Punk rock has always been known for masking a deep-seated earnestness with playfulness, and Red Stinger follows firmly in that tradition. Although the band’s latest album, Money in a Blender, is chock-full of political angst and personal self-doubt, the group still makes it sound lively and playfully nonchalant. In advance…
Iman S. is passionate about everything he does. The Denver native (“It’s all Denver everything — I’m from Park Hill,” he says) has only been rapping for two years, but to hear him tell it, he’s the best out there. Known for releasing mixtapes with upwards of thirty songs, the…
Let’s face it: Wednesdays in Denver aren’t exactly poppin’ on the regular. The mid-week LoDo scene is still recovering from the previous weekend, the Highland district has yet to catch a ride on the bass wave, and Capitol Hill just needed something. Enter Wasted Wednesdays at Vinyl in the BASSment…
Over the past year, Bad Weather California has been hard at work on two albums, Sunkissed, recorded in Detroit with Akron/Family, and Demos and Live Takes for the Fans, recorded at bandleader Chris Adolf’s home. The latter is being released this Saturday, April 23, at the Larimer Lounge, with A…
Today marks the one-year anniversary of the death of Type O Negative frontman Peter Steele (aka Petrus T. Ratajczyk). The towering singer was found dead of heart failure following an unspecified illness at the age of 48. In memory of this one-of-a-kind ex-Playgirl model, our resident Peter Steele expert runs…
When Russ Christiansen wanted to develop his skills and confidence as a songwriter, he went straight to his peers. For more than a year, the former Three Miles West frontman has spearheaded the Surplus Cheaper Hands Collective, a studio project that’s seen input from a slew of local musicians. The…
With a number of Grammys under his belt, and being named “Male Singer of the Year” by the Jazz Journalists Association six times in the last decade, Kurt Elling is one of the world’s top jazz vocalists. On his latest effort, The Gate, released in February on Concord, Elling teamed…
Ten years ago, My Chemical Romance (due at the Fillmore this Saturday) was just another aspiring band in a van hoping to make it big. With a handful of three-chord punk rock songs hastily written and recorded in the attic of a house in New Jersey, the young outfit had…
As singer and guitarist of the Demon Funkies, Ryan Chrys clearly knows his way around a groove, but he’s also well-versed in other genres, as evidenced by his new solo album, The Ambivalent Justice Of… With some help from Seth and Josh Larson of Something Underground, Brent Loveday from Reno…
For a band that plays moody, dramatic synth pop, Cold Cave (due at the Larimer Lounge on Monday, April 11) has an unusual pedigree. A veteran of several hardcore bands, including Some Girls and American Nightmare, Wesley Eisold turned to electronics as a way to take more control over the…
In the late 1970s, Tesco Vee was an elementary-school teacher in Michigan who led something of a secret life, first as a fan of punk rock and then as the frontman of one of the most notorious and hilarious bands of that era: the Meatmen (due this afternoon at Twist…
If you’re jonesin’ for some fresh hip-hop this morning, take a minute and check out The Veil from Deca, a burgeoning bi-coastal-by-way-of-Denver rhyme giant. Lest you think we’re merely gassing him up, you should know that while his debut, The Hedonist, is now considered a classic by many, honestly, it…
D’Girl (aka Dosha Harris) has emerged as a compelling new force to be reckoned with in the mostly male-dominated local scene. But it goes way beyond the fact that she’s a lady MC. The twenty-year-old, who’s been rhyming since age thirteen, carries herself with the poise of a veteran and…
San Francisco’s Birds & Batteries may be essentially a pop band, but the lushness of the act’s songwriting and the ability to evoke and articulate complex emotions with poetry and intensity is a rare talent these days. The group’s latest album, 2010’s Panorama, lived up to its title as a…
You may have noticed recently that Josh Ivy has been popping up behind the decks in the Mile High City with greater frequency. Good news: He’s not visiting. He’s back from his hiatus in North Carolina. We caught up with Ivy for a few minutes to talk about his break…
St. Vitus (due tonight at Summit Music Hall) were one of the pioneers of a style of music that took its direct inspiration from the first four, maybe even the first six, Black Sabbath albums. The band’s aggressive guitar work flirted with psychedelia but was too heavy to ever be…
It’s true: Drums, guitar, bass and a vintage NES can collide and create gorgeous music together. Pete Berkman, the 22-year-old behind the part-chiptune, part-traditional rock band Anamanaguchi says it was as simple as his own high school-age realization that what Weezer and dudes behind Mega Man 2 were doing was…
Inspired by the first wave of punk in the U.K., the Beat combined the social critique of punk with the broader emotional and sonic palette of reggae. Formed in 1978, the English Beat (so named when the band made its way across the Atlantic) released three classic albums before Dave…
Lupe Fiasco’s Lasers was the album he didn’t like and the label didn’t want to release. It’s a disaster of pandering, middle of the road pop from a rapper, who, at the very least, seemed full of fight until now. Most of the album couldn’t hold its own in a…
The National and Sharon Van Etten recorded a song for the Win Win soundtrack. It leaked yesterday, but Fox Searchlight has pretty well scrubbed the legal-ish streams. Regardless, the two artists are a good fit, Matt Berninger’s sleepy baritone makes a seamless companion for Van Etten’s own honeyed hum. The…
Charismatic, enigmatic and often hilarious, Lee Burridge built his reputation as one of dance music’s most well liked DJs playing gigs all over the world and winning over nightclubbers everywhere he goes. In advance of his show tomorrow night at Beta, we caught up with the English-born jock and talked…
Tanya Morgan, once a group with a following confined to the East Coast underground hip-hop scene, has seen several layers of artistic success since first coming onto the scene. Anyone affiliated with the following of Donwill and Von Pea can assert the mainstream success of artists like Kid Cudi and…
