At its best, rock and roll is a noncompetitive, egalitarian art form, in which like-minded musicians come together to create, communicate and share their souls as equals instead of constructing bloody ladders to superstardom out of the corpses of the weak. Of course, that’s total crap, and for proof, check…
The cover of Van Hunt’s self-titled debut has a picture of our man’s face framed by psychedelic squiggles and a comic-book speech balloon announcing his name. Kinda funny when you think about, seeing as how the hyped neo-soul movement of the past few years has graced us with a lot…
I’ve had a pretty hectic day,” says Arrington de Dionyso from Olympia, Washington, the state’s tiny capital and the headquarters of K Records, the venerable indie label that de Dionyso’s band, Old Time Relijun, calls home. “A bag that contains a passport and all of my jaw harps was stolen…
From the outside, the small building in the back yard of 111 West Archer Place appears to be a simple sheet-metal shed. But inside is a DIYer’s paradise: the Denver Zine Library. The newest experiment in Denver’s tradition of upstart libraries — the city’s first was begun in a newsstand…
In the iconography of childhood, hearts and stars are crayon-scrawled hieroglyphs symbolizing love, hope and wonder. Fittingly, Heart is the title of the newest album by Canadian outfit Stars, which will appear on Monday, March 15, at the Climax Lounge, with the Dears and George & Caplin. The band’s throwback…
Hot damn! Another concept album. With recent releases like the Mars Volta’s De-Loused in the Comatorium, Cursive’s The Ugly Organ and Racebannon’s Satan’s Kickin’ Yr Dick In, the gears on this idea are starting to get stripped — as if they weren’t already eroded enough in the ’70s. What saves…
If Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda had ditched Easy Rider and taken over 2001: A Space Odyssey from Stanley Kubrick, Dead Meadow would have made the perfect soundtrack. This Washington, D.C.-based trio is riding high on the acclaim from its third record, 2003’s downright wizardly The Shivering King and Others…
In Andy Greenwald’s lame book Nothing Feels Good: Punk Rock, Teenagers and Emo, the author unhooks his lips from the gonads of Dashboard Confessional long enough to cite Denver’s own Christie Front Drive as one of the founders of contemporary emo. Granted, that alone is enough to make anyone justifiably…
Literary readings are usually about as rousing as a two-hour wait at the DMV. Maybe it’s the stick-up-the-butt, tea-party ambience; maybe it’s the fact that most writers can’t credibly translate their prose into the spoken word. Whatever the reason, the whole idea of sitting on a folding chair, sipping fruit…
When Dave Hall of The Honky Tonk Hangovers sings about life in the big rig, he’s not speaking from a childhood spent watching reruns of B.J. and the Bear. When he was a boy, he used to accompany his big brother, Steve, on runs in an eighteen-wheeler — which explains…
Existence, according to Henry Miller, is an ovarian trolley, a runaway treadmill full of yolk-like crap that could care less how it gets incarnated. Birth, identity and death are inconsequential; it’s the motion itself that has any chance of meaning anything. On As the Eternal Cowboy, Tom Gabel of Florida’s…
There wasn’t a cloud in the sky as the twin-engine Lockheed Electra took off from Lae, New Guinea. It was July 2, 1937, and although international relations were tense, World War II was still many months away. The only enemy the little plane had was the Pacific itself, vast and…
In the early 1900s, burlesque — a mix of parody and bawdiness — was huge. Yet over time, what was known as the “burly-Q” grew tired and was displaced by raunchy strip clubs and porn mags. But the concept didn’t die, and these days, neo-burlesque is busting out all over…
In the future, entire universities will be staffed by legions of cultural archaeologists toiling for decades to fully catalogue the extent of the atrocities that Coldplay has inflicted upon the world. Besides their own music — which, admit it, sounds like a Gap-plastered Radiohead giving a dry-ice enema to Sting…
Things just aren’t always what they seem. Take, for instance, Andy Tanner, lead singer and guitarist of Laymen Terms. He’s a tall guy, spindly, with a fringe of greasy hair hanging over his forehead. Draped in a T-shirt and jeans, he hunches his shoulders and mumbles a little, humble and…
In a cultural landscape littered with decaying, decrepit rap stereotypes, Mr. Len is resurrecting yet one more: the strong, smart hip-hop artist who is neither pumped-up thug nor science-dropping spazz. Len began his career as part of the New York City crew Company Flow, whose 1997 debut, Funcrusher Plus, was…
“The songs are all done, and as they go down on tape/The critics click their pens/Comparisons made and names dropped in all boldface/To sound like his best friends.” So begins “Sing a Song,” the first track on the debut solo effort by Denver Dalley — otherwise known as Statistics. Dalley…
The voice snakes in around the cracks of the song like a curl of smoke, a vapor stinking of lust and poison. “I threw everything away/That you’d ever given to me/All the things I saved are gone/The dead flower from the time/That my little baby died,” Bambi Lee Savage groans…
If garage rock is music that supposedly sounds like it was made in a garage, “fallout-shelter rock” might be an appropriate term to describe The Dirtbombs, who will be tearing up the Bluebird on Saturday, February 7, with the Tarmints. Led by Mick Collins, formerly of the Gories — who…
Starsailor’s 2001 debut, Love Is Here — a million-selling Brit-rock triumph described by critics and fans alike as a tender, majestic union of Van Morrison, Jeff Buckley and the Verve — was pretty much a hunk of crap. Leader James Walsh’s drab songwriting and overwrought vocals were about as stirring…
We don’t have tattoos on our necks. We don’t write songs about feelings and stuff. And we certainly don’t scream enough. We’re probably going to get eaten alive.” Matt Armstrong, bassist for the Bloomington, Indiana, quintet Murder By Death, is scared shitless. It’s two years ago, and his band is…
As hardcore gradually and inexorably seeps upward into rock’s mainstream, a lot of shit ends up getting filtered out. Leave acts like Thrice and Glassjaw to the sassy and fashion-whipped; we’ll keep Yuriko. This Denver quintet is as staunchly committed to maintaining its independence as it is to yanking punk…
