Concerts

Even though ManeLine is continually doing shows around town and the Pirate Signal is hard at work on its new album, rapper Mane Rok and DJ A-What have found time to connect and put together a mixtape project called Mane Rok and DJ AWHAT! Present Rok Stars Mixtape. The project…

Boulder-based jazz/afrobeat/electronic (and it’s no coincidence that those initials almost spell “jam”) outfit the Motet are releasing their new album Dig Deep for free. The impetus behind this altruistic act is simple, according to drummer/bandleader Dave Watts: no one is buying records anymore, so you may as well give them…

Joe Thunder and Selector Sam’s Special Addiction mixtape has been available for almost a month now, but it’s still making its way around the web. The new collection features Street Philosafee, a group that consists of rappers Mr. Verbal and J Cook and features appearances from Dent, Tetrahedron Crew, Pontius…

Looks like we’re not the only ones psyched for this weekend’s Mile High Music Festival. This afternoon, the folks at Spin.com weighed in with their top five must-hear bands. As it turns out, their picks mirrored  ours: Tool (natch), Duke Spirit, 3OH!3, Gogol Bordello and the Black Keys. We’ve got…

Christie Front Drive may very well be my all time favorite Colorado band. You should have seen me at the Marquis a few years ago when the band reunited for Denver Fest. I was giddier than a school girl. For years, I’ve kept my copy of the split 10-inch the…

In a unique arrangement, Suburban Home Records has come to an agreement to do distribution and, through the Vinyl Collective sublabel, a vinyl release of Gregory Alan Isakov’s self-released record This Empty Northern Hemisphere. Under terms of the deal, Suburban Home will handle distribution of the record and help make…

Now that’s what we call representing the home team in word and in deed. Talking about the old school Broncos sticker affixed to Adam Halferty’s drumkit. Attaboy, Adam! When he’s not keeping time for Young Coyotes, Halferty and his former Chain Gang of 1974 bandmate, Kamtin Mohager are touring members…

For years, we here in Denver watched enviously as festivals such as Bonnaroo, Coachella, Lollapalooza, Austin City Limits, Rothbury and Sasquatch cropped up in cities across the country, and wondered when the Mile High City would have a major gathering of its own. We’ve had great festivals in the mountains…

A lot can change in three years. When Frontside Five released its last full-length album, three years ago, it was, in many ways, a very different band than it is today. Then a quintet, the group boasted a single lead singer, a frenetic sound and lyrical cues solidly rooted in…

As the owner of Suite Two Hundred (1427 Larimer Street), 5 Degrees (1475 Lawrence Street) and Monarck and 24K, both at 1416 Market Street, Lotus Concepts’ Francois Safieddine has a good feel for the trends in that part of town. “In Larimer Square, for example, the crowd is extremely upscale…

Initially, Motel Saints can sound a bit too familiar. But pinpointing the source of that musical déjà vu is difficult, and then suddenly it dawns on you that maybe the group is on to something. Borrowing some phrasings from mid-’70s David Bowie, the early solo Iggy Pop records and the…

Dr. Eugene Chadbourne is one of those genius avant-garde musicians that most people don’t readily recognize despite his long career and influence. But he’s worked with similarly minded artists such as John Zorn, Fred Frith, Carla Bley, Camper Van Beethoven and Sun City Girls. Like the Sun City gals, Chadbourne…

Just as punk rock embraced the stripped-down, authentic aesthetic of rock and roll from a bygone era, the current wave of electronic-pop songwriters have embraced the analog-synth sensibilities of early-’80s new-wave and electro-post-punk acts. Forest World is clearly part of this phenomenon, and not unlike well-known artists such as M83,…

Florida’s Fake Problems may be proof that evolution is real — musically, anyway. The quartet, which has since added cello and trumpet to its live show, was, at its earliest inception, often compared to its Florida brethren in Against Me! This prompted one unnamed Gainsville rocker to refer to the…

The Veronicas are a good example of that old aphorism about books and covers. Although they are nominally a teen-pop phenomenon, they don’t come from the same assembly-line printing process as most of today’s pop idols. Crafting a sound that splits its time between sugarcoated yet punked-up pop numbers and…

Lyrics: Are they necessary? Not always — and a little can go a long way. “The Boys Are Leaving Town,” the first song on Post-Nothing, the Polyvinyl Records debut by Canada’s Japandroids, boasts just two lines: a sentence featuring the same five words as the title (and in the same…

To see some really innovative DJs, sometimes you have to go to non-traditional venues — like a bowling alley on a Tuesday night. That’s where you’ll find DJ Soup, last year’s Showcase winner for best non-traditional DJ and one of Denver’s most exciting talents behind the decks. Soup got his…

When you do it yourself, you get to showcase your talents — but also your faults. Here we have the good and the bad of Stu Basham. He wrote the songs, played most of the instruments, sings and presumably produced. And while he is a talented piano and keyboard player…

Should you wait to sing the blues until your voice has changed? That unlikely question is central to this debut by Michaela Rae Knox, who cut Backbone when she was just thirteen. Her guitar playing is plenty solid, if not exactly innovative — unless you’ve never heard Stevie Ray Vaughan…

For a CD titled A Farewell to Echoes, there sure are a lot of, well, echoes. Fell recorded this during the delay of its upcoming Incoherent Lullabies. Sure enough, there’s a raw, rushed aura here despite its ethereal layering and exquisite eruptions of distortion. “Low at Dusk, Distance at Dawn”…

The Burn Heavy side of this record sounds like Sleep filtered through a doom/grind lens and blended with psychedelic swirls. The prominence of Maia Fortis’s eerie violin drone and John Gross’s undercurrent of noise and samples lend the proceedings an otherworldliness. On “Situations,” Heavy lopes along before shifting into a…