Ever find yourself missing the word “alternative’ as a concept, a signifier, a lifestyle? Nowadays, any dudes-with-guitars collective either has to do the Creed butt-rock thing, the whine-incessantly-about-your-ex-girlfriends emo thing, or the get-beat-up-incessantly-by-your-ex-girlfriends indie-rock thing. It’s harder and harder to find the best aspects of each combined: the fist-pumping intensity…
It’s difficult to survey the hip-hop of 2004, more bloated and self-referential than ever, and not imagine the mythical AOR wasteland of the mid-’70s. Like rock before it, hip-hop has easily won a cultural acceptance once unthinkable, and our reward is a parade of Jadakisses and G-Unit solo projects, preaching…
Sales-wise, at least, 2004 was the year Nashville got its groove back. Heavy hitters such as Tim McGraw, George Strait, Kenny Chesney, Keith Urban and Shania Twain all dropped platinum records, but what has the city more excited than it’s been in years is the fact that it finally managed…
Britney got married. Ashlee was caught lip-synching. ODB died. Congress continued to wring its hands about the legality of downloads, which flourished anyway. Conservative groups condemned sex in popular culture, while Usher’s sultry Confessions shot to No. 1. A major label signed a guy who can’t sing, can’t dance and…
The sight of six makeup-clad Norwegian satanists on the Ozzfest main stage this summer was a great sign for metal, if not the makers of Max Factor. During recent outings, metal’s biggest event of the year has been plagued by rote rap-rockers like Crazy Town, Papa Roach and Linkin Park,…
In 2004, the line between indie and mainstream rock disintegrated even faster than Britney Spears’s quickie Vegas marriage. Vinyl obsessives mingled with white-hat-wearing fratheads at Modest Mouse shows, Taking Back Sunday debuted at No. 3 on the Billboard charts, and Death Cab for Cutie earned O.C.-sanctioned buzz and a major-label…
For hipsters, the coolest things are to be found twenty years ago, the most dreadful things ten years ago. So starting a few years back, we were deluged with ’80s electro and synth-pop, and we pretended to forget jungle ever existed. Electroclash, the first naive sortie by dance music into…
Everyone knows all of Usher’s Confessions by now; everyone went to see Prince play “1999′ for the very last time. Everyone knows all about Lil Jon and his penchant for hollering “Yayy-uuhhh!’ With everyone paying attention to these superstars, a lot of other talented folks got drowned out, and not…
From its launch in the 1970s until well into the ’80s, Firefall released a steady stream of hits that included everything from “You Are the Woman” to “Just Remember I Love You.” By fusing equal parts country and pop with laid-back rhythms and a soft-rock style, the Colorado band found…
Ever had friends try to tell you how much more clear-thinking and able-bodied they are when they’re high? Denver’s Under the Drone will convince you of exactly that. The group’s precision stoner rock chokes on the smoky grooves of Kyuss and Nirvana’s Bleach even as it sculpts protein-packed riffs with…
Carlos D has already made his mark in the music world playing bass in the hugely popular, NYC-based Interpol. And before he played out as a DJ in various bars and clubs in Gotham, he cut his teeth at New York University’s WNYU, where he hosted a goth-specialty radio show…
It’s been an amazing year for music in Denver. In a recent note, the Swayback’s Eric Halborg put it best: “This place is on fire. I’ve been trying to whisper that into anyone’s ear that I thought could take the message in the bottle out of Denver. But it’s obvious,…
Our man Butt-head, in spite of his primate-like intellect, was spot-on a few years back when he asserted that he likes music that “doesn’t suck.” The Backbeat critics, knuckle-draggers that we are, concur wholeheartedly. So after sifting through more crap than a Roto-Rooter guy (some of which would’ve tested his…
Good songs are like those BMG inserts in magazines that you just can’t ignore. You’re drawn to them, no matter what page in the pub you intended to flip to. But unlike those intrusive ads, which most folks curse, then tear out and toss, you can’t disregard — much less…
If you listen to “Pure,” a track from the upcoming full-length by Denver electronica duo Adrenaline Sky, you’d never guess it was born a funk tune. Eric Smith wrote it years ago in his first group, Exit 232, and has resurrected it in every band he’s been involved with since…
Drum-and-bass, more so than other genres of dance music, can swing like a pendulum from the melodic and ethereal to the absolutely dark, brutal and aggressive. Mark Caro, who operates under the name Technical Itch, has been pushing drum-and-bass toward the more menacing end of that spectrum since the mid-’90s…
Dave, this is God. The Fray is the best new band ever.” It’s been said that God works in mysterious ways. He’s spoken through dreams, a burning bush, even a jackass. And now it seems he’s delivering a message through a Sony Pressman. The voice doesn’t really belong to the…
For a second, all you could hear was a buzz. It was a packed Saturday night at the Larimer Lounge, and Boulder’s Signal to Noise had just erupted into yet another epic, surging song. Riffs lunged with ponderous grace and buckled under each other’s weight. The vocals drifted in ether…
Why would you want to/Hurt or kill or maim/To take a dream of life away/And why would you hear the calling/In your Napoleonic mind/To hurt so many people that way/Why would you want to pull the trigger/Of a black shaft of steel/Where have you lost the ability to feel? Last…
There’s a scene in Mean Girls where Lindsay Lohan’s character lip-syncs at a talent show with her beslutted Plastics. The music suddenly cuts out and Lohan begins singing, promptly saving the day. Unfortunately, Speak, Lohan’s new disc, features no such triumphant moment. Because while deft screenwriting augmented Lohan’s natural charm…
There’s really nothing inherently wrong with — or even new about — punk’s mainstream popularity. After all, wimpy derivatives of it have been riding the charts since the late ’70s, and all it’s done is strengthened the resolve of the bands and fans who choose not to buy in or…
The Cars Are the Stars is what the Postal Service would be with a spookier undertow and song structures as loose as ball bearings dropped on slick marble. Fragments has lofty ceilings and oceanic depths, songs that sound like underwater caverns populated with analog synths. The Cars Are the Stars,…
