Noise punk — or whatever all-encompassing term you prefer — is nothing new. That said, any band that sounds like it’s bursting with a desperate energy and has the inspiration and drive to engage inner turmoil head-on is always going to be relevant. Shoppers, from Syracuse, New York, embodies that…
There is some irony in the fact that three of the four current members of a band named Cattle Decapitation are staunch vegetarians — but there is also awesomeness here. The same goes for the longtime death-metal act’s songs, a rowdy and riveting back catalogue that decries animal abuse, genocide…
Although Mark Arm is sometimes credited with coining the term “grunge,” all of his bands have been informed by a keen sense of humor as well as the great raw sound of the garage-rock bands of the Pacific Northwest. Forming Green River in 1984 with friend and guitarist Steve Turner…
When crazy people do crazy things — especially if those crazy things are violent or harmful — there is an unfortunate tendency to look for some external impetus for the craziness. Like when Drowning Pool got scapegoated for the Tucson killings last year, or when the Colorado Springs police openly…
Wandering Monks is a duo whose lyrics embody the rebellion present in so much of early hip-hop. The two tackle difficult subjects like war and peace over strong production, making their anti-big-money lyrics shine. While the content is serious, it gets a bit redundant over the course of the record’s…
On Chimney Choir’s debut EP — titled (feather) and graced with a block-print feather graphic on the cover — the trio offered five songs that were all keepers. At the same time, those tunes left the listener wanting more. It didn’t take long for the act to deliver, following that…
It’s likely that Madeline Johnston didn’t actually hole herself up for the winter with only her private thoughts and the company of a crate of records and books while writing this album. Just the same, these eight tracks have that sort of feel — a kind of lonely, minimalist, contemplative…
Judging from the extremely dense, seemingly arbitrary and slightly pretentious narrative spun on the band’s bio, including the overwrought descriptors they’ve attached to themselves individually as players (bassist Shawn Briardy, for instance, is responsible for “thickening undertones” and “low end theorems”), the men of Genre Theory have clearly put a…
Meaghan Lillis met Josh Guisinger while the two were students at Auraria. Lillis was studying piano performance, and Guisinger was an art student. They had run into each other at Radiohead and Björk concerts, and then at the bookstore in Westminster where Lillis worked. They bonded over music and decided…
Last year, Full Flavor Fridays brought some of the best national (and international!) talent out there to its underground weekly event, and the trend is continuing this year. For its first 2012 headliner, Full Flavor is bringing us Hugh Cleal, a Detroit native who cut his teeth on violin and…
Update (1/3/12): As reported by numerous outlets yesterday, a twenty-year-old man died yesterday from injuries sustained during a fall at 1STBANK Center on New Year’s Eve. The name of the young man hasn’t been released yet, and Broomfield police are currently investigating the incident. We’ll post more details as they…
SLICK RICK @ CITY HALL | 12/31/11 New Year’s Eve 2011 was well under way Saturday night before Slick Rick took the stage at City Hall Amphitheater. Dipped in so much iced-out jewelry he could have fed an entire Third World country just with the diamonds in his watch, the…
WEEN @ FILLMORE AUDITORIUM | NIGHT THREE | 12.31.11 See also, reviews of: 12/29/11 (night one) and 12/30/11 (night two) Just in case anyone in the capacity crowd packed into the Fillmore Auditorium on New Year’s Eve wasn’t paying attention, Dean Ween sketched out the theme of the night after…
Slim Cessna’s Auto Club @ Bluebird Theater | 12/30/11 For the past decade, Slim Cessna’s Auto Club has been playing the Bluebird on New Year’s Eve and the night before. As Slim himself says, it just kind of happened. The band just kept getting asked to do these yearly shows…
PRETTY LIGHTS @ 1STBANK CENTER | NIGHT ONE | 12/30/11 See also photos from New Year’s Eve With a fairly expansive catalogue to draw from, Derek Vincent Smith has a plethora of singles at his disposal when preparing his sets. Last night, the Pretty Lights mastermind kept things a bit…
WEEN @ FILLMORE AUDITORIUM | NIGHT TWO | 12.30.11 See also, reviews of: 12/29/11 (night one) and 12/30/11 (night three) There was no ambitious declaration or plan of attack from the Ween brothers as they launched into their nearly three-hour long set on Friday night for the second show of…
By now, anyone who’s ever blogged — which is likely most of you reading this — knows that the stories that took the most time, the really important ones, were often around the bottom when it came to traffic, pageviews, unique visitors, etc. Meanwhile, the ol’ bacon Nativity scene is…
Some things, guys, are just too good to be true. Backbeat discovered the perfect example of this fact this morning when, while watching TV, we saw the blog on CNN and wondered what the hell was going on. The story behind that story involves Radiohead, a bakery, the major media…
Long in development, the Miles Davis feature film that Don Cheadle plans to star in and direct has a studio offer, the actor said in interview with the Wall Street Journal that was published today. Cheadle, who graduated from East High School, says in the interview that “the movie isn’t…
WEEN @ FILLMORE AUDITORIUM | NIGHT ONE | 12.29.11 | See also, reviews of: 12/29/11 (night two) and 12/30/11 (night three) Early in the first show of Ween’s three-night stint at the Fillmore, guitarist and frontman Dean Ween offered the crowd a simple game plan: “We’re Ween. We’re the band…
You can’t possibly be partied out! The fun really starts this weekend, where all sorts of people will come together in cheap champagne and party favor glory. If you’re into getting the celebrations started early minus the shenanigans, we’ve got a line-up of album release parties, end of year live…
While there have been a few Red Rocks show announced for next summer, including Foster the People (July 3) and Big Head Todd & the Monsters (June 7), a few tribute shows have also been added to the summer line-up. The third annual John Denver Tribute, featuring Jim Curry and…
