Over the Weekend: Nixon in China @ the Ellie Caulkins Opera House

Nixon in China Saturday, June 7 Ellie Caulkins Opera House Although Nixon in China premiered way back in 1987, the John Adams-Alice Goodman opera still feels fresh and quirky. But neither the brashness of the piece itself nor Opera Colorado’s energetic and imaginative rendering of it during its June 7…

Over the Weekend…Dosh, Anathallo, L’elan Vital @ hi-dive

This was not taken at the hi-dive Dosh, Anathallo, L’elan Vital Saturday, June 7, 2008 hi-dive Better than: A makeshift drum circle. Martin Dosh is one of the more interesting artists to come out of Anticon’s multi-colored stable of artists. Over the course of four albums, he’s created a stream…

Rewind: Flobots on Leno

Wow. We had a considerably more difficult time tracking down a clip of Flobots performing on Leno last night than we did when they played on Last Call with Carson Daly. In fact, after trolling You Tube and refreshing our Google search every ten minutes or so, we came up…

Last Night…Maceo Parker @ Boulder Theatre

Slideshow by Jon Solomon Maceo Parker Thursday, June 5, 2008 Boulder Theatre Better Than: Seeing a gal wearing hot pants in a cold sweat doing it doing to death. It’s been more than a decade since the last time I saw Maceo Parker perform, and the 65-year-old funk sax master…

Flobots on Leno Tonight

Flobots continue their swift march upwards tonight with an appearance on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno. From all indicators, the band hasn’t lost any momentum. Fight with Tools is continuing to sell briskly (the album is once again Twist & Shout’s top seller), and “Handlebars” is still doing quite…

I’m a Boy

When I’m a Boy kicks into its set, you may start to wonder exactly what year it is. Not because the music is dated, but because the band’s music has the lean, focused quality that characterized early songs by the Who. The group’s shows may make you flash back to…

Ame

The Germany of popular imagination is a place ruled by efficiency, order and a rigid, uptight worldview. How is it, then, that so much incredibly sexy, funky house music originates there? Okay, the fact that so much of it is of the stripped-down, minimal variety lends credence to that whole…

Irish Snug

In Woody Allen’s film Sweet and Lowdown, Sean Penn plays guitarist Emmet Ray, who said he cried every time he listened to the great gypsy jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt. Some of Reinhardt’s beautiful ballads have the same effect on me, and knowing his history makes the music all the more…

Ellison Park

Driving eastbound on I-70, Ellison Park has one hand on the wheel while the other navigates an iPod mounted to his dash. Scrolling through the songs, Park makes his way to the batch of demos he recorded on his MacBook and pushes play. As his voice pours from the speakers…

Mini Reviews

Beehatch, Beehatch (Lens Records). Frequently danceable and consistently dark, Beehatch is a collaboration between Phil Western and Mark Spybey, both previously members of Skinny Puppy side project Download. Beehatch often sounds like the soundtrack to both your nightmares and your wet dreams, but trance beats and the occasional melodic hook…

Set Forth

If writing obscenely accessible pop is a crime, Set Forth should get the chair. Radio-friendly? Hell, these guys might as well send BFF pendants to program directors with copies of their four-song debut. Figures that the group formed at the behest of a radiohead. Shortly after catching Steve Melton and…

Girl Named Kyle

No, the world hasn’t been waiting for another folkish band fronted by a precocious, big-voiced singer, and the familiar nature of the strummier material on Let’s Build doesn’t help separate Girl Named Kyle from the pack. Take the concluding “Epar,” which contains the confession “I feel like I’ve been here…

Silver Jews

Singer-songwriter David Berman is as much of an ironist in life as he is in art. Note that after landing in rehab following a Xanax overdose (an act with sardonic aspects of its own), he belatedly embraced Judaism — a belief system he’d never taken that seriously despite his band’s…

Mates of State

Husband-and-wife team Jason Hammel and Kori Gardner seemingly make gorgeous indie-pop songs as casually as the rest of us shower in the morning. Much has changed since they released their 2006 debut on Barsuk, Bring It Back; they’ve moved to New York and had another daughter, for starters. But Re-Arrange…

Maceo Parker

“We like to do 2 percent jazz and 98 percent funky stuff,” proclaimed Maceo Parker on his 1992 live album, Life on Planet Groove. Sure, he’s a deft jazz player, but when it comes to funk and R&B sax, Parker is the king. After honing his chops in James Brown’s…

Emmylou Harris

Emmylou Harris explored the arty side of the street on her previous three studio albums: 1995’s indelible Wrecking Ball, helmed by studio auteur Daniel Lanois, plus 2000’s Red Dirt Girl and 2003’s Stumble Into Grace, made with Lanois protegé Malcolm Burn. In contrast, All I Intended to Be, her forthcoming…

Times New Viking

You know your band is in trouble when it’s being covered by MTV and lumped in with a movement called “Lo-Fi Punk.” Fortunately, the music of Columbus, Ohio’s Times New Viking does not lend itself well to vast commercial accessibility. In both recordings and live performances, the group brings a…

Russian Circles

“Post-rock” may not be the most ridiculous descriptor in contemporary music; I’d cast my vote for either “sadcore” or “neo-prog.” Still, the term means next to nothing when it’s applied to a band like Russian Circles, which co-stars on this roster with Daughters and Young Widows. On 2006’s Enter and…