Lil Wayne recording from behind bars

Used to be time when a stint in the big house would put a stop to an artist’s recording career. Well, today we have evidence that time has passed. Jailed rapper Lil Wayne guests on the new Drake track “Light Up (Rikers RMX)” alongside Jay Z. Only, we assume Jay…

Yuzo Nieto and the Hand that Rocks the Dreidel calls it quits

One of Denver’s weirdest pop auteurs has dissolved at least one of his various projects: Yuzo Nieto and the Hand that Rocks the Dreidel played its final show this week. The band, led by the eponymous saxophonist Nieto, has been for some years now trafficking in sounds that spanned from…

Liz Clark wins local talent search for Lilith Tour

Singer-songwriter Liz Clark, who divides her time between Colorado and Ireland, was tapped to play the Lilith Tour at Comfort Dental Amphitheatre on Tuesday, July 13. She won the the Denver-local talent search after submitting her tune “Who’s Your Angel” from her 2005 release Hand on the Stove, which you…

2010 Westword Music Showcase Awards wrap up

Whoo boy! What a time we had last night. Every year, I’m always so energized after hosting the awards ceremony — not to mention hungover (more on that in a minute). As I mentioned last night (numerous times, apparently), I’m really in love with this town, with this scene and…

A look at the minimalist music and maximum insanity of Monotonix

He looks like a cross between a young Albert Einstein and a biblical prophet. With a wild mustache and a shock of curls bursting from his head, clothed only in shorts so tiny they look more like a loincloth, Monotonix vocalist Ami Shalev gesticulates like a man possessed as the…

Fingers of the Sun at the Meadowlark

The Pseudo Dates, one of the most promising pop bands of recent years, broke up last year without making an announcement or organizing a final show. Luckily, primary songwriters Nathan Brazil and Suzi Allegra finally came to their senses and realized they wrote great, even timeless songs together, and they…

Josh Gabriel at Beta

The music of Josh Gabriel is hard to escape. As half of the duo Gabriel & Dresden — and, more recently, on his own — his productions and remixes have seen play from some of the industry’s top DJs, including John Digweed, Carl Cox and Danny Howells. His signature work…

All aboard! Leigh Jones turns the Recovery Room into Bar Car

When Leigh Jones moved to Denver a decade ago, she was living in Park Hill, and the Recovery Room (a longtime dive at 819 Colorado Boulevard) was her neighborhood bar. She went on to open several bars and restaurants of her own — including the now-defunct Brasserie Rouge and B-52…

Danielle Ate the Sandwich

No amount of Westword cover stories, YouTube sensationalism or pole-vaulting to the head of the line can make Two Bedroom Apartment — the third release by Fort Collins wunderkind Danielle Ate the Sandwich — any more listenable. Luckily, the album doesn’t rely on those things, nor does it need to…

Frogs Gone Fishin’

There’s just something about the name Frogs Gone Fishin’ that, well, kind of screams “jam band.” That’s not necessarily a bad thing if you’re hoping to take some folks on a “phishing” trip. But at the same time, it might keep others from actually giving you a fair shake. In…

SuperSeed

An epic sound somewhere between a jet taking off and the THX theme might be a tad dramatic as far as album openers go, but when SuperSeed blasts off into a blistering blues lick over a driving hi-hat beat on “Dreams,” the first track off its latest, self-titled EP, you…

Sunray Breaker

Travis Barton and Chris Powell have been making experimental electronic music for around a decade, and the aesthetic for the duo’s first widely available release is succinctly summed up with its title. Reminiscent of ’90s electronica, these songs sound like Future Sound of London’s Lifeforms album mixed with glitchy noise…

Zoroaster

Taking their name from the ancient Iranian philosopher name-checked by Nietzsche (whose own work inspired the Richard Strauss composition that is considered the theme song of 2001: A Space Odyssey), these Atlanta sludge-rockers do plenty of their own outer and inner space exploration on the recently released Matador. Often compared…

Umphrey’s McGee

Add the goofy name to a tag like “jam band,” and you’ve got a band that’s stigmatized right out of the gate. True, Umphrey’s McGee might not be for everyone. In terms of bands that traffic in long-form compositions — and Umphrey’s McGee (playing with Galactic and the Wailers at…

Thao and Mirah With the Most of All

Mirah Yom Tov Zeitlyn and Thao Nguyen are West Coast-based singer-songwriters who came together at wildly different points in their career arcs. After clicking at this year’s Noise Pop Festival in San Francisco, they formed indie-chick super-group Thao and Mirah With the Most of All and immediately embarked on a…

The Hold Steady

The Hold Steady seems like a particularly apt name for the lauded New York band following the release of its fifth full-length, Heaven is Whenever, earlier this year. After a grip of albums that cranked the populist, classic-rock bombast of Thin Lizzy and Boston through frontman Craig Finn’s hyper-literate, spoken-sung…

3OH!3 slated to appear on Jimmy Kimmel Live! tonight

If the above tweet is to be believed, when the 3OH!3 hooligans perform two songs tonight on Jimmy Kimmel Live! (“My First Kiss” and “Déjà Vu”), we can expect to see gold — lots of gold, evidently. Oh, and massive amounts of chest hair (not as much of that, though,…

Chris Brown, the saddest Michael Jackson impersonator

Chris Brown is sad, and it’s not because he cried at the BET awards on Sunday. While performing a tribute to Michael Jackson, the singer and alleged Rihanna-beater broke down and wept during a rendition of Jackson’s “Man in the Mirror,” leading many, as noted in the CBS report above,…

Fireworks set off a Larimer BBQ

Summertime, in our book, is all about fireworks, barbecues and sweaty live music. How fitting then, that this week’s top flier uses one of those things to advertise a great slate of the other two? It’s for one of the Larimer Lounge’s fine summer barbecue events, which are like little…