For a band so obsessed with the chillier frontiers of experimental rock, Hood refuses to stay frozen. Cold House, from 2001, was a watermark for the English group, crystallizing its aqueous post-rock into a new, glitteringly austere form of pop. But where House enclosed its digital chisel work in claustrophobic…

Being at the top of the Wedding Present’s thank-you list may not be much of an honor. On Take Fountain, the revived Present’s first release in eight years, that prestigious spot is granted to Sally Murrell — former girlfriend of the band’s leader, David Gedge, and his longtime collaborator in…

It didn’t even cross my mind that people might perceive us as a bunch of drunks.” Sarah Rocereta, singer/guitarist of Stoli and the Beers, is far more pissed than she is wasted. It’s Friday night at the Cherry Pit, and her band just tore through a neck-snapping blur of primal…

Tragedy and loss have inspired some great songwriting throughout history — as well as some great performances. But at the hi-dive on Tuesday, February 22, it won’t be breakups or rainy days that are moving the musicians; instead, a cadre of local players will join voices to raise funds for…

Nashville, believe it or not, is still capable of pumping out the kind of primal American essence it was originally known for. Case in point: Th’ Legendary Shack Shakers, who will wheel their cranium-cracking sideshow to the Larimer with the Trailer Park Playboys and the Skulls. Drawing from, but not…

You can just picture it: Four children of the ’70s kicking it in the basement, inadvertently huffing poorly capped bottles of paint thinner and plowing through wobbly renditions of all their classic-rock favorites. Then punk comes along and, instead of giving them tunnel vision, actually opens their eyes. After five…

It’s hard to shrug off the genius of Neil Diamond. In fact, he only truly sucks when he’s being channeled through someone else — especially someone once famed for having such a distinct and idiosyncratic voice. Yeah, we’re looking at you, Eric Bachmann. Since the ex-Archers of Loaf songwriter formed…

There are headphone albums — and then there are albums that can only properly be heard through the telecom inside the helmet of a spacesuit. Feathers, Dead Meadow’s fourth studio full-length, is exactly the latter. The problem is, you shouldn’t have to be shuttled into orbit for a psychedelic record…

We’re just a wandering band of comedians.” You might expect such a statement from the stooges in Barenaked Ladies or, at the very least, Ween. But coming from Matt Pike, singer/guitarist of Oakland’s High on Fire, the confession sounds seriously hilarious. After all, the trio — Pike, drummer Des Kensel…

Love hurts. Love stinks. If the Valentine’s season makes you want to run gagging to the nearest gutter, inoculate yourself against America’s most contrived holiday in style — as part of the Funeral of Hearts 4: Day of the Dead celebration this Friday, February 11, at Rock Island. Conceived as…

“What’s it gonna be — pleasure or action?” wails Stephonik X of Aqui on “Roll,” a song from the group’s welt-raising debut, The First Trip Out. The Brooklyn outfit is a maelstrom of noise and electricity, a metal-inflicted mutation of art, punk and rock just as likely to make eyeballs…

When indie buzz band Denali broke up last year, the group’s singer, Maura Davis, wasted no time in rounding up a new posse. Minus her guitarist brother, Keely (who left Denali to focus on his main project, Engine Down), the Virginia-based chanteuse enlisted the talents of three Chicagoans — bassist…

A little raunch can go a long way — not that Denver’s Hate Kate would know. The sleaze sloshes like a tsunami out of the group’s debut CD, It Is What You Think It Is. The title says it all: No holds are barred as the disc lays bare everything…

Years ago, Lou Barlow was scheduled to do an in-store performance at Wax Trax Records in Denver. He showed up almost an hour late; by the time he walked through the door with guitar in hand, the place was packed to the ceiling. As he hustled past the cash register,…

As numblingly beautiful as Sam Beam’s music is, an entire album of it can almost be too much. His two previous full-lengths as Iron & Wine, The Creek Drank the Cradle and last year’s chilling Our Endless Numbered Days, were overwhelming. Beam’s songs are so dark they threaten to blot…

On August 1, 1981, MTV broadcast its first video, a blast of tuneful Technicolor called “Video Killed the Radio Star.” The band that sang it, the Buggles, went on to accomplish absolutely nothing and has been immortalized primarily on the back of Trivial Pursuit cards. The second video MTV aired…

While nu-punk bands are proliferating like maggots nowadays, few of them burrow very deep into the genre’s tradition. But England’s the Fight does — as evidenced by Nothing New Since Rock N’ Roll, the group’s 2004 debut full-length. While its previous EP on Fat Wreck Chords — Home Is Where…

Tift Merritt’s sophomore release, the masterful Tambourine, was just nominated for a Grammy for Best Country Album, which is ironic: Although Merritt has been a staple of North Carolina’s alt-country scene for years, the disc is a big departure from the rustic strum of her 2002 debut, Bramble Rose. Her…

For a compilation of local music, PS 2 oddly lacks a unifying identity; the word “Denver” doesn’t appear anywhere on it, and the bands it features certainly don’t sound very much alike. But diversity has long been a strength of Colorado’s indie scene, even if it somewhat hamstrings groups’ efforts…

Poland has the dubious distinction of being America’s most complicit and obsequious ally in its current crusade in the Middle East. It makes a twisted sort of sense, then, that the country birthed the pagan-death-metal ogre known as Behemoth (appearing Tuesday, February 8, at the Bluebird Theater). Demigod is a…

Oh, what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to make pop music that isn’t popular. Not that End of Love, the fifth full-length by Clem Snide, abandons itself to the conceptual outback of art pop; instead, it continues the group’s erratic, enthralling arc across old-school song wizardry…