Named after a state park of the same name in the Ozarks, Ha Ha Tonka plays the sort of Americana that would be right at home in an episode of Prairie Home Companion. Although its lyrics are focused on imagery and themes you’d expect from a poet laureate from rural…

Peter Murphy is probably best known for his role as the charismatic, mysterious, ectomorphic frontman for influential post-punk band Bauhaus. But before that act reunited in the late ’90s and since, Murphy has released a string of accomplished albums under his own name. It wasn’t until his second solo record,…

Everyone in Denver got to take Nathaniel Rateliff for granted for many years — both as the frontman of Born in the Flood and with the Wheel — watching him perform at intimate places like the hi-dive and the Larimer Lounge. But over this past year, Rateliff’s profile grew considerably…

PLAID at the BLUEBIRD | 11/19/11 One of the most vividly enduring memories of last night’s Plaid show at the Bluebird Theater came at the end of the show, when the band performed “At Last.” The video projected on the screen and the group itself made it seem like we…

Andy Turner and Ed Handley of Plaid (due Saturday, November 19, at the Bluebird) were part of the groundbreaking electronic music project The Black Dog in the late ’80s through the earliest part of the ’90s with Ken Downie. Mixing ambient soundscaping with textured, syncopated rhythms, The Black Dog became…

“Dionysiac” starts out as fairly straightforward technical death-metal fare, with frantically twisting passages of guitar seething around the rhythm. But with one vocalist erupting with gruff pronouncements and the other taking a higher, more black-metal pitch in distorted singing, these songs are doing more than just serving as a showcase…

Andy Turner and Ed Handley were once in pioneering British electronic group the Black Dog with Ken Downie. Between that project and Plaid, which the duo finally dubbed their collaboration in 1991, Turner and Handley have been busy writing original music and doing remixes for the likes of Björk and…

If you’ve ever been to Salt Lake City, you know there’s gotta be a dark underbelly of pissed-off people who rage against the prevalent cultural climate in private or in venues that are the underground of the underground. Gaza gives credence to this notion. Are these guys kidding when they…

When you hear an act being referred to as a “musician’s band,” it usually means the band in question has incredible technical skill, but not a lot in the way of emotional resonance when it comes to songwriting — especially if the outfit is instrumental. Panal S.A. de C.V. (due…

Everything that defines religion is interesting to me,” declares Chris Thomas, who just finished work on his solo debut, Messiah Complex, which is being issued under the name Omniism. “I think people should think about it — basically, read the sacred texts that were written by these people as the…

ORBIT SERVICE at the WALNUT ROOM | 12/11/11At the end of the Orbit Service set last night at the Walnut Room, Randall Frazier and his bandmates conferred after repeated requests for an encore, and performed the first song of the set again in order to get a better take of…

Since the last half of the ’90s, the music of Orbit Service has been through a few different permutations, from early soundscaping experiments to blissed-out space rock to deeply introspective psychedelia — all of it informed by the dark shadings of Randall Frazier’s colorful imagination. This year, Orbit Service (due…

Before ever playing a show together, Ezra-David Darnell and Jordan Hubner had played music and written songs as fellow students at the University of Colorado Denver for a handful of years. When they first got together, Hubner was a member of outfits like Hawks of Paradise and Pacific Pride. Hearts…

“Love Scene” is the first of the three songs on this release, and it establishes a mood like the alternative soundtrack to an early Michael Mann film. The slow gyre of volume in the song gives it a disorienting feeling, like being in some labyrinthine American version of an underground…

Nothing about this Syracuse-based band is particularly riotous; in fact, it uses classical instrumentation in its songwriting. What’s more, those instruments never seem like a fashionable affectation. When you hear Ra Ra Riot’s winsome, gently affecting pop songs, you get the feeling that everyone in the band was in on…

Though straight-edge is a movement often attributed to Minor Threat, that band never embraced the term as codified in the lifestyles and ideologies of groups that followed in its wake. One that truly took the message to another level of stridency was Youth of Today, whose members were not only…

JUDAS PRIEST at 1STBANK CENTER | 11/5/11 Somewhere early in the set, Rob Halford told us that the band was going to play material from all roughly forty years of its career including hits and older and more obscure material. And that for the “next two hours and twenty minutes”…

The latest offering from long-running experimental guitar band IZ is filled with the kind of metallic riffs the project has often used to produce its idiosyncratic art rock. Part Frank Zappa in a heavy and unpredictable mode, part Motörhead’s gritty drive and part Dinosaur Jr’s penchant for warped, melodic aggression,…

On Apple-Eaters, Thrifty Astronaut’s Nick Jones has pushed himself a little in terms of production, but he’s done so without losing the rough edges that have always made his songwriting so compelling. The title track has lyrics and a vocal delivery worthy of Jad Fair, but the music is more…