Ever had friends try to tell you how much more clear-thinking and able-bodied they are when they’re high? Denver’s Under the Drone will convince you of exactly that. The group’s precision stoner rock chokes on the smoky grooves of Kyuss and Nirvana’s Bleach even as it sculpts protein-packed riffs with…

If you listen to “Pure,” a track from the upcoming full-length by Denver electronica duo Adrenaline Sky, you’d never guess it was born a funk tune. Eric Smith wrote it years ago in his first group, Exit 232, and has resurrected it in every band he’s been involved with since…

Few local bands explode out of your stereo the first time you slap their discs in — especially if they’re as new as Le Boom. But even though the foursome has only been extant for a few months, its members have been around the block, and then some: Bassist/singer Maylyn…

It’s pretty funny that one of the best Saddle Creek releases in recent memory isn’t even on Saddle Creek. The lauded Nebraska label is, of course, home to Bright Eyes, the Good Life and the defunct Desaparecidos — three acts that ’89 Cubs draw members from. But the Cubs’ debut,…

Like his contemporary Townes Van Zandt, Loudon Wainwright III comes from a wealthy and blue-blooded family — but he spit out the upper crust in the late ’60s to embrace the everyman poetics of folk music. Since then, the course of his career has jackknifed all over the place, from…

With 3 Weeks In, the EP that Laymen Terms released earlier this year, the Colorado Springs band displayed a bare-assed work in progress, a transition from pop-punk ho-hum to epic rock drama and a promise of greater things to come. Damn. Who would have known they’d actually transcend those expectations?…

There’s really nothing inherently wrong with — or even new about — punk’s mainstream popularity. After all, wimpy derivatives of it have been riding the charts since the late ’70s, and all it’s done is strengthened the resolve of the bands and fans who choose not to buy in or…

For a second, all you could hear was a buzz. It was a packed Saturday night at the Larimer Lounge, and Boulder’s Signal to Noise had just erupted into yet another epic, surging song. Riffs lunged with ponderous grace and buckled under each other’s weight. The vocals drifted in ether…

Confusion has been a motif of modern music from Igor Stravinsky on down to Sonic Youth. But rarely has Colorado seen as bizarre an avatar of panic and pandemonium as the Springs’ own Colonial Excess. After a puzzling jumble of handmade EPs leaked out over the past year, the quartet…

The Trouble We’re In, by Milwaukee’s Call Me Lightning, doesn’t open with either a whimper or a bang — just the crackling hum of a crappy, over-cranked amp. But it’s an omen, a stab of static that perfectly sets the tone for the unhinged, neck-snapping mayhem to follow. Formed out…

It takes balls the size of Tasmania to impersonate AC/DC, Australia’s most famed musical export and an undeniable rock-and-roll legend. Uh, that is, unless you’re Seattle’s Hell’s Belles — an all-woman AC/DC tribute band that ably salutes all those about to rock. The band came together four years ago, and…

Mike Kinsella must be getting tired. Since he took a detour from Joan of Arc in 1999 to begin recording his own material — first in the group American Football, and now solo, as Owen — the songwriter has quietly constructed a panopticon of doomed emotional scenarios that somehow involve…

As a self-described introduction to the music of Junior Kimbrough, this tribute album fails spectacularly: These versions of his songs are so radically and haphazardly interpreted that they give only the faintest clue as to what set Kimbrough apart from other such venerated bluesmen. And yet almost every eclectic cut…

It’s cold, the sky is spitting rain, and I’m driving a dead man’s car across Texas to see Chin Up Chin Up. The Chicago quintet is playing tonight in Denton, north of Dallas, and since I just spent Thanksgiving with my girlfriend’s family in San Antonio, I figured I’d trek…

Before ’60s garage-rockers got ahold of fuzz pedals, pharmaceuticals and the British Invasion, a different kind of noise was oozing out of American teenage suburbia. A raw, Neanderthal mangling of surf and R&B, it has since earned the dubious designation of “frat rock” — a style drilled into the cultural…

Although Ozzfest is usually nothing but a slop bucket of shitty nü-metal, someone in Ozzy’s empire was on the ball this year when he tapped Washington, D.C.’s Darkest Hour. The brutal fivesome brought a much-needed injection of legitimacy and bile-spewing hysteria to the fest; those qualities were honed by years…

The most obvious connection between Roger Green and Porlolo’s Erin Roberts is the Czars: The former is a full-time guitarist for the band, while the latter has occasionally appeared with Green and company as sort of an auxiliary member. This split CD, though, proves that there’s a deeper tandem current…

The Rise has absolutely no idea how to do things the way it’s supposed to. The Austin quintet’s debut, Signal to Noise, shattered hardcore convention, taking a strong cue from Refused but adding an even harsher, more electro tone to its nerve-shot techno-punk. As unorthodox as it was, though, the…

As everyone now knows, Nirvana started out merely great and wound up, well, godlike. Not that With the Lights Out is meant as some kind of Bible, unless you’re talking about the particularly gruesome parts of the Old Testament. Every manner of misfire and fuckup is immortalized on this boxed…

It was a couple of years ago, back when his grandfather was still alive. Win Butler and his girlfriend, Régine Chassagne, invited Alvino — Butler called him by his first name — up to their home in Montreal to visit. Alvino had always been close to his grandson, but they’d…