The anxieties and neuroses of modern living have been documented for decades by legions of psychologists and prophets, scientists and seers. Add to that list Denver’s own Navy Girls, who will play a free show on Saturday, January 22, at the Larimer Lounge with Denunzio and Pinkuu. But while most…

Special thanks to the forgotten towns and rolling hills along 101.” So states the thank-you list printed inside Whenever You’re Ready, the latest release by the longstanding California band Swell. Made up primarily of singer/guitarist David Freel and drummer Sean Kirkpatrick, the group formed in 1989; soon after, Swell was…

Can’t make up your mind between a rock show or a dance party? You’re not alone: Neither can The Royal We. This local threesome has been spinning melodies and bustin’ moves over the past year, torching Denver with its jittery, sassy brand of string-strangling pop. Singer/guitarist Eli Mishkin seems to…

You may already know Orlando Terrell. Tall and bald-headed, he used to walk all over downtown Denver towing three or four of his kids in a single-file line like ducklings while balancing a huge electronic keyboard on his shoulder. Occasionally you’d see him at Wax Trax Records, parleying playfully with…

Laughter may be the best medicine, but to Stanley Jordan, music is the universal anodyne. The celebrated jazz guitarist is a spokesman for the American Music Therapy Association, and his 2003 disc, Relaxing Music for Difficult Situations, Volume One, is an hour-long improvised solo piece that showcases the more restrained…

There’s something about sticking an acoustic guitar in someone’s hand and leaving them alone in a room that makes for some pretty gloomy tunes. Maybe it’s the solitude, the lack of external stimulus or simply the fact that that’s just what people have always done with acoustic guitars in lonely…

I’m a bastard. That’s the whole thing.” It’s early on a frosty evening at Gabor’s, the infamous Capitol Hill dive bar where the jukebox leans toward Zeppelin and X and autographed snapshots of Hollywood has-beens like Louie Anderson adorn the walls. Charles Edward, leader of Seraphim Shock, sits at a…

Zombies are shambling, reanimated corpses that drip with decay and a cold, bloodless contempt for all human life. Zombie Zombie is like that, times two. For the last couple of years, this local foursome has been assaulting the country with a surreal mingling of costumes, noise and apocalyptic hallucinations of…

There’s a very little-known installment of the Shaft movie series where Richard Roundtree’s funky detective gets sent to bust some pimps and pushers on a space station circling Alpha Centauri. Artificial gravity hasn’t been invented yet, so our man Shaft floats weightless with a fishbowl over his head while he…

Every time some subterranean sound decides to paint itself up and whore itself out to the hoi polloi, there’s a legion of bands left behind to rock away in obscurity, more out of love for the music than the lure of record contracts and movie-star girlfriends. Take, for example, Radio…

It’s easy to see why autumn is a lot of people’s favorite season. For one thing, it isn’t so goddamn hot. Summer simmers down to a chilly lull, leaves put on a patina of rust, and the smarter mammals bury themselves in hibernation. At its heart, though, autumn is palpably…

Sucking Satan’s dick can really change a person. Just ask Rodney Mitchell, a guy who’s been taking his lumps for years playing music in what he calls “nobody’s underground” — the limbo between obscurity and fame that most people know as the world of independent rock. Frustrated and finally fed…

It looks more like Eastern Europe than East 13th Avenue, more Carpathian Mountains than Capitol Hill. The building is straight out of Gothic novel, a Romanesque castle of brick and oak complete with a spire-topped tower straining toward heaven. The front entrance is framed in carved stone, its pointed arch…

Paisley shirts. Nehru jackets. Chelsea boots. Gregg Kostelich probably got his ass kicked quite a bit during the 1980s. In the middle of that decade of lasers, silicon and polyurethane pop, he began pumping up the retrogression as the guitarist of Pennsylvania’s The Cynics (who will play Saturday, November 22,…

There’s death in the undergrowth, black and loamy. It crouches beneath broad green leaves like puddles of shadow, sucking at wet roots and bare feet, insulating the banks of the Cumberland and the Monongahela with the muffled, hollow hush of decay. The Appalachians ache with it. So does Jolie Holland…

Epiphanies are like assholes: Everyone has one, most stink and not even surgery can purge them. Consider as a case in point the 33-year-old, New Jersey-bred punk songwriter Ted Leo. The first record he ever owned was “It Never Rains in Southern California,” by Albert Hammond. His first concert, at…

I never saw any relation between my upbringing and the art that I do,” says j.frede, the former Denver aesthetic agitator who now resides in Los Angeles, where he has been making a name for himself as a composer and performer of experimental music over the past two years. “I…

Mark out the points! Build the pyre! Assemble different drummers! Light up the fire! Put on your masks and animal skins!” Dictums for an ancient pagan ritual? Canons handed down by a Druidic high priest during Samhain, the Celtic precursor to Halloween where worshipers draped themselves in costumes and the…

Cello plus drums and screams: How can you go wrong? Especially if you’re the Portland duo known as Discharge Information System, who perform on Wednesday, October 29, at Revoluciones (719 West Eighth Avenue), with the May Riots and Nightshark. Andy Gehrz pilots the traps and Melissa Collins scrapes the catgut…

They climb on the stage like acrobats tiptoeing onto high wires. Their moves are poised, exact; their balance and dexterity are honed to surgical precision. Their confidence is almost overbearing, an arrogant mix of savvy and narcissism bolstered by the knowledge that, in the eyes of their fawning audience, they…

There’s a fine line between myth-making and fucking around. Tons of rock bands throughout history have been as good, if not better, at playing the image game than they have been at playing their instruments. The Clash, by a barrage of astute media manipulation, was able to downplay the fact…