Evolution bit the big one a few months ago when the owners of the gay-centric club at 821 22nd Street (you know, in the other part of downtown) decided to close it down for good. But the address wasn’t out of circulation for long. With some fresh paint and new…
The word “clit” entered into the Star Wars fans’ lexicon a few years back when Los Angeles-based street-punk outfit Clit 45 quarreled with some Lucasites outside the premiere for Star Wars II: Attack of the Clones. Sci-fi geeks had been in line for days waiting for the opening of the…
Who hasn’t played in Autokinoton? Since its inception a few years ago, the band has eaten up and spit out members all along the Front Range. The most recent lineup — which included vocalist Joe Triscari, drummer Andrew Segreti (of Bailer), guitarist Justin Slojkowski (ex-Season at Sea) and Auto-K originals…
The Queers have been around forever — or so it seems. Any snot-nosed kid who’s ever dipped into the punk scene, even if it was only for a summer, has probably elbowed a few faces in the pit at a Queers show, or at least bought (and later sold) an…
Dudes like boobs. Dudes also take pleasure in knocking back a few while looking at boobs. And dudes especially enjoy folding dollar bills lengthwise and offering them up for a bit of shake-boobs-in-face time. A business model working off these facts is nearly foolproof; the boobs don’t even have to…
Erase Errata presently comprises a group of ladies from the Bay Area who take late-’70s punk and amplify it through distorted minimalist effects pedals. The girls push the weird envelope with the occasional lavish on-stage costume and an improv eclecticism that’s like a noise-rock disembodiment of Blondie three decades later…
Sludge this, sludge that. Who isn’t in a sludge band these days? The word is carelessly thrown around to describe any two-bit act that can fuzz its guitars enough. But it’s not just a sound; it’s a tone of voice. Sludge is what happens when you take a crop of…
Frontside Five Thank God for punk rock. Simple and cheaply executed, it’s a musical haven that is mutually exclusive for disgruntled adolescents and jaded, aging rockers. Punk, an ode to thee: How you make anger palatable and cynicism worthwhile! When you die, your many offspring will remember you as the…
Nashville doesn’t make musicians; Nashville makes music. The city crafts songs, lyrics, notes and chords — but not one person can lay claim to any of it. This is the bitter truth of the music mecca, and there’s not a better band than Lambchop to wholly embody the Nashville way…
“Are you Asian?” Chan Marshall asks me over the phone. “Yes,” I reply. “I am.” “You are!” Marshall exclaims. “You sound Asian.” “I don’t know what that means. How can you tell?” “I don’t know,” she says with a squeal. “I guess I’m psychic.” Or maybe she picked up on…
It takes only one psychedelic-looking iPod commercial soundtracked by Wolfmother — those wailing, Aussie rock fakers — to make it achingly apparent to underground nerds everywhere that the ’70s revival has been co-opted. It’s gone mainstream as the eBay value of crappy vinyl records inflates and, my God, white-guy ‘fros…
Portugal the Man has a fate worse than death: In fifteen years, it will be lost to 99-cent sidewalk sales and left as a remnant of consumer waste. The outfit’s debut full-length, Waiter: “You Vultures!”, its liner notes streamlined with ultra-hipster Photoshopped collages, will be shucked aside in a large…
Mouth of the Architect’s MySpace page irreverently claims the band’s home town is the fictional Hell, Ohio. If you’ve ever visited the Buckeye state, you know that “hell” is a pretty good description of the place. The land of tortured artists (Stiv Bators of the Dead Boys, convicted murderer/country star…
Last night I dreamed I was reviewing the new Everything Absent or Distorted disc, The Soft Civil War, when someone from the group called to say that they were done with wordy band names and had decided to change to the much simpler autonym LOVE. Despite the fact that rock…
We’re living in a time where if you believe what you read in certain places, then right now is supposed to be the flowering of something called ‘indie rock,'” muses Efrim Menuck, one of the seven members of Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra & Tra-la-la Band. “I don’t even…
Patrick Houston is back. Finally. For years, the fleet-fingered guitarist has been bearing the burden of being an ex-member of Angels Never Answer — a band ahead of its time that imploded before realizing its full potential. Although Houston has spoken of new projects and bandmates in the past, things…
I was once a thirteen-year-old girl. No lie. It totally happened, and I can prove it by deciphering C.Y.S.L.A.B.F. — the acronymic release from Los Angeles-based all-chick band Mika Miko. Any girl that survived middle school knows the basics of gossip: a slip of notebook paper exchanged between classes, scribbled…
Steven Williams, the owner of Midwest hardcore label Init Records, once tried to coin the term “emo violence” as a substitute for the now-convoluted screamo subgenre. At the time, it was tough for independent hardcore acts to differentiate themselves from the growing status of their sissy-pants mainstream rivals. The alternate…
Hailing from a little town in Arizona called Peoria, the Format lives up to its name by making pop music that is easily accessible and, well, true to the format. And the fun bus doesn’t stop there: The band went through the formalities of being almost famous with a stint…
The Raconteurs have the best website ever. Modeled in the style of the green-screen days of bulky supercomputers, the site (www.theraconteurs.com) is 2-bit awesome, with text-heavy simplicity that ditches mouse controls in favor of keyboard-only commands. Nixing the Flash and the glitz, the Raconteurs do it old-school, which seems to…
Remember Sonic Youth? Really, how could anyone forget? Those inciters of noise-heavy rhythms, those provocateurs of alt-rock exploitation — Sonic Youth, oh, how we hold a tiny place in our grunge-begotten hearts for thee. More than two decades on, the Youth troupe has managed to stay afloat through the turbulent…
His name isn’t really Elvis Costello. The London-born iconic pop figure popped out of the womb christened with the desperately un-romantic and very un-rock-star handle of Declan Patrick MacManus. The young MacManus outgrew his given appellation by his early twenties and adopted the combined names of Elvis (straight from the…
