Bad blood ran as thick as Jägermeister that night at the Lion’s Lair. After an infinitely long session by some crappy bar band from Pennsylvania — culminating in an eight-minute, dual-guitar lead that succeeded in putting everyone to sleep, even as it blew the speakers — Denver’s d.biddle took the…

Just when people started to figure out how to unravel Xiu Xiu’s brand of puzzling, theatrical art-rock, two of the group’s provisional sidemen — Sam Mickens and Jherek Bischoff — have spun off into the equally confounding outfit the Dead Science. The Seattle trio’s new EP, Bird Bones in the…

The name of Menomena’s debut full-length, I Am the Fun Blame Monster, is an anagram for “the first Menomena album.” Similarly, the Portland trio rearranges parcels of sound into epic pop opuses using Deeler, a software program created by pianist Brent Knopf. But there’s much more magic involved than simple…

Januar hasn’t played many shows in its three-year existence, but the quartet has a good reason: Drummer Katie Aiken spends more time in far-flung locales like Pennsylvania and Iceland than she does in Denver. That fact — along with the group’s unusual two-acoustic-guitarists/two-drummers lineup — might lead you to believe…

According to the liner notes of A Frames’ Black Forest, the trio features a bassist, a drummer and a guitarist by the names of Cholera, Ricketts and Emphysema. Insert contagion metaphor here. Seriously though, the Seattle outfit makes some damn infectious music — that is, as much so as a…

“Hey, get off the thin ice! Geez!” Zak Sally of Low is yelling at his dog. It’s an unseasonably warm winter day in Duluth, Minnesota, and the bassist is multi-tasking — cell phone in one hand, leash in the other. “I’m at the park,” he explains. “It thawed yesterday, so…

For such a relatively new band, Monofog has a complicated history. The Fort Collins outfit started in 2001 and quickly kicked up a buzz with its atmospheric, cerebrally aggressive indie rock. In 2003, though, drummer Lucas Rouge moved out of state; three of the remaining members — singer Hayley Helmericks,…

I wouldn’t like me if I met me — weird lyrics for sure, coming from a pair of identical twins. Said song, “You Wouldn’t Like Me,” is the first cut off Tegan and Sara Quin’s breakthrough disc, 2004’s So Jealous. Resembling a twenty-something Heart with a serious Strokes crush, the…

As much Pure Prairie League as Townes Van Zandt, Portland’s Dolorean has spent the last five years finding the pop appeal lurking within the darker backwater of the folk-rock canon. Essentially the vehicle for singer/guitarist Al James, the group recently released Violence in the Snowy Fields, a collection of songs…

The Eurythmics perfected the formula: the dude who stands in back, tinkering with the equipment, fronted by a chanteuse oozing icy mystery. Eric Smith and Shannon Alexander play Dave and Annie in Adrenaline Sky — a Denver duo whose full-length, The Ultimate Illusion of Privacy, hints at the Brit-pomp of…

Chicago’s Sweep the Leg Johnny was always a great band. But that sax? Had to go. Amid all the group’s streamlined savagery, singer Steve Sostak’s ungodly squawking was about as welcome as a turd in a hot tub. So it’s with one hand on the doorknob and the other holding…

Scott Kerr pauses, rests his chin on his hands and ponders for a minute. The clink of glass and burble of conversation overflows from the other booths at Sputnik as the singer/guitarist of Yellow Second composes his thoughts. His bandmates — guitarist Josh Hemingway, bassist Brett Bowden and drummer Jimmy…

Right before Franz Ferdinand and the Arcade Fire came along and swiped its thunder, British Sea Power was poised to be the world’s foremost purveyor of angle-brandishing indie anthems. But not everyone forgot: The Nightmare Fighters have enthusiastically channeled British Sea’s arty post-punk and Ian Curtis-esque grumble into a promising…

Side projects often have a way of turning around and influencing the bigger bands that spawned them. The New Amsterdams is a prime example: Singer/guitarist Matt Pryor formed the group in 2000 as a vehicle for his more folky, delicate compositions, ones that didn’t quite fit into the emo-pop framework…

The story starts like this: Five years ago, two sisters by the names of Adrienne the Anemone and Bethany the Barracuda decide to mix ornate, goth-shaded pop music with puppetry, sign language and a flair for sheer fantasy. Enlisting the aid of drummer Khattie the Katfish, the Austin-based outfit began…

The contrasts between Ozzy Osbourne and Morrissey are multitudinous. A few of the most obvious: Morrissey is rock’s most famous abstainer since Ian MacKaye; Ozzy once inhaled pills and groupies like they were oxygen. Morrissey reads Oscar Wilde; Ozzy has problems with a TelePrompTer. Ozzy munches bats; Morrissey thinks meat…

Ripping words from music can be as traumatic as mom and dad getting a divorce. Very rarely are lyrics able to stand unaided by their sonic concomitant. Shit, even naked Dylan stinks. So what possessed Aesop Rock to release an EP accompanied by a ninety-page book collecting all the script…

Stereolab’s once-thunderous drone may have decayed into a flimsy echo over the last few years, but that hasn’t hushed Laetitia Sadier. In 2003 the group’s singer released a solo album, Socialisme Ou Barbarie, under the name Monade — and while it deviated from Stereolab only in scale, the project’s homespun…

“Booty tuba.” Seamus Kenney, lead singer of North Carolina’s SNMNMNM, is attempting to describe the slithery, oomph-like gulp emitted by his outfit’s unconventional low-end instrument. Most sane bands use a bass guitar, or, in a pinch, a synthesizer, to pump those subterranean frequencies. But instead, SNMNMNM’s Mark Daumen wields a…

Puppet heads, robot dancing, electro-punk and jazz improv? Add some cheap liquor, and you’ve got a recipe for one kick-ass migraine. This Wednesday, the cranial constriction will be applied by Les Georges Leningrad, a vibrantly surreal trio from Montreal infamous for its lurid, theatrical live shows and berserk flagellation of…

The thumbprint of At the Drive-In will doubtless be leaving impressions on post-hardcore forever — but few pretenders to that throne possess as much energy, honesty and soul as Irradio. The San Diego quintet came together six years ago and has since released two albums, 2002’s Semantic Noise and last…

For too many, country rock is equated with either the hangdog wheezing of fringe-jacketed troubadours like Gram Parsons or the mustachioed mush of the Eagles. But to Zach Boddicker, former guitarist of Fort Collins’s Drag the River, the term has way more of a shit-kicking connotation. Neon Steven is the…