With song titles like “As Long As There Is Whiskey in the World” and “Rum Brave,” Murder by Death — whose best album is 2012’s ambitious Bitter Drink, Bitter Moon — is a little bit like Jack Nicholson’s legendary character in The Shining, who famously said, “I’d give my goddamn…
After work one frozen night last week, I put on my bike helmet, ski mask and warmest gloves and rode in the snow up 17th Street in Boulder to Beat Cycle, a new music-centered cycling studio on the Hill. “Sorry, I’m early,” I said to the four young female employees…
While traveling from Denver to Texas a few weeks ago, I could not stop listening to Mutiny on the Bay, the searing collection of ’80s Dead Kennedys performances released in 2001; East Bay Ray, it occurred to me, is one of the most underrated guitarists in the history of rock…
As Banshee Tree, Kalyn Pembridge and Thomas LaFond make a surprisingly original and enticing mix of gypsy jazz, folk pop and swing. They moved to Colorado from upstate New York four years ago, and can be seen seemingly every night of the week along the Front Range, playing a mix…
One of Boulder’s most promising new art spaces is Dead Leaf, founded by Tom Abraham and Colin Wilcox. Abraham is soft-spoken, every careful word seeming to come from an organized mind that, in the case of setting up events at Dead Leaf, is focused on smoothness and detail. In contrast,…
The tone for DeVotchKa’s annual Halloween celebration was set as soon as I walked into the Boulder Theater behind a tall man with a tall, faux-bug-light apparatus attached to his head. The Boulder Theater has a capacity of 850, a far cry from the 9,500 that can fit into Red…
Alt-J is among rare company as an internationally successful pop act that attracts mostly 20-somethings who danced elegantly on every spare piece of Fillmore floor – and stairway, to security’s dismay. Nowhere to be seen were the loud-mouthed bro-downers and screaming teenagers frequently populating the concerts of the band’s peers…
The Motet, a funk/jam outfit founded more than fifteen years ago in Boulder as the Dave Watts Motet, is well known around the country for its celebrated Halloween shows, when the band puts on a “musical costume” and plays songs from a classic artist, ranging from Prince to Michael Jackson…
Pearl Jam’s 24th anniversary – which the band celebrated last night with a raucous, rarity-filled, tour-ending barnburner of a concert at the Pepsi Center – closed with lead guitarist Mike McCready playing “the Star Spangled Banner” Hendrix-style while the rest of the Seattle quartet sprayed champagne on the Denver crowd…
People throw all kinds of things at Deer Tick in order to express their love of the gritty rock-and-roll band from Providence, Rhode Island. At the quintet’s sold-out show at the Bluebird Theater in Denver, they threw half-full beers, shoes, even themselves. Even before the group, led by John McCauley,…
When a music-geek favorite such as Jolie Holland comes to town, the Larimer Lounge on a summer Thursday is pure Denver: tattooed, homegrown punks hanging at the bar and (mostly) transplants — hippies, middle-aged alcoholics, young white-collar music lovers and everything in between — milling around on the back porch…
ROCKET FROM THE CRYPT at SUMMIT MUSIC HALL | 2/1/14 Rather than linger through decades of drama and/or mediocrity, Rocket From the Crypt rose to fame in the 1990s with bonafide big-band punk, but chose to disband in 2005, despite continued acclaim. Notoriously busy frontman John Reis (aka Speedo) had…
BON IVER @ RED ROCKS AMPHITHEATRE | 5.31.12 Flanked by talented multi-instrumentalists and standing in front of two drummers, both of whom played kits so sprawling they resembled Neil Peart’s smaller setups in the ’70s, Bon Iver compelled the packed Red Rocks crowd with songs from across its powerful catalog…
JOLIE HOLLAND @ WALNUT ROOM | 5.26.12 After the applause died down following her final song last night, Jolie Holland offered to pay someone in the crowd for gas if they could drive her to her next gig in Colorado Springs. It’s a shame that she was forced to ask,…
I’m a big hockey fan and have been since junior high, when my Penguins won their first two Stanley Cups and the Pittsburgh suburb where I grew up exploded with joy. But I’m now a working Colorado father and the NHL has all but priced out middle-class families, with many…
DJ SPOOKY at ASTROLAND, BOULDER | 7/8/11Update (7/11/11, 11:26 a.m.): Kate Lesta of CMNKY has advised us that DJ Spooky did not perform for charity, and that he was, in fact, paid to perform at Astroland, which is not a BYOB venue, as described, but stresses that “It’s a Substance…
THE BLACK ANGELS With Sleepy Sun 05.11.11 | Fox Theatre Last night at Boulder’s Fox Theatre, as Austin’s Black Angels shrieked, stomped, thrashed and pounded, my mind kept curiously dragging me back to the old-school AC/DC anthem, “Hell Ain’t a Bad Place to Be.” Yes, the Devil’s music is still…
DANZIG 05.03.11 | Boulder Theater The first time I went out to see Danzig, over a decade ago, as a teenager in Pittsburgh, the concert was inexplicably canceled minutes before showtime, and I returned to my ’89 Pontiac Sunbird to find it towed. Last night in Boulder, I feared a…
BROKEN SOCIAL SCENE With Houses 03.19. 11 | Boulder Theater Dressed in a cream-colored parka, Broken Social Scene frontman Kevin Drew skipped onto the Boulder Theater stage last night pumping his fist along to the Toronto-based indie supergroup’s customarily euphoric opener, “KC Accidental,” from the band’s 2003 breakthrough You Forgot…
TREY ANASTASIO BAND 03.01.11 |Ogden Theatre Whenever I think of Phish singer/guitarist/composer Trey Anastasio’s most powerful solo work, my mind always turns to “orchestral funk” — the term Anthony Keidis used to describe the Talking Heads’ large-band era (with Adrian Belew on searing lead guitar) when inducting the art-rock legends…
Lately, Seattle has become known for lush folk rock in the vein of Fleet Foxes or hammer-headed, Band of Horses-style dreamscapes that caress the soul but punish the ears with shimmering noise. The Moondoggies, however, look the lumberjack part but hit a bluesy guilty-pleasure spot with chugging lo-fi AM rock…
Avi Buffalo’s Avigdor Zahner-Isenberg looks and sings like the bastard son of Wayne Coyne and Kevin Drew. Nevertheless, it’s more than just an excess of cute faces that makes his Long Beach-based band so powerful. The group’s self-titled 2009 Sub Pop debut warms up any room it’s played in with…
