Equal parts Bernard Herrmann, John Zorn and Jim O’Rourke, Strangers Die Every Day makes cinematic, esoteric chamber punk that never forgets to rock. Bassist Stirling Myles and drummer Lawrence Armstrong thunder away like an indie-rock rhythm section that fell into the orchestra pit, while violinist Scott Wilkinson and cellist Jessie…
Just over four decades ago, actor Peter Sellers presented the Beatles with a Grammy they’d won for the song “A Hard Day’s Night.” In a film of this event that was shown during the 1965 Grammy telecast, Sellers referred to the prize as a “Grandma award” — and his joke…
The drive into work this morning was a thing of absolute beauty. A heavy fog was draped around the city like a thick winter coat, and Born in the Flood’s latest (specifically “In Debt to the Heart”) was on my iPod. I was staring out the window as the 122x…
When I started this job almost four years ago, there were only a handful of things you could have told me about my future that would have given me even a moment’s pause. That I’d soon be speaking of my father in the past tense — and eventually getting used…
Creativity plays a key role in every musician’s life. For Branford Marsalis, expressing that inventiveness means showing authenticity, spontaneity and imagination within the framework of a solo. “A good jazz solo is one that has strong melodic imagination,” he explains during a tour stop in Los Angeles. “The context of…
Martin Dosh is the proud recipient of an English degree from the State University of New York at New Paltz. But, he concedes, “I’m obviously not doing very much with it.” That’s because Dosh has stopped penning the short stories that were once his forte in favor of electronic music…
Jonathan Kreisberg’s playing conjures the dualistic essence of New York. The guy’s a badass, burning up the fretboard like Jimmy Bruno, with a swaggering bravado that’s pure Gotham. At the same time, there’s an evenness to his attack in which every note has clear and distinct resonance, lending the material…
If Nathan McGarvey and Stephen Till had had even the slightest inclination that their casual collaboration would morph into a nine-piece band, perhaps they’d have come up with a different name. But forming a group wasn’t part of the plan when the pair first convened in the summer of 2005…
Is there a peppier performer than the Apples’ Robert Schneider? Although he’s never achieved the sort of commercial breakthrough that’s long seemed his due, this former Denver resident remains upbeat and ready for anything, as he proved on a January episode of the Colbert Report by enthusiastically belting out an…
If Of Montreal’s lead singer and songwriter, Kevin Barnes, claimed — in his best Barbara Mandrell-like drawl, of course — that he was indie dance when indie dance wasn’t cool, he’d be well within his rights. Barnes has been working with a jumbled mix of ’60s psychedelia and ’80s electro…
In 2005, Born in the Flood created giant expectations with its outstanding six-song EP, The Fear That We May Not Be, and one jaw-dropping performance after another. But the act more than measures up on its followup, If This Thing Should Spill (slated for release this Friday, February 9, at…
Yeah, I know, this CD has been out since late last year. But it’s also one of those rare recordings that improves with repeated listens — a stimulating swirl of creativity that’s as intense as it is intelligent. Of the four Spheroids, three — guitarist/drummer Robert Rutherford, guitarist/Fender Rhodes player…
Organist Reuben Wilson’s releases on the Blue Note Records imprint helped ignite the jazz-funk/soul-jazz movement of the late ’60s and early ’70s. Taking cues from a few other Hammond B-3 players like Jimmy McGriff and Richard “Groove” Holmes, Wilson put enough funk and breakbeats in his trunk to make today’s…
In the video for “Lloyd, I’m Ready to Be Heartbroken,” Camera Obscura’s latest single, there’s a guy clad in a blaring yellow shirt, dancing around like the gayest dude you’ve ever seen. He’s with a hot blonde who’s wearing white knee-high stockings and some sort of vibrant pink ’60s get-up…
If a poll is taken before this show, the majority of respondents will be familiar with co-stars Lyle Lovett, John Hiatt and probably even Guy Clark — but maybe not with Joe Ely, who’s always generated more respect than album sales. Ely came to the fore in 1970 with the…
Of the original Throwing Muses, Tanya Donnelly came the closest to mainstream celebrity; during the ’90s, she even appeared on the cover of Rolling Stone with Belly, her post-Muses combo. Nevertheless, Kristin Hersh, Donnelly’s half-sister, was the heart of that underrated group, as well as the source of the fiercest…
Okay, so the only reasonable explanation for Rock Star Supernova — the CBS-spawned rock monstrosity featuring ex-Metallica bassist Jason Newsted, ex-Guns N’ Roses guitarist Gilby Clarke, ex-Pam Anderson hubby Tommy Lee and some Canadian ex-nobody dude on vocals — is that it’s all just an elaborate hoax. Seriously. Three aging…
Call it a revival, a tribute, a throwback, whatever; any synonym will fill the space, but it won’t really say anything. Music is a vast universe, each band a tiny blinking light, collectively influencing any who would gaze into the infinite black sky. So to call an act such as…
Have you Backbeat readers out there been wondering what happened to Playlist? For a variety of reasons, our regular collection of national and local CD reviews hasn’t appeared in the published issues of Westword since December — and as a result, the critiques we prepared for January papers are no…
After her nanosecond turn on The One last summer, I’m sure the last thing in the world that Aubrey Collins wanted to be thought of was a one-trick pony. Funny thing is, if everything pans out with her current endeavor, that’s precisely what she’ll be. In a manner of speaking…
Playing in a band means steeling yourself to judgment. At some point, your group is bound to get noticed, prompting all kinds of horrifically unqualified people to make snap decisions about your sound, categorizing in the simplest, lamest, laziest terms the art for which you’ve sacrificed, the music that you…
Singer-songwriter Marc Cohn admits that his first visit to Colorado since August 2005, when he was shot during an attempted carjacking, has been weighing on him. “I would be lying if I said I didn’t have a little bit of anxiety about it,” he concedes. Cohn was returning to his…
