Music

Before the ideas of “pop” and “punk” were grafted in unholy union, there were bands that didn’t know there was ever a difference. Add the Hacks to that list. Influenced by the gruff, Oi!-tinged punk of Channel 3 or Sham 69 and the almost conceptual sloppiness of Crimpshrine (whose “Fucked…

Biggie Smalls and Tupac Shakur have been in the news more often recently than they were during their heydays as East and West Coast rap stars, respectively. A Los Angeles Times series and a new movie — each presenting different theories as to who killed Shakur in September 1996 and…

“True love is a blessing/True love is a curse,” begins one song on Johnny Dowd’s latest disc, The Pawnbroker’s Wife, and even though Dowd addresses the highs (largely in past tense), he’s more comfortable scraping emotion’s depths. A discomforting collection of tar-toned tunes, The Pawnbroker’s Wife explores a decaying relationship…

Since the demise of the late, great Foreskin 500, most of Dave Kerr’s appearances before local audiences have found him standing behind a turntable deck and donning a pair of headphones. He’s had informal “residencies” at the Lion’s Lair and the 15th Street Tavern, gigs that were more likely to…

In an interview with Rolling Stone published in June, Taalib Johnson — known to the world as Musiq Soulchild until earlier this year, when he dropped the second half of his nom de plume — was asked if he had groupies even before he made music. “Actually, no,” he replied…

For a long time, Austin-based Spoon was considered one of the most underrated, underappreciated bands working. There are many theories as to what brought about that sorry state of affairs: label neglect, lack of opportunity in a city that brags about its music scene, and the band’s failure to write…

I think it’s hard to pull off actually having feeling in aggressive rock,” says Chris Sorensen, guitarist of the pigeonhole-dodging Denver group Vaux. He and his bandmates were once known as Eiffel, a clean-cut, emo-scented combo that somehow went horribly wrong. Instead of sticking to meek melodies and humble ambitions,…

My friends were skeptical when I told them we’d be spending Saturday night watching a musical about an East German transgendered rock-star wannabe with platinum spaceship hair. It took some not-so-gentle persuasion — not to mention a couple of steins of Hefeweisen at Cafe Berlin — to assure them that…

With public displays of affection all but outlawed in Japan, it’s little wonder that cultural deviance infests the Empire of the Red Sun. Take vending machines that sell pre-worn girls’ underwear, for example. Or ATM machines that greet customers with coy baby talk. Then there’s the complete Japanese antithesis to…

Boulder’s McCloskey Brothers Band crafts a sound that’s apropos of falling leaves, mountain streams and good times at high altitude. Composed of brothers David (banjo) and Todd (mandolin) McCloskey, bassist Steve Roseboom and drummer Dan Menchey, TMBB opens for Strangefolk on Saturday, October 12, at the Bluebird Theater. The outfit…

So you think you have a stressful career? Consider Kelly, who makes his living under his given name as a senior attorney in the legal-affairs department of Qwest, a Colorado telecom that’s spent more than a year making the wrong kind of headlines. The guy who said there’s no such…

Gomez is one of those bands that, like a cat being forced into a pet carrier, struggles against being placed in any one category. Is Gomez a blues act? Space rock? Prog rock? Latin-tinged alt-country? Somehow, the answer to all of the above is yes. Yet despite this crazy-quilt approach…

Super Furry Animals know the rules have changed. Their music is a throwback to the ’70s and earlier — all pretty harmonies, dreamy strings and expansive, meandering song construction — and yet they’ve laced it throughout with studio trickery, updating the Beach Boys’ sound with Beck’s sensibility. Because in the…

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…