DIVINE FITS @ BLUEBIRD THEATER |12/14/12 Picking a high point of a show as thoroughly enjoyable as this one would be tough, but when Alex Fischel started playing the synth intro to “You Got Lucky” by Tom Petty — which could have gone either way, kitschy or funny — and…
It feels like we say this every week, and we probably do, but we’re continually astounded by how good we have it here music-wise. If you haven’t noticed, this time of year, the number of touring acts decreases dramatically, generally in line with the music industry itself, which pretty much…
For the past few weeks or so, Air Dubai has been teasing a big announcement. We had a pretty good idea what it was (for as big as it is, Denver’s still a pretty small town when it comes to some things, especially juicy gossip), and last night at KTCL’s…
Hallelujah! It’s finally Friday. Feel like cutting loose this weekend, having a few cocktails and then cutting a rug like nobody’s watching? You’ve come to exactly the right place. As with every week around this time, we’ve put together a full rundown of the best EDM options available to you,…
FUN. @ 1STBANK CENTER | 12/13/12 If you came to KTCL’s Not So Silent Night at the 1STBANK Center last night expecting to hear “We Are Young”-like songs for the duration of fun.’s almost two-hour set, you were disappointed. That’s not to say that the rest of the songs paled…
Once again it’s on. The finalists have been announced for KTCL’s annual Hometown for the Holidays promotion. Although some are understandably loathsome of such battle of the bands types of gigs, Hometown for the Holidays is a great gift to the scene. Is there any other city in the country…
Brent Loveday had a moment of clarity on the road. It came one night in Oklahoma City, while he and his band, Reno Divorce, were on tour, and it happened somewhere in the midst of kicking out the side window of their new tour van, then horsing around and hanging…
Most people these days probably know Nathaniel Rateliff best as an acclaimed singer-songwriter with an album out on Rounder Records who’s toured and shared bills locally with Mumford & Sons. Before he embarked on a successful solo career, though, he used to front a band called Born in the Flood,…
Even though Divine Fits got started earlier this year, its members are hardly unknown figures: Britt Daniel started the experimental pop group Spoon in Austin in the early ’90s; Dan Boeckner played guitar and sang in the like-minded and popular Wolf Parade; and drummer Sam Brown came to this project…
The word “Americana” comes up a lot in Of Monsters and Men’s press coverage, despite the fact the band hails from Iceland. Apparently, “Icelandicana” is not a thing. In any case, that lazily applied label is shorthand for the kind of indie-pop-meets-folk sound that’s been all the rage over the…
Bob Weir is a restless soul. Already fully engaged with Furthur (his latest and perhaps most true-to-form post-Grateful Dead venture), his solo band Ratdog, assorted musical projects at his TRI Studios, activity in various political and environmental organizations, and the occasional mountain-bike foray, this founding member of the Dead comes…
Although in the minds of many, Dethklok represents the unlikely foray of death metal into the mainstream, it was pioneers like Maryland’s Dying Fetus that did the legwork in establishing and refining the art form. Beginning in 1991, Dying Fetus fused technical death metal with grindcore, and co-founder and singer/guitarist…
In the vein of the influential Switched On series pioneered by Wendy Carlos, Mike Buckley of Nightshark recorded this timely album. Much as Carlos famously did with Bach, using only a Micromoog and a vocoder, Buckley performs synthesizer interpretations of classic Christmas songs that almost have to be heard to…
Although Fred Hess has released a number of excellent small-ensemble recordings, the saxophonist’s big-band recordings are equally captivating. As with his previous two big-band outings, Speak borrows from big bands of the past while also looking toward the future. Some of the area’s finest musicians are on board here, like…
A collaborative project from beatsmiths Snubluck and amor, est, tumtums is self-described as “a psilocybin soliloquy of wonder born in the depths of our dreams.” While certainly poetic, the line is also apt. All of the tracks on this seven-song EP have a starry-eyed quality to them; it’s the perfect…
The Lonely Kid Show, the latest effort from Pries, has four acts, starting with the song “Curtains,” which kicks off with a slowed melody straight from the circus and leads into Pries’s dropping some introspective rhymes about his rise to fame from sleeping on the streets. For the most part,…
VS, which stands for Vibration Sequence (originally EVS, the “E” standing for “Eternal”), was formed in 2009 by Cole Hopfenspirger and Tom Moore, who met while working at the Cheesecake Factory. Both started in the hardcore scene but had left that world before meeting each other. They were familiar with…
John MacLean — better known as his on-stage alter ego The Juan MacLean — has had a strange journey from guitarist for post-hardcore band Six Finger Satellite to DFA Records superstar. By 2002, the formerly rock-minded artist was fully immersed in the electronic scene, releasing his first major single, “By…
Sitar icon Ravi Shankar died yesterday at his home near San Diego at the age of 92, according to his wife, Sukanya, and his daughter Anoushka Shankar. Shankar’s heath had been fragile for the last several years, and, according to a statement issued by his family, last week he underwent…
On Tuesday, January 1, when most of us are still sleeping off the last good times of 2012 or steeling ourselves to tackle resolutions for the new year, our city’s live-music scene will mark a major development: This is the day that the iconic Gothic Theatre will be put in…
Winter On the Rocks 2013: There’s a very good chance you’ll be braving frigid temperatures to see this year’s bill, which, of course, is being headlined by Macklemore & Ryan Lewis — who crushed it last week at the Ogden — and features Major Lazer and the Grouch & Eligh…
LAMB OF GOD @ FILLMORE AUDITORIUM |12/10/12 The high point of Lamb of God’s set came somewhere around the mid-point, when, after projecting pictures of the band’s fans in the military on the twin screens flanking drummer Chris Adler, Randy Blythe dedicated “Now You’ve Got Something to Die For” to…
