Music

Ray LaMontagne Macky Auditorium Monday, October 27, 2008 Better than: than the last time I saw him. A lot better. Nearly four years ago I saw Ray LaMontagne for the first time at New York City’s Bowery Ballroom. His impressive debut, Trouble, had been gaining a lot of traction and…

Diplo, Abe Vigoda, Telepathe and Boy 8-Bit Monday, October 27, 2008 Cervantes’ Masterpiece Ballroom Better Than: You’d expect for a Monday night show. Things were pretty grim when I first got to Cervantes’, but as the night wore on, a sizable crowd eventually showed up. For the first hour and…

Rudy Ray Moore. When word broke this past week about the death of Rudy Ray Moore at age 81, far too many people probably responded with the question, “Rudy who?” if they reacted at all. But for fans of ribald comedy, as well as anyone interested in the roots of…

Wovenhand Saturday, October 25, 2008 Mercury Café Better than: Most shows I’ve seen in the last decade. After Wovenhand’s show, there was a guy sitting on a chair near the stage. His head was in his hands and when a girl asked if him he was all right, he looked…

Common’s new album drops in December — and he’s already talking about the next one. LOCALS ONLY Hip-hop group On Point, which now consists of Flawless and Fo-Chief, formed back in 2004, but it really didn’t get noticed locally until when they released their album, D-Town Extravaganza, last year. Although…

Wendi Wikstrand, aka Grandma Dynamite Earlier this morning, I was sitting in a folding chair inside the Reflection Pavilion at Crown Hill Cemetery, waiting for the memorial service to begin for my friend Wendi Wikstrand, who passed away on Sunday, when I heard a guy seated behind me say, “Ok,…

See the slide show here. Sasha October 23, 2008 Beta Better than: His most recent mix disc, Involver 2, led me to think it might be Sasha was an early favorite of mine, but over the years my tastes have changed. I’ve come to prefer more primal, groove-oriented and generally…

Kings of Leon Thursday, October 23, 2008 Fillmore Auditorium Photos by Chad Fahnestock Better than: Fiery sex. Well, almost. Kings of Leon had already plowed through seven songs before frontman Caleb Followill told the few thousand fans packed in the Fillmore that the dry air was really getting to him…

It came in so fast that I barely remember it,” says Murray Lightburn, recounting the origins of the title track from his band’s newest album, Missiles. “I remember I was downstairs in the studio cleaning up, and suddenly I heard this tune.” As he continues, Lightburn — frontman and auteur…

I vaguely recall watching the first Real World episode, which was filmed in New York. That was in 1992, and the characters, well, it’s all pretty foggy now, but I do remember that they lived in a sweet loft, which probably ran $20,000 a month back then. In almost every…

Has the Denver music scene peaked, or are we in a temporary lull? I’ve been wrestling with this question for several weeks. Because while I’ve been to some decent shows over the past month, that’s just it: They were merely decent, not life-changing, as so many shows have seemed over…

Formed in early 2005, My Sister Outlaw began life as the Sirens but played only one show under that name before switching to its current moniker after former Catatonic Lydia drummer Sophia Throop came on board. The group is one of the few all-female bands in Denver. But rather than…

Crystal Antlers, EP (Touch and Go). These Long Beachers locate the art in hardcore. Their music is as wild and thrashy as anything that’s ever come out of a garage, but tracks such as “Until the Sun Dies (Part 2)” and “Vexation” feel epic, unbound, with melodramatic organ and screeching…

Damian Lazarus’s free Lazpod podcast reveals him to be more than just another DJ. Instead of a quick mix of whatever records he’s flogging in the clubs that month, each entry in the series uncovers a deep and omnivorous love of all music — from vintage soul and retro electro…

Canada’s Arts & Crafts imprint is dominated by acts that operate on the margins of rock rather than the dead center. That makes the Stills the white sheep of the family. On Oceans Will Rise, their latest recording, singer/guitarist Tim Fletcher and his crew present their songs in a very…

Aaron Parks was precocious as a youngster. At age fifteen, he was already working on a triple major in math, computer science and music at the University of Washington. He says he never really thought about a career in music until the music began playing him. By the time he…

MSTRKRFT men Jesse F. Keeler and Al-P, appearing with Felix Cartal and LA Riots, are regularly accused of borrowing from their dance-tastic predecessors rather than taking the genre’s sound to new places — and based on the sonic familiarity of their debut long-player, 2006’s The Looks, this argument has some…