The Apples’ antsy retroactivity has ping-ponged back and forth so many times over the past nine years, it’s become downright dizzying, from ’60s pop to ’80s jangle to ’90s indie. By the time the band released its fourth studio album, 2000’s Discovery of a World Inside the Moone, it was…
Unlike many soundtracks that pale creatively in comparison with their celluloid counterparts, 24 Hour Party People more than matches the spirit of the film it accompanies. More impressively, it captures the feel of a bygone era in British dance music. At eighteen tracks, this compilation approximates the energy and underground…
Reviewers seldom gush over discs that remind them of albums made by lousy artists from the past; hence the dearth of notices praising Shakira for introducing a new generation to the genius that is Charo. But the opposite proves true when it comes to CDs that recall the long-ago platters…
Richard Patrick of Filter might be a good moderator for a music-conference panel: The Hit Single: More Harm Than Good? The band’s 1995 release, Short Bus, produced a major hit with the single “Hey Man, Nice Shot,” but its overexposure on MTV and commercial radio did not come without a…
When Kurt Ottaway and Jason Cotter decided to pull their heads out of the underground and take over a legitimate music venue, they entered into a pact — not only with themselves, but with those who for years had begged them to open a damn club already. So on Friday,…
The underappreciated Boston-based Swirlies put out a reliable brand of lo-fi bedroom pop with enough white noise to make the tunes sound like they were recorded in the great outdoors — say, on a busy airport runway during holiday rush hour. Founding member Seana Carmody, who performs Sunday, October 6,…
A nasty gash from a broken full-length mirror left Andy Falconetti in need of emergency surgery on his calf last summer. Still recuperating (through the curative one-two punch of prescription drugs and bad daytime television), the frontman for Denver’s Breezy Porticos — who open for Athens-based pop upstarts Of Montreal…
Music-business decision-makers realize that the pop bubble is apt to burst soon — and most of them are touting post-indie rock as its probable successor. Why? For one thing, underground rockers are in plentiful supply; throw a stick in most major cities, and you’re likely to hit at least one…
When Gorgol Bordello’s Eugene Hütz was fourteen and living in Striy, a small Ukrainian village near the Hungarian border, he caught wind of the 1986 Chernobyl meltdown while listening to BBC Radio. Moments later, he and his family members were packing their suitcases and preparing to flee. “I’m trying to…
If the British music press is to be believed, the two biggest stories of the year so far have been the return of rock and the rise of electro-pop. Yet an even more notable phenomenon may be found in Berlin-based singer/producer/performer Peaches, an artist who seamlessly melds the two with…
At this point in its development, hip-hop is all about the marketing. Crossing over to the pop side of town is incredibly lucrative, but doing so too overtly puts street cred at risk. That’s why acts and their labels are looking for new and creative ways to make the music…
Subtle as an amputation, the Residents cut themselves off from pop music’s tumorous body three decades ago and never looked back. Still as prolific as they are self-indulgent, the cadre of one-eyed malcontents — led by Mr. Skull — remain cloaked in deliberate secrecy. And while they proudly anoint themselves…
Danny Shafer has recently undergone a change of heart. For one thing, he’s been wired to a honky-tonk frequency, studying the players and pluckers who perfected the two-stepper years ago in Texas, Nashville and Bakersfield. He’s also done some stepping of his own — out of the limelight and into…
Whether contemplating the mercurial nature of love or denouncing brutish political oppression in the Third World, Spanish-speaking pop oufit Maná is a pleasant surprise. Despite an image and sound that at times feels shamelessly derived from better-known Anglo acts such as U2 and Sting, the band, which has garnered multiple…
Something of an all purpose, genre-juggling utility man, Paul Fonfara has played an integral part in several roots-driven acts of local renown, including the Denver Gentlemen, DeVotchKa and Munly De Dar He. Following a recent European tour as a cellist for David Eugene Edward’s solo project, Woven Hand, Fonfara has…
On stage, Cephalic Carnage’s Zac spends most of his time swinging his head and his guitar, sweating, screaming and abusing listeners with the brutal bombast that issues from his instrument. But today, sitting in his publicist’s office almost 2,000 miles from his Denver home, there is little evidence of that…
If there’s anything that irritates Fred Sargolini, half of the forward-looking hip-hop/electro duo Ming & FS, it’s artists who think they have to color inside the lines. “A lot of them don’t realize they’re doing it,” he believes. “They say they’re open-minded, but they’re really puritans. And people in drum…
Born on Georgia soil and bred on Southern music, John Davis is the first to admit that he’s a fish out of water here in the higher, drier land of Colorado. But that hasn’t prevented him from finding a home and a musical career along the Front Range, where he…
With a gritty, gospel-bred tenor, Tommy Thomas doesn’t skimp on punchy, electric, gut-driven blues — which gives this followup to his 2000 debut, Working Man, such universal appeal. Ironically, Thomas’s method of pushing product upon the masses is less conventional than the music itself: He avoids hustling for shelf space…
Kerry McDonald, former bassist of local emo legend Christie Front Drive, has reinvented himself with the Mighty Rime. Sounding at times like Neutral Milk Hotel’s Jeff Mangum, Built to Spill’s Doug Martsch or Lungfish’s Daniel Higgs huffing helium, McDonald takes the unpaved back road to indie-rock rusticity. “Broke Baroque” is…
Boyd Rice is Denver’s darkest iconoclast: A Web site devoted to his twisted oeuvre wasn’t named www.longlivedeath.com at random. Yet his twelfth disc for Mute (most issued under the aforementioned Non de plume) is fairly accessible, by his standards. The seven works here consist mainly of industrial drones, and while…
A followup to 1999’s excellent Collecting Empties, Rainville’s second CD is another impressive showcase for songwriter John Common, who’s emerged as Colorado’s most authentic heartland-style rocker. Now playing as a four-piece with the addition of multi-instrumentalist Ian Hlatky, Rainville displays a growth and dexterity on The Longest Street in America,…
