Once upon a time, pop music — like the rest of American popular culture — was in closet. From Liberace and his floor-length furs to George Michael’s dangly earrings, gay men were marketed as female conquests. Thankfully minds and attitudes have (for the most part) evolved, and a band like…
A throwback to a time when popular music had an intentionally kitschy side, Scissor Sisters runs its fingers through the dirty hair of New York Dolls while maintaining a musical intelligence even Elton John has come to admire. The quintet’s lyrics are threaded with smart, sexually aware social commentary that…
Denver Does Denver, happening this Saturday at Meadowlark and The Flobots Community Space, is a festival promising to cut the local music community apart and glue it back together in ways we’ve never heard before. Folk songs will be auto-tuned, guitars and pedals will stomp out lyrics, and homage will…
DJ Narky Stares (aka Lauren Zwicky) is a non-traditionalist when it comes to the tastemaking side of deejaying. Dropping tracks from Dave Nada to Egyptrixx, her proudly weird taste is as diverse as her upbringing: Zwicky’s childhood took her from Utah to Mexico to Costa Rica and eventually to her…
From a creatively active Denverite to a now fully immersed Baltimorean, Nick Houde has always been a vocal participator in the DIY community at large. Houde’s musical projects — from Transistor Radio Sound and BDRMPPL to Snake Feathers and Future Heavy — have pulled from diverse movements like no wave…
As Pollination Population, Katherine Ersing folds volumes of personal stories into melodies made from bells, acoustic guitar and her trademark cassette tape samples. Finding beauty in the easily ignored sounds of traffic noise and passing conversation, the Buffalo, New York transplant makes them all unintentional players in her music, forming…
Crystal Castles • Rusko, Sinden, and Destructo 08.09.10 | Ogden Theater, Denver, CO Whatever happened before or after Crystal Castles’ set last night at the Ogden really didn’t matter. In fact, Destructo and Sinden’s pre-sets and whatever Rusko followed up with need not to have happened at all, for you…
Since Crystal Castles first pissed its way into my heart with the irritatingly catchy “Alice Practice” in 2007, I haven’t been at peace with my manic devotion to a duo that seems to take pride in being total assholes. These total assholes, however, keep making great records that I can’t…
Way back in 2006, patchy duo Crystal Castles began a rise to high-art infamy based mostly on the negative hype of its supposed 8-bit plagiarism. Along with getting slammed for stealing artist Trevor Brown’s “Bruised Madonna” imagery for unauthorized merchandise (not to mention unsanctioned use of the Chanel logo), the…
