Concerts

Great Lake Swimmers, Wooden Birds, Brothers O’Hair Larimer Lounge October 21, 2009 Better Than: Bird watching in the snow. Brothers O’Hair were clearly the least seasoned and the least purely talented of the three band bill. They were also by far the best live act, engaging the crowd of friends…

Let’s live hard together!” So declares the MySpace bio of Ault-based singer-songwriter Chad Price, a man known to pack more heartache and drunkenness into a single song than some do in their entire careers. No one who’s been following Price’s alt-country band Drag the River up close over the past…

After launching the anticon. label with Pedestrian in 1998, Sole (due at the hi-dive on Sunday, October 25) has become one of the world’s most influential underground hip-hop artists. With a dense stream-of-consciousness lyrical delivery and emotionally charged beats and music to accompany the weighty content, Sole established himself early…

Unlike their sonic brethren the Animal Collective on the East Coast, San Francisco’s the Dodos keep it simple — but hardly stupid. Steeped in psychedelic folk and classic pop, leader Meric Long and crew focus on tattered guitars, huge yet warm drums and the kinds of melodies and harmonies that…

Formed in 1980, Youth Brigade played shows with hardcore bands, but its music didn’t focus on speed or brutality. Instead, the Stern brothers wrote songs that addressed the concerns of conscious young men of the day, like existential angst and criticizing a power-mad government vastly streamlining society in favor of…

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee Tommy Ramone knows a thing or two about sheer volume: As a founder and producer of the Ramones, the drummer helped pioneer the sound of rock as we know it. Now in his sixties, Ramone spends his time apart from the drum kit…

Although there’s video of the Damned titled Final Damnation, which includes footage of a 1988 reunion show in London, it was hardly the last straw for an act that got its start during London’s burgeoning punk movement in the late ’70s. Just the same, there were a few rough patches…

Eric Paul and Craig Kureck both inspired and confounded audiences as members of the influential noise-rock combo Arab on Radar. After that act disbanded in 2002, Paul and Kureck formed the Chinese Stars and continued in a similar vein, still making deranged, outré music but incorporating danceable rhythms that would…

It’s not often that you encounter an instantly satisfying record that also rewards repeated listens. Hello Kavita’s sophomore effort blows in like a lost 1972 Flying Burrito Brothers record, tumbling across the California desert. The seductively spare ten-song collection has the polish and professionalism you’d expect from such seasoned players…

On the Bottesini Project’s outstanding self-titled debut, leader and saxophonist Paul Riola recruited high-caliber musicians like Tortoise guitarist Jeff Parker and drummer Scott Amendola to play on tunes that were largely improvised. For its followup, Naima’s Grass Pajamas, Riola assembled a new cast of players, among them Wilco guitarist Nels…

Mirror Universe isn’t a subsidiary of Siltbreeze, but the ultra-lo-fi production on this album’s nine tracks makes it sound like it is. From the beginning, it’s a bit like what you might get using an old reel-to-reel machine you picked up at a garage sale to listen to some unmarked…

Nimble-fingered Leftover Salmonite Drew Emmitt teams with String Cheese Incident strummer Bill Nershi for a soul-warming platter of acoustic fare. The shimmeringly clear recording enables a rootsy blend of strings to ring through on everything from the Gypsy jazz-inspired instrumental cut “Surfing the Red Sea” to the Latin-infused track “Mango…

For the past fifteen years, Matthew Kelly has been entrenched in the local hip-hop scene. Although his stage name has changed over the years, Kelly, now known as Babah Fly, has been one of the most consistent artists in that scene. Whether he’s putting in work as a solo artist…

Few, if any, living guitarists can match Adrian Belew’s impressive resumé in terms of depth and range of accomplishment over the course of his four-decades-long career. Belew first came to prominence as a player on Frank Zappa’s 1979 album Sheik Yerbouti, which led to his long-term role in King Crimson…

Although the Pogues’ storied career spans nearly four decades and includes several tours to the States, the London-based band has never played Denver before. Instead, the Irish punk-folkers stuck primarily to the East and West coasts, with occasional forays down south, even when boisterous frontman Shane MacGowan was ousted in…

At some point in the future, all music is going to transmogrify into one big crazy-ass mess of sound, and the smart money says that future fusion is going to sound a lot like what Mochipet — aka David Wang — is doing right now. He’s worked with everyone from…

I only went to Shakespeare’s once after it moved to 2620 Walnut Street, and I never ventured beyond the front section of the bar, so I had no idea how massive the space was until I met with Adam Ranes, who took it over after Shakespeare’s moved out. This was…

Evidently, Nathaniel Rateliff’s trip to the Big Apple for CMJ has proven to be very fruitful. According to Brooklyn Vegan, who covered the show, Rateliff wowed the crowd last night at the Music Hall of Williamsburg. The showing should give Rateliff and his Wheel bandmates, who have reportedly inked a…

You may have downloaded The Foodchain EP, you may have seen Foodchain members giving away their EP outside of venues during hip-hop shows, and you might have even seen the group perform live at release parties and award shows, but do you really know who the Foodchain is? The act…

Updated: The farewell performance is Saturday, October 24, not Friday. DJ Miss Audry, one of the best-known female DJs in the city, is retiring after more than a decade behind the decks. “It’s been a long and amazing DJ ride for me, but after thirteen years, I have decided to…