Concerts

Derek Vincent Smith is the electronic-music mastermind behind Pretty Lights, the Fort Collins-based act whose last two albums just surpassed 110,000 digital downloads. The music of Pretty Lights is like a mixtape of styles Smith grew up listening to, from ’70s AM Gold-era soul to bass-heavy club beats to gangsta…

Los Angeles based Andy Caldwell claims his ambitions were small when he started out a decade and a half ago: He just wanted to hear his tunes on gigantic speakers in front of a huge crowd. It’s safe to say that he’s exceeded those expectations many times over by now…

Among the most literate of hip-hop artists, Chris Steele, aka Time, is a seemingly endless wellspring of clever turns of phrase and creatively illuminating pairings of words and ideas. The guy certainly has silly, fun-loving songs, but even these are written with a playful intelligence. Time’s true genius can be…

We heard some rumblings a month ago that this might happen, but we were hoping against hope it wouldn’t. Well, hope got played, because today Everything Absent or Distorted (a love story) officially announced that they are calling it quits. The poetic and obscure post names “built-in contradiction” as the…

The author is a Denver-based music junkie and quasi-music writer of the female variety, and not she’s afraid to admit that she sometimes wants to make out with the bands she writes about. This year’s Mile High Music Festival billed some of the hottest bands around. But since I sometimes…

See more photos at westword.com/sldeshow. Tuesday, July 21, 2009 Ogden Theatre Better Than: Chaperoning an unchaperoned prom. Not that different, but definitely better. It’s not often someone asks you, during the first song of a headliner’s set, “Who is this?” It’s even less often that when you answer with the…

Back in December, Colorado MCs Whygee and Sunkenstate connected with Colorado producer Kid Hum to create Suicide Watch, one of the better Colorado hip-hop releases of 2008. And it was free! Now Whygee and Sunk have reconnected for Suicide Watch 2: Sambodextrust, a seven-song collection that features production from Nigel…

Last month, we wistfully reflected on the final razing of Rainbow Music Hall, specifically, the iconic marquee that outlived the venue itself and served as a reminder of the early years of Denver music. As we remembered the many shows we saw there growing up, we became somewhat outraged that…

Tori Amos and eskimOTuesday, July 21, 2009Paramount TheatreBetter Than: The last time I saw Tori Amos at Red Rocks in 1998.London-based One eskimO opened the show, and at first, I was concerned it might be one of those bands favored by modern rock stations that border on the adult contemporary…

New music: The Mansfields, who just completed a tour with the Queers, will be recording a new album in Atlanta, and Joe Queer will be reportedly producing it. Hello Kavita has posted three new songs (“Sunday,” “To a Loved One” and “Ok”) on its MySpace page from the forthcoming album…

I like Denver-based, danceable post-punk outfit the Ideal Fathers a lot. I like the bleepy, chirping 8-bit soundscapes of chiptunes a lot. So you can imagine my excitement today when I stumbled upon a completely kickass chiptunes remix/reimagining of one of my very favorite Ideal Fathers tracks whilst wasting time…

On Wednesday, July 22, Live Nation is offering buy one, get one free lawn tickets for Fiddler’s Green Amphitheatre shows including Creed, Crue Fest II, Def Leppard with Cheap Trick and Poison, Toby Keith with Trace Adkins, Brad Paisley with Dierks Bentley and Jimmy Wayne, and Rod Stewart. The two-for-one…

If you like free music — and I know you like free music — point your web-browsing machine over to One Track Mind, a newish blog offering a daily song review and download of said reviewed song. It’s a Denver-based operation and, according to its About page, it’s staffed by…

The highlight of the Mile High Music Fest — at least for the guy who was stuck in the media tent uploading photos and reviews — had to be the moment when photographer Brian Landis Folkins returned to the tent armed with photos from the early-Sunday performance of honeyhoney, the…

It took me a bit, but I finally was able to sift through the hundreds of photos our photogs took over the weekend and cull out some of the best. So on the slideshow page, you’ll now find slideshows of full of concert photos for Day One and Day Two…

Venerable Colorado dance music resource Unnet has been going through some changes lately, revamping the site to make it even more of a hub for Colorado’s dance music scene. One key addition was the introduction of a mobile-friendly site for all you folks that like to read the ‘Nets from…

The Beastie Boys have just announced, via YouTube video, that Adam Yauch (aka MCA) has cancer in one of his parotid glands. As a result, they are canceling all tour dates for this summer and pushing back the scheduled September 17 release of their album Hot Sauce Committee Part 1…

If you missed the Mile High Music Fest — and I did too, thanks to a wedding that was occurring simultaneously — or if you were there, but were just so trashed your memories are hazy, you can relive it in glorious lo-fi, shaky-cam glory on YouTube. A quick search…

The Black Keys, Jerry Joseph & The Jackmormons Friday, July 17 The Fox Better Than:Engine oil under your fingernails, sweat running down your back and your car in good working order once again. Zero frills. A white drum kit with two toms and three cymbals, a bag of extra sticks…

See photos of the day’s fans and crowds on the slideshow page. We’re back for Day 2, which looks to be shaping up a little hotter, and not just because of HoneyHoney’s frontwoman (above). Check back throughout the day for more photos and reviews. For coverage from Day One, see…