Past Liars albums have typically been greeted with copious chatter about the newest radical stylistic shift the band has made — from dance punk to murky drone to percussive tribalism to cheeky Jesus and Mary Chain ripoffs — but Sisterworld, the band’s excellent fifth album, feels like the completion of…
It only makes sense that Silversun Pickups hit it big at the end of the aughts. The Los Angeles band, after all, is a faceless, hollow rehash of just about every overhyped trend of the past ten years, from garage rock to post-punk to indie rock. Toeing the center line,…
Take one part religious iconography and one part overt sexuality, top it off with the trendiest pop production available, and you’ve got a recipe for multi-platinum success. It’s a formula Madonna knew all too well, and nobody since has done it with more precisely honed instincts than Lady Gaga. Of…
Bad Weather California’s three-day residency with Akron/Family at Quixote’s in May is still panning out. Not only is the eminent avant-folk band taking Bad Weather on tour later this month, but its members make a guest appearance on Live Jammers, a new, live Bad Weather EP released just in time…
A sample from the 1940 film Colorado, starring Roy Rogers, opens this album before it warps off into the distance, replaced by a song that sounds like it’s borrowed liberally from modern hip-hop and an oddly Frank Zappa-inspired psychedelic funk — like ’70s-era Kool & the Gang riding high on…
While Nick O’Connor is only 21 years old, the breadth and scope of his solo debut, Lady in Pink, has the feel of an album made by someone a good decade or two older. Although O’Connor, whose voice at times recalls that of Cat Stevens, has a solid roots and…
If the Mars Volta carried on the hyperactive, experimental legacy of At the Drive-In while Sparta, the original four-piece’s other half, simplified into plain old straightforward rock, the Say So is a band that comes close to splitting the difference. Insistently poppy on first listen, Something Like Wild, the group’s…
Ken Keifer and Karl Haikara have been writing dark and abrasive yet atmospheric music since 2006. With lyrics culled from Keifer’s extensive notes on ideas that occur to him on any given day, the average song from their band, the Silver Cord, delves into corners of the human psyche most…
When the guys in Gaslight Anthem were working on their new album, American Slang, guitarist Alex Rosamilia says, the initial goal was to try to come up with their own ideas rather than borrowing. “This record is us trying to stand out on our own.” While American Slang is a…
The clanking, shifty rhythms and cool, prickly textures of techno auteur Bob Rogue’s work are awash in contradiction. Despite sounding like a transmission beamed to Earth from a distant star and tuned in by SETI’s massive telescopes, his music is typically both pretty and impossible to resist dancing to. Creating…
We’re number two! We’re number two! Yeeaaaahhhh! Coming in second in a music quiz may not seem like something to cheer about, but considering our desultory sixth-place finish in our own fucking quiz a few weeks back (a finish so lame I felt compelled to make up a list of…
Update: The media onslaught continues. Just received word that 3OH!3 is slated to perform on Jay Leno next Thursday, July 22 (REMINDER: That’s tonight). Is this their Tonight Show debut? Think it is. Alright, just when you think 3OH!3 had reached maximum exposure on the retail and media front, comes…
What happens in your brain in that space between waking and sleep, when thoughts cease to flow but dreams are still yet to arrive? We don’t know, because we’re music bloggers, not brainologists, but we’re thinking it’s some kind of mental test pattern that looks a lot like this week’s…
In case you missed it, Amanda Palmer (of Dresden Dolls fame) has released a ukulele Radiohead cover album called, well, conveniently enough, Amanda Palmer performs the popular hits of Radiohead on her magical ukulele — a title that’s sure not to leave anyone confused. Now, this is all well and…
Way back in 2008, when we first spoke to Luke Bodley about Heaven Fest, the annual Christian music festival he produces was in its infancy. Bodley confided to us that he had difficulty convincing acts to perform at the inagural event. Jeremy Camp and Skillet were his headliners that first…
Kings of Leon • Built to Spill • the Features 07.20.10 | Comfort Dental Amphitheater, Greenwood Village In the pantheon of all time miserable shows, I’d rank last night’s Kings of Leon show at Comfort Dental right up there with MGMT at Red Rocks last month, DeVotchKa’s set at Monolith…
A rose by any other name is still a rose, as Shakespeare famously said, but what if you name your particular rose “poop?” Fewer people, we’re guessing, will want to smell it. So when Gauntlet Hair, a Lafayette-based indie outfit whose name makes us think of a clogged drain, came…
It’s that time of year again, time for the annual Gathering of the Juggalos. Just in case you were getting worried that you might not have anything to do this summer, this year’s Gathering (held in Cave-In-Rock, Illinois), the eleventh annual edition, will offer endless entertainment in the form of…
“High standards reap high results. You’ve got to spend money to make money. You’ve got to work hard to get big, big reward.” Trite, time worn platitudes from somebody’s dad? Naw, but close. Those are excerpts of a voice mail Kevin Wesley of Hot White received from a dude in…
Okay, just a real quick plug for our people at BoxStateMusic — and by people, we really mean our dude Big Joe Thunder. Cat’s a one-man wrecking machine, a seemingly omnipresent figure when it comes to hip-hop in Denver. Joey T’s got his ear to the streets, which is why…
Less than a month left until this year’s Mile High Music Festival. Figured out your itinerary yet? We have. Well, sorta. My Morning Jacket, Weezer, Phoenix, Drive-By Truckers, Ozomatli, Damian Marley & Nas are on our shortlist so far. The full schedule was just released a few moments ago, and…
For their fourth studio effort I Learned the Hard Way, released on Daptone in April, Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings recorded on an eight-track tape machine, which lends the disc an analog warmth that perfectly matches their ’60s-infused soul and funk. Armed with a batch of new songs and a…
