Review: The Flaming Lips and Primus at Red Rocks, 8/3/11

THE FLAMING LIPS + PRIMUS at RED ROCKS | 8/3/11″This will probably go down as one of the greatest shows at Red Rocks – ever!” So declared Flaming Lips frontman Wayne Coyne as part of his introductory rundown on what would be happening over the course of the evening before…

Tonight: Paleo at the hi-dive

Paleo (performing tonight at the hi-dive with Glowing House and John Davey) is the chosen stage name for David Strackany, a singer-songwriter who once lived out of his car while traveling the country and playing hundreds of shows. There isn’t much to his music in the way of instrumentation or…

DMX at the Gothic Theatre on September 10

Correction: DMX performs on September 10 at the Gothic. An earlier version of this post had the incorrect date. Fresh out of the clink, DMX is making his way to the Gothic Theatre on Saturday, September 10. After serving most of a year-long parole violation sentence in Yuma, Arizona, the…

MTV’s 120 Minutes changed my life

There is a point at which, I think, we all start to discover music on our own. I was around twelve or thirteen when the shift from pre-teen radio sex jams to discovering albums I would fawn over (and eventually learn to play) occurred. Up to then, I was listening…

Review: Iceage at Rhinoceropolis, 8/2/11

ICEAGE at RHINOCERPOLIS | 8/2/11When Iceage, from Copenhagen, Denmark, took the stage (or floor in this case) at Rhinoceropolis last night, there was a palpable air of anticipation and excitement, and certainly the members of the band had a quiet intensity about them that they unleashed in full from the…

Tonight: Flaming Lips and Primus at Red Rocks

The Flaming Lips and Primus co-headline Red Rocks Amphitheatre tonight for a special show. Yes, the Lips are covering Dark Side of The Moon in its entirety, but the band has also asked Denver’s own Lizzie Allen of Vitamins to join them. In fact, the local vocalist has already joined…

Review: A Perfect Circle at Red Rocks, 8/2/11

A PERFECT CIRCLE at RED ROCKS | 8/2/11It seems more than a bit paradoxical that A Perfect Circle’s frontman prefers to perform in background. With Tool, his primary band, and with A Perfect Circle, Maynard James Keenan is an enormous presence. His voice is the driving force of both acts…

Recent reforms have Guitar Center playing a new tune

Okay, so a woman walks into a Guitar Center… Sound like the perfect setup for a sexist punchline? It’s not, but it very well could be. As long as there’s been a music industry, women have been treated as lesser-thans often viewed as supporters and sideline cheerleaders, not key players…

Mercuria and the Gem Stars, August 4 at the Larimer Lounge

If you’ve been to the right places over the past couple of years, chances are you’ve caught Maria Kohler playing solo or as a collaborator in whatever projects Mike Marchant has been involved with at any given time. And if you heard her, you know that Kohler’s soulful voice and…

My Morning Jacket

Over the past twelve years, My Morning Jacket has gone through the kind of perfect organic growth that you wish every band would go through. Starting as a ragtag bunch of longhairs from Louisville, Kentucky, who loved Skynyrd and Neil Young alike, the band proved early on that it could…

John Digweed

John Digweed has been living the dream for decades; at age eleven, all he wanted in life was to be a DJ. Suffice it to say, he reached his goal — and then some. Alongside famed collaborator Sasha, Digweed was a resident at Twilo in New York City; he appeared…

Dntel

Jimmy Tamborello is probably best known for his work with Ben Gibbard in the Postal Service, where his pioneering, glitchy electronica provided the beautifully textured backdrop to that band’s songs. The basis for that sound was one he’d been developing in other projects, including his main musical priority these days,…

Typhoon

Typhoon is currently capping its membership, touring and otherwise, at twelve members. While this may seem like a gratuitously sprawling lineup, one listen to any of the band’s releases makes it obvious that each member is making an important contribution to the deceptively simple but lushly textured sounds on each…

The T-Pain effect and what it means to you

Recall, if you will, Coyote McCloud’s 1984 novelty hit “Where’s the Beef?,” based on the Wendy’s commercial that employed the same catchphrase. Now multiply that song by several full-length albums. Go ahead, I’ll wait… Congratulations! You have mathematically solved T-Pain’s entire career. It was just a couple of weeks ago…

Able Archer

Able Archer’s latest effort starts out on a grandiose note with “No Goodbyes (The Mass Tremendous).” The elegant instrumental is a chorus of synthesized strings, a classically formal passage spelled out on the keys by Matt Huseman that leads into “Plane Crash.” That brief tune’s epic feel is a fitting…

Chimney Choir

David Rynhart drew from a diverse pool of influences, including folk, blues and Eastern European music, on his excellent solo effort, By the Hollow Tree. He also founded the traditional Irish quartet Bodha. Kevin Larkin, one of Rynhart’s bandmates in Chimney Choir, released music under the Pineross moniker, which fused…