Concerts

Thanks to David Mead’s flute playing, “The Black,” Black Stitch in Eternity’s opener, could be part of the soundtrack to an early-’60s Japanese ghost movie. Elsewhere, “Weight for Dusk” introduces the tenor sax and recalls the hard bop of late-’50s jazz figures, while “Rotting Cage” displays Mead’s deeper roots in…

The spectrum of noise delivered on the self-titled debut from EXKXO reveals the multitude of options available in hip-hop beat creation these days. EXKXO drops sixteen tracks with no real theme, and while the beats themselves lie in the safe zone of musical exploration, the album is still a joy…

You might’ve seen a picture floating around Facebook this morning in which it looks like part of the ceiling caved in at Sancho’s Broken Arrow at Colfax and Clarkson. Turns out, the soffit around the bar indeed slipped. But according to Jay Bianchi, folks worked through the night repairing it,…

POLICA at BLUEBIRD THEATER | 11/26/13 Somewhere in the relentless blur of the first ten minutes of Poliça’s pounding performance at the Bluebird Theater last night, Chris Bierden’s bass strings broke, and Poliça had to do something it has rarely done since hitting the scene a few years ago –…

BILL CALLAHAN at ORIENTAL THEATER | 11/25/12 If you show up to a Bill Callahan show expecting a whiskey-soaked rager, you shall be disappointed. Last night’s gig at the Oriental was proof positive of that. The audience took their seats, and Callahan — standing near the back of the stage,…

BLACK JOE LEWIS at BLUEBIRD THEATER | 11/25/13 Last night’s Black Joe Lewis show at Bluebird showed that the garage heavy sound all over the band’s latest release, Electric Slave, sounds incredible live and has really rejuvenated old hits. Now that the group has dropped “and the Honeybears” from its…

Exactly a month ago today, the Mouth House was closed, and two of its tenants are due in court today facing charges of distribution of alcohol without a license. On Saturday, October 26, just as the first band was starting its set at the DIY house venue, two undercover cops…

TUES | POLICA at BLUEBIRD THEATER | 11/26/13 Polica, which hails from Minneapolis, Minnesota, features former Roma di Luna vocalist Channy Leaneagh, Ryan Olson of Gayngs fame, a pair of drummers, Ben Ivascu and Drew Christopherson and bassist Chris Bierden. Formed in the summer of 2011, the act came together…

CAT POWER at GOTHIC THEATRE | 11/23/12 It was somewhere around an hour between the end of opener Nico Turner’s set and the beginning of the Cat Power set. By the time Chan Marshall took the stage, some people seemed to be getting restless. Marshall more than made up for…

MORBID ANGEL at BLUEBIRD THEATER | 11/22/13 Although this tour was dedicated to Morbid Angel playing its landmark third album Covenant in its entirety, the guys treated us to at least one song from each of its full-length releases. Before the band took stage, the lights went low and the…

ALEJANDRO ESCOVEDO at SOILED DOVE UNDERGROUND | 11/22/13 One big takeaway from Alejandro Escovedo’s show at the Soiled Dove Underground: The man lives the songs he writes. On stage, he spun tale after tale, at times foraying into extended monologues, to describe the backstory of each song. When millionaire rockers…

SAT | CAT POWER at GOTHIC THEATRE | 11/23/13 Cat Power is the sometimes solo, sometimes full-band, project of Chan Marshall. Although born in Atlanta, Marshall made her way to New York City in the early 1990s and became involved in the underground music scene in the Big Apple. In…

SAT | CATZ ‘N DOGZ at NORAD | 11/23/13 Catz ‘N Dogz has had a smashing year so far. In addition to being invited to create a BBC 1 Essential Mix, the powerhouse duo has collaborated with a mother lode of impressive acts, including Eats Everything, with whom it put…

Black Friday is at hand. And while we’ve all come to begrudgingly accept the fact that this annual fateful day unofficially serves as the kickoff of the holiday season, there’s a new tradition being started by some local faves that’s far more worth getting excited about. Here’s BLK Tuesday, a…

In the Whale has the kind of live show that can literally turn the head of a rock star. No, really — not speaking figuratively here. Ask Slash. The Guns N’ Roses guitar god hand-picked the band to open for him after seeing footage of Eric Riley and Nate Valdez…

An odd duality marks Counter Counter Culture, Skyfox’s latest effort. There’s a common thread of pain that comes through in the lyrics on each of the ten tracks. Whether it’s the agony of a romance gone bad — a theme spelled out in songs like “Drug in Me (Down)” —…

For a guy who grew up learning to play Elton John songs on his autoharp while listening to the radio, Clay Cabe has quite an affinity for funk. Although his debut, 2003’s December, was an acoustic-driven folk-rock album, The Underworld is more of an eclectic effort. There are still a…

Many sludge/doom bands tune their guitars to drop C. Joseph Weller Myer of Whilt goes one step further, playing a bass that evokes the lowest registers of both guitar and bass. “Black Leaves” is a clear reference to marijuana — the kind Satan keeps for himself in a secret stash…

“Night of Lonely Zombies,” from Locusts of Egypt’s sophomore effort, Fondness, could easily be a long-lost ’70s power-pop song; it also recalls the sound that Elephant 6 became known for in the ’90s. Meanwhile, Jim Angell and Eugenia Appelhaus’s higher-register vocals and the way they sit in the mix call…

In 2009, a study commissioned by the Denver Office of Cultural Affairs introduced Creative Vitality Index (CVI), a metric created by Western States Arts Federation (WESTAF) to measure our city’s cultural viability. Based on Denver’s CVI, the study determined that the Mile High City was an emerging national cultural hub,…

Catz ‘N Dogz (due at NORAD this Saturday, November 23) has had a smashing year so far. In addition to being invited to create a BBC 1 Essential Mix, the powerhouse duo has collaborated with a mother lode of impressive acts, including Eats Everything, with whom it put together a…