PLANES MISTAKEN FOR STARS REUNION at 3 KINGS TAVERN | 8/13/11With special guests Kingdom of Magic, the Fire Drills and Vamos! Right before Planes took the stage, you could see the anticipation on the faces of many people who had been looking forward to this show as soon as it…
Founded in Salem, Oregon, in 2005, Typhoon (due tonight at the hi-dive, with Lord Huron and Sour Boy Bitter Girl) started out as a recording project but quickly evolved into a sprawling live affair with over ten members. Two years into its time together, the act essentially went on hiatus…
Jimmy Tamborello. While the name might not register immediately, you’ve probably heard his work with the Postal Service, an outfit that also features Death Cab for Cutie’s Ben Gibbard. On his own throughout the ’90s, Tamborello, who plays under the name Dntel (due tonight at the hi-dive with One AM…
Neil Ewing has spent the past several years exploring the odds and ends of experimental hip-hop and experimental electronic music of various stripes. But with this solo project, he takes his creativity to its furthest extent. On this sprawling release, Ewing’s dark-hued pop songs take on a range of sonic…
Swedish writer Erich Von Däniken is alive and well, lecturing on the influence of extraterrestrial contact on ancient civilizations. His writing, meanwhile, has evidently inspired song titles for this Irish band. Since forming in 2002, God Is an Astronaut has created dense instrumental music in the vein of acts like…
Artists mining the territory between chamber pop and Americana aren’t exactly a rarity right now — and everyone writing pop music worth listening to has been influenced by the Beatles or, for the slightly more adventurous, the Velvet Underground. The Grownup Noise started out writing songs that draw immediate comparisons…
Maybe Brian Knab, Brandon Roth and Ryan Murphy wanted to be Laymen Terms back in their days living in Monument and failed at it miserably. But when the trio reconfigured in Denver with bassist Jeff Wiencroft and fused punk-rock spiritedness with a full-bodied, almost orchestral aesthetic, The Still City was…
Spires is a brand-new band, by traditional standards. The band made its debut just after the first of the year, which, in the blogosphere, could be considered a lifetime ago. Regardless, you’d never know Spires was a freshly minted act just from listening to its self-titled four-song debut. The inherent…
BLKHRTS at OLD CURTIS ST. BAR | 8/6/11In advance of this show, BLKHRTS spread the word that there would be a sacrificial ceremony to kick off its tour. Considering the names of the opening acts and the lyrical content of the band’s music, this “sacrificial ceremony” promised to be tongue-in-cheek…
After debuting on March 10, 1986, 120 Minutes became a showcase for non-mainstream music of various stripes until around the year 2000 when it first got shuffled to the side in favor of reality programming. But during its heyday, 120 Minutes introduced a generation and more to music by artists…
ICEAGE at RHINOCERPOLIS | 8/2/11When Iceage, from Copenhagen, Denmark, took the stage (or floor in this case) at Rhinoceropolis last night, there was a palpable air of anticipation and excitement, and certainly the members of the band had a quiet intensity about them that they unleashed in full from the…
Headbanger’s Ball started on April 18, 1987, and ran for nearly eight years. With little regard for a narrow definition of what constituted metal, the show’s programmers seemed to embrace it all. So you would see a Poison video, something from Motorhead and then something from the Cult. The early…
With her classical training and her background singing country music, Lizzy Allen brings impressive chops to her role in Vitamins, which got its start in Greeley. And tonight at Red Rocks, she’ll be putting that talent to work with the Flaming Lips, who have asked her once again to provide…
Flashlights started in the basement of Ethan Converse’s house in Four Mile Canyon shortly after he graduated from college, when he and Sam Martin met through mutual friends. Inspired by Martin’s desire to break away from his background in rock groups and propelled by Converse’s realization that a creative endeavor…
With song titles evoking images of alchemy and the occult, Josh Powers seems to have tapped directly into hermetic knowledge, creating tones that get under your skin in the same way that Skinny Puppy’s “Smothered Hope” does. “Character Map” sounds like a peek into Innsmouth after the introduction of futuristic…
Typhoon is currently capping its membership, touring and otherwise, at twelve members. While this may seem like a gratuitously sprawling lineup, one listen to any of the band’s releases makes it obvious that each member is making an important contribution to the deceptively simple but lushly textured sounds on each…
Jimmy Tamborello is probably best known for his work with Ben Gibbard in the Postal Service, where his pioneering, glitchy electronica provided the beautifully textured backdrop to that band’s songs. The basis for that sound was one he’d been developing in other projects, including his main musical priority these days,…
If you’ve been to the right places over the past couple of years, chances are you’ve caught Maria Kohler playing solo or as a collaborator in whatever projects Mike Marchant has been involved with at any given time. And if you heard her, you know that Kohler’s soulful voice and…
The members of Iceage, from Copenhagen, Denmark (due tonight at Rhinoceropolis), are all under the age of 22, but in its relatively short time together, the band has garnered a buzz for the sonic savagery of its live shows and the harrowingly resonant emotional tenor of its music. Its debut…
TITWRENCH FESTIVAL | 7/29-7/31/11Friday, July 29 – Glob Every year it seems as though someone involved with Titwrench (likely Piper Rose) comes up with some kind of ritual to start off the festivities. This year, a woman calling herself Bast (you know, from Egyptian mythology, which is fitting) set things…
In the eloquent liner notes of Sin Desires Marie, the band’s sole full-length, bassist Yoon Park explains that Sin Desires Marie (due tonight at Glob for this weekend’s Titwrench Festival) was started by friends who learned how to play their respective instruments as they learned to play together as a…
Some bands are iconic just for their music and image, but Devo is an act that also became iconic for the very idea of what it stood for. “Devo” was the insult yelled by the ignorant at anyone who might be into punk rock in the late ’70s and early…
