Jimmy Nasi carries a hint of Lou Reed’s clipped inflections on ‘Half of the Things’; Nasi, backed by Whitney Rerh’s vocals, gives this song a sonic depth that recalls later Big Star compositions. “For Years” starts off with a delicate but progressive guitar line that deftly shifts gears throughout to…

Rarely has a band with such upbeat, accessible music had its identity and origins so shrouded in mystery — initally, anyway. Cults is not, in fact, some witch-house project, or even a black-metal band, as its moniker might suggest. Instead, it’s a New York duo with a knack for post-tropical…

Based in Atlanta, Georgia, the Coathangers didn’t set out to be torchbearers for any movement — unless mixing some sassy attitude with a healthy sense of humor counts. In tried-and-true garage-rock and punk fashion, most of the members of this group were unseasoned when they formed the Coathangers, but after…

With the ebb and flow of bands and styles in any musical community, it’s easy to forget or overlook anyone involved in an area of a scene you don’t know. Pam Puente was one-third of the punk-rock band Double-Barreled Slingshots last decade. Even if you weren’t really into the group,…

UMS on S. BROADWAY | 07/23-24/11An especially hot summer day made navigating various venues an enervating experience, not to mention the humid heat indoors at times. Nevertheless, it didn’t seem to dampen anyone’s spirits in performing the music, even in the early slots like the one where Mercuria and the…

Oh, sure, from the jump this album screams “21st century post-punk!” And, yes, it was recorded by the Faint’s Kyle Petersen. But there is something more desperate, spooky and urgent in these songs. “Stars” breaks out of any expected mold with a dissonance that seems to warp out of the…

The members of Acrassicauda learned about heavy metal from bootleg tapes they were able to get during the regime of Saddam Hussein. And just like many heavy metal bands in America, the group was accused of worshipping Satan. Except that in Iraq, this meant credible death threats. The trials and…

Alela Diane was born in the small town of Nevada City, California, where she got a nudge from her friend Joanna Newsom to perform her solo material for the first time. After issuing her debut album, Forest Parade, in 2003, Diane recorded and self-released her followup, 2004’s The Pirate’s Gospel,…

Kyle Person doesn’t look like what most people think of when they think “musician,” and that will probably work well in his favor in the long run. He also doesn’t make music like the average musician. Anyone who’s seen his shows these past few years may have witnessed someone who…

SOUNDGARDEN at RED ROCKS | 07/18/11With turrets of light bathing the stage in purple, the opening strains of “Searching With My Good Eye Closed” set the stage perfectly for the entrance of Soundgarden. It certainly felt like these guys believed in their music again, and as one of the band’s…

In 1984, Soundgarden (due at Red Rocks tonight with The Mars Volta) started out as a three piece with Chris Cornell on drums and vocals, Kim Thayil on guitar and Hiro Yamamoto on bass. Within a year, the trio recruited Scott Sundquist to play drums, so that Cornell could cultivate…

It would be a stretch to call this a concept album. Yet on Hello Cruel World, Sole comes back to the theme of how modern society is hostile to intelligence and creativity. But he never prescribes the despair and pessimism he expresses here as the solution. “Hello Cruel World” cleverly…

Brooklyn’s Liturgy (due Tuesday, July 12, at the hi-dive with Collapse and Barnacle) started as the solo project of singer/guitarist Hunter Hunt-Hendrix, who started writing the music with a drum machine on which he created the “burst beat” — a way of taking the blast beat of much grindcore, death…

For most of the ’90s, guitarist Ian Williams was a part of the math-rock outfit Don Caballero, but in 2002 he teamed up with former Helmet drummer John Stanier, former Lynx guitarist Dave Konopka and avant-garde musician Tyondai Braxton, the son of experimental multi-instrumentalist Anthony Braxton. The resultant group uses…

Graham Parker kicked around various bands in London before hooking up with the Rumour and recording with future Stiff Records chief Dave Robinson in 1975. The resulting 1976 album, Howlin’ Wind, yielded the outfit a Top 40 hit with “Don’t Ask Me Questions.” The song’s blend of R&B, soulful folk…

Since forming in July 2007, the Vergers (due at the Larimer Lounge on Friday, July 15) have been something of an an unknown quantity in the underground rock scene in Denver — but it’s not for lack of effort or quality material. Like most bands, the Vergers wrestled with a…

I saw them play at the Rainbow Tavern in Seattle,” recalls Matt Cameron. “I loved Soundgarden even before I joined the group. They were my favorite Seattle band. I always tried to make their shows whenever they played. I was always impressed with Chris’s natural charisma, and Hiro was fantastic…

MANCUB at HI-DIVE | 7/9/11Nothing you’ve heard about ManCub can probably prepare you for ManCub. It would be easy to compare the duo to Daft Punk, because both make groove-heavy electronic music and have an arresting visual element to their shows, but ManCub seems more tied-in with a raw energy…

Dark Castle (due tonight at the Larimer Lounge, with Yob and Clinging to the Trees of a Forest Fire) from St. Augustine, Florida, is often lumped in with doom or death metal — or whatever heavy music seems to be at least a few steps removed from mainstream metal. But…

If you didn’t know better, you’d think Sparkler Bombs had just stepped out of a time machine dialed back to the period following the release of Modest Mouse’s The Moon and Antarctica — at least that’s the era the first three tracks of this EP recall, particularly the music’s ability…