Reverend Deadeye started his wild-eyed, tent revival, country-gospel-blues one-man band in 2002, just as one his previous projects, the dark, gnarled post-punk outfit, the Bedraggled, was coming to an end. Embracing the music he grew up with as a child on a northeastern Arizona reservation, Reverend Deadeye (aka Brent Burkhart)…
Although the names Nahum, Soul Bender and the Bedraggled are probably lost on most people familiar with the work of Reverend Deadeye, from the early ’90s until 2003, Brent Burkhart played in those dark, experimental rock bands before launching his solo side project. Casting off former pseudonyms like Saint Absinthe,…
A combination EP and video, Quality! is something you wouldn’t play in your car unless you had a DVD player. “Jovian,” the first video, starts off like a late-’90s party-band video, but as the song goes on, it’s clear that it’s about the ways in which we ritualize and rationalize…
Originally based in Phoenix, Arizona, Miniature Tigers relocated to Brooklyn in the past couple of years. The band’s charmingly confessional debut full-length, Tell It to the Volcano, is full of catchy pop songs clearly influenced by post-“White Album” Beatles and the Beach Boys. On the outfit’s latest release, Fortress, the…
Fusing electronics with rock music is hardly the most original thing a band can do these days. But Sunset Curse does so with a complete immersion in both musical realms. The insistent beats are straight out of dance music, but the forceful rhythms and soaring guitar leads sound like these…
UMS Travelogue, Night Four 7.25.10, Baker District/South Broadway Getting a late start, I got to the TS Board Shop stage in time to catch The Conjugal Visits. Before the show, I saw Pete on the side of the truck, and asked him about the new band, and he said it…
UMS Travelogue, Night Thee 7.24.10 | Baker District/South Broadway The TS Board Shop stage was really an augmented version of the truck that Jeremy Gregory of Bands for Lands and The Construct uses to put on shows anywhere and everywhere. This year, someone did something right, and the sound, despite…
UMS Travelogue, Day Two 7.23.10 / Baker District, South Broadway Well away from the densest cluster of the festival was a place called Fentress Architects Materials Garden on 4th and Broadway, and when you walked through the glass doors, there was a large room with these odd glass-encased displays that…
UMS Travelogue, Night One 07.22.10 | Baker District, South Broadway The first day of the UMS festival, a Thursday, was what you might expect in terms of attendees — mostly other people in bands or those who are clued into the fact that there is plenty of great music coming…
Lords of Acid • My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult • Blownload 07.21.10 | Ogden Theatre These days, it would be easy to dismiss a band like Blownload, whose music sounds like so much of that late ’90s industrial metal and its ilk. But instead of trying to prove…
Ken Keifer and Karl Haikara have been writing dark and abrasive yet atmospheric music since 2006. With lyrics culled from Keifer’s extensive notes on ideas that occur to him on any given day, the average song from their band, the Silver Cord, delves into corners of the human psyche most…
A sample from the 1940 film Colorado, starring Roy Rogers, opens this album before it warps off into the distance, replaced by a song that sounds like it’s borrowed liberally from modern hip-hop and an oddly Frank Zappa-inspired psychedelic funk — like ’70s-era Kool & the Gang riding high on…
In an era where most of us are scrambling just to get by and otherwise conditioned by modern life to warp our psyches to fit into the dictates of commercial efficiency, the music of Pollination Population is a gentle reminder to derail the madness. At least for a little while…
In 1988, Belgian electronic artist Maurice Engelen released a song under the name Praga Khan called “Sit on Acid,” and it became something of an international dance club hit. Ultimately that aesthetic and sound became what is now known as Lords of Acid. The unvarnished sexual themes of Lords of…
Quintron and Miss Pussycat Mr. Pacman • Bongo Fury • Little Fyodor & Babushka Band 07.17.10 | Rhinoceropolis In case anyone was counting, it’s probably been at least two years since we last saw Mr. Pacman on stage, possibly three. So this rare Pacman appearance was a real treat, despite…
Founded in 2009, the Dead Weather had a bit of a leg up for a new band. But then all its members came together from other well-known projects: Jack White, who decided to take up the drums once again for this band, is famous, of course, for his stints in…
In 2007, Eric Peterson and Patrick Kelly started Roger, Roll with some mutual friends. At the act’s earliest shows, songs were split between atmospherically immersive space rock and lush, pastoral numbers of a meditative transcendence that could alternately be described as abstract Americana and dream pop. At the same time,…
The hypnotic harmonium drone of “In a Thousand Years” lets you know you’re in store for something not entirely familiar unless you’ve been traveling — literally or otherwise — in the musical circles of northern India, Pakistan, Iran, Turkey or Tuva. None of the instruments used on this album are…
Starting with the humble aim of putting out a seven-inch record, the Dead Weather realized at its initial recording sessions that its members had real chemistry together, and they ended up recording far more material than could fit on one record. Often referred to as a “supergroup,” the Dead Weather…
As Reverend Dead Eye, Brent Burkhart is a bit of an itinerant spirit these days, seeing as how he’s almost always on tour somewhere. But between tours, he’s made time for his first full band since making dark post-punk with the Bedraggled. Joining Burkhart in Broken Spirits (due at Old…
Titwrench 2010 Friday, July 9 – Sunday July 11, 2010 | Glob | Denver Over the course of one weekend, Titwrench 2010 brought together artists and people of all stripes from around the country and attracted a wider than usual swath of the local community. On Saturday afternoon, there were…
“Yeti in the City,” this album’s opener, sounds like its authors have been listening to a lot of dubstep, experimental electronic music and underground hip-hop while scoring a really weird episode of Monk. The production might be a bit slick for some, but there’s nothing wrong with technological competence, and…
