A cursory listen to Psychic Reality will leave you with the impression that this outfit is part of the strand of the neo-lo-fi aesthetic exemplified by artists part of, and formerly part of, the Siltbreeze label. And just like those artists, the music translates with greater clarity in the live…

Dan Kaufman is the musical equivalent of Colonel Kurtz, in that he seeks to awaken his audiences to their authentic selves. With the appropriately named Dan Kaufman Superstar Eruption, he burns through a flood of expansive and abrasive atmospherics that swirl around darkly warped melodies and fever-dream visions of a…

Anyone trying to make challenging music that pushes the boundaries of what can still be considered music is going to have to do more than just hash together established genres. That’s what makes New York’s Drunkdriver stand out. Not only does this band piece together elements of punk, noise and…

Gomez has always been something of an anomaly in the world of non-mainstream music — partly because its layered pop songs are immediately accessible to a wide audience and partly because the band never followed any big trends in music. While this has resulted in a bit of a roller-coaster…

Whether on the world stage or local stages, having been in a moderately popular band can have its disadvantages. Some will immediately discount what you do as a clone of your other projects, while others will expect you to stick to your so-called roots. That’s why the heady, dark and…

The title track of this album is an opening salvo that sets the pace for a collection of songs that make you wonder how this outfit can call itself Yawn Tron. As Iuengliss, Tom Metz’s solo material is expansive and heady, in sharp contrast to his work here. The first…

With so many bands using the musical equivalent of Mr. Peabody’s Waybac Machine, San Diego’s Donkeys are hardly alone in terms of looking to the past for direct inspiration. Often enough, Americana and country are where punk rockers end up when their anger peters out. These four may not have…

Having formed during a backpacking trip on the John Muir Trail, San Francisco’s Hot Buttered Rum is, on the surface, pretty much the embodiment of what many find so distasteful about the jam-band scene: Rum has worked with former members of the Dead, tours around the country in biodiesel-fueled vehicles…

Owing a clear artistic debt to the smoky atmospheres and muscular rhythms of Portishead, Ode to the Marionette performs the kind of music you’d expect to hear in a club scene in a Gregg Araki movie. The outfit sounds a bit like the Cranes with a grounding in jazz lounge…

Elizabeth & The Catapult and Greg Laswell Tuesday, July 28, 2009 Walnut Room Better Than: A show with similarly-minded music performed by a bunch of stiffs. For various reasons I don’t often find myself going to the Walnut Room for a show, but a little band from Brooklyn caught my…

Among the most literate of hip-hop artists, Chris Steele, aka Time, is a seemingly endless wellspring of clever turns of phrase and creatively illuminating pairings of words and ideas. The guy certainly has silly, fun-loving songs, but even these are written with a playful intelligence. Time’s true genius can be…

Unless you’re tuning in to some kind of specialty show, the number of female voices, literally and otherwise, that you’ll hear on the radio or see on TV is criminally small compared to those of their male counterparts. That ratio drops further when you try to find women doing challenging…

Written as a musical companion to Rachel Carson’s 1951 classic on marine biology, The Sea Around Us, this latest full-length from Fort Collins’s Candy Claws bears immediate sonic comparisons to the Animal Collective opus Merriweather Postpavillion. The dreamy, breathy soundscaping across the entire album captures images of sun-dappled afternoons on…

Although technically part of the whole jam-band phenomenon that has come in the wake of the cult of the Grateful Dead, Philadelphia’s Boris Garcia is a cut above most. This band learned early on that at its core, the Dead wrote great songs, without which the extended instrumental passages would…

Tori Amos and eskimOTuesday, July 21, 2009Paramount TheatreBetter Than: The last time I saw Tori Amos at Red Rocks in 1998.London-based One eskimO opened the show, and at first, I was concerned it might be one of those bands favored by modern rock stations that border on the adult contemporary…

The Burn Heavy side of this record sounds like Sleep filtered through a doom/grind lens and blended with psychedelic swirls. The prominence of Maia Fortis’s eerie violin drone and John Gross’s undercurrent of noise and samples lend the proceedings an otherworldliness. On “Situations,” Heavy lopes along before shifting into a…

Just as punk rock embraced the stripped-down, authentic aesthetic of rock and roll from a bygone era, the current wave of electronic-pop songwriters have embraced the analog-synth sensibilities of early-’80s new-wave and electro-post-punk acts. Forest World is clearly part of this phenomenon, and not unlike well-known artists such as M83,…

Dr. Eugene Chadbourne is one of those genius avant-garde musicians that most people don’t readily recognize despite his long career and influence. But he’s worked with similarly minded artists such as John Zorn, Fred Frith, Carla Bley, Camper Van Beethoven and Sun City Girls. Like the Sun City gals, Chadbourne…

Initially, Motel Saints can sound a bit too familiar. But pinpointing the source of that musical déjà vu is difficult, and then suddenly it dawns on you that maybe the group is on to something. Borrowing some phrasings from mid-’70s David Bowie, the early solo Iggy Pop records and the…

Lazy LesterThursday, July 9, 2009Boulder Outlook Hotel, BoulderBetter Than: The canned blues playing over the PA between sets — by a long sight.Admittedly, when I first heard about this show coming up, I had to look up who Lazy Lester (Leslie Johnson) was, but after listening to a great deal…