PRETTY LIGHTS @ RED ROCKS | FRI & SAT, 8/16-8/17 Returning to the Mile High City for his now-annual two-night run at Red Rocks, Pretty Lights maestro Derek Vincent Smith is bringing an album’s worth of new music and a talented cast of characters to entertain the hometown crowd. On…
FIVE IRON FRENZY @ OGDEN THEATRE | SAT, 8/17/13 Five Iron Frenzy began life in 1995 as the side project of a long-forgotten thrash-metal-and-industrial band called Exhumator. Ahead of the ska revival of the mid-’90s, Exhumator’s members wanted to play music that was inherently fun, positive and uplifting. Two years…
The Arise Music Festival kicks off today at Sunrise Ranch in Loveland and runs through Sunday. Take one look at the schedule, and you’ll quickly see there are an overwhelming number of acts on the bill. We narrowed it down to the half-dozen acts you must see. Keep reading to…
Roots & Rhythm frontman James Speiser and KUVO DJ Erik Troe both know a few things about blues and jazz, so it’s no surprise that the two came up with the concept for Blue Roots Denver, a Denver-produced program that features local blues and jazz musicians. The pilot for the…
Right now I’m between a rock and hard place,” declares Jay Jaramillo, who was recently laid off from his job at Denver Health. “And there’s a part of me that wants to take my music by the horns and just run with it.” That wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing…
Prior to being discovered by Gabe Roth of Daptone Records, who released his superb 2011 debut, No Time for Dreaming, Charles Bradley spent a good chunk of his time impersonating James Brown in Brooklyn clubs. Bradley delved into some fairly dark themes on Dreaming, including heartbreak and the death of…
The hints of an epic journey are easy to find on I Am the Wind, the latest release from Matthew Moon. The record’s twelve tracks all speak of wanderlust; whether Moon is describing nature, deep spiritual transformations or personal relationships, the constant theme here is movement. No wonder, considering these…
Since the release of his 2008 debut, Possible Beginnings, alto saxophonist Aakash Mittal has grown considerably, both as a player and as a composer. He and his quartet have always fused Eastern Indian music and jazz, but on Ocean, which features trumpeter Ron Miles, Mittal pushes things forward with songs…
With The Green Invasion, BurntMD proves that he has most of the tangible tools needed to be a prime-time rapper: a distinctive, gritty voice; a seasoned flow that seems to change every few lines; constant intensity; and detailed, mostly well-written lyrics with unexpected rhymes and schemes. He’s even earned the…
Goer returns from a brief hiatus with a more contemplative, polished approach to its cavernous, post-Radiohead, lo-fi electro-indie pop. The percussion work on opener “Fill Your Cravings,” for instance, incorporates more jazz and trip-hop than the frenetic style found on previous EPs Cove and Like Minds. The use of delay…
With plans to expand into the former Kitty’s East space next door, the 2UP recently reopened after being closed for a two-week renovation, which is part of a two-phase construction plan. The second part of the plan involves expansion. The addition, which will increase the size of the arcade/bar by…
After hosting Adore Tuesdays at the Living Room for nine months, former Backbeat scribe Ru Black is launching a new Tuesday-night soul series tonight at Epernay Lounge, 1080 14th Street, in the Theatre District. Dubbed the Blueprint, the series is set to kick off this evening with singer, songwriter and…
Is it the end of the year already? Of course not. It’s only August, silly. Still, no reason you can’t start making plans for New Year’s Eve right now, particularly if you’re fond of Big Head Todd and the Monsters. If so, might want to snag a babysitter now. After…
QUEENS OF THE STONE AGE @ RED ROCKS | THURS, 8/15/13 A six-year hiatus hasn’t made Queens of the Stone Age forget its roots. The earnest full-length album …Like Clockwork, released earlier this year, is a long-awaited return to the spotlight, and it proves that the band hasn’t lost its…
YONDER MOUNTAIN STRING BAND @ RED ROCKS | SAT, 8/10/13 If any band typifies the Colorado approach to contemporary bluegrass, it’s Yonder Mountain String Band. The quartet built up its chops playing in venues in Boulder, Nederland and beyond in the late 1990s, and its fusion of traditional instrumentation and…
BICEP @ NORAD | SAT, 8/10/13 It’s always heartwarming when a childhood friendship grows into something more, which is exactly what happened with Bicep (aka Andy Ferguson and Matt McBriar). Currently based in London, the two spent their early years in Belfast, sneaking into nightclubs as soon as they were…
Eats Everything, the DJ formerly known as Daniel Pearce, has blown up over the past couple of years, getting signed to the dirtybird label and releasing track after track of dance-floor hits (including a brand-new US mix). In advance of his show at Beta this Saturday night, we caught up…
PHOENIX @ 1STBANK CENTER | 8/7/13 Last night at 1STBANK, when the repeating bell-like sounds at the beginning of Phoenix’s biggest hit “Lisztomania” rung out, the crowd roared expectedly and the outfit almost didn’t have to sing at all. As everybody sang along with every word, you could tell that…
Tyler Ludwick is nostalgic for things he’s never experienced. “I’ve always had an infatuation with the cultural emotion of different nations,” says Ludwick, the 26-year-old mastermind behind orchestral rock band Princess Music. “In Japan, they have the word ‘mono-no-aware,’ which is an obsession with the ephemeral, the transience of things…
Primitive Man is the latest band fronted by Ethan McCarthy, best known as the frontman for death-grind acts Clinging to the Trees of a Forest Fire and Death of Self. McCarthy formed Primitive Man in February 2012 with original drummer Bennett Kennedy, citing a mutual interest in starting the heaviest…
At just 26 years of age, Cassie Taylor already has a decade of performing and recording experience under her belt, having played bass and sung with her father, the great Boulder-based bluesman Otis Taylor, during that time. On her latest effort, Out of My Mind, Taylor proves that she’s got…
The Ill, The Wicked + The Wack, the new mixtape from musical oddballs WAHHH (We Are Hip-Hop Humans!!), is occasionally ill, rarely wicked and frequently wack. This crew seems to have attended the BasedGod school of rapping, throwing out haphazardly assembled cliches, half-rhymes and non-rhymes. The majority of the verses…
