Concerts

After paying tribute in record to both Don Henley and Black Flag — not to mention collaborating with both David Byrne and Björk — over the past few years, it’s hard to pin down on paper what Dirty Projectors is all about. A listen to the group’s acclaimed 2009 album,…

As modern music goes, you really can’t get that much more with-the-times than Neon Indian’s sun-warped, synth-based, dance-pop sound. It’s a style so current, in fact, that critics are still having trouble settling on a genre name for the music that this band and other blog-adored acts like it are…

Snuggle puts in two tracks of snarly, refreshingly unpolished, melodic punk with the archly defiant “Commercial” and the edgy and almost spooky “Aces.” No High Fives to Bullshit’s “Drawing a Blank” is a dense and dynamic slab of melodic hardcore. But the real gem here is No High Fives’ “Colt…

The music of Fort Collins’s Drag the River has never been short of heartache. But with his debut solo album, Smile Sweet Face, Drag co-leader Chad Price has stripped away the band’s comforting layer of drunken revelry to reveal something far more painful. Bearing nothing but acoustic-folk chords, a whiskey-scarred…

Everything Absent or Distorted had strength in numbers. There were usually at least eight members, which sometimes ballooned to a dozen or more, depending on the show, and together they created some huge, buoyant and joyous sounds, with a wide assortment of instruments. Unfortunately, the guys decided to call it…

It’s a shame that Six Months to Live’s time is up (their final show, a CD release for this album, is Saturday, November 14), since this disc shows them reaching a new level of polish. The group’s sound has evolved to something like Beulah laced with a more cynical They…

Brothers Pete and Sam Loeffler, who formed Chevelle while still in high school, have essentially been performing as a band half their lives. They started writing music when Sam was just fourteen and Pete was twelve, and began playing gigs around Chicago just four years later, in 1995. Since then,…

Jonny Woodrose & the Broken-Hearted Woodpeckers started out as a solo for writer Jonson Kuhn. His lively, wiseacre perspective on relationships and trying to get by in this world attracted attention early on, and he was ultimately joined by the band’s current lineup, including guitarist Charles Kern, bassist Brian Payne…

Dubstep producer/DJ NumberNin6 (aka Nishant Parikh) came to the style by way of trance. That’s an unusual progression — dubstep’s roots in drum and bass are about as far from trance as can be imagined — but he manages to make it work to his advantage. Occasionally, wisps of trancey…

Ever notice just how much more advanced kids are these days? They just seem so much cooler than we were growing up. We were at a barbecue not too long ago, for instance, and heard the wee son of a friend — seriously, the kid hadn’t even hit puberty yet…

Ah, it’s refreshing to know that as frenzied as life can sometimes be, some things remain ever constant. In defiance of fair weather trends, Denver is still a hotbed for metal, and Dave Otero still has a hand in producing some of the best music coming out of here. For…

It’s that time again. Next Thursday night, the Denver Film Festival kicks off. Although the various films are clearly the main draw, by no means are they the only attraction. As in years past, the real excitement takes place after the screenings. For those who are unable to get their…

Okay, can we all just agree that Jeff Buckley is a god? Mean, seriously, the man was in a whole other league from all of the other artists of his time. And with the exception of perhaps Jimmy Gnecco from Ours, no one has even come close to displaying the…

A few weeks ago, the longtime Colorado dance music community unnet.net fractured and came apart under the stress of some considerable internal drama. This was a sad thing, but no surprise. Online communities frequently do that after a decade or so of existence. Very shortly after unnet.net ceased to exist,…

Matt Fecher isn’t letting the grass grow under his feet. Although his hands are clearly already full with helping curate the Monolith Festival, Fecher, who DJs under the name Hot to Death, is constantly moving in a number of different creative directions at once it seems, from launching and hosting…

Update 11/03/09: Just received word that I Am the Dot’s self-titled debut EP will be available tomorrow, Wednesday, November 4, from Brother Bear Records at the online music retailer of your choice. The EP, mixed and mastered by Matt Wilcox in his home studio, contains four tracks, “Love Song for…

There’s no denying that Denver’s cachet as a top music city is quickly becoming recognized across the country, but in case any lingering doubts remain, we just received word that the Harmony Sweepstakes, one of the world’s top a cappella music competitions, has once again chosen Denver for it’s 2010…

Update 11/02: Just received word that Dashboard Confessional has postponed its upcoming tour due to “a family situation that is beyond our control,” including a scheduled appearance at the Fillmore on Monday, November 9. No word on when the dates will be rescheduled or how this new development will impact…

The Siren Project Sunday, November 1, 2009 The Church Better Than: The Project has been in a long time. Having a show at the Church is a bit of a losing proposition not because it’s not that a cool place to have a show — although it’s a beautiful building…