When he released The Ugly Truth last year, Mane Rok (aka Sam Baron) vowed to create an EP with each of the producers he worked with on the album. Staying true to his word, he released the hip-hop purist joint En Stereo with Es-Nine, whose production was stellar, and Santanamation…
Nicki Minaj’s “Starships” and “Stupid Hoe” couldn’t sound more different. We know this. The lyrical themes are light years apart, as is the production. For those like us who were wondering how Minaj could reconcile such a wide sonic divide on her new album, Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded, the answer…
Gabrielle McClinton had to dismiss a good deal of formal training in preparing for her role in the touring production of Green Day’s American Idiot. McClinton, a graduate of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, plays the character of Whatsername in the Broadway musical, which is set to open tonight at…
For close to a decade, Dave Simonett has stuck with Trampled by Turtles for all the ups and downs. From just a mere thought of starting a band to selling out venues across the country, the Minnesota-born bluegrass quintet is steadily amassing a legion of fans across the country with…
Yet another big week for Adele, who continues to dominate the charts. With a ninth consecutive week at number one on the Billboard 200 chart, the 22nd week overall, Adele’s second album, 21 recently supplanted The Bodyguard soundtrack in the record books and now the album has is closing in…
What do you do if the lead single from your new album campaign drops like dead weight down the charts? If you’re Madonna, you release another single and hope that the club kids don’t notice that you’re treading on old territory. Madge’s lead single from her hotly-anticipated twelfth album, M.D.N.A.,…
VNV Nation (due tomorrow night at the Black Sheep in Colorado Springs) started as a kind of bedroom project for the band’s singer and co-programmer, Ronan Harris. By 1995, he had developed his music to the point that it was becoming part of the next wave of underground electronic pop…
See Also: Megadeth live review at Fillmore and interview with Chris Broderick Megadeth (due tonight at the Fillmore Auditorium) may be one of the Big Four of thrash, but in many ways, its frontman Dave Mustaine is largely responsible for the sound and aesthetic of three of the Big Four…
Update 4/12/12: Hot on the heels of its appearance on Saturday Night Live this past weekend, One Direction has announced a date at the Pepsi on Tuesday, July, 24. Tickets on sale next Saturday. Pop music is cyclical. With the absence of one niche pop artist arises another: Look at…
In his best selling book Killing Yourself to Live, Chuck Klosterman asserts that “the best career move any musician can make is to stop breathing.” When examining Kurt Cobain’s post-mortem transformation from junkie dad to iconic voice of a generation, Klosterman notes that the suicide told everyone that “he wasn’t…
Iced Earth (due tonight at Summit Music Hall) came out of the rich heavy metal scene in Tampa Bay, Florida in the late ’80s. At a time when melodic heavy metal, especially the glam variety, was on the wane, Iced Earth came in with the wave of metal that produced…
Zola Jesus (due tomorrow night at Larimer Lounge) started as the solo project of Nika Roza Danilova. Shortly after she released her earliest recordings, she came to the attention of Caleb Braaten of Sacred Bones Records who has since been a champion of her singular creative vision. Danilova’s 2009 album,…
John Popper seems stunned by the fact that Blues Traveler boasts a longer lifespan than a legal drinker. Popper, who helped launched the band as a quartet in a New Jersey garage in the mid ’80s, has seen the outfit go through fundamental changes. The commercial success of the album…
Let the comparisons to the late Whitney Houston begin. As of yesterday, Adele, the vocal powerhouse and people’s champ of 2011, has broken Houston’s record for number of weeks atop the Billboard 200 albums chart. As 21 logged 21 nonconsecutive weeks at the top yesterday, 365 days after being released,…
See Also: Megadeth live review at Fillmore and interview with David Ellefson When Megadeth plays the Fillmore next Tuesday, February 28, it will be a homecoming for guitar prodigy Chris Broderick, a Lakewood native and alumni of the University of Denver, where he studied classical guitar. A onetime member of…
The Jealous Sound (playing tonight at the Marquis Theater) came together when former Knapsack guitarist and singer Blair Shehan got together with some of his friends who had also been members of melodic punk bands of the ’90s, including Padro Benito of Sunday’s Best, John McGinnis of Neither Trumpets Nor…
Okay, after hearing the full version of Rihanna’s “Birthday Cake (Remix),” featuring Chris Brown, we’re in utter shock. If Tina Turner heard this damning pop, which essentially gives Brown a pass for what he did to Rihanna three years ago, we’re pretty sure she’d be shaking her head like us…
It’s unfortunate that so many people assume that U.K. punk was all about politics. When Bill Maher interviewed Green Day’s Billy Joe Armstrong on his show Real Time with Bill Maher last year, he questioned the singer’s punk credibility for working to help elect Barack Obama in 2008, referring to…
Update: Chris Brown’s “Turn Up the Music” remix featuring Rhianna added below. Happy 24th birthday, Robyn Rihanna Fenty. We remember your first record, “Pon De Replay.” Nice, disposable dancefloor pop. It was urban enough to get people dancing in high school, but not sexy enough to fertilize anything — that…
Over the last two years, Soulive has set up shop at Brooklyn Bowl for the band’s annual Bowlive residencies, which have also featured guest appearances from heavies like by Maceo Parker, John Scofield and Ivan Neville. With this weekend’s Snowlive, Soulive will be at the Fox Theatre for a three-night…
Breathe Owl Breathe (due tonigh at the Hi-Dive) is from East Jordan, Michigan, a relatively remote place that forced the members of the act to turn inward for inspiration in its music. This explains the unique sound of its albums including its most recent, 2010’s Magic Central, which falls somewhere…
When we wrote on this week’s cover that local slammer Suzi Q. Smith is “poetry in motion,” we weren’t kidding. In addition to owning one of the boldest voices in Denver’s prolific poetry scene, Smith and her poet peers have also breached the world of music. In local tribute band…
