All right, just when you thought it couldn’t get any better (or at least that’s what we thought), it has. Talking about the 15th annual Westword Music Showcase here, an event that already includes more than fifty of Denver’s best and brightest and a main stage offering that features Built…
Things slowed down a bit this week with concert announcements, especially compared to the past few weeks, but we did the get the word on some noteworthy shows including Sonic Youth Friday, July 31 at the Ogden Theater, Yes and Asia at the Paramount Theatre Sunday, July 12 and a…
Just heard that Duncan Barlow, frontman for the incomparably awesome d. biddle, is getting together with some band mates from back in the day to play some reunion shows as Guilt. Since those shows are in Louisville, Kentucky and Chicago, we’re going to miss them. What we don’t have to…
Although the future of the Procussions is up in the air, founder Mr. J Medeiros is continually working hard on new music out in Los Angeles. He’s currently working on his new album, Friends, Enemies, Apples, Apples, which is scheduled to drop sometime this summer. But in the meantime it…
Vote for the 2009 Westword Music Showcase winners. We’ve sneak-peeked the award nominees, asked who we missed, and solicited your dream lineup. Now it’s time to vote — to see which bands will emerge from the 2009 Showcase as your favorites. With the Showcase scheduled for Saturday, June 13 (with…
I just caught sight of this excellent poster and knew right away that it was our flier of the week. In the course of advertising the sure-to-be excellent appearance of Dormir, Gloam, Portamento, St. Elias and Woodsman at the Meadowlark this Saturday, April 25, this flier makes a powerful statement…
Chris Barber just stopped by the office and laid a hot-off-the-presses, just mastered copy of Mama’s eagerly awaited debut, Bayoutopia. Spinning it right now as I write this. Whoa, Mama! Even on cheap computer speakers, this thing freaking smokes. Asked Barber if there’s any chance we’ll get to experience Mama…
So now that the ballot is finalized for the 2009 Westword Music Showcase, it’s time to start fashioning the lineups for the festival itself. It’s an agonizing process, mainly because we only have a finite number of slots and a wealth of talent to consider. Typically, the way things work,…
Okay, so we know we’re just asking for it when we put this out there, but taking your feedback into consideration, it’s clear that as inclusive and considered as we strove for the nomination process to be, invariably we ended up missing some worthy artists. So far, the acts that…
So earlier this week, we wrote about the locally based digital download boutique max3 being up and running. It’s in beta form and right now they are giving away more awesome free stuff (and also some awesome not free stuff, but that’s another blog post all together) in addition to…
In music annals, 1991 is most often remembered as the year Nevermind came out and changed the commercial-music landscape for the next half-decade. That was also the year, however, that an up-and-coming band with a luridly suggestive name released an album of sublimely expressive, dreamy guitar songs that became a…
Christopher Rigel wishes he thought more like a novelist. “I’d say the written word is just as big an influence for me as the musical side of things,” says the Light Travels Faster frontman. “Ginsberg, Burroughs. I love the way Vonnegut structures things. Now, that — his way of composing…
Francois Safieddine’s upscale Suite Two Hundred (1427 Larimer Street) has been doing extremely well since it opened just over six months ago, according to Paulina Szafranski, vice president of marketing for Lotus Concepts. But to stay ahead of the game, this weekend the club will unveil its new VIP lounge:…
Ascaris is the genus of a variety of intestinal roundworm. Appropriately enough, the Denver band adopting such a gruesome moniker brings together the abrasive outrage of death metal and the aggression of hardcore. Instead of that resulting in a giant ball of razory bad vibes, however, Ascaris (due at the…
Bruce Springsteen has influenced many artists over the years, and not always in a positive way: We have him to blame for the all-too-often egregious genre known as “heartland rock,” for instance. Strangely, though, only a relative handful of punks have bowed to Bruce — a rule to which the…
Plenty of music-biz tastemakers see Lady Antebellum as the next big country crossover act. So a 2009 Grammy nomination as Best New Artist, which pitted the Nashville trio against Adele, Duffy, Jazmine Sullivan and the Jonas Brothers — and Adele’s eventual victory shouldn’t be seen as a slap against this…
Strangely enough, throughout McCoy Tyner’s storied career, which spans more than five decades, the jazz pianist has rarely performed with a guitar player — something he more than makes up for on Guitars, his fittingly titled recent effort. The outstanding disc, which features lauded fretmen Bill Frisell, John Scofield (see…
Ask any guitar player if he recognizes the name John Scofield, and you’ll be hard-pressed to find a single six-stringer who doesn’t. Based on his work with Miles Davis and Herbie Hancock in the ’70s to collaborations with modern music pioneers Medeski, Martin and Wood in the 21st century, Scofield’s…
The sonic scions of Crash Worship and Arab on Radar, Arkansas’s Church of the Snake eludes easy classification. Heavily rhythmic noise rock characterizes one strain of the band’s sound, while another is marked by hypnotic, psychedelic drones, conceived in the shadowy recesses of a witch doctor’s visionary travels among his…
Here’s the plot synopsis for The Marcus Church Story: Marcus Church really likes Guided by Voices. The similarities encompass Church’s singing style, voice, lo-fi production style and, to some degree, his songwriting. Unfortunately, Church seems fixated on the mellower, more accessible side of the GBV oeuvre. That’s fine and dandy,…
To get an idea of how versatile Adam Stern is as a guitarist, check out “Alchemical Rooms,” the first cut on Twang Shui: Opening with volume swells and a Bill Frisell-esque tone, Stern does some mean country picking à la Danny Gatton, then flips his pickup selector to rhythm and…
The latest release by this extremely prolific singer-songwriter from Bailey, Colorado, isn’t universes removed from his previous material. Smiley’s finds Porter speaking about life near Colfax in Capitol Hill as a poor, creative person trying to survive with his soul and creativity intact. Standout track “Wait for Another” is so…
