Who would have thought that in the early 21st century there’d be a glut of garage-punk bands fronted by Tina Turner-esque soul divas? The Detroit Cobras. The Now Time. Delegation. The BellRays. Well, now you can slap The DT’s at the top of that list. This senses-searing, Washington-state quartet (playing…

Late last summer, a pale, willowy young man walked into the vinyl section of a Denver-area record store. He seemed nervous. His glossy black hair fell like ink across his eyes, and he glanced around the relatively empty shop as if someone were about to run up and hit him…

With Terroir Blues, his second solo full-length, Jay Farrar has inched 23 tracks closer to his final destination: an image of Americana where country, punk, folk, blues and psychedelia accelerate into a single, grim gravity. In the same way that Neil Young sang folk tunes about spaceships, Farrar — who…

My strength is in writing pop songs — punk-rock pop songs.” Dave Smalley, singer/guitarist of the Southern California-based quartet Down by Law, is spelling out exactly why, unlike his friends and contemporaries in Fugazi, he never tried juggling test tubes in the punk-rock laboratory. “From a spiritual side, I’ve always…

“So, which one of you guys is Rilo?” Yup, Rilo Kiley, appearing Thursday, July 17, at the Climax Lounge, with M Ward and the Golden Age, is another one of those bands with a name that sounds like a person. Pretty fucking annoying. Just as annoying as most of the…

Death to the fascist insect that preys upon the life of the people!” So declared the manifesto of the Symbionese Liberation Army. In 1974, this group of revolutionaries — made up of a few escaped black convicts and a dozen or so affluent white kids — kidnapped Patty Hearst, granddaughter…

According to the medical journals, the symptoms of Swayback disease include weakened arteries, internal bleeding and the laying of abnormally shaped eggs. Coincidentally, these are also three symptoms of being exposed to Denver power trio The Swayback. The group, playing Tuesday, July 15, at the Bluebird, with the Raveonettes and…

It takes sound and meaning to make a word. Remove either one and you’re left with a morphological shell; combine them in just the right way and, well, you’re communicating. This formula applies to pop music, too. Great lyrics can turn a rote melody or an empty riff into an…

Mixing rock and funk nowadays is usually about as appetizing as pouring shellac on your pancakes. Luckily for Denver, the Compulsions — who play Wednesday, July 9, at Herman’s Hideaway, with Horse Thief, Etherglow and Ball of Ages — nimbly sidestep the cliches and offenses perpetrated by this hybrid genre…

Trilobites. Plesiosaurs. The double-record, gatefold, vinyl LP. One would assume they were all extinct, rendered obsolete, yanked from the gene pool because, frankly, they just couldn’t compete with flashy new life forms like mammals and compact discs. First brought to prominence by the Beatles and then perpetuated by the likes…

The racket is nauseating. Vibrations slither up your tailbone and into your skeleton, rattling ribs and clacking skull against jaw. The heat bakes your stomach into a queasy bile casserole. To top it all off, your ass is about to become unhinged from bucking violently against a bare metal floor…

Punk rock sure has come a long way since the days of three chords, battered amps and shredded knuckles. Just don’t tell The Hacks. This mosh-pit-scarred trio — playing Saturday, June 28, at the Ogden Theatre as part of Blister 66’s Summer F**king Jam — is the type of band…

Fly Me to the Moon,” by Frank Sinatra. “Crying,” by Roy Orbison. “Roxanne,” by the Police. The hits keep rolling out of the jukebox and bouncing off the faux-walnut paneling and mirrored walls of the P S Lounge on East Colfax Avenue. The four members of Voices Underwater sit clustered…

Wayne Shorter didn’t start out playing the saxophone — or even music. His first mode of expression as a teenager was the graphic arts. “Back in 1949, I did a lot of drawings,” says Shorter, now 69, as close to a jazz legend as anyone alive could claim to be…

The phrase “Feel-Good Summer Hit” doesn’t make any sense at all. Summer doesn’t feel good — in fact, it’s downright shitty, what with all the pit sweat and foot fungus and boiling garbage juice and blinding Caucasian leg meat. Spring is way better. Every beam of bright, warm sun is…

Open up the May/June 2003 issue of Adbusters and you’ll find a cardboard-sleeved CD glued to the inside of one of the pages. Its presence isn’t blazoned across the cover as an incentive to buy the magazine; it’s not tagged with a magnetic strip to prevent sticky-fingered browsers from lifting…

Boredom, poverty, loneliness, suicide and heartbreak. Sounds cheerful, doesn’t it? Actually, it is…as long as FM Knives are singing about it. This Sacramento four-piece, playing Thursday, May 22, at the Climax Lounge, has mastered the punk-rock alchemy of turning depression into elation, ennui into energy. On “16 DOA,” a love…

Nothing’s funnier than watching a room full of carefully uncaring, strategically mussed indie rockers trying to dance at a show. That is, trying not to dance, but trying to make it look like they are dancing. But only kind of. The symptoms are universal: the nodding heads, the half-hearted hip…

I’m not one of those people who wants to hear the same thing over and over again,” says alto saxophonist and pioneer of improvised music Wally Shoup. “I always use the metaphor of the roller coaster. When you’re on a roller coaster, it’s exciting. You don’t necessarily know what’s around…

Whoever voted Johnny Marr one of the “Top Ten Guitar Heroes of All Time” must be a total idiot. Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page…sure, it’s easy to see why, in 2001, they were chosen by the BBC to head such a list. But Johnny Marr? Guitar hero? Where are…