Eric Elbogen doesn’t know my mother. And after listening to Ferocious Mopes, his third CD under the name Say Hi to Your Mom, I’m not sure I’d even introduce them. First of all, at 23, he’s way too young for her. Plus, she’s really not into whiners — trust me…
Dischord, the hallowed post-hardcore imprint, has been getting all kinds of folky lately. First, members of Lungfish released a haunting, bare-bones disc under the name Pupils, and then label founder and Fugazi frontman Ian MacKaye formed the Evens, a hushed, strum-laden combo. Now that Q and Not U — Dischord’s…
“Love Song,” by the Cure, is a great tune. And its almost as good when rearranged slightly to become “Devil,” the opener of Cat-A-Tac’s eponymous debut EP (whose release will be celebrated on October 21 at the Walnut Room). In fact, most of the disc’s five cuts are comfortably derivative…
Twenty-five years ago, Paul Weller would have smashed a pint glass in your face for calling him the punk version of Steve Winwood. But the analogy nearly fits. Both legendary English songwriters started out in blistering R&B-based bands and went on to dabble in groove-locked psychedelics and sultry rock. But…
After half a decade of triumphs and tribulations, Breakdown Book Collective is closing up shop. A fluctuating stream of funding and volunteers sustained the activist group’s space for radical literature, lectures, music and community, but there are pitfalls to organizing anarchists and running an anti-capitalist business. The irony isn’t lost…
SUN, 10/16 “I had trouble with poetry when I was in school,” confesses Golda Solomon. “It wasn’t accessible. My life experiences didn’t relate to great British poets and all of that. I found that I related more to poets that told stories.” Solomon has plenty of her own stories to…
SAT, 10/15 Sid Pink, the self-proclaimed “Host with the Most Boast,” is Colorado’s premier mocker of ceremonies. But besides emceeing scores of events around Denver over the past few years, Jason Stoval’s coiffed and zinger-spitting alter ego is infamous for two comedy projects: Think Pink, a riotous fake game show,…
Don’t call it a throwback — well, actually, go right ahead. Frontside Five is proudly unapologetic about exhuming the thrash of classic American skate-punk acts like the Faction, Gang Green and Life Sentence. Formed three years ago by singer Brandon Stolz, bassist Brooke Crawford, drummer Robb Dogg and guitarists Shane…
“Emo” isn’t really as bad a word as critics would have you believe. From the ’80s heyday of Rites of Spring and Embrace to the genre’s many mutations throughout the ’90s, emo has an honorable tradition that a few shitty MTV bands can’t erase. When the Appleseed Cast released its…
Everything about Dead Ringer — from its name to its vaguely radical screeds to the shrill tone of its guitars — screams generic. So it’s to the band’s credit that Let Freedom Ring, its debut full-length, takes such played-out elements and pounds them into something compelling. With obvious nods toward…
Some people get home at night, neatly undress, and place their clothes in tidy piles. Real human beings, though, throw their shit all over the floor and drunkenly stub their toes on half-eaten pots of Chef Boyardee as they stumble to their unmade beds. Broken Social Scene plays it both…
SUN, 10/9 Taking cues from the legendary Earl Scruggs, the Czech Republic’s Druhá Tráva (which means “Second Grass”) has transformed a quintessentially American idiom into a unique synthesis of jazz, pop, folk, classical and Eastern European music. “Bluegrass has a long tradition in our country and became extremely popular in…
We’ve been shitting on her for eons, but as recent catastrophes will attest, Mother Nature refuses to be take it any longer. Humankind will have an equally hard time ignoring Divides, the deafening debut by Denver’s Across Tundras. A concept piece chronicling an epic voyage across seasons, the elements and…
SAT, 10/1 I started listening to Johnny Mathis as a joke. Well, not a joke, exactly — but I first embraced his honey-dipped hokeyness with a punk smirk and an ear for kitsch. Years ago, a friend turned me onto the ossified tones of KEZW, 1430 AM, shortly before the…
“The sun is a symbol of rebirth,” explains Tony Garcia. “In our culture, death is not an end. It’s part of a recycling.” The word “recycling,” though, fails to convey the mythic scope and spirit of El Sol Que Tú Eres/The Sun That You Are. A stage musical written and…
MDC has stood for many things: Millions of Dead Cops, Millions of Damn Christians, Multi-Death Corporation. But attached to a staunchly leftist hardcore group that’s sold over half a million records, the initials could just as easily mean Milking Defiance for Cash. Unlike scores of punk sellouts, though, singer Dave…
If the name of its new CD, Telescopic Eyes Glance the Future Sick, makes John Wilkes Booze sound none too enamored of tomorrow, there’s an easy explanation: The Indiana-based group is obsessed with history. Formed in 2001 by singer Seth Mahern — nephew of Paul Mahern, leader of the legendary…
Behold the latest entry in the “let’s-give-our-disc-a-name-that-makes-it-easy-for-critics-to-bash-us” sweepstakes: Searching for a Former Clarity. The third album by Against Me!, however, fails spectacularly to live down to its title. Even sharper and more focused than 2003’s As the Eternal Cowboy, these fourteen songs plumb the band’s seemingly bottomless well of passion,…
“We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas,” wrote celebrated technophobe Henry David Thoreau in 1845, “but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate.” The poor guy would have dropped a load if he’d lived to see Myspace.com. Recently sold…
FRI, 9/23 Last year, on August 29, KGNU made history. The stalwart, Boulder-based independent radio station — Colorado’s home for such lauded syndicated shows as Democracy Now! — purchased the broadcast frequency of 1430 AM in Denver, expanding its potential audience by millions. “It’s a process, and we’re just barely…
FRI, 9/23 The IMAX feature Mystic India: An Incredible Journey of Inspiration might not be as steamy as HBO’s new series, Rome — it’s a family flick, after all — but its visual pageantry, shown four stories high, can’t be beat. The film, opening today at the Phipps IMAX Theater…
While We’re From Japan! would have you believe it’s from the Land of the Rising Sun, a far more likely birthplace would be Iceland — specifically, Sigur Rós’s garage. Raising more racket, if fewer goosebumps, than Jon Thor Birgisson and crew, the Portland group still evokes enough glacial grace and…
