Concerts

Hey, all you super-squares, time to dig out that sparkly prom dress with the puffy sleeves and the ill-fitting leisure suit. Run to that dusty box in the closet to bust out the retainer, the horn-rimmed glasses and the D&D magic decoder ring. No room for hipsters here: This party…

“I don’t care! He’s not gonna be talking to me all crazy!” Arms flailing, head whipping back and forth, a young woman is being carried through the sweeping front doors by a hulking security guard who ignores her protests and beating fists. Setting her down gingerly on her teetering heels,…

Ghosts of Glaciers has a name that could alternately be an oblique reference to global warming or a poetic nod to the crags — inexplicable rock formations and giant rocks left on the ground when the most massive of glaciers from the last great ice age passed into history. The…

In 2007, singer-songwriter Cass McCombs told the San Francisco Chronicle that he wants his tombstone to read “Home at Last.” McCombs’s subtle and sardonic humor, enmeshed with a poetic truth, also informs his songwriting. Although he doesn’t really sound like Roy Orbison, his lushly evocative tunes resonate with the same…

If you ignore the fact that any of his sadder, sappier new material could be about his wife, a post-Walk to Remember Mandy Moore, Ryan Adams remains one of the most listenable and versatile singer-songwriters just this side of Americana. Three years ago, he married Moore, sobered up, disbanded his…

The jazzy electronic quintet Lotus, known for its precisely timed improvisations during live shows, is celebrating its thirteenth year together. This weekend, fresh off the release of its most recent effort, Lotus, the band, which is signed to Boulder’s SCI Fidelity records, is kicking off a tour that will culminate…

Having changed its name from Inearthed to a reference to the infamous Lake Bodom murders of 1960, this Finnish band continues to defy easy categorization in any specific subgenre of metal. The band’s precision and furiously fast and melodic riffing are clearly influenced by the new wave of British heavy…

In grossly oversimplified terms, here’s how semiotics works: A unit of language is known as a “signifier,” and it functions as a symbol for the concept it represents, the “signified.” This interchange of meaning works on two levels: denotation, in which a signifier like the word “rock” simply represents the…

On past albums, the Fray’s stock-in-trade has been crafting earnest, piano-based tunes that successfully capture and articulate the simple yet complex interpersonal issues that life brings. Tracing both the exhilaration and despondency of love, these portraits also tended to expose the vulnerabilities, uncertainties and insecurities we all face. Drained of…

There’s a lot of Eagles of Death Metal influence happening here. In the first two songs alone — one called “Woman” and the other “34-28-32,” detailing her ideal measurements — In the Whale’s Eric Riley and Nate Valdez take on the brazen, balls-out machismo of bands like Queens of the…

The Sting and the Light, Le Divorce’s latest effort, starts off with “Six Feet Under,” a bit of a rocker that quickly evolves into a surprisingly straight ahead pop song with jazzy undercurrents. In “Under Boxcars,” a breezy melody meets textured rhythm, while the layered atmospherics of “Splinter Song” evoke…

Concept One has poured the past four years of his life into one thematic project: Beautiful Disaster, his brand-new, fifteen-track full-length. Dark and intimate in some places (“All Gonna Die”) and triumphant and motivated in others (“We Run This Shit”), Disaster serves as the ideal showcase for the American Trash Republic…

Cheyenne, Wyoming, isn’t the most ideal place to grow up as a punk — “It was an uphill battle,” says Mark Masters, who eventually moved south and with three friends formed Negative Degree, part of a new wave of hardcore bands in Denver. Masters and fellow record nerd Johnny Mather…

Jeroen Snik, better known as Icicle, is based out of London these days, but he began his musical career in Holland. He started playing piano when he was eight, then quickly moved on to a drum kit and eventually a MIDI setup for beatmaking. When Snik was fifteen, a local…

On Saturday night, the Meadowlark was once again invaded by Neon Knights, the monthly dance romper put together by DJ Shannon Kelly. The crowd in the basement venue morphed throughout the night from a snug-fitting sweat-fest of tightly packed, jittering bodies to a reasonably thinned-out space, giving room for those…

The Lady Wu-Tang, a group of Denver-area female MCs who formed to put on tribute shows to the Wu-Tang Clan, played its one-year anniversary show on Saturday night at City Hall. Photos from the show are below…