Photos by Soren McCarty. Robert Plant & Alison Krauss Red Rocks Amphitheater Saturday, June 21, 2008 Better Than: Being at Stonehenge for summer solstice. As the electrifying frontman of Led Zeppelin nearly three decades ago, Robert Plant was the epitome of the über-rockstar. But Saturday’s show with bluegrass queen Alison…
Photo by Tom Murphy. Broken Spindles, Red Orange Yellow and We Are! We Are! Saturday, June 21, 2008 Larimer Lounge Better Than: Anything else going on in town this night. I got to the show a little late, and was relieved to find that We Are! We Are! hadn’t played…
LOCALS ONLY Being a hip-hop artist in Denver is one of the toughest gigs in town. Not only is it difficult to find a venue that will allow hip-hop shows, let alone take home a piece of the bar and door, but it’s really hard to find an audience who…
Photos by James Mitchell Evans. Creative Music Works Thursday, June 20, 2008 Denver Art Museum Better than: A typical Thursday night at the DAM Last night, I walked into what has to be one of the strangest events that the two-year old Hamilton Building in the Denver Art Museum has…
Tom Waits played a extraordinary show in Phoenix at the Orpheum Theatre this past Wednesday night as part of his twelve-city “Glitter and Doom” tour. As far as we’re concerned, Waits is a god among men. The guy doesn’t tour a lot and his shows have taken on the holy…
Steve Porter calls his brand of dance music Porterhouse, and if you’ll forgive the terrible pun, it is indeed pretty meaty. His mixes are full of thick, dense progressive tracks that meld the airy, sweet tendencies of trance with earthy, ass-shaking bass lines. By injecting a healthy dose of funk…
With the demise of Motheater last year, the Denver scene lost one of its brightest lights. Because of its artier, more adventurous use of sound and volume, the outfit never fit in with the post-hardcore scene or the experimental metal scene. Thankfully, Michael Reisinger and Weston Wilson bring that vision…
I grew up in Cherry Creek North in the ’70s and ’80s, and it’s hard not to think about the days before the Cherry Creek Shopping Center replaced the old mall. To think about the very first record I bought: the twelve-inch single of the Sugar Hill Gang’s “Rapper’s Delight”…
The Beach Boys, U.S. Singles Collection 1962-1965 (Capitol). Another dismal example of how the harmony-laced music of the Beach Boys can be whored out. Technology is lost on this sixteen-CD set. Without any notable bonus tracks, listeners are subjected to “singles” they already hear on the radio every day for…
Knocking the members of Rose Hill Drive for their retro tastes is like criticizing shredded wheat for being crunchy. It’s part of the package — one that Moon Is the New Earth delivers in a variety of tasty ways. The disc, which is being celebrated at a Tuesday, June 24,…
This deluxe re-release of the VSS’s final album probably would have benefited from some remastering, since the levels seem somewhat uneven and often flat. However, these flaws are easily ignored when compared with the fiery, churning intensity of the music presented. With Nervous Circuits, the VSS became one of the…
Over the years, reviewers aplenty have wished for Weezer’s Rivers Cuomo to grow up. But when he’s occasionally tried to do so, the results have served as an argument for endless adolescence — at least until now. The group’s latest self-titled release is practically a novelty disc, albeit a notably…
Destined to be a stoner classic, Tha Carter III should silence critics who think Lil Wayne can’t make a cohesive album. III is pop rap to giggle to and marvel at, from “Phone Home,” where Wayne gives his outer-space shtick the full treatment, to “Misunderstood,” in which he disses Al…
There are definitely people who think we’re legendary, who think we’re the greatest, and that’s so cool to me,” says James Clower, guitarist for the Fluid, one of Denver’s best-ever bands, which is reuniting, at least temporarily, after a nearly fifteen-year hiatus. “I still can’t get over the fact that…
Detroit noiseniks Wolf Eyes are renowned for creating unholy aural assaults with their electronics, guitars, horns, tape machines and shrieks. As one reviewer put it, their music is perfect for “washing dishes in a haunted house or performing at-home knee surgery.” Prepping for its next brain-melting opus, the trio is…
D.C. rapper Wale (pictured, pronounced wah-lay) has been drumming up a lot of support with his free online releases. He recently issued the Seinfeld-inspired Mixtape About Nothing on his Elitaste blog (www.elitaste.com). The nineteen-track collection features plenty of sound bites from the ’90s sitcom and, of course, “The Kramer” reminds…
After Brian Wilson completed the Beach Boys’ watershed album Pet Sounds in 1966, he started work on Smile, which would be his “teenage symphony to God.” While the album was never officially released (although bootlegs surfaced), Wilson reconstructed it nearly forty years later. In the past four decades, the Beach…
There are a handful of male vocalists in the modern era who possess truly breathtaking voices: Andrea Bocelli, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and Luciano Pavarotti immediately come to mind. There are fewer still with that kind of otherworldly talent in the rock arena: Jeff Buckley, Chris Cornell and, some would…
The origins of Sleepercar’s music is said to date back to the last days of At the Drive-In. The former’s oldest song is said to have been written during a sound check at one of the latter’s final shows. At the Drive-In guitarist Jim Ward had long been interested in…
Music’s certainly seen its share of odd-couple collaborators, from David Bowie and Bing Crosby to Nick Cave and Kylie Minogue. No pairing has felt so strangely natural, however, or been quite so successful, as the one of Led Zeppelin frontman Robert Plant and bluegrass icon Alison Krauss. Having met while…
Moving from the underground to the overground is difficult in any musical genre, but especially in hip-hop, a populist medium whose participants generally look with suspicion upon artists who seem more comfortable with creativity than with cashing in. Such was the reputation of Dilated Peoples (on tour with Aceyalone, The…
At first blush, Dawn McCarthy seems to have been born into the wrong time. After all, the music she makes as the main force behind Faun Fables, supported at this gig by the Legendary River Drifters, draws heavily from the English folk tradition of centuries past, and the instrumentation she…
