Concerts

With the 2009 release of High Beams, Carbon Choir (due at the hi-dive this Friday, January 20) showed promise with a set of introspective, heartfelt songs rimmed with layers of impressionistic, melodic flickers of sound. As Joel Van Horne’s vocals soar over the top of the instrumentation, he shows an…

Wilco is a little like baseball, in that you probably know the rules, but the die-hard fans see skill and nuance that are impossible to convey to the casual crowd. Jeff Tweedy and company have become a full-blown American institution, and their fans are tracking stats, keeping up with the…

Being a hardcore band from Boston can be both a blessing and a curse — a curse in that it can so define a band that it won’t be able to move beyond that realm artistically. Death Before Dishonor, one of the hardest-working disciples of both the city and the…

Ethan Holtzman went to Cambodia in the 1990s and returned with music culled from the rich Cambodian rock scene that had existed before the Khmer Rouge put an end to just about everything in that country for five years. Holtzman recruited his brother Zac and some musician friends to do…

A couple of years ago, as part of my mom’s ongoing quest to relieve her basement of all the shit that spontaneously piles up because she might actually, you know, use it one day, she made me spend an afternoon sifting through the boxes of crap that I’d left behind…

On songs like “Melpop,” with its hint of guitar atmosphere in the background, textural, minimalistic percussion and echoing bass line, Velocirapture imagines the kind of moody yet strangely compelling bedroom recordings Robert Smith might have made had he grown up a couple of decades later. On “The Watcher,” a clacking…

From FY5 tracks “Red Mountain Pass” and “Sing a Lonesome Song,” it’s clear that Finnders & Youngberg is equally at home with foot-stomping bluegrass and a wide spectrum of roots, Americana and country music. On “Tomorrow Night,” the quintet takes Hank Thompson’s slow country song, speeds it up and adds…

Night Shiftin, the latest release from Six O’Clock, produced entirely by the Aurora-based MC himself, has an intimate, organic feel to it. As far as rapping goes, Six shows plenty of passion and promise, with a decent flow that’s strong enough to carry the joint. Night Shiftin is all about…

Taking its name from the Capitol Hill neighborhood where its founders met, Poets Row is an indie-folk outfit made up of Emily Hobbs and Mickey Bakes. Exquisite Corpse, the duo’s new EP, is a delightfully organic collection of sparse, harmony-laden tracks reminiscent of Gram Parsons’s duets with Emmylou Harris. The…

Ed Marshall is a music critic who wrote for The Big Take Over for some years when he was roommates with the magazine’s publisher, Jack Rabid. Since the early ’90s, Marshall has been in and out of the underground music scene in Denver, a veteran of bands like Man Ray’s…

Kris Wadsworth was inspired to create tunes after listening to mixtapes his siblings brought home from nightclubs. The DJ, who was born in Atlanta but is now considered part of the Detroit electronic-music scene, started producing and mixing tracks at the tender age of fourteen; two years later, he was…

Two legendary bars went dark the first week of 2012. Music Bar, which has been around since the late 1940s and most recently was known for its karaoke nights, closed its doors at 4586 Tennyson Street at the end of 2011. And a week later, Gabor’s, a classic Capitol Hill…

Today as the country honors Dr. Martin Luther King, a consortium of local hip-hop artists and community activists is getting together this afternoon at 3 p.m. at RedLine Denver (2350 Arapahoe Street) for Beyond Occupy: An MLK Dialogue for 2012, to engage in dialogue about the bigger picture of the…

NURSES @ THE HI-DIVE | 1/15/12 This was one of those Sunday shows where a lot of people showed up and everybody seemed to be very into all of the artists on the bill, from the opening set from The Don’ts and Be Carefuls all the way to the end,…

FITZ AND THE TANTRUMS @ THE OGDEN THEATRE | 1/15/12 Fitz & The Tantrums put on a show that was magnetic, engaging and inspiring. Boasting an impressive presence unable to be captured by its recordings, the Los Angeles act absolutely set the stage on fucking fire with an undeniable chemistry…

GAME SEVEN at QUIXOTE’S TRUE BLUE | 1/13/12When the bases were loaded last night after the monumental kickoff of the Great Cycles Spectacles tour at the Fillmore, the party was still rolling at Quixote’s True Blue with the miracle that is Game 7. Music Marauders started its celebration of its…

SOUND TRIBE SECTOR 9 at the FILLMORE | 1/13/12Somewhere toward the end of the first set, STS9’s Zack Velmer and Jeffree Lerner took the reigns on drums and percussion for a monumental, LED temple-constructing percussive solo that left the auditorium in complete disarray. If the crowd left on that note,…

Happy Friday the 13th! If you’re like us, you’re ready to get into a little mischief in honor of this superstitious date. In addition to the brand-new speakeasy-style party at Milk Bar being hosted this week by yours truly, there’s plenty of parties to entice you out of the house…

For whatever reason, you’ll notice that this Saturday night, aside from the second night of STS9’s two-night stand at the Fillmore, there aren’t too many must-see shows. This is mere speculation on our part, but we’re guessing that might have something to do with a certain sporting event taking place…

Every time Sound Tribe Sector 9 heads to Denver, you know the techno-hippies are going to come out in full force to hear the livetronica act; if you’re more into house or trance, then you’ll want to catch Avicii and Sydney Blu. Page down to take a peek at what…

Okay, I know we’re all a little Tebow crazed around here these days and with good reason, but is anybody else here befuddled by the retooled version of John Parr’s mid ’80s tune “St. Elmo’s Fire (Man in Motion),” in which England’s elder mullet ambassador has inexplicably revised the original…