Boulder has long been known for spawning talented musical acts — and then inspiring them to move on to more welcoming climates. Maybe Chairlift didn’t exactly flee the People’s Republic seeking musical asylum, but it did relocate to Brooklyn. To call the act indie rock or synth pop is to…
Although singer Dallas Taylor is no heathen, Maylene and the Sons of Disaster, his latest band (which shares this bill with Modern Life Is War and Paulson), represents a rather unholy enterprise, and thank God for that. Taylor once pledged allegiance to Underoath, a Christian metal-core act with a sizable…
Over the past five years, renowned U.K. DJ Danny Howells has built a sterling reputation on the strength of his live sets and mix CDs — which straddle the line between deep underground cuts and more accessible tracks — and a series of stellar productions under the moniker Science Dept…
You’ve heard of one-man bands — but one-man glam is something else entirely. On The Moonstation House Band, released earlier this year on the Secretly Canadian label, and a new EP built around the Moonstation single “Nothin’ No,” Vandervelde, who’s based in Chicago, nods to the glitteriest rock of the…
If Richard Simmons swallowed a fistful of hipster pills and started sweating to the indies, Gravy Train!!!! would likely be playing in the background. The Oakland-based foursome has been dishing out its rambunctious electro-kitsch sex pop and whipping crowds into frenzies for more than five years. All the Sweet Stuff,…
This may seem a bit strange, but one of the fondest memories I have of my dad is the time we went to Shotgun Willie’s (490 South Colorado Boulevard) together. I was home from college for the holidays, and we decided to head to the strip club for happy hour…
One of the most amusing trends in the last few years has been the merging of Southern rock and so-called stoner rock. As if we needed the unholy union of Sleep and Molly Hatchet. And yet someone was bound to make it work without sounding like a pack of rednecks…
Each clip is between 20-30 seconds in length Rock Machine Gun Blues The Omens Rose Hill Drive The Swayback Tarmints…
Slide Show Crash Orchid, Go Patriot, The Dirty Novels June 29, 2007 3 Kings Tavern Better than: Missing out on Go Patriot would have been. Friday night at 3 Kings tavern brought a more or less random mix of bands and music fans out. The night started off with Crash…
Slide Show The Heyday with Tickle Me Pink, The Autobiography and The Simple Discussion June 30, 2007 The Marquis Theater Better than: Waiting to see The Heyday until it starts filling arenas. I have seen the future, and it is The Heyday. Hyperbole? Maybe, but it’s hard to overestimate a…
Buzz Bomber & the M-80s Cricket on the Hill Saturday, June 30 Slide Show…
Slide Show The Ideal Fathers, The Classic Breakdown, Racecar God and Latch June 27, 2007 Larimer Lounge Better than: Staying home on a Wednesday night. Wednesday is not an ideal night for four largely unknown local bands to play a show. With no national draw and no big-name Denver act…
In a profile from Westword’s June 28 edition, Mavis Staples speaks her mind in a notably feisty manner — and in the following Q&A, which encompasses the entire text of the interview that formed the basis of the article, her undimmed passion comes through even more clearly. Topics include her…
All right, so the biggest thing I learned on my summer vacation — er, I mean, at the Westword Music Showcase, which, though always a trip, is far from a retreat for me — is that it’s truly impossible to categorize all the disparate factions of the local scene. While…
Mavis Staples may be on the cusp of her 68th birthday, but the righteous fire that distinguished so many of her rich, bottomless vocals during an extraordinary fifty-year-plus career continues to burn brightly. When asked why the songs of struggle that make up We’ll Never Turn Back, her moving new…
Jonathan Meiburg is up early. Not because it’s the first day of a tour and his band, Shearwater, still needs to practice before leaving — though that’s part of it. Mostly it’s because he wants to make sure all the talking he’ll have to do for this interview won’t drain…
In case you’ve ever wondered how “American” you really are, here’s a quiz to help find the answer. 1. Given the chance to actually wear the American flag, you would… a) Turn it into a sexy leather halter top to accentuate your barely legal curves, like Britney Spears did on…
Ryan Adams was needled throughout 2005 for releasing three CDs’ worth of songs without seeming to consider whether all of the tunes met his standards. In interviews, Adams shrugged off such criticism, but lo and behold, he waited over eighteen months — an eternity for him — to release Easy…
Like a Beyoncé album, Queens of the Stone Age records typically have two awesome tracks and are otherwise filled out by mediocre ones. The act’s latest effort, Era Vulgaris, is no different. Lead single “Sick, Sick, Sick” is a simple power-guitar anthem that speeds along during the verses, then slows…
Opening with the bouncy, infectious “Ramona, Just the Other Day,” These Record Highs finds Breezy Porticos in the familiar mode of slipping smart, emotionally mature observations into finely crafted pop masterpieces. Pop music doesn’t need to be dumb or rife with cliches to be enjoyable, something Breezy Porticos proves in…
Listeners definitely shouldn’t judge this CD by its cover, or its surface sonics. Despite their fondness for ghoulish get-ups and extreme-metal accoutrements, the members of Relevent are old-school moralists; in Display’s liner notes, vocalist Angel begins by thanking “God and Jesus Christ.” It’s no surprise, then, that the material here…
Wild Billy Childish and the Musicians of the British Empire, Punk Rock at the British Legion Hall (Damaged Goods). Quintessential eccentric British musician, writer, painter and poet Billy Childish broke up his scintillating Buff Medways in favor of this outfit featuring his wife, Nurse Julie, on bass. Fact is, the…
