There were no costumes on stage until near the end when some silly fan got up with a shirt over his head like some low-rent imitation of HeWhoCannotBeNamed and sang into the mic. And yet somehow The Dwarves created a spectacle even without the cheap theatrics last night at the…
Andy Cabic of Vetiver (due tonight at The Bluebird Theater) started out in more rock-oriented bands when he was a college student in North Carolina in the 1990s, rubbing shoulders with some of the great underground bands of the era, as will be outlined below…
From the opening song, “Brew Ha Ha,” Hawk Attack celebrates rock’s hedonistic era. Yes, there is a hint of early solo Ted Nugent here and there in the guitar harmonics of “Set ‘Em Up,” but it’s not some ironic pose or attempt to sound just like another band. The crunchy,…
Zach Condon’s backstory, in which he left a small city to travel around Europe with his older brother, absorbing the indigenous music of the eastern part of the continent, reads like something that might have happened fifty years ago at the height of the early folk scene in Greenwich Village…
Many people will probably stamp this band with the “lo-fi garage” label or something equally inaccurate. But while Grave Babies’ sometimes raw recordings and live performances are reminiscent of Siltbreeze artists like Eat Skull, the group’s melancholic atmospheres are more akin to some bizarre hybrid of Sonic Youth and 154-era…
Scheduled on the actual date that Nirvana’s Nevermind was released in 1991, this show (dubbed Come As You Are and slated for Saturday, September 24, at the hi-dive) features local talent covering songs from the entirety of the band’s back catalogue. Everyone playing rock music since Nirvana — and, as…
PETER HOOK & THE LIGHT at the BLUEBIRD THEATER | 9/19/11It was to be expected that Peter Hook & the Light would be playing Unknown Pleasures in its entirety, and that it wouldn’t be a half-hearted and insincere attempt at re-creating that music live. What was not expected was the…
GOLDRUSH FESTIVAL | NIGHT TWO, 9/17/11Day two of Goldrush Festival also felt like you had stepped into an alternate universe where a good friend with good taste in music was introducing you to his or her favorite bands of the moment were gathered together in one place instead of being…
GOLDRUSH FESTIVAL | NIGHT ONE, 9/16/11With no real low points at the first night of the Gold Rush festival, one performance that stood out was that of Drew Englander during his set as R E A L M A G I C. He was like the Pied Piper of dance…
For the next two days, the Goldrush festival will take place at Delite and the hi-dive. The event was the brainchild of three local music bloggers: Jake Martin, Crawford Philleo and Ryan Pjesky. For the last two years, each of the three have been writing largely about contemporary music for…
With his ground-breaking band Joy Division, Peter Hook (due this Monday, September 19, at the Bluebird Theater) perhaps accidentally created a style of playing bass that made the instrument not just a part of the rhythm section but also a carrier of the melody…
Big suprise that a bunch of guys who might have been gamers formed a metal band and named themselves after one of the denizens of Hell in Dungeons & Dragons. Even bigger surprise that this foursome decided that “Pitsix” was less suitable than naming their project after a demon. Biggest…
Sketch comedy is the best way to describe it,” says Nathan Wright, discussing the process of composition within the Kevin Costner Suicide Pact. “It’s not verse, chorus, bridge,” adds Carson Pelo. “It’s more of a flow chart. Things don’t necessarily have to go somewhere, but they can lead into something…
Joy Division made an immediate mark on the world of music with its two full-length albums, 1979’s Unknown Pleasures and 1980’s Closer. The desperation, anger and psychic torment of those records is all but unparalleled in the annals of rock music. Singer Ian Curtis’s tragic suicide, two months before the…
Extra Kool and Satyre once worked together as Optik Fusion Embrace, and the two recently teamed up again for this album full of wry observations and playful musical experiments. It opens with “Optik Fusion Is Dead,” a Danny Elfman-esque recounting of the duo’s history since the breakup. “Everyday Living” is…
Called the Mob when it first started out in Seattle in 1981, Queensrÿche quickly developed what would later be called a “progressive metal” aesthetic — which really just meant that these guys played with great precision and experimented freely with the structures inside each song. In that same era, outfits…
THE DON’TS AND BE CAREULS at the HI-DIVE | 9/9/11 The Don’ts and Be Carefuls did something at this “Triple EP Release” show that you just knew the band had in it but you might not expect to see: they fused the exuberance and innocence of its original sound with…
Picking up where Recidivist, the band’s audacious 2010 debut album, left off, this EP from the Raven and the Writing Desk displays an even more fully integrated band adept at making creative use of all the sounds and textures at its disposal. “Tiny” sounds like Danny Elfman got together with…
Since forming in Austin in 1999, Explosions in the Sky has had a bit of a charmed career for an instrumental rock band in the wake of critical backlash against post-rock. Ten years ago, Explosions released Those Who Tell The Truth Shall Die, Those Who Tell the Truth Shall Live…
Anyone who saw experimental pop band Lil Slugger probably wouldn’t have guessed that Ben Martin was a talented R&B singer. Slugger, after all, sometimes sounded like a mash-up of Captain Beefheart, Chrome and the Fall. For King Mob (due at Moe’s on Tuesday, September 13), Martin teamed up with his…
“I actually just got out of jail four hours before that show.” Casey Banker, frontman for the Don’ts and Be Carefuls, is relating the story of how he was arrested last year just before a gig his band played on Halloween at the Skylark. Apparently, three months prior, keyboardist Dane…
Tollund Men is no longer just a bunch of poor saps buried in a Danish peat bog from the time before the Roman Republic transitioned to Empire. In Denver, it’s the solo project of Neal Samples, with some help from genius musical chameleon Daniel Bouse when the project plays live…
