Trawling the Small Print for Denver’s Day of Rock Lineup

Editor’s Note: Trawling the Small Print is a new feature wherein we squint hard at big festival lineups and spotlight a few gems that may have been hidden below the headliners. Saturday is the Day of Rock in Denver, a one-day festival this Saturday, May 28, aims to benefit Amp…

Jamie Hince of the Kills on Taking the Trans-Siberian Express

Not so many years ago, Jamie Hince, guitarist and electronics-and-production wizard for the Kills, might have had to give up playing guitar completely. After complications from cortisone injections into his knuckles to treat the strain of playing guitar so much, Hince had to have multiple surgeries and a tendon removed…

Air Guitar Elevated to Performance Art — Yes, Really

When this scribe was a blossoming wee headbanger in the late 1980s and early ’90s, air guitar was what we did instead of dance when we went to clubs underage. It was the tribal ritual for the terminally uncool — those of us without any sense of rhythm and next-to-no…

How Much Did You Hate Prom? Do It Over at Denver’s Goth Prom

Desiree Albee has hosted her music-and-fetish night, Repent, for nearly two years, but she’s always known that the event represented only one flavor of Denver’s goth scene. In a flash of inspiration, she conceived of an event that would bring together the city’s various goth-themed nights and include as many…

Latin-Ska Group Roka Hueka Drops Politically Charged Party Soundtrack

Three years after forming, the Denver-based Latin ska band Roka Hueka will release its self-produced debut album Red at Ophelia’s Electric Soapbox on Saturday, May 28, with fellow local Latin-Caribbean fusion acts Quilombo and ArteCura opening. Mixing influences and transcending borders is a recurring theme for Roka Hueka, in both…

My Morning Jacket Embraced the Spirits of Panoramic House Studio

“I think we search for spaces that aren’t really meant to be recorded in and have tons of character and charm,” says My Morning Jacket drummer Patrick Hallahan. From the beginning, MMJ has recorded largely in unconventional spaces and situations. The band recorded its first three albums on the family…

Guster Covering Guster Fans Covering Guster Will Make You Smile

This summer, the Denver Botanic Gardens will host Guster, the long-popular indie band which now performs as a four-piece. Newest member Luke Reynolds is an accomplished multi-instrumentalist who has previously performed with the band and collaborated with the group on recent album Evermotion. With elements of Beach-Boys harmony, trombones reminiscent of tooting…

Ghost Stories for Adults: Aesop Rock’s The Impossible Kid

According to a 2014 analysis conducted by data scientist Matt Daniels for Polygraph, the largest vocabulary in hip-hop belongs to Ian Bavitz aka Aesop Rock who had used 7,392 unique words in his song catalog up to that point, more than a thousand more than the next highest artist in…

Paul Simon Tries Too Hard, and His Shows Are All the Better for It

As I watched Paul Simon perform at Bellco Theater on Friday, I kept wondering: “Does he still enjoy doing this?” Which isn’t to say that the 74-year-old singer/songwriter wasn’t trying to put on a good show (or one worthy of Bellco’s minimum ticket price of $64.50). If anything, Simon seemed…

Catch LANY While You Can

Three months ago, nobody in Denver knew who LANY was. When the three-piece alt-pop electronic band opened for Troye Sivan back in February at the Ogden, they played to a crowd of people who only just learned their name and hadn’t yet had a chance to learn their music. Despite…

The Violent Femmes Have Something to Promote, At Last

The Violent Femmes put out a new studio album in March, their first since 2000’s Freak Magnet. That’s been a massive gap for a band that previously averaged an album about every three years. But band members have come and gone, and the group took a break between 2009 and…

Doomtree, Paul Simon and the Best Concerts in Denver This Weekend

With the rescheduled Denver 4/20 Rally (with performances from Wiz Khalifa and Lil Wayne), Project Pabst and the Five Points Jazz Festival all happening on Saturday, May 21, things will be a bit crazy around downtown, RiNo and Five Points. Also this weekend there’s Paul Simon at Bellco tonight, the…

The Coathangers on the Weed Zombiedom of Nü Denver

The Coathangers have been touring Europe for the past couple of weeks in support of their new album, Nosebleed Weekend. The punk/garage rock band with experimental leanings will end its European tour with a flight from Berlin straight to Denver to play the Project Pabst festival this Saturday, May 21…

Alex Edgeworth Returns to Denver With Peach Kelli Pop

“We went to a flea market today, and there was a sign that said ‘Tasers on Special’ next to a sign that said ‘Real Cool Knives’ or something. This place has, like, the worst humans,” says Alex Edgeworth with a laugh. Her phone is half-functioning, so she’s blasting this speakerphone…