Concerts

VIBESQUAD @ THE UNIFIED FIELD/CERVANTES’ | FRI, 5/3/13 Playing under the VibeSquaD moniker, Aaron Holstein creates music that straddles several genres, blurring the lines between breakbeats and bass without straying far from his hip-hop roots. Live, a VibeSquaD show can quickly go from Holstein setting the groove with a nice…

Oh, man, this week just isn’t getting any easier. As we’re still grappling with the two recent deaths that rattled our community this week, comes word of another significant loss. If you haven’t heard yet, Jeff Hanneman has passed away at the age of 49. The Slayer guitarist reportedly died…

Stay Tuned, the outfit formerly known as MainLine, is preparing to hit the road in the next few weeks, taking advantage of the $3000 Western States Arts Federation Independent Music on Tour grant Mane Rok was awarded last year. What makes this jaunt particularly noteworthy, beside the fact that local…

Alert your darling niece, the one whose mom just insists she’s the next Christina Aguilera, that stardom awaits. X Factor auditions are being held at the Denver Coliseum; wristbands will be issued on Sunday, May 12, at 8 a.m. and auditions are slated for Tuesday, May 14. Unlike the first…

SERIS @ HERMAN’S HIDEAWAY | SAT, 5/4/13 Seris plays technical metal without trying to splice in another genre of music willy nilly. Melati Olivia is the kind of singer that isn’t just strong but versatile. The rhythm section of Robert Jepsen and Cody Goodman pound out rhythms in precise sequence,…

By Gil Asakawa I first visited the offices of Feyline, Barry Fey’s concert promotions company, in the early 1980s when I was music editor for Westword. I had become friends with Feyline’s publicist, Mark Bliesener, and I would go over to the office to get the skinny on upcoming shows…

This Toronto trio emerged in 2008 and did what more bands in this day and age should: It developed its music and overall aesthetic, then turned the results into songs that the band actually seems excited to play. Sure, the noise-rock roots from the ’80s and ’90s are there, and…

When the members of the Appleseed Cast made their first appearance in Denver in the late ’90s — they played the Market Street Lounge, a club that was attached to the Old Chicago in LoDo — they were fresh-faced young men from Lawrence, Kansas, playing a serviceable brand of emo…

Maybe “New American Weird” just means that you play constantly evolving music rooted in folk and take it to interesting, cosmic places without consciously trying to go psychedelic. If that’s the case, then Devendra Banhart is exactly that. Never fitting easily into any genre straitjacket, his catalogue can easily confound,…

For many listeners, their first introduction to Alex Clare came courtesy of “Too Close,” the catchy tune played during the recent Internet Explorer commercials. There’s more to Clare’s music than that, though. Melding intimate vocals with drum-heavy tracks, Clare showcases his range as an instrumentalist and vocalist on Lateness of…

The latest album from Alex Botwin’s exploratory band Paper Diamond begins with “The Intro,” a song that sets a suspenseful mood and builds delicately through trap and house beats, propelling an Obie Trice sample over a hard bass line on the refrain “They can’t tell me nothin’.” This bleeds into…

Near the end of “According to Me,” the spirited opening track on Raise Your Flag, Sam Lee intones, “Turn it up and sing it like you mean it” — a reasonable demand, given Lee’s performance on the disc. Dude puts his money where his mouth is: He’s got some incredibly…

“Opening Gem” is the first track on the Grey Sinatra/HoTT collaboration Diamonds and Beats, and the song lives up to its title. Producer Sinatra shows restraint in the beat, letting a somber piano carry the weight until drums begin to trickle in almost a minute later, adding extra weight to…

The title of its latest album notwithstanding, School Knights has never put out anything even remotely lethargic. Here, intricately textured guitar work practically effervesces throughout, with bright melodies that rush by in an energizing breeze — a lot like Deerhunter, if that band’s songs were played at double time. Even…

Petals of Spain doesn’t consider its latest release to be a full-fledged album. “It’s more of a culmination,” bassist Mason Shelmire asserts. “We wanted to get something out.” That something is Soul Canon, a record that represents a good two years of a band forging its own identity, exploring different…

Dreadnought manages to meld fairly disparate sonic elements into a coherent whole. Inspired by the image and power of capital ships, in the era before aircraft made battleships and their ilk obsolete, Dreadnought (due at the Marquis Theater on Friday, May 3) creates music that, though heavy and dark, has…

For nearly a decade, Jimmy De Martini has played fiddle for the Zac Brown Band, one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed modern country acts. De Martini studied classical violin and rock guitar before joining Brown’s ensemble in Georgia in 2004, but his background didn’t keep him from…

Yes, Quantic (aka Will Holland) is known for his productions and collaborations with other electronica artists — his breezy 2005 offering with New York-based Nickodemus, “Mi Swing Es Tropical,” gained international recognition in an iPod commercial — but he also makes music with a long list of South American percussionists,…

Earlier this week, Kent Shelton shared a conversation with me that he had with Chris Haney some time ago in which he asked Haney if he ever got depressed. “Sometimes I get depressed,” Shelton recalled his friend saying. “But I have so many friends, I can’t stay depressed…They just cheer…

RODRIGUEZ @ 1STBANK CENTER | 4/30/13 When Rodriguez played “Sugar Man,” the song that inspired the title of the movie that brought him very much back into the public consciousness, there was something mythical about the song. The performance matched the mystique. On stage, Rodriguez is gracious, gentle and humble…

GASLIGHT ANTHEM @ OGDEN THEATRE |4/29/12 Gaslight Anthem performed last night with a fluidity and emotional power worthy of peers like Hot Rod Circuit or Hot Water Music or perhaps even the E Street Band. Gaslight is clearly informed by punk, as edges of the band’s guitar sound recalled Hüsker…