With early support from one of the country’s most important independent radio stations, KEXP in Seattle, The Pains of Being Pure at Heart — appearing at Monlith this weekend — struck a chord with fans of earnest, dreamy, lush pop music. Though often compared to C86-era and Sarah Records bands,…
Get Your Going, Murder Ranks and Caroliner Rainbow Sunday, September 6, 2009 3 Kings Tavern Better Than: Anyone but the performers could have hoped for. With Get Your Going you never really know what you’re in for, and on this night, a big black podium sat in the middle of…
A native of Santa Fe, New Mexico, Travis Egedy, who performs under the name Pictureplane, has been rapidly gaining the attention of popular underground bands such as HEALTH, which praised the act on Pitchfork, invited Pictureplane to go on tour, and brought it to the attention of the Lovepump United…
The subtly disturbing “Death Sides Now,” a Joni Mitchell cover, opens the latest full-length from Little Fyodor. Recalling the more demented side of Sun City Girls, Peace Is Boring is possibly this act’s most actualized release to date. Before punk became codified, weirdos like the Residents, Ranaldo and the Loaf…
Hailing from Milan, Italy, OvO is essentially an international duo at this point, keeping up a rigorous yearly tour schedule that traverses Europe and North America. The act’s sound could be termed “gothic power violence,” in that its sharp-edged dynamics and acidic drones are an alloy of black metal’s unblinking…
Fort Collins’s Castles started as a solo project, but eventually Matt Sage’s sophisticated electro-indie pop evolved into an impressive three-piece, experimental rock band. After retiring that outfit, Sage went fully into exploring the possibilities of a lo-fi recording approach and released the hushed yet intense Consider Me, Ghost under the…
Slight Harp w/Black Magicians From the Mountains of Mars and Pink Hawks Saturday, August 29th, 2009 Glob, Denver Better Than: Every other Slight Harp show I’ve seen. The three-piece Black Magicians From the Mountains of Mars looked like they might have still been in high school, but it was definitely…
Kissing Party w/Bad Weather California Friday, August 28, 2009 hi-dive Better Than: What some would say of a Kissing Party show. The Bad Weather California set started off with Chris Adolf playing the recorder, making the song sound like a madrigal or a Kung Fu episode, before the band kicked…
Desolation Wilderness, M. Pyres & the Skygaze Family Band, Woodsman and Milton Melvin Croissant III Thursday, August 27, 2009 Rhinoceropolis Better Than: The previous Desolation Wilderness appearance in Denver. The show opened with M. Pyres & The Skygaze Family Band. Behind the drum kit, Logan Corcoran of Bad Weather California…
A native of Santa Fe, New Mexico, Travis Egedy, who performs under the name Pictureplane, has been rapidly gaining the attention of popular underground bands from around the country for the last few years, most notably HEALTH who took Pictureplane on a national tour in March 2009. HEALTH was also…
The Kissing Party is a band masterful in the writing of upbeat, melancholy pop songs and wry wit. Although the lyrics reveal the romantic and sentimental outlook of the group’s primary songwriters, Gregg Dolan and Deidre Sage, it is the rhythm section of Lee Evans and Shane Reid, coupled with…
Before joining Nick Houde to form BDRMPPL, Ryan Mcryhew performed under the name Thundercade. This latest release from that project weaves together eight-bit composition with house beats, analog synth pop and a touch of trance. “Autosuggestion” feels like a lost OMD track until a hip-hop vocal sample bursts the bubbling…
Olympia’s Desolation Wilderness combines ghostly atmospherics with scintillating poppy guitar work, sounding as though its members learned to play music from listening to a steady diet of Galaxie 500, Big Star’s Third and Codeine. The live version of Desolation can be startlingly forceful, as the band also manages to pull…
The elusive Tjutjuna, the Siberian equivalent of Sasquatch, roams the highlands of eastern Russia. Tjutjuna (due at the Larimer Lounge on Wednesday, September 2) is also an experimental band from Denver that comprises four of the former members of the ambitious space-rock group Mothership. As with that outfit of cosmic…
Bat For Lashes, Other Lives Bluebird Theater Saturday, August 22, 2009 Better Than: See bands with technical ability but no imagination. Openers Other Lives started out with a lush, orchestral, folk-inflected pop song that reminded me a bit of Arab Strap, without the bile and the Scottish accents. It would…
The lushly atmospheric, mysterious and richly resonant music of Bat for Lashes first caught the attention of critics with the release of the single “The Wizard” in 2006. Subsequent releases, including Fur and Gold and the recent Two Suns, have been nominated for the prestigious Mercury Prize and have earned…
A band doesn’t always fit into a specific musical category even though it’s associated with one by default. Burn Sand Burn (due on Thursday, August 20, at the hi-dive) often plays with metal bands, but anyone able to listen honestly can hear that these guys do not bother to play…
The appropriately titled In a Different Time and Place is the result of a collaboration of bandmembers across three years and disparate geographical locations, including recordings done in Romania and Egypt. But there is nothing disjointed about the results. The combination of acoustic and electric instrumentation gives the album a…
Named after enemy beings in the Rigveda and the Bhagavad Gita, the members of Portland, Oregon’s Danava are clearly adherents of the heavy psychedelic rock in vogue of late. Unlike many of their peers, however, the guys in this band were smart enough to realize that stoner rock and sludge…
The panoramic songwriting of Natasha Khan of Bat For Lashes has gained the attention of critics and peers alike and lead to her recurring opening gigs on the 2008 Radiohead tour. Drawing on her rich imagination for inspiration, Khan’s songs tap into the language and imagery of collective myths, ancient…
SunnO))), Eagle Twin and The AccüsedBluebird TheaterThursday, August 13th, 2009Better Than: Some commentators on SunnO))) would have you believe. The two-piece Eagle Twin kicked off the show in high spirits. Although mining similar artistic territory as Isis, Twin brought its own take on experimental metal. With the sometimes staggered, sometimes…
The appropriately titled “Intro” begins this latest Vitamins album, sounding like it’s going to be a work of ambient noise. Instead, it ramps up into one of the band’s best songs, the bombastic and rocking “Big Bang.” What is most impressive here is the seamless sequencing between tracks, as though…
