Nineteenth-century colonialists spoke patronizingly of the Noble Savage. Today we have the Enlightened Redneck: Mike Damron, singer/ guitarist of the Oregon quintet I Can Lick Any Sonofabitch in the House. Scrapping the sad-sack sensitivity of the Gram Parsons/Townes Van Zandt school of country-rock, Damron and his boys rip out a…

So many daring jazz musicians who hit the scene in the late ’60s wound up pissing away their talent throughout the following decades — either yapping at the heels of trends like fusion and “lite jazz” or regressing to some bland, archaic rehash of bebop. Not Dave Holland. After making…

He bleats at you with foghorn-like forlornness, a bedwetter yelping in his sleep while dreaming about tsunamis. In a downpour of snot and spit, Hutch Harris of the Thermals sings, “Eyes so deep/You’d never see through/I can’t fucking stop/Thinking about you!” His voice, extinguished, then sinks like an anchor, drums…

There are a lot of things you want to ask the members of a band called Thank God for Astronauts. What they think of the Space Shuttle blowing up. How they feel about the recent disturbing trend in full sentences as band names. Whether or not they even believe in…

With the recent semi-notoriety of Har Mar Superstar and MC Paul Barman, there seems to be a newfound market for self-consciously geeky Jewish dudes making self-consciously fucked-up novelty music. Atom and His Package, though, has them all beat. Atom (playing Thursday, March 20, at Club 156, Boulder, with Sixty Stories,…

“The Bible Thump! The Bible Thump! Everybody do the Bible Thump!!!” Along with his dead eye, the good Reverend might just have a couple screws loose. Bibles, hellfire, trains, booze and babes are Reverend DeadEye’s meat and potatoes, and he delivers his lyrics in what could only be called “singing…

The secret to writing a perfect pop song? Learn everything — then forget it. Just look at Supergrass. This English group, playing Monday, March 17, at the Bluebird Theater, with the Coral, is almost an encyclopedia on tape of British popular music. Even a brief earful of any one of…

Drawing a line around The Sea and Cake isn’t easy. Over the past eight years, the Chicago quartet, appearing Friday, March 7, at the Gothic Theatre, with Califone, has soaked up color from a broad palette of influences: indie pop, kraut rock, post-punk, jazz, funk and techno. Sound splotchy? It…

Lighting should be theatrical rather than rockist. We are interested in atmosphere, mood, drama, energy, subtlety, imagination — not rock cliche.” So reads one of the dozens of protocols directed at light men, stagehands, producers, promoters, journalists, record labels and even would-be members of the band Pere Ubu. These commandments,…

In a weird twist of semantics, the word “authentic” has almost come to mean its exact opposite: fake. In this sense, 20 Miles, playing Tuesday, February 25, at the Larimer Lounge, with the Speeks and the Swayback, could be considered the most authentic blues band in the world. Of course,…

New Rock Regime opens with a sloppy, R2D2-sampling piss-take of a techno song; thirteen tracks later, it closes with a cover of CCR’s “Fortunate Son.” Somewhere in the middle, Ozzy’s “Crazy Train” is plagiarized. Of course, this all gives no indication as to what Five Day Messiah itself actually sounds…

With much of the world dangling over an abyss of terror and war, now may be the most tense time in recent history to be alive. As if in spontaneous reaction comes Black Black Ocean. While most indie-rock bands whimper and cringe, the Denver quartet (which appears Saturday, February 8,…

Your leader and our lapdog” is how Paul Weller describes President George W. Bush and British prime minister Tony Blair. Blair is the youthful liberal who seems to be the only world leader dumb, or crazy, enough to back Bush unconditionally in his imminent war against Iraq. “It took eighteen…

Skaters in the ’80s thrashed to Jodie Foster’s Army; today, they have Scott Baio Army. This punk foursome is splitting an album with fellow Denver group Line of Descent; the two will commemorate the release by co-headlining a show on Saturday, January 18, at Monkey Mania, with Angels Never Answer…

Over the phone lines between Denver and Nashville, a distinct buzz can be heard — and it’s got nothing to do with faulty fiber optics. “I’m pretty out of it this morning,” says Kerry McDonald, singer and guitarist of the Mighty Rime, from his home studio on the outskirts of…

Here are two more in a long line of compilations meant to promote Denver-area punk rock. The only real surprise here is that more of these groups aren’t better known. On Undead in Denver, almost every band sounds like some combination of X, Social Distortion or the Dwarves, which is…

An indie-rock-scarred hipster’s first reaction to this disc might be one of disgust. Clean, processed guitars? A singer in tune? Swelling anthems that would sound at home on an SUV commercial? Yes, all of this — and not an ironically dissonant note in sight. Battery Park’s music falls somewhere between…

The members of 90 Day Men are some of the biggest assholes in rock. Just ask Chunklet, an indie-rock magazine based in Atlanta; earlier this year, it published its “Shit List” of the most obnoxious people in the world of underground music, and the Chicago quartet — guitarist Brian Case,…

Nobody likes a whiner. And yet a whole troop of emo crybabies, from Dashboard Confessional’s Chris Carraba to Bright Eyes’ Connor Oberst, has whimpered its way into the spotlight over the past couple of years. Mike Kinsella, otherwise known as Owen (appearing Tuesday, November 26, at Club 156 in Boulder),…

Sometimes too much caffeine can be a horrific thing: the shakes, the jerks, that vicious nervousness that boils your intestines in adrenaline, blood rushing so hot you can feel your veins sweat. Listening to Get Hustle (appearing Wednesday, December 4, with V for Vendetta at Monkey Mania, 2126 Arapahoe Street)…

There are people who walk through a door and on pops the spotlight — heads turn, glances flash, and the air crackles with the presence of an electric personality. And then there’s Patrick Porter. He sort of ducks into rooms, squirming around people’s stares as if they were security-system laser…

“And love, like a versified cliche, came down on me/Hard, in its casual way,” wrote militant black poet LeRoi Jones in 1962. “Versified cliche,” of course, could be considered an apt description of pop music — that is, until Smokey Robinson got his hands on it. The Miracles’ music was…