Some people just stand out. Whether their style is cutting-edge, quirky or just well-executed, they make you want to know: How do they do it? Because we work for you, dear reader, we’re finding out. Each day, we’ll hit the streets and talk to one person who catches our eye…
To be honest, it could have gone either way. I don’t exactly spend a ton of time at Tracks, I’ll admit, and the venue might — and probably did — have had something to do with it. One thing’s certain, though: There were a lot of freaks at Lady Gaga’s…
They come a dime a dozen: singer-songwriters, toting acoustic guitars and an array of well-worn clichés. Fortunately for Weather Maps, leading man and singer-songwriter Jimmy Stofer is working from the same palette as some of the best in his game. Bearing the clear influence of Bon Iver, particularly in his…
Armando T. “Mondo” Guerra knows a thing or two about adaptation: The 32-year-old Denver native got his start in fashion by taking thrift-store clothing and repurposing it for his own designs with scissors and a glue gun. But after graduating from the Denver School of the Arts in 1996 and…
First there’s the noise — the random, free-form fiddling musicians do at practice, waiting for everyone to get set up, dial in their tone. Bassist Dave Lierman slaps out a funk line while drummer Victor Acquilla pounds out a few rolls and adjusts a pedal. In terms of cohesion, it’s…
UMS Travelogue, Night Four 7.24.10 | Baker District/South Broadway The heat was stifling when I showed up to watch Photo Atlas play the main stage in the Goodwill parking lot, and the crowd seemed too sluggish to truly enjoy it, even though the band’s guitar-based, Foals-style technical pop warranted some…
UMS Travelogue, Night Thee 7.24.10 | Baker District/South Broadway There’s been no shortage of buzz surrounding Air Dubai: Though it has yet to hit the national stage, round these parts we’ve already as good as coronated the band successor to Flobots. Though the acoustics were terrible in the Import Warehouse,…
UMS Travelogue, Night Two 7.23.10 | Baker District, South Broadway I started out with Papa Bear at the Irish Rover, where the band’s uber sincere Neutral Milk Hotel vibe proved a good start to the evening. The band boasts a small horn section, and I happened to be right in…
There’s nothing like the sweat, thump and catharsis of a great show. But it can be tough to decide which one to go to when you live in Denver, the land of embarrassing musical riches, the land of too many shows and too little time. So which ones are worth…
All right, how many times have you been bopping along, minding your own business, listening to some tunes, when all of the sudden, you’ll hear a line in a song that instantly makes you do a double-take? You know, the ones where you keep rewinding the sucker, marveling aloud to…
Noted for a diverse array of children’s programming, the Chicano Humanities and Arts Council is expanding its lineup for adults with Mira! Un Artista, Una Hora (Look! One Artist, One Hour), a lecture series in which artists will discuss their art, inspiration and process. The first lecture features longtime CHAC…
If the Mars Volta carried on the hyperactive, experimental legacy of At the Drive-In while Sparta, the original four-piece’s other half, simplified into plain old straightforward rock, the Say So is a band that comes close to splitting the difference. Insistently poppy on first listen, Something Like Wild, the group’s…
Take one part religious iconography and one part overt sexuality, top it off with the trendiest pop production available, and you’ve got a recipe for multi-platinum success. It’s a formula Madonna knew all too well, and nobody since has done it with more precisely honed instincts than Lady Gaga. Of…
It happens to most everyone sooner or later: We have kids, get a little older, start to lose touch. It’s understandable. Still, hopefully, we retain our ability to know bullshit when we smell it — and when we say bullshit, we mean like the kind found in this very grave-sounding,…
A rose by any other name is still a rose, as Shakespeare famously said, but what if you name your particular rose “poop?” Fewer people, we’re guessing, will want to smell it. So when Gauntlet Hair, a Lafayette-based indie outfit whose name makes us think of a clogged drain, came…
There’s nothing like experiencing the sweat, thump and catharsis of a great show. But it can be tough to decide which one to go to when you live in Denver, the land of embarrassing musical riches, the land of too many shows and too little time. So which ones are…
For some time now, Pabst Blue Ribbon has been the predominant staple of the hipster booze diet. It’s cheap, it tastes acceptable, but most importantly, it’s high in a key nutrient known as “irony,” which it derives from its sort-of-patriotic, red-white-and-blue label art, and also from it’s having been awarded…
It isn’t every day an arena-packing icon throws a free concert at the park, but that’s exactly what’s happening tonight, courtesy of the Denver Office of Cultural Affairs. As part of the office’s annual Latino Rhythms series, DOCA brings Panamanian pop star Horacio Valdés (really, the guy is huge there)…
Back in 2007, 3OH!3 hit on a potent formula by appropriating the snarl and swagger of crunk for the white suburban set. With 2008’s Want, the band retained the swagger but angled its sound toward a type of electro-pop-punk expertly calibrated for mass appeal. Though Streets of Gold edges slightly…
Back in 2005, when Ke$ha was just a glimmer in the eye of the reality-TV wave, her random appearance on The Simple Life proved a harbinger: Like Paris Hilton back then, Ke$ha rose earlier this year, seemingly out of nowhere, to startling ubiquity. By combining hard-house-appropriated dance pop with singsong-couplet…
It’s inherent to the nature of risk that to take one involves the possibility of failure. On M.I.A.’s latest, // / Y / (which is the last time we’ll be typing that, by the way), pronounced “Maya,” the album’s namesake definitely takes some risks. But then, M.I.A. is no stranger…
We’ve got some good news and we’ve got some bad news. The good news is, Suburban Home Records just released a new mix tape, which the Denver-based label is calling Someone’s Gonna Die. The bad news is, well, there isn’t any. But there is more good news: It’s free. All…
