Josh Quinlan Quintet

After many years in Chicago, saxophonist Josh Quinlan moved to Colorado to work on his doctorate of music arts in jazz studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder. While here, in addition to teaching at Denver School of the Arts, he’s also taken over the helm of Dazzle Recordings…

ManCub’s Alex Anderson goes the DIY route on a new EP

ManCub’s noisy, distortion-washed dance punk seems like it could have been born of some combination of wide-eyed innocence and reckless abandon. Truth is, it’s a labor of spite.  “I had a girlfriend at the time, and she broke up with me and broke my heart,” explains ManCub’s mastermind, Alex Anderson…

Tulip Wars bloom at the Larimer Lounge on Thursday, May 17

Anyone who stuck around for the final act of the second night of 2011’s Titwrench Festival got to see something very different when Tulip Wars took the stage. At times the music felt like straight-ahead pop with a lot more depth; at others the band sounded like mid-’90s alternative-rockers who…

Lupe Fiasco

Lupe Fiasco knows just how to incite the masses, whether it be through his politically charged lyrics or the convincing execution of his rhymes: When this man speaks, everyone listens up. Such is the case with his record Lasers, the culmination of a standoff between the MC and Atlantic Records,…

Eric Church

Nashville eats mavericks for breakfast, spitting them out compromised or undigested. Eric Church has never played by Nashville’s rules, yet he appears poised on the brink of country mega-stardom. The clever iconoclast’s edgy debut single, “Two Pink Lines” (off his 2006 debut, Sinners Like Me), waited out a teen pregnancy…

Spindrift

After a handful of years spent experimenting with a broad spectrum of psychedelic music while based in Newark, Delaware, two of this band’s founding members relocated to Los Angeles. There they found like-minded musicians, and for a while, Spindrift included members of Psychic TV, Brian Jonestown Massacre and Warlocks. The…

Jamey Johnson

If the country charts were a battle royal with the only weapons being raw honesty and authenticity, Jamey Johnson would have Kenny Chesney and Brad Paisley pretty anxious. The former marine isn’t joking when he claims a home “between Jennings and Jones,” though he spends more time on Waylon’s side…

CMT takes a well-worn trip to Redneck Island

Comes a time in every man’s life when he must reckon with the fact that he’s become old and crotchety. For me, that day actually came at about age 22 — and while I’ve not been averse to shaking my fist at many a nonsensical aspect of our dumb culture…

Various Artists

The crew from Ugly Azz Ent, which includes Julox, Lil Rip and Double O Purv, among others, has churned out a posse record in every sense of the word with Da Good Da Bad and Ugly. While the rhyme schemes and flows of these MCs aren’t necessarily impeccable, the simple…

Ben Knighten

There is so much about this album that shouldn’t work. For one thing, Ben Knighten’s voice is the soft, Disney-caliber croon of road-trip montages and your grandmother’s car stereo. For another, his backing instrumentation is sparse, less simple than it is frankly easy — or easy listening. And his lyrics…

The Hate

Starting things off with two pop-punk anthems, “Where Hope Lives” and “Rooftops,” the Hate strikes a triumphant note on Authors, like a statement of purpose from a group of vital, snarling hellraisers, simultaneously channeling bits of the Sweet and Bad Religion and mixing them with a touch of Hot Rod…

Calling Out West brings its new sound to the Gothic this weekend

Reinvention has come relatively quickly for the members of Calling Out West. In 2009, the trio of guitarist Max Comer, bassist Cody Vinton and vocalist/drummer Jake Vinton expanded the band then known as the Side Project, adding guitarist Mike Anderson and drummer Zach Armijo. Starting with 2010’s eleven-song release Short…

Subb-an brings the tech-house down on Saturday, May 19

It might seem that Subb-an has appeared on the scene overnight, but give him some credit: The guy’s 24 years old, and considering that he started mixing tracks at the tender age of fourteen, he got here as fast as he could. He earned a prestigious degree in sound design…