SAT, 10/30 The Billy Nayer Show, a New York City-based band, has created bizarre story-driven rock for more than a decade. But forget trying to describe its unfolding saga or style. Instead, think of a creepy alien spaceship landing tonight in Boulder at the International Order of Odd Fellows Hall,…
Allegedly, teachers teach because they can’t do. Damien Jurado, though, shouldn’t have any worries: Although he leads sing-alongs as a preschool teacher in suburban Seattle, it hasn’t inhibited his ability to craft and perform his mordantly clever, darkly catchy songs. After forming the Christian pop-punk band Coolidge with Pedro the…
This Scottish quartet has always had a problem getting its due in the States. Although the Delgados’ members collectively founded the Chemikal Underground label, which launched the careers of Arab Strap, Bis and Mogwai, the group has lurked in the shadows of its better-known neighbors for most of the last…
Though it’s often prone to sounding like a malfunctioning Hoover, minimalist music is not made in a vacuum. In fact, when it comes to the tweaking of stark tonal palettes and pure silence, context is everything; each time and place has its own ambient default, a given and unconsciously realized…
Explosions in the Sky doing the soundtrack to a jock flick? Makes about as much sense as Korn scoring a Merchant-Ivory film. And yet the ethereal Austin-based ensemble contributes the majority of the aural backdrop to Billy Bob Thornton’s new football fable, Friday Night Lights. Like Explosions’ earlier work, these…
Talk about missing the boat. When Moving Units’ debut EP came out in 2002, it actually sounded kind of fresh for being a slab of retro rehash. Filling the cracks between the Rapture’s post-punk appropriation and the Strokes’ garbled, tattered pop, it was easy to imagine then that the Units’…
Sometimes we get things off to a slow start,” says Todd Baechle, revealing a trace of modesty not usually apparent as he slinks and swaggers, often in makeup, around the stage during a Faint show. “And people are a little bit creaky at first.” Yeah, right. The last time the…
“Your spine is curving like a question mark,” belts out Christopher Richards somewhere in the middle of Power, the new full-length from Washington, D.C.’s agit-disco trio, Q and Not U. Like all the band’s lyrics, the above line is as cryptic as the Sphinx. But it could very well refer…
As versed in jazz and chamber music as she is in acoustic pop, Mirah Yom Tov Zeitlyn has a lot more on her plate than your typical Cat Power-cloned indie chanteuse. After singing in the Hot Set, an Olympia, Washington, swing band, she loaned her bell-toned voice to the Microphones’…
Autumn. To some, it’s all about chestnut hues, rustling leaves and the realization that all things must wither to be reborn. To others, it’s the year’s lowest tide of serotonin, a constant struggle to keep razors out of veins and shotgun muzzles away from dental work. The Czars’ timely new…
Not to get too gossipy or anything, but did you hear about the Apples in Stereo? After years of marriage, drummer Hilarie Sidney and guitarist Robert Schneider have broken up. Which would be nothing but old dirty laundry, except for the interesting fact that Schneider and Sidney have just released…
TUES, 10/19 Lollapalooza died a quick and quiet death this summer, a victim of sluggish ticket sales and growing apathy toward the whole idea of large-scale rockfests. But ironically, there’s still a thriving market for weird Lollapalooza mutations, like Pepsi-palooza and Hallelujah-palooza, not to mention a personal favorite, Pancake-palooza. Well,…
“To escape landlord land, we created Landlordland.” So reads a part of the vaguely Situationist diatribe that adorns www.landlordland.com, the Denver outfit’s website. Formed in 2002, the foursome of Sylas Cooley, Dan Zmolek and stepbrothers Darren Dunn and Rich Sandoval plays music much less cryptic and obscure than its manifesto…
Jim Chandler once whacked the skins in a slew of Colorado outfits, from the punky Social Joke to the fuzzy Down-n-Outs. But even after moving to Seattle to join Sub Pop garage troupe the Makers, he wasn’t prepared for the drum throne he was offered last year — the one…
With rookie metal-core acts popping up out of nowhere like a bad case of ass acne, it’s great to see the hard-bitten, decibel-scarred troops of Converge still soldiering on. Since its inception in 1990, the Boston-based battalion has been a study in sustained bloodletting and violent contradictions. Sinewy yet sensitive,…
There’s just way too much that you can read into this album. Yes, this month marks the anniversary of Elliott Smith’s tragic suicide — not that his death came as a huge surprise to fans of his music. But even as bitter as Smith’s songs could be going down, they…
Some albums are so twisted that when you listen to them, you think your CD player might be busted. But give the Blood Brothers’ new disc, Crimes, a spin, and you’ll be convinced there’s a glitch going off somewhere inside your cerebellum. Not that the Seattle quintet has ever seemed…
Driving through the lush mountains of rural Appalachia, there’s plenty of pretty scenery to look at — for instance, a tiny TV screen broadcasting images of John Kerry and George Bush ripping each other’s throats out. “We’re watching the debate in the van right now,” enthuses Mike Cooley of Southern-rock…
SAT, 10/9 Centuries ago, minstrels roamed the countryside with lutes and mandolins, trilling ballads of romance, chivalry and the glories of ages past. Today the music of the masses has a little less hindsight. Consider: Legendary British songwriter Richard Thompson was one of dozens of rock dignitaries asked by Playboy…
FRI, 10/8 From Harry Potter to Sabrina, the practice of witchcraft has been ripped off, exploited and corrupted over the past few years. Hmm…kind of like the United States presidency. The Mercury Motley Players will help set straight both injustices tonight during its presentation of The Allied Witches’ Presidential Election…
When Sam McPheeters first shrieked “Born Against are fucking dead!” over a decade ago, it was only a sarcastic epitaph for his band. But it soon turned prophetic. In 1993, the seminal hardcore group broke up, leaving a legacy of political passion, fury and wise-ass iconoclasm. Now, after years spent…
If, like philosopher Alfred Korzybski, you know how far a map can stray from the territory, an entire atlas can be downright disorienting. Likewise, Atlas’s debut CD, Ways You Once Thought Were Short Cuts, is a confusing series of creases, tears and folds in the cartography of post-punk. “Cutback,” the…
