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…
A few oddly brilliant Nintendo cover bands — notably the Advantage — began packing clubs everywhere a few years back with a sound culled from the 8-bit video-game music that saturated our souls a couple decades ago. More interesting than those unabashed musical Zelda and Metroid devotees, however, are bands…
The self-titled debut from Boulder’s 18 Switchbacks is essentially the very pleasing result of several former Deadheads and Colorado Americana/jam-band veterans getting serious about bluegrass songwriting. The romantically dusty lyrics and harmonies of dual singer-songwriter-guitarists Matt Wallwork and Tim Johnston are continuously beautiful throughout the seven-track EP, and upbeat bluegrass…
Like Midlake, Cotton Jones and Sub Pop labelmates Fleet Foxes, Blitzen Trapper is a key player in the current outpouring of poignant lo-fi rock influenced by ’70s legends like CSNY, the Band and Neil Young. However, spearheaded by the quixotic lyrics and vocals of Eric Earley, Blitzen Trapper stands out…
Montreal’s Arcade Fire, whose Grammy-nominated 2004 debut LP Funeral was the indie hit of the last decade, throws somewhat of a curveball on its new, sixteen-cut album, The Suburbs. Thirty-year-old Win Butler earnestly — and patiently — comments on modern America and his band’s rapid, meteoric stardom on the new…
On A Chorus of Storytellers, Album Leaf’s mastermind/frontman Jimmy LaValle once again proves he isn’t a spectacular wordsmith – like a derivative musician who needs to widen his exposure to sounds, LaValle’s lyrics suggest he could benefit from studying poetry for a bit. Just the same, his calm, enigmatic techno-suites…
To some, indie rock is an aesthetic, something between Sonic Youth and Pavement that’s played by people with in mop-tops and ringer t-shirts with cans of Pabst atop their amplifiers. Others, meanwhile, might define indie rock literally as music recorded and performed by musicians not signed or affiliated with major…
For those with tickets to tonight’s Pixies show, here’s a bonus review with another perspective, to give you a clear idea of exactly what to expect this evening. If you haven’t already check out Jon Solomon’s review.PixiesFillmore AuditoriumMonday, November 16, 2009Better than: having whores in your head.See more photos on…
Jolie Holland, with Matt Bauer The Walnut Room Saturday, October 10, 2009 Better Than: Walking from Market St. Station to Walnut & 31st in the cold No one shines like Brooklyn-based indie-folk goddess Jolie Holland. Just as Neil Young was the depth and edge of CSNY, Holland was the stand-out…
These days, a real punk band (sorry, Green Day) can almost never find its way onto the pop charts. But back in the day (see: mid-’80s), England’s New Model Army released political punk that didn’t merely sell to left-wing extremists. Almost thirty years ago, frontman/mastermind Justin Sullivan, who has been…
Bob Weir & Ratdog Sunday, August 30 Chautauqua Auditorium Better Than: Parts of the reunited Dead’s performance in Denver a few months ago For those of us who were introduced to the Grateful Dead as elementary school kids in the late-1980s by the San Francisco band’s ubiquitous MTV hit “Touch…
It was a series of firsts last night for Adam Perry: In was his first show at Red Rocks and his first time seeing the Flaming Lips. Given the profound, momentous nature of that combination, we thought we’d share his experience, which means you get a bonus review of last…
For fans of America’s biggest cult band, the term “boys of summer” doesn’t refer to guys who get paid millions to play baseball but rather four Vermont men in their forties who earn millions by playing goofy, unpredictable music while jumping on trampolines, having glowsticks thrown at and around them,…
Falling somewhere between Tom Waits and the Misfits (with a generous helping of classic seafaring work-song influence), the debut album from Boulder zombie folk-punkers the Widow’s Bane is arresting and addictive. These pitiless lads got their start performing in storefronts on Pearl Street, and their self-titled CD was recorded partly…
One of the most memorable turns of phrase from the past few years of original rock music has to be “Jesus saves, I spend,” from St. Vincent’s 2007 debut full-length Marry Me. Born Annie Clark, the 26-year old multi-instrumentalist — who has toured as a guitarist with the Polyphonic Spree…
The DeadThursday, May 7, 2009Pepsi CenterBetter than: a Grateful Dead cover band but at times worse than some of Phil Lesh’s bands — wait, the Dead kind of is a Grateful Dead cover band.Singer/guitarist Bob Weir, always the wild-eyed youngster in the Grateful Dead, was in his late teens and…
Kentucky-born musician, actor and photographer Bonnie Prince Billy’s landmark 2006 cover album The Brave and the Bold, with instrumental wizards Tortoise as the backing band, was seen by many as an epochal event in American rock music. It’s fairly astonishing that Billy has put out four quality records since then,…
The Morning Benders arrived on the indie pop-rock scene in 2006, when singer/guitarist Chris Chu released Loose Change, a solo collection of low-fi, high-spirited recordings made with one microphone and a laptop. By the time 2007’s Boarded Doors EP was released, Chu had recruited three UC-Berkeley classmates and created a…
With the surviving members of the Grateful Dead touring this summer for the first time since 2005, it’s surprising that 62-year-old drummer Bill Kreutzmann (the notoriously “obscured” member of the Dead, who has been a virtual hermit in Hawaii since the death of Jerry Garcia in 1995) is also touring…
Christian Bland, guitarist and occasional vocalist for the Black Angels — Austin, TX’s leading psych-rock band — knows his evil ’60s rock. From the Velvet Underground to Syd Barrett to the 13th Floor Elevators, Bland and his bandmates dig the slow-churning, drone-filled jams that highlighted the darkside of the decade…
The Black Angels are a trip to see in concert. The last time they played the Bluebird, they opened with “Manipulation” — a twisted love song from their 2006 cult hit Passover — in the cover of almost total darkness, with lead singer Alex Maas stalking the stage like a…
I think a certain kind of person settles down to raise a family in the Northwest, and that breeds a certain kind of kid,” says Fleet Foxes frontman Robin Pecknold. “I definitely feel like a product of my environment in that way, and really can’t imagine dying anywhere else. I…
