The Psychedelic Furs formed in 1977 in the wake of the explosion of punk rock in England. By the 1980s, the group had evolved from its earlier musical impulses into a kind of atmospheric, at times brooding, at times celebratory, post-punk band with a broad emotional and sonic palette. See…
“Gangsta of War” is the perfect intro to a tape that essentially sounds like a secret early recording made by a now-well-known Warp Records project. Or it could be Art of Noise doing its best imitation of gangsta rap. The hypnotic yet syncopated drum-machine-generated beats, punctuated by bass and urgent…
Rutherford Belleview says the Widow’s Bane, his theatrical, dark, Americana-flavored, self-styled “zombie death polka” band, began sometime around 1700 A.D. “The name ‘The Widow’s Bane’ is from where we originally met, which was a ship,” the accordion player explains. “We were a house band on the Devil’s ship. We weren’t…
Wampire is a five-piece whose music doesn’t seem fixed to a particular musical period, especially the current era. If anything, the band’s gently swirling, swaying melodies are buoyed almost imperceptibly by a distinct if informal structure that keeps the music from wandering completely where it will. It’s almost like psychedelic…
FEAR @ ” target=”_blank”>MARQUIS THEATER | 6/4/13 With his characteristic enigmatic smile, Lee Ving looked up at the crowd after making sure his guitar was ready to go and said, “This is a classic sing-along,” before he and the band went into “I Love Livin’ in the City.” With that,…
ALICE COOPER / MARILYN MANSON @ RED ROCKS | 6/3/13 The moment everyone was waiting for and had to guess was coming came at the very end of the show, when Alice Cooper came back on stage for his encore. As the familiar strains of “I’m Eighteen” drew cheers from…
It’s rare to find a free CD in the front of an independent record store that’s worth more than a casual listen. Greasy Demos, by Pizza Time, was crudely recorded, it sounds blown out, and the music is raw, primitive stuff. There are no track titles on the cover or…
During the 1980s, Denver and Boulder both had thriving experimental-music scenes, with acts like Architects Office, Walls of Genius, Human Head Transplant and the Bruce Odland Big Band, which included Ron Miles and Mark McCoin. But the longest-lasting and most prolific of these is Thinking Plague. Rather than being grounded…
Yuzo Nieto is best known for his stint as the gifted sax player in Pee Pee and the ringleader of avant-garde jazz and Afro-Cuban outfit Pink Hawks, the latter of which is still a going concern. Nieto has been a music teacher at SOAR Charter School in Green Valley Ranch…
SOUNDGARDEN @ 1STBANK CENTER | 5/28/13 Five songs into its set last night at 1STBANK Center, with the stage bathed in emerald light and Chris Cornell appearing sans guitar for the first time in the set, Soundgarden performed “Outshined,” one of its first radio hits. Cornell put his mic toward…
Soundgarden formed in 1984 as a three-piece with Chris Cornell on drums on vocals, Kim Thayil on guitar and Hiro Yamamoto on bass. Though noisier in the beginning, the band would go on to be one of the main purveyors of a slow, sludgy, intense, punk-rooted rock that was dubbed…
ZZ Ward released her debut album, Til The Casket Drops, in 2012. Growing up, she honed a talent for writing bluesy R&B songs. Her knack for that can be heard prominently on that disc, and well as her proclivity for hip-hop, which is even more prevalent on her Criminal EP…
There is something otherworldly and old-worldly about the songs on the Seven Hats’ Scientific American; they’d be right at home on a Guy Maddin soundtrack. Julie Davis’s voice, while in the foreground, sounds like it was captured on film and then played until the film stock was worn to the…
People come up and say, ‘I’ve never seen anything like that before. When are you playing again?'” marvels bassist Harmony Star about how audiences often react to her band, Dangerous Nonsense. “We don’t even know how to explain it. Our influences couldn’t explain what we sound like.” “And it wouldn’t…
Kylesa got its start in 2001 when former members of sludge-metal band Damad teamed up with guitarist and visual artist Laura Pleasants. From the beginning, this Savannah, Georgia-based band has shown no loyalty to a specific genre; as a result, the outfit’s discography has been fascinatingly varied. See also: -…
TURBONEGRO @ OGDEN THEATRE | 5/20/13 The familiar feedback leading to the down-strumming guitar intro of “Get It On” drew people to come from the upper areas of the Ogden to join in the pit down front last night. Turbonegro’s new lead singer Tony Sylvester, dressed up like some bizarre…
BLACK MOTH SUPER RAINBOW @ BLUEBIRD THEATER | 5/17/13 Near the end of its set, Black Moth Super Rainbow performed “Sun Lips,” one of its signature older songs. While some people sang along a bit earlier in the show, it seemed like everyone up front knew the words to this…
Drawing on a hardcore background, Turbonegro combined glam metal with punk to create a sound it has cheekily called “death punk.” With lyrics and imagery that both celebrate and make a mockery of the gaudy aspects of glam and its thematic tropes. The band’s 1996 album, Ass Cobra, established the…
Black Rebel Motorcycle Club formed in the late ’90s after Peter Hayes left the Brian Jonestown Massacre, when he and his high school friend Robert Been, son of the late Michael Been of the Call, started the band, influenced by acts like the Verve, Loop and the Jesus and Mary…
Although Black Moth Super Rainbow’s dreamlike, psychedelic melodies sound like they could’ve been part of those ’70s era Sid & Marty Krofft shows, the band actually formed in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 2003 in the wake of earlier projects from the act’s singer and multi-instrumentalist, the unimonikered Tobacco (aka Thomas Fec)…
“Assume the Imposition” gets things going on Allout Helter’s new album with a bracing dose of aggressive rhythms and pointed invective aimed at those who are smug in their ideological framework while society suffers or those who are otherwise complacent, assuming nothing can be done. Related themes run through this…
Straight Outta Luck formed in 2009 when Missouri transplant Ryan Jacobs met up with Natalie McFall, a veteran of the punk scenes in Fort Collins and Denver. Although he was initially reluctant to sing, Jacobs became the perfect vocalist for the band’s raw, dynamic and urgent songs. McFall and Jacobs…
