There’s something terribly wrong about the cover shot of this CD. Not that I’m a moralist. Sure, the image of Ms. Knowles wearing a bejeweled variation on the beads people hang across open doorways is capable of inspiring impure thoughts among impressionable youths and, well, impressionable non-youths, too, and that’s…
It takes sound and meaning to make a word. Remove either one and you’re left with a morphological shell; combine them in just the right way and, well, you’re communicating. This formula applies to pop music, too. Great lyrics can turn a rote melody or an empty riff into an…
Wearing their garage-band title as a kind of attitudinal badge of honor, the Dallas-based Deathray Davies have honed a casual, offhand cool that dovetails nicely with the anti-refinement, retro-rock movement. But Midnight at the Black Nail Polish Factory confirms that the band is most powered by its own momentum. On…
It’s been ten years since the jazz-fused hip-hop trio Digable Planets dropped its classic debut, Reachin’…(A New Refutation of Time and Space), which spawned the number-one hit “Rebirth of Slick (Cool Like Dat)” and a Grammy for Best New Artist. Shortly thereafter, the group released its critically acclaimed but widely…
The cautiously optimistic look on Kevin Geraghty’s face as he surveyed the sparse but bedazzled crowd last Saturday night was telling: Over the past year, he’d poured his heart and soul into his new club, and now he hoped that folks hadn’t forgotten him. But consumers — especially bar-hop-ping consumers…
Brett Netson, the guitarist/vocalist behind Caustic Resin, which hits the Lion’s Lair on Thursday, July 12, was an original member of Built to Spill, and he still maintains an association with the band. That doesn’t mean, however, that Keep on Truckin, the latest Resin disc on Up Records, is a…
According to the medical journals, the symptoms of Swayback disease include weakened arteries, internal bleeding and the laying of abnormally shaped eggs. Coincidentally, these are also three symptoms of being exposed to Denver power trio The Swayback. The group, playing Tuesday, July 15, at the Bluebird, with the Raveonettes and…
Denver hip-hop fans in the know already caught DJ Musa Bailey at the grand opening of the new Club Vibe, located in the Russian Palace (1800 Glenarm Place), this past Sunday, July 6. DJ aficionados are familiar with Bailey, from his early days in Denver to his turntable-battle days to…
The racket is nauseating. Vibrations slither up your tailbone and into your skeleton, rattling ribs and clacking skull against jaw. The heat bakes your stomach into a queasy bile casserole. To top it all off, your ass is about to become unhinged from bucking violently against a bare metal floor…
Hip-hop like it used to be in 1985, 1988 — the golden years of hip-hop — that’s gone,” says MC Iomos Marad. “All of that is over.” Rather than lamenting that fact, however, the Chicago-based, seven-piece Family Tree is planting seedlings culled from the collective gospels of Rakim, Public Enemy…
Trilobites. Plesiosaurs. The double-record, gatefold, vinyl LP. One would assume they were all extinct, rendered obsolete, yanked from the gene pool because, frankly, they just couldn’t compete with flashy new life forms like mammals and compact discs. First brought to prominence by the Beatles and then perpetuated by the likes…
Who wouldn’t give his right arm to be ambidextrous? Jeremy J. Jacobsen, that’s who. Using all four of his limbs to make strange, worldly and beautiful racket, this multi-dexterous Chicago transplant can play drums, keyboard and guitar simultaneously — while singing. He can play steel drum while tap dancing. And…
O.A.R. Guster. Hootie & the Blowfish. God Street Wine. Lisa Loeb. The Spin Doctors. Edwin McCain. The Wallflowers. Soulhat. The Cranberries. Jack Johnson. Toad the Wet Sprocket. The Dave Matthews Band. Vigilantes of Love. Shawn Mullins. Counting Crows. Tonic. Jewel. Jars of Clay. Rusted Root. Better Than Ezra. The Freddy…
Ashley Wales and John Coxon, the men of Spring Heel Jack, helped innovate and popularize drum-and-bass, a stripped-down electro movement that may have shot its wad as a stand-alone style but continues to influence production techniques in a variety of genres. Yet the duo aren’t interested in either repeating themselves…
I’m sitting across the table from Wendy Woo, Bob Rupp and a handful of other folks at the Goosetown Tavern after the Westword Music Showcase Awards ceremony; we’re reminiscing about the local scene. And from the smiles coloring everyone’s faces, no one is ready for the night to end. Wendy…
Harnessing the spirits of all slain and martyred chickens through the inverted KFC bucket on his head, guitar virtuoso Brian Carroll still leaves fans of wank rock slackjawed. As Buckethead, Carroll’s masked and mutant alter ego, the former Napa Valley, California, resident has come a long way from getting his…
Mixing rock and funk nowadays is usually about as appetizing as pouring shellac on your pancakes. Luckily for Denver, the Compulsions — who play Wednesday, July 9, at Herman’s Hideaway, with Horse Thief, Etherglow and Ball of Ages — nimbly sidestep the cliches and offenses perpetrated by this hybrid genre…
Describing his music as “the motion of my cells and freakwencies bouncing back at the world,” Lorin Ashton, aka Bassnectar, began making his own music at age twelve but experienced an epiphany five years ago when he first started getting excited about electronic beats and music. As a testament to…
Fly Me to the Moon,” by Frank Sinatra. “Crying,” by Roy Orbison. “Roxanne,” by the Police. The hits keep rolling out of the jukebox and bouncing off the faux-walnut paneling and mirrored walls of the P S Lounge on East Colfax Avenue. The four members of Voices Underwater sit clustered…
Tortoise co-founder Doug McCombs no longer bristles at the term “post-rock.” But during the mid-’90s, he and his musical cohorts from the Windy City — fellow co-founder/drummer/ keyboardist/vibe player John Herndon, producer/drummer/vibe player John McEntire, percussionist Dan Bitney and guitarist Jeff Parker — couldn’t read one single review about their…
Let’s get this out of the way right off: Norwich, England’s KaitO is not named after Inspector Clouseau’s butler from the Pink Panther series. Nor is it named after the Green Hornet’s sidekick/valet from the mid-’60s television series, or any other American pop-culture icon, for that matter. That said, the…
Those who focus too heavily on history are doomed to overestimate it. Witness Koufax, which joins American Analog Set and KaitO at the Larimer Lounge on Sunday, June 29. Given that the group was initially championed by the Get Up Kids — an act linked to the term “emo” like…
