Local indie rockers doing the solo-acoustic thing are a dime a dozen right now. Good or bad, most of them tend to blur together into a blob of wistful strums and sad-sack sensitivity. Aaron Hobbs, aka Hobbs NM, doesn’t really stray far from that equation. But where too many singer/songwriter…

It’s been an eventful stretch of time since the release of Engine Down’s last record, 2002’s blisteringly gorgeous Demure. In the last two years, the group has signed to mega-indie Lookout Records, hit the road with huge bands like Thursday and Sparta, and seen its side project, Denali, get super-popular…

Naming your band after another band’s song is one thing. Actually sounding like that other band is kind of pushing it. And yet, the Seattle quartet known as Shoplifting actually pulls off appropriating both its moniker and method from England’s dance-punk pioneers the Slits. Not that Shoplifting is a straight-up…

There’s enough memorializing going on this week already; no need to downplay real tragedy by making a big deal about some local band breaking up. Still, the Risk is playing its final show this Saturday, September 11, at the Climax Lounge — and Denver doesn’t even know what it’s losing…

Everyone loves a kick in the ass, the thrill of slashed guitars, the exhilaration of a fat bass beat. Even slow music can have a tension that triggers the adrenaline as readily as the speediest hardcore track. But the guys in the Six Parts Seven (appearing Saturday, September 11, at…

From Pussy to penises, Sally Timms really covers all her bases. The English-born, Chicago-based performer has played the roles of musician, author, actor and activist since joining the legendary Mekons in 1986. Pussy, the King of the Pirates was the Kathy Acker-inked lesbian opera that Timms starred in nine years…

I think of myself as a very small link in a very big chain.” Jazz may get a bad rap as something complicated, esoteric, maybe even a bit snooty, but you wouldn’t know it talking to Charlie Hunter. Speaking early in the morning from his home in Brooklyn, he sounds…

Here’s where the last installment of the adventures of Reverend Dead Eye left off: After a shit-kicking, soul-scorching sermon at the Westword Music Awards Showcase in June — a raw, bluesy baptism of hellfire that featured Eliza Jane Smith of the Emmas on drums — the Reverend’s six-string sidekick, the…

Stay up channel-surfing some night and you might run across an old episode of It’s Showtime at the Apollo. On it, a boyish rap duo throws down some goofy rhymes over deep, dexterous scratches and beats. The mixmaster is a zit-faced kid named DJ Jazzy Jeff; the MC is some…

“Shoop shoop/Shoop de-lang de-lang”? While the Libertines’ epic drug consumption has been well documented, not even a kiddie pool full of meth could account for the gawky, girl-group doo-wop of “What Katie Did,” one of the more tweaked tracks off the British group’s self-titled sophomore effort. Not that the band…

Except for the groupies and free weed, Medeski Martin & Wood could probably give two shits about the jam scene. Sure, MMW has collaborated with Phish, and the trio’s instrumental, semi-improv sound has been embraced by the hippie masses. But its music has always been steeped in smooth ’70s fusion…

There could be no Denver anymore,” says David Marion. “It could have been bombed a month ago and I wouldn’t even know.” Marion, the frontman of Aurora’s Fear Before the March of Flames, is speaking from somewhere in upstate New York, en route to a show in Farmingdale after a…

Two things never fail: Only the good die young, and all the great Denver bands break up before their time. Add Manalive! to the latter. The stalwart local trio will be packing it in this Friday, August 27, at Pancho’s Villa (3428 Downing Street), with Bailer, Call Sign Cobra, Murder…

“What is it/This anger dissected?” wails Gabe Shapiro of Volante in the song “Everybody Loses.” Little does he know, he’s already answered his own question. “Anger dissected” pretty much nails his band’s sound: a surgically wrought revelation of buried strife, a biopsy of amputated desires and in-grown rage. When Volante…

Hot on the heels of last week’s Curiosa festival comes Levinhurst (above, right), the new project by erstwhile Cure member Laurence “Lol” Tolhurst. But, in contrast to many of the acts that appeared at Curiosa, don’t expect the Cure redux; while Tolhurst was a founding member of Robert Smith’s glorified…

Luke Fairchild must have some obsession with flashing lights: The singer/guitarist’s last band was named Sparkles, and his new project is dubbed White Dynamite, which is funny because the seven cuts on The Bleeder Broadcast are anything but illuminating. Instead, they cast a pall of darkness and disorientation over Fairchild’s…

Just ask the Dixie Chicks: The revolution will not be countrified. But that hasn’t stopped country-rock rebel Steve Earle from making The Revolution Starts…Now, his most political — and sadly unconvincing — statement to date. Whereas his past work deftly straddled the line between rhetoric and song, Revolution thrashes and…

Condensing the depth and complexity of a Joan of Arc record into a terse string of words is impossible. Instead, please accept this list of half-assed associations. This disc’s opener, “Questioning Benjamin Franklin’s Ghost,” is an out-of-whack tap dance of piano, cello and babbling that revisits the crankier side of…

D’Artagnan was the hero of Alexandre Dumas’s great adventure novel, The Three Musketeers. And while Denver’s Dartanian will readily admit to screwing up the spelling, the foursome’s music is just as swashbuckling and triumphant as its namesake. Sporting ex-members of the much-loved metal-core acts Shogun and Angels Never Answer, Dartanian…

Like a modern-day hunger artist, the Los Angeles group the Starvations is a caged, anxious avatar of alienation and dread all but ignored by the fickle fans of the garage-rock revival. And for good reason: Rather than hamming it up or dumbing it down, the quintet’s latest releases — 2003’s…