India.Arie believes in music’s power to heal, transform and transcend. And though the grooving, funky and bluesy moments might disguise it, this notion serves as a spiritual underpinning for much of her Motown debut, Acoustic Soul. “We’ve all heard of someone being woken up from a coma by a song…
If truth is stranger than fiction, the Judas Priest saga is one that somebody should make a movie about. In fact, somebody has, sort of. Rock Star, the recently released Mark Wahlberg vehicle, is loosely based on the life of Tim “Ripper” Owens, the bar-band imitator who replaced original Priest…
This week’s gargling fodder includes some welcome returns, sad departures, happy developments and untimely closings. Backwash leaves it to you to determine which is which. Uphollow has returned to Denver stages, and this time the band is working without a script. While some may recognize Uphollow’s name from bills and…
Stories From the City, Stories From the Sea, the most recent album by PJ Harvey, received the usual critical hosannas, and it’s in the running for this year’s high-status Mercury Music Prize. But many of Harvey’s fans (this one included) found it a bit difficult to get worked up over…
Chris Daniels & the Kings will feel right at home when they perform at Swallow Hill on Friday, September 14. Daniels recently stepped down as director of the revered acoustic-music outfit, a position he held for nearly five years. The room he’ll be playing — Daniels Hall — sports his…
Poets and poetry can come from anywhere. Sometimes the poet and his hometown are completely intertwined, inseparable as the thorn and the rose — much as Lou Reed is fully a part of New York, and Tom Waits is the ragged king of down-and-out Los Angeles. The songs that Stockton,…
As artists go, film composers are often chumps. They rarely pursue their own vision; instead, they’re following some director’s agenda, trying to match their music to edited pieces of celluloid they had no hand in creating. Blending in usually counts for more than standing out — hardly a recipe for…
The rampart sprung from the defeated, shattered shopping mall, where not enough people spent enough of their money. Concrete debris and misshapen metal amassed into a hundred-foot peak, much less natural and stately than the ones to the west, but somehow more personal — especially because the viewpoint was a…
Writing reviews of recordings by freshly dead artists is a tricky business that frequently results in overrating, a critical embarrassment that keeps on giving. Think about all those poor shmoes who, rightly thunderstruck by John Lennon’s murder, found themselves raving about Double Fantasy, a modest album that’s not even within…
If there is one complaint to be made about punk, or punk rock, or just plain rock music these days, it would have to be that most bands take themselves way too seriously. When one does find an inkling of humor embedded in a punk song, it is of the…
Perry Farrell has found God. That fact would usually send music scribes scurrying to hurriedly write his artistic epitaph, and rightfully so: Most of the time, when musicians claim to have suddenly tapped into a higher power, it appears that they have actually sold their souls to a much darker…
For a couple of years now, Radio 1190 in Boulder has held the distinction of being the area’s most righteous arbiter of interesting sounds, many of them local. But KGOAT Radio in Idaho Springs — which broadcasts from a tiny studio in the hillside town and, like Radio 1190, is…
In these days of digital recording, pitch shifters and ProTools, it’s hard for some people to imagine that there are still bands out there that don’t want to sound nicer than Jesus. The American Analog Set, Saturday, September 8, at the Lion’s Lair, revels in making a mockery of overpriced…
Primitive cultures used the drum to communicate with neighboring villages, among other things. The Motet, which performs Friday, September 7, at the Boulder Theater with Being Lara Maykovich, uses drums and percussion as the foundation of its culture-colliding sound. Employing rhythmic patterns that echo Pan-American, Cuban and African music alongside…
“I should not be making a living off of music,” declares Skerik, the mysteriously self-christened tenor saxophonist of Critters Buggin. “Because I can only play music that I like. For me, it’s not a job.” The old joke about free jazz (that it’s called “free jazz” because it’s worth every…
If androids were able to partake of and enjoy psychedelic drugs, that would be Shaggy Robot,” says James Sharpe, den master of the avant-electro monthly theme night at 60 South. The new club — formerly Zu Denver — houses the indie event on the first Monday of each month in…
Get any punk-rocker talking about his roots, and things can get a little ridiculous. Amid the revisionist history that ignores now-embarrassing elementary-school purchases and junior high school identity crises, there are tales of being conceived at an X concert, hearing Minor Threat records played while in utero and other equally…
There have been rock-and-roll record geeks for as long as there’s been rock and roll — but it took the music industry a while to catch on. Back when Elvis Presley was still alive and still the size of an average person, rock compilations focused almost entirely on the hits…
Clear Channel made it pretty clear last week that it isn’t scared of a little ol’ legal spat. In a move that competitors viewed as alternately surprising and downright horrific, Clear Channel revealed that it would soon enter into an agreement with the City of Denver that gives the company…
Bruce Springsteen may be the American heartland’s most enduring musical biographer, but the list of artists who continue to mine the territory suggests that it’s still rich with material. A local example is found in Salute This!, Friday, August 31, at the Boulder Theater, a collaborative, multimedia hodgepodge of a…
It’s been three years since local 3 Da Hardway recording artist Kingdom dropped a jewel from his crown. The game has changed somewhat since the release of his debut record, I Reign Omnipotent, in 1998, but the just-released followup, Life As I Know It, shows why this rapper remains one…
Three years ago, just after her first solo album, The Virginian, made a big (and well-deserved) splash, Neko Case confessed to a reporter, “I want to play the Grand Ole Opry in my grandmother’s lifetime.” That a former punk rocker — she played drums in the all-girl trio Maow –…
