Hey, dude. So here’s my mixtape that’s been twelve months in the making. Sorry it’s taken a while, but reality often moves at the same molten pace as a couple of the bands culled here. While the new folksters get accolades for their freaky psychedelic tendencies, there’re plenty of heavy…
For nearly a decade, the giants of electronic dance music, a cold-blooded cadre mostly from northern Europe, lumbered across the earth. Tiesto, Paul van Dyk, Paul Oakenfold, Seb Fontaine, Judge Jules and Fatboy Slim dominated small suburban dancefloors and Ibizan caverns alike with crafty disco assembled from chest-rattling basslines and…
Is it getting hot in here, or is it 3Oh!3? Early in 2006, the Colorado hip-hop scene received a smack in the face from Sean Foreman and Nathaniel Motte, two pasty-faced Boulderites ready to get the party started. With barking flow, Casio beats and frenetic live energy, the duo known…
“I write my life as it progresses, as it gets worse — whatever,” says Aaron Yates, who headlines on Saturday, January 6, at the Fillmore Auditorium under his nom de plume, Tech N9ne; Blaze opens the show. “I’m like a fan inside this cat called Tech N9ne, who writes this…
A good friend of mine — a fellow critic, someone whose work I admire — recently confided that he’s tired of seeking out new music. Just the thought exasperates him. Everything these days sounds hackneyed and derivative to his finely tuned ears. Worse, listening to music has become a job…
Thanks to MTV, which is using Denver as a backdrop for the current installment of The Real World, our town will be seared into the public consciousness for the next several months. And with two of our most celebrated homegrown acts up for Grammy awards, it’s safe to say that…
Christmas came early this year for the Fray. Unless you’ve been holed up on your couch playing Guitar Hero II for the past week, you’re undoubtedly aware that Denver’s biggest musical export — the pariah of many a vitriolic MySpace-blogging pundit and assorted message-board-posting player haters in the scene –…
Sitting with the members of Electric Side Dish on this Sunday evening in early December, I’m reluctant to utter the dreaded J-word. But as my eyes wander around percussionist John Bunting’s living room, from the burning incense to the framed photograph of Jerry Garcia to guitarist John Tipton’s Widespread Panic…
The Pink Spiders are some cocky dudes. The act’s bio is littered with superfluous and self-aggrandizing words such as “iconoclastic” and “Machiavellian,” and the trio itself, which hails from Nashville, has a larger-than-life bravado about it that makes the hand-clapping, cutesy pop punk it plays seem more important than it…
In honor of Jay-Z and Rocky, who are both out of retirement, a pop quiz to test your boxer-versus-baller acumen. 1. To which upcoming project did Coldplay’s Chris Martin make the biggest contribution? A. Jay-Z’s Kingdom Come (out November 21), with vocals on the foreboding “Beach Chair.” B. Sly Stallone’s…
Hollywood adores making big-budget biopics about rock stars and their eternal struggles with booze, broads and diverse demons. And we love watching them. Some they nailed, others not so much. Jamie Foxx was a respectable Ray Charles, for instance, and Gary Oldman made a fine Sid Vicious. But Joaquin Phoenix…
Holiday songs are a love-hate proposition. At their best, such tunes provide an evocative seasonal soundtrack. However, they’re just as likely to be nausea-inducing, like that cheese log your aunt gave you last year — the one you’re still trying to digest. It’s appropriate, then, that the thirty releases below…
Want some well-done, socially relevant music? If so, you’d better skip the El Vez show at the Bluebird. On the other hand, if what you want is the laugh-till-you-pee type of musical entertainment, then put your butt in the front row at El Vez’s show. Don’t know El Vez? He’s…
Trail of Dead co-stars Conrad Keely and Jason Reece continue to beat the odds. The two have been making music together since 1994, and during that span, they’ve lived in a pair of musically buzzworthy cities: Olympia, Washington, and Austin, Texas. Keely and company were eventually “discovered” at Austin’s South…
Look, dude, it’s the holiday season, so chill with the politics, experimentation and all that pussy shit. It’s time to drink, get stoned and listen to Murphy’s Law — the perfect brain-need-not-apply party band. It shouldn’t seem odd that song topics tend to gravitate toward themes of marijuana and pissing…
You’d be hard-pressed to find a more dynamic, fervid and swaggering singer, male or female, in all of indie-rockdom than Katrina Ford, frontwoman of brambly Baltimore post-punkers Celebration. She’s an arresting, mesmerizing stage presence, and her voice — husky, powerful and neither overtly feminine nor masculine — is the force…
So there’s this whiskey-drinking, truck-driving nun hauling ass down Highway 9. She’s low on cash, so she starts turning tricks for gas at the Flying J. Then, while watching perverts on the street, she has a holy vision… Okay, so right about now, you’re probably thinking, “Get to the punchline,…
Have there ever been two happier humans than Brooklynites Matt Johnson and Kim Schifino? If so, they were probably institutionalized for having such a freakin’ great time. Matt & Kim’s new EP, a self-titled effort on the IHEARTCOMIX imprint, is a cheerful shambles built upon the simplest of sounds: Johnson’s…
Ninety percent silk and ten percent grit, Philadelphia blue-eyed-soul man Amos Lee’s pipes are steeped in both the smooth R&B stylings of Billy Paul and Smokey Robinson and the Seventies singer-songwriter tradition of James Taylor and Harry Chapin. The late-twenty-something schoolteacher turned singer — whose unfussy, jazzy folk-soul tunes and…
Emerging in 2005 from the wreckage of bands like Call Sign Cobra, Pariah Caste and Murder Scene Clean Up Team, Big Timber has waited until the waning hours of 2006 to issue its first full-length. Taking its title from the unglamorous town where it was recorded, Alma (slated for release…
Over the past twelve months, ten very different releases have dominated my personal playlist. And although 2006 still has three weeks left, I doubt that anything coming out in that time will knock off these personal bests. 1. TV on the Radio, Return to Cookie Mountain (Interscope). Critical consensus suggests…
Imogen Heap has no excuse for being self-deprecating. After all, this British import started improvising classical airs at an age when most of us were still figuring out how to tie shoes, and today, on the cusp of her 29th birthday, she’s a gifted singer-songwriter who’s as comfortable making music…
