Anyone familiar with electronic music of the ’90s and underground hip-hop will hear shades of Sole, Massive Attack, post-ambient Aphex Twin and Dead Cities-era Future Sound of London on this intriguingly eclectic release. If Martin Scorsese decided to remake After Hours, “Makin’ Love Free” would be the ideal song for…

At first glance, Jamey Johnson looks like someone who just walked out of the outlaw movement. That’s probably because he spent the better part of a decade in the Marines after dropping out of college. Unlike the “outlaws,” though, Johnson moved to Nashville to pursue the beloved country music of…

If ever there were an indie-rock Cinderella story, MGMT could be cast in the lead role. Starting out as The Management when Ben Goldwasser and Andrew VanWyngarden were in their first year at Wesleyan University, this project had already been around for a few years by the time it toured…

Only a handful of people who have been part of the circuit of underground-rock shows in Denver since the early part of last decade remember Façade. Part dream pop and part jazz-inflected rock, the band put out one album before fading into the background in 2002. Its talented guitarist, Joe…

La Roux • boyhollow 06.05.10 | Ogden Theater Boyhollow opened this show, and his DJ set was a nice weaving together of modern, house music and tastefully chosen pop and rock songs to match the pace being set at that given moment. Kind of a more original take on Big…

For over five years, Clinging to the Trees of a Forest Fire has been cultivating a sound that combines the darkness and brutality of grindcore and death metal, resulting in a seething cauldron of outrage and tortured despair. Amid the often atonal clangor and pummeling rhythms, vocalist Ethan McCarthy’s feral…

Songs in Alphabetical Order is a bit of a departure for Will Baumgartner, former Action Figure 8 frontman and new-wave affiliate. Beginning with a bossa nova rhythm and an Americana-meets-early-R.E.M.-jangle-rock sound, Baumgartner steers clear of the funk and jazz of his earlier endeavors on this short EP, instead favoring a…

The Getdown! didn’t channel the ghost of James Brown so much as the would-be love child of frayed garage-rock psychopaths the Sonics and the arch post-punk of the Blackouts. But while superficially this band’s music could be lumped in with garage rock, it goes further into droning atmospheres with its…

Ideal Fathers • Vicious Women • Fugitive Kind 05.28.10 | The Wasteland Although the Fugitive Kind from San Francisco may be the same band that former Blatz guitarist Robert Eggplant helped start, the female-fronted five-piece sounded like a more brutal Dead Kennedys fronted by a lead singer with the unfettered…

This retrospective by the Warlock Pinchers, the most deservedly notorious of Denver bands, compiles recordings from the earliest cassette-only releases, seven-inches, demos, rehearsals and an unreleased collaboration with the Butthole Surfers on a devilish cover of “Forever Your Girl,” by Paula Abdul. Clearly, these recordings are, at best, lo-fi. But…

The Lighthouse and the Whaler took direct inspiration for its name — as well as the guiding principle for its approach to making music — from the chapter in Moby-Dick in which the lighthouse is a symbol for doing what one should be doing, a signifier of fate. The band…

Appearances to the contrary, “Colleen,” from the Heavy’s debut album, 2007’s Great Vengeance and Furious Fire, doesn’t feature the late Curtis Mayfield circa 1972 or his band at the time. That’s Kelvin Swaby singing, and along with the rest of the band, he’s managed to make soulful rock and roll…

The Horace Van Vaughn’s atmospheric sketches sound like someone in the band spent some time listening to Pink Floyd’s more obscure soundtrack work while taking a break from life and from writing more conventionally accessible music. The band’s latest opus, “The Flame” (in D Major, no less), is proof that…

Lil Slugger • Hot White • Good Old Fashioned Sinners 05.22.10 | Rhinoceropolis Evidently, this was some sort of reunion show for openers Good Old Fashioned Sinners, or perhaps just a coming out of hibernation party. The foursome — looking like they could’ve been in Alice Bowie — launched to…

After the sound of crickets ends at the beginning of the opening track, “Delirium Heights,” Glass Hits dives into a savage bit of noise rock that sounds like it was recorded right at the line of pegging the board. Fans of Drive Like Jehu and the VSS will appreciate the…

Isaiah “Ikey” Owens is the mad-genius keyboard player for the Mars Volta, but before that, he played with Sublime and the Long Beach Dub Allstars. On stage, Owens looks like a supernatural agency is at work, guiding his hands and body in a frantic display of instrumental wizardry. In his…

With a name that refers to an old Jackie Chan movie rather than a phrase from the dictionary of Winston Smith’s Oceania, Nice Nice hails from Olympia, Washington, and offers up music that is as difficult to pin down as it is to guess what kind of music a band…

What could be more ridiculous than a tribute band, really? Maybe a tribute band for the hilariously absurd, entirely fictional, animated-series metal outfit Dethklok from the popular Metalocalypse program on the Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim segment. Even deeper into that hole is the fact that an actual band tours as…

Bongo Fury • Night of Ultraviolence • Aenka • Hunter Dragon 05.14.10 | Glob Jason Isaacs is probably better known for his stints in Bio Bitch and Friends Forever, but for this show, he performed as Night of Ultraviolence, a project that’s been going on for at least a couple…

Often brutally confessional, this latest release from David McGhee features some of the songs he used to perform before he disappeared for a few years. And if they’re any indication, McGhee must have been processing more than his fair share of personal demons, crippling loss, intense confusion and social rejection…

If melodic, anthemic pop music is a crime, then these guys are guilty as charged. Hailing from Tallahassee, Florida, Look Mexico signed to Suburban Home Records last spring on the strength of its early releases. Like Sunny Day Real Estate without the dark side, Look Mexico resembles a pop-punk band…