Music

Sometimes too much caffeine can be a horrific thing: the shakes, the jerks, that vicious nervousness that boils your intestines in adrenaline, blood rushing so hot you can feel your veins sweat. Listening to Get Hustle (appearing Wednesday, December 4, with V for Vendetta at Monkey Mania, 2126 Arapahoe Street)…

When Boulder’s Tom Steenland formed the Starkland imprint in 1992, there was real doubt as to whether he’d still be in business even a year later, since he was drawn to musical esoterica of the sort that’ll never be featured on MTV. But he’s managed to survive a full decade,…

There was really nothing Backwash wanted to do more than spend the evening in an animal suit. Fortunately, the Warner Bros. publicist understood why I so desired to be among the fuzzy, dancing bears — and frogs, cheetahs, orangutans, unicorns and skunks — who joined the Flaming Lips on stage…

Nobody likes a whiner. And yet a whole troop of emo crybabies, from Dashboard Confessional’s Chris Carraba to Bright Eyes’ Connor Oberst, has whimpered its way into the spotlight over the past couple of years. Mike Kinsella, otherwise known as Owen (appearing Tuesday, November 26, at Club 156 in Boulder),…

After falling some thirty feet off a windmill and landing on his head, Maraca Five-O rhythm guitarist Matt Stemwedel sustained a serious brain injury, which kept him comatose for three days last June. Following months of extensive physical therapy, the local surf rocker is slowly re-emerging as his old, wily…

Denver’s Honky Tonk Hangovers play some of the twangiest music this side of Bakersfield, but they purposefully avoid the “C” word when describing their sound lest they scare folks away. That’s how far mainstream country music has strayed from its hillbilly roots. “We don’t even advertise ourselves as a country…

Besides the phenomenal writing of Knut Hamsun, the postcard-perfect fjords, an advanced garment system known as lusekofte and some of the world’s best-tasting salmon, what can Norway really boast about to the rest of the world? The invention of the cheese slicer? The paper clip? Blueberry soup? Graciously hosting Tonya…

These two groups, who share the bill on Friday, November 15, at the 15th Street Tavern, aren’t taking popular music to places it’s never been. Far from it: In many respects, the Warlocks and the Greenhornes are throwbacks to a long-ago time when rock and roll was more about making…

“And love, like a versified cliche, came down on me/Hard, in its casual way,” wrote militant black poet LeRoi Jones in 1962. “Versified cliche,” of course, could be considered an apt description of pop music — that is, until Smokey Robinson got his hands on it. The Miracles’ music was…

The last thing that you expect to hear on a Mudhoney song is a lone saxophone staggering through the psychedelic mist of hippie-dippy organs, twittering electronica and slow-burn guitar rumble. Yet thar she blows in meandering amplitude on “Baby, Can You Dig the Light?” the extended opening salvo of the…

Aubrey Collins is feeling a little tired when I call her on a Friday morning, and it’s easy to understand why. Yesterday she woke up with a sore throat and a sniffle — nothing serious, but the kind of thing that can throw your day when your life revolves around…

Blasting out of late-’70s Los Angeles like the most righteous Santa Ana wind ever, X blew the smog-and-pot-addled minds of hippies and metalheads alike. The fierce foursome’s post-Raymond Chandler, pre-James Ellroy snapshots of L.A. despair and absurdity allowed landlocked daydreamers everywhere to figuratively stand at the corner of Hollywood and…

“High concept” is a term that often connotes an overwrought art project — something self-consciously deep or, worse, “important.” But when affixed to Denver’s Uphollow, the description celebrates the band’s ability to cultivate new ideas through sound. In 1993, founders Ian O’Dougherty and Whit Sibley released Soundtrack to an Imaginary…

Much like skinning cats, there’s more than one memorable way to scream in a song. There’s the artfully abrasive method — a full-throated screech with enough primal intensity to make Edvard Munch stop and stare. There’s the discordant and painfully deranged animal cry: Think of a confused Jim Morrison wailing…

Del tha Funkee Homosapien is known to be a video-game junkie, so it’s no surprise to hear booming electronic explosions firing off in the background of his tour bus; it’s just a member of his crew exploring a new game demo. Del’s response when asked what games he’s into these…

Many bands that spend years teetering on the brink of fame get more conservative with age. So it’s refreshing to discover that the latest recording from Space Team Electra, a group that’s been threatening to graduate from Denver since the mid-’90s, is its wildest and least inhibited to date. An…

Can ORB quit its collective day job yet? It depends. In an oversaturated rock market, any interchangeably mediocre band (like this one) occasionally gets the nod. In its current state, however, the quintet not only lacks vision and originality, but needs a name that folks won’t confuse with the ambient,…

On the cover of Cold Wind, Open Road’s second album (and major-label debut), the bandmembers — captured in glorious black and white — wear severe dark suits and matching white Stetson hats. Instruments in hand, they’re gathered around a vintage RCA microphone — ready, perhaps, to launch into Bill Monroe’s…

Though not looking the part, with Marc Bolan-inspired vocal histrionics, Mick Ronson Spiders From Mars-era guitar solos and a gift for Queen-sized drama, one might peg Denver-based Tinker’s Punishment a revisionist act. (None of the four bandmembers, or their rabid fans, are old enough to know who any of those…

While Xiren’s two previous CDs were globetrotting adventures, whisking the listener away for a whirlwind tour de force of cultural influences, Polite Conversation gets right down to his essential pop roots. Most of the songs spin and soar, relying mainly on lush keyboards and breathy, sensuous vocals that land on…