“There’s a lot of dissonance involved in our music,” notes Martyn Leaper, 26-year-old vocalist, guitarist and chief songwriter for the Denver pop trio known simply as INK. “I don’t think we can control what we’re going to do next. A lot of times, I just start fiddling with my guitar…

Christie Front Drive Christie Front Drive (Caulfield) There are an oodle of pop-core bands slugging it out in the indie underworld right now, but nary a one gets to the euphoric heart of the punk-pop aesthetic quite like Denver’s Christie Front Drive. On this, their debut album, guitarist Eric Richter…

Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy knows a thing or two about rock journalism. “The Flying Burrito Brothers have to be mentioned in any article about a country-rock band,” notes the singer/guitarist. “It’s like the Velvet Underground or Big Star. For rock critics, its a reference point. Which is fine. That’s cool with…

Archers of Loaf, with the Flaming Lips and Beatnik Film Stars, Tuesday, May 2, at the Ogden Theatre, seem to be at their best when they’re beating the crap out of poor, defenseless guitar-pop melodies. The band’s 1993 debut, Icky Mettle (on Alias Records), kicked and spit with so much…

godheadSilo, with the Melvins, Wednesday, April 12, at the Fox Theatre, is the name chosen by two guys who don’t care much for musical frills like harmony and melody: They just wanna rock! Bassist Mike and drummer Dan–a duo so dynamic they don’t need a guitarist–kick out the sort of…

Electric Company A Pert Cyclic Omen (Onion/American) Thus far, the memorable work Brad Laner has produced under the auspices of his band, Medicine, has evaded the embrace of the mainstream: A cut on The Crow soundtrack does not a breakthrough make. But rather than up the pop quotient of his…

“When most people come to see us play live for the first time, they expect us to be some strange, experimental band,” explains Robert Pollard, frontman for America’s latest garage-rock saviors, Guided by Voices. “But we’re a fucking power-pop band. When we play live, we really kick it out and…

“I don’t really feel like ,” observes Chuck Cleaver, singer, guitarist and chief songwriter for Cincinnati, Ohio’s Ass Ponys. “With my physique, rock stardom doesn’t really come into the picture–unless maybe the Atlanta Rhythm Section look is getting big again.” Indeed, Cleaver hardly possesses the alterna-hunk good looks of, say,…

P.J. Harvey To Bring You My Love (Island) Polly Jean is an uncompromising cuss for the most part, but she’s not obstinate enough to commit career suicide just yet. So when 1993’s Rid of Me, produced for maximum skronk value by Steve Albini, turned off everyone within earshot other than…

Pond, Friday, March 10, at CU-Boulder’s Club 156, never did quite get the hang of the whole grunge thing. While other acts in and around the band’s Portland home were peddling their acerbic walls of noise to the hungry MTV masses, these quirky Alaskan transplants spent their free hours tossing…

“I don’t know what our sound is,” says Sebadoh singer/guitarist Lou Barlow. “We’ve always kind of consciously avoided having a sound.” And they’ve done a damned good job of it, too. Since Barlow and his fellow Sebs (bassist Jason Loewenstein and drummer Eric Gaffney, recently replaced by Bob Fay) started…

It’s a sorry time for those punk rockers who hoped their favorite music would remain forever underground. After all, Green Day’s major-label debut, Dookie, has just hit the quadruple-platinum mark, while Orange County’s Offspring have sold nearly as many discs on the way to becoming an impressive concert draw: For…

Independent labels aren’t the cozy, accessible harbors of artistic freedom they used to be. Call most of these onetime upstarts and you’ll find yourself playing tag with a chain of receptionists, press agents and tour managers every bit as convoluted as those found at Atlantic or Columbia. But Simple Machines,…

Various Artists The Colpix-Dimension Story (Rhino) On first listen, many of these forty cuts sound downright terrible–and they don’t improve with repeated plays. Nonetheless, this collection exerts a certain fascination, if only because it captures on plastic some of the more blatant attempts to put rock and roll on an…

Ice Cube Bootlegs & B-Sides (Priority) I’ve gone back and forth on this character so many times that the only thing I’m sure of in 1995 is that he’s still got the potential for greatness. Hard to describe why–there’s plenty of idiocy sprinkled throughout these thirteen intermittently engaging tracks, which…

As a new year dawns, let us take a minute to thank the members of Green Day and Offspring for all they’ve accomplished in recent months. No, we’re not talking about how they managed to break a genre of music (punk) that PR folks have been struggling to keep under…

Eric Richter, guitarist and lead vocalist for Denver-based Christie Front Drive, boasts an extensive–not to mention goofy–range of influences. “One of the albums I’m listening to a lot these days is the Xanadu soundtrack,” he reveals. “It brings back a lot of memories of when I was a kid. And…

Decked out in his weathered cowboy hat, Wrangler jeans and cherry-red shit-kickers, guitarist Gary England doesn’t look like your archetypical surfer, and for good reason. Despite his role as the fair-skinned frontman for Denver’s premier instrumental surf trio, the Moon Doggies, England has yet to catch his first wave–although it…

Various Artists Woodstock ’94 (A&M) Didn’t I read about this on a Pepsi twelve-pack?–Michael Roberts Sade The Best of Sade (Epic) The lukewarm smooch tracks from this babe probably couldn’t even get a rise from the inmates at Denver County Jail.–John Jesitus Collective Soul Hints, Allegations and Things Left Unsaid…

When singer/songwriter Jeff Buckley talks about his music, he doesn’t mess around. “I’d say my songs fall into of twentieth-century American,” he notes, “because that definition encompasses so much. Pop art. Even the Flintstones. It could be Gershwin. It could be Rodgers and Hart. It could be John Cage. It…

Ani DiFranco, Wednesday, November 9, at the Mercury Cafe, and Thursday, November 10, at the Fox Theatre, can do more with three chords and a complaint than an entire busload of weekend anarchists–and she does it with nothing more than an acoustic guitar and a stool. On Out of Range,…

“We all grew up on bad heavy metal,” says Ron Heathman, guitarist for the hardcore pranksters the Supersuckers. “Then we discovered `cool’ music and started playing that. But we still have a little bit of the heavy-metal influence in us, too.” No kidding. While most punk acts have a metallic…