Music

Music journalists are largely responsible for turning Paul Oakenfold into the planet’s foremost DJ — a title he wears as if by right. But after the arrival of Bunkka, a CD that presents Oakenfold as a full-fledged pop artist, these tastemakers turned on their man in a big way. A…

On the cover of his most recent album, Here I Am in Dallas, Dallas Wayne sits at the counter of a dimly lit bar with a cigarette in hand and a deeply troubled look on his face. He’s obviously in no hurry to leave the joint. At his elbow are…

Someone once dubbed Chuck Pyle “the Zen cowboy,” and that’s a pretty accurate description of the Colorado singer-songwriter, whose songs are filled with metaphysical musings straight out of a Buddhist text. “The waves they ebb and they flow/The perfect moment’s gone before you know,” he observes in the dreamlike “If…

An indie-rock-scarred hipster’s first reaction to this disc might be one of disgust. Clean, processed guitars? A singer in tune? Swelling anthems that would sound at home on an SUV commercial? Yes, all of this — and not an ironically dissonant note in sight. Battery Park’s music falls somewhere between…

When a group’s CD includes enough promotional packaging to kill a small forest, a lengthy musical manifesto that could put the Unabomber to shame and a grand total of three songs, you’ve got to wonder how much effort went into the crafting of the actual music. The answer is plenty,…

Singer-songwriter Kim Jones, a native New Yorker, has put down roots in Denver, but if Road Dreams is any indication, she’s got traveling on her mind. Several of the CD’s tunes deal with voyages of one sort or another, including “Journeymen,” which tells the immigration tale of her great-grandparents, and…

There’s no end in sight to the acoustic revival, which is a lucky break for local-but-touring band Newcomers Home. Traditional, gently trickling guitar melodies and well-worn influences permeate the band’s second CD, In the Hour, which places the trio within the general sanctuary of Americana-style folk. More safely bland than…

Here are two more in a long line of compilations meant to promote Denver-area punk rock. The only real surprise here is that more of these groups aren’t better known. On Undead in Denver, almost every band sounds like some combination of X, Social Distortion or the Dwarves, which is…

Once a fixture on the Denver jazz club scene, singer Lynn Skinner has been keeping her own counsel of late. But Gems in the Rough, a new, self-produced collaboration with guitarist Vonn Regensberger, reaffirms her gift as a versatile stylist with a voice as appealing as old brandy. The material…

Active since 1982 in the underground home tapers scene, Little Fyodor has helped create and circulate countless cassettes of varying oddness over the years — mostly at a time when publications like Factsheet 5 gave a rat’s ass about willfully unmarketable forms of musical expression. Packed to the gills with…

The chamber of commerce and the census bureau do not appear to keep records on the number of bars per capita operating in our fair city. The Department of Excise and Licenses can tell us that there are approximately 1,200 active liquor licenses on file in the City and County…

Both Shania Twain and Peter Gabriel, who headlines the Pepsi Center on Thursday, December 5, have new albums called Up — but only the eager-to-please Twain, who appends an exclamation point to her title, appears to be using the word literally. Gabriel’s first collection of new material in about a…

Hurtling at the speed of thought, the Czars are making introspective proclamations these days. The title to their latest four-song EP, X Would Rather Listen to Y Than Suffer Through a C of Z’s, sounds like the title to a Wallace Stevens poem about bank executives dozing on the job…

The members of 90 Day Men are some of the biggest assholes in rock. Just ask Chunklet, an indie-rock magazine based in Atlanta; earlier this year, it published its “Shit List” of the most obnoxious people in the world of underground music, and the Chicago quartet — guitarist Brian Case,…

At first glance, Toddy Walters appears to be a walking dichotomy. With a sweet and subdued demeanor, a penchant for singing torch-like songs of drama and desperation in the Kate Bush vein, and a clear focus on her musical vision, she’s not easily pegged as the voice behind the drunken…

Is it retro electro, neo electro or electroclash, the phrase New York DJ/producer Larry Tee coined to describe it? Whatever the name, the sound is beginning to vibrate across the same underground scene currently eating up the analog offerings of the Vines, the Hives and the Strokes. The vibe is…

Earlier this year, Celeste Krenz and her husband, Bob Tyler, surrendered their spot as one of Colorado’s country-music power couples and moved to Nashville — the revered as well as derided epicenter of the twang-centric universe. Now they’re part of a community that’s powered almost entirely by the music-minded, from…

If you’re under 45, the romance of the West probably doesn’t resonate with you all that much. Hopalong Cassidy might have been your father’s or uncle’s childhood obsession, Bonanza was something you watched in reruns amid the dregs of Sunday-morning TV, and Gene Autry is a fading cultural landmark. For…

“Have you ever been alone after the party under the blue light?/Wondering where it all went?/Your youth, patience, sanity?” So begin the conversational lyrics to a slow, bombastic ditty called “Chasing the Dragon” — one of the more reflective moments on an otherwise loud and rabid batch of punk tunes…

There are people who walk through a door and on pops the spotlight — heads turn, glances flash, and the air crackles with the presence of an electric personality. And then there’s Patrick Porter. He sort of ducks into rooms, squirming around people’s stares as if they were security-system laser…