenes are thriving in Denver and Fort Collins. Earlier this month, the eighth-annual Ft. Collins Music eXperiment festival featured exciting Colorado bands in venues all over town, and Denver, which will soon host UMS and the Westword Music Showcase, has exciting local rock bands playing across the city…
Robin Pecknold, whose Seattle alt-folk band Fleet Foxes has somewhat vanished since 2011’s Helplessness Blues peaked at #4 on the Billboard chart, made for an interesting opening act last night at the Boulder Theater. At the age of 22 in 2008, Pecknold struck indie gold with haunting, creative tunes like…
By the time Dr. Dog finished touring in support of its 2008 breakthrough Fate, the quirky Philadelphia indie-rock quintet had become what the Band was to musicians in the late ’60s and early ’70s: the group everyone would give a limb to be in. It was the authenticity, the seemingly…
As if it hadn’t been four years, and a whole lot of drama, since the last time Ween performed, Aaron Freeman—who had shocked his bandmates in 2012 by announcing, in a Rolling Stone interview, that Ween was over and he’d no longer go by Gene Ween—smiled and told a sold-out,…
In the wake of the recent deaths of several classic-rock stars, it’s easy to forget about bands in the midst of careers that may achieve the same longevity and perhaps even “classic” status. Dr. Dog — a scrappy, critically acclaimed Philadelphia rock-and-roll band that formed seventeen years ago and has…
A few minutes before Godspeed You! Black Emperor’s string section took the stage last night at the Ogden Theatre, a slow, bass-heavy drone began washing over the packed-in Denver crowd. Kids who had been jammed against the rail for two hours waiting for the electrifying Montreal symphonic indie-rock act suddenly…
Ween, the ever-experimental and edgy Philadelphia rock band, is back. With frontman Gene Ween (born Aaron Freeman) in recovery from substance abuse, the brilliantly oddball group will play three shows this weekend at 1STBANK Center, and the list of subsequent dates is growing. Other than a statement last fall and…
Remember that scene in the classic ’80s bio-pic La Bamba when Ritchie Valens, played by Lou Diamond Phillips, is blowing the roof off a late-’50s party in Los Angeles with both Latinos and whites dancing their asses off to Mexican-American rock and roll? That feeling of joy, abandon and possibility—just…
“This is the most interesting thing we do all year,” Murder By Death frontman Adam Turla said a few songs into the Indiana-bred band’s 28-song, two-hour set at the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park on Saturday night. And that’s saying a lot, as the indie-Americana quintet with a twisted gothic…
David Bowie always paid tribute to his older brother, most famously in “All the Young Dudes,” for changing his life as a teenager by turning him on to rock music and the Beat Generation. So it makes sense that Bowie’s The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars…
When Radiohead demanded public access to Prince’s fantabulous cover of “Creep” recently, I couldn’t help but recall falling in love with creative covers as a teenage drummer and finishing all my own shows in the clubs, bars and garages of Pittsburgh with the punk trio Falling Short by blazing through…
In January 2014, the gothic-Americana band Murder by Death played the reputedly haunted Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, but singer-guitarist Adam Turla didn’t have any paranormal experiences. So when the quintet returned for three shows in early January 2015 — just before its seventh album, Big Dark Love, was released…
Pop-rocker John Mayer fronting a band featuring three of the four surviving members of the Grateful Dead may sound like an odd, even off-putting, endeavor. But 50 years after the Dead started playing LSD-soaked improvisational electric blues at pizza shops in what’s now Facebook and Apple territory south of San…
As a cold rain fell in Boulder last night, I walked into eTown Hall for the first time since eTown relocated from the Boulder Theater in 2012. Shame on me for previously only passing by the show’s incredible new setting, inside a renovated church that originally opened in 1922. eTown…
My daughter, Sidney, is somewhat of a punk-rock connoisseur, at least for a Boulderite, and especially for a five-year-old. Sure, she’s obsessed with Cinderella (the princess, not the band) and digs Frozen, but “Rebel Girl” by Bikini Kill is near the top of Sidney’s favorite songs. Plus, when she heard…
Trevor Powers debuted as Youth Lagoon in 2011 with the gorgeous indie-pop minimalism of The Year of Hibernation, a calm, poetic and endearing trip through the anxiety, curiosity and lament of the then-21-year-old Boise State University student. Powers, who looked even younger than 21 in press photos surrounding The Year…
Sera Cahoone, a Littleton native and Columbine High School graduate who now lives in Seattle, quickly rose to critical acclaim as a singer-songwriter when, already known for her drumming in bands like Band of Horses and Carissa’s Wierd, she released a self-titled solo album in 2006. Cahoone’s dusty, welcoming songs…
Boulder resident Arrow Zoe Amelia, a 29-year-old Florida native and Naropa University graduate, was a key member of the now-defunct Language of Fish Collective Arts in Boulder from 2011-2014. LOFCA, as it was affectionately known, was a “performance company” that utilized the diverse talents of numerous young local women to…
