As audiogenic as she is photogenic, Marcy Baruch makes the best of country and blues influences while following her own introspective muse. Sultry, powerful and resilient, her voice shifts seamlessly from soothing and simplistic to bawdy and brash. With her 2001 release, Clearly, Baruch entered Denver’s already crowded singer-songwriter pool;…
Like its two predecessors, the album Will the Circle Be Unbroken, Vol. III features the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band performing songs with an all-star cast of musical legends. This time, the guests include Johnny Cash, Taj Mahal, Jimmy Martin, Dwight Yoakam, Emmylou Harris and Doc Watson. Given such high-caliber company,…
DJ Z-Trip has a trademark sound that’s been forged by experimentation — as well as by an unbreakable will to do things his own way. So, at 31, he doesn’t mince words when talking about his ability to shake up hip-hop. “Where am I going? To the fuckin’ top,” says…
God’s Son is the creative by-product of a tumultuous period for Nas: The last year brought battles with everyone from Jay-Z to the on-air staff of New York’s Hot 97. After dropping a certified classic with 2001’s Stillmatic and then giving fans some great leftovers in Lost Tapes, he returns…
A choir of angelic voices followed by violently lovely orchestral bombast precedes “The Light Before We Land,” the opening track on the Delgados’ fourth album, Hate. It’s a rather incongruous beginning to an album born of personal tragedy and deep, black sadness, but it works. And how. Formerly reliant upon…
Among the more enjoyable offspring of the electro-dance movement is chill-out music — sounds that help bring a listener down from the ecstatic highs generated by house and other club-friendly styles. But as the form’s popularity has grown, so, too, have the number of chillers-come-lately who seem to think their…
The City has weighed in on the Skylark Lounge saga, and, from the looks of it, owner Scott Heron’s bird shall sing: On Tuesday, Department of Excise and Licenses director Helen Gonzales approved Heron’s application to transfer the bar’s tavern and cabaret licenses to a new space on south Broadway…
When talking about Rainer Maria, it’s easy to become effusive over all the ten-cent words: Quote some lyrics from the trio’s 2001 album, A Better Version of Me (“Why is this technology/An anathema to me?”), mention that singer/bassist Caithlin de Marrais and guitarist Kyle Fischer met in a poetry workshop,…
A seedy barroom staple since the mid-’80s, when he performed solo and with a band called Luke the Drifter and the Lonesome Saddle Tramps, Joe Vasquez certainly isn’t a household name in Nashville — not that he ever aspired to be one. But ’round these here parts, the man with…
Your leader and our lapdog” is how Paul Weller describes President George W. Bush and British prime minister Tony Blair. Blair is the youthful liberal who seems to be the only world leader dumb, or crazy, enough to back Bush unconditionally in his imminent war against Iraq. “It took eighteen…
In 1981, Hall and Oates dispatched their private eyes, Olivia Newton-John wanted to get physical, Joan Jett and the Blackhearts loved rock and roll, and Ben Lev Kweller was born in Greenville, Texas. Twelve years later, when most of his peers were primarily concerned with the weird shit going on…
Raw exuberance matched with a burning desire to change the world is the hallmark of enlightened youth, often leading to embarrassing clothing buried in attics and repressed memories of auctioned-off idealism. But on occasion, a rare alignment of planets can turn such bright-eyed passion into a more permanent contribution –…
Jonathan Bates’s claim that his major-label debut was “lovingly recorded in a bedroom” is slightly misleading: With his solo career in a fledgling state, Bates caught the attention of Tony Berg, an A&R executive who signed both Black Rebel Motorcycle Club and Beck. Soon after, the magic of studio-enhanced remastering…
Having established itself as one of the most talented of an ever-expanding crop of jam bands, twelve-year-old moe. is navigating middle age just fine. The band grooves with more of its signature neo-hippie fare on Wormwood, a healthy fourteen-track effort. Low-end man Rob Derhak propels the group through a guitar-laced…
As a “content provider,” Backwash feels a moral obligation to shun reality programming on TV, and I await the day when American networks exhaust the public’s appetite for ready-made voyeurism and have to start hiring actual writers. But I gotta confess, I love American Idol, which entered its second season…
In far tougher economic times than these, American homesteaders often burned their houses to the ground just to retrieve the nails — then moved somewhere new with the hopes of rebuilding. Catherine Irwin, co-leader of the Kentucky-bred roots outfit Freakwater, borrows this idea of hardscrabble existence as a metaphor for…
With much of the world dangling over an abyss of terror and war, now may be the most tense time in recent history to be alive. As if in spontaneous reaction comes Black Black Ocean. While most indie-rock bands whimper and cringe, the Denver quartet (which appears Saturday, February 8,…
It’s tough to believe, but just ten years ago, musicians from Seattle routinely received more attention than did performers from practically any other locale. And why not? Thanks to the success of Nirvana, Soundgarden, Alice in Chains and many of their peers in the so-called grunge movement, talent scouts looked…
“So, are you going to fuck us over, then?” Such is Coldplay singer Chris Martin’s greeting, proffered with a warm smile and a clasp of the arm. Before assurances can be offered, he’s sashayed into his Los Angeles hotel room, where clothes spew out of a suitcase and over the…
The dark constellation of singer-songwriters formed by Leonard Cohen, Nick Cave and Tom Waits is no place to go poking around if you can’t stand a little self-indulgence. So pomp-averse listeners beware: Crooked Fingers may well get on your nerves. The third installment of this earnest enterprise from former Archers…
Sanity isn’t a prerequisite when it comes to making good music. Syd Barrett and Roky Erickson are only two of many performers who’ve created intriguing songs in spite of — or perhaps because of — minds that don’t operate in ways most of us regard as normal. In that sense,…
Ryan Policky is one of the very few Denverites who didn’t spend last Sunday watching football. He was too busy getting ready for a gig at the Church. Policky’s band, Pure Drama, which performs only a couple of times a year, recently added two members, bassist David Ferguson and drummer…
