A long-winded Southern degenerate who can’t catch a commercial break, John William Davis should be a household name in Colorado by now. Instead, after years of toiling as an underground folk phenom and releasing the critically acclaimed Dreams of the Lost Tribe, Davis has decided to return to his native…
The Crystal Method was one of the few American dance acts to enjoy the electronica boom of the late ’90s. With a sound akin to the Chemical Brothers’, the Method’s huge breakbeats, samples and acid lines helped tracks like “Keep Hope Alive” and “Busy Child” become club, rave and radio…
With Lucky Strike Lanes and Coyote Ugly joining Beyond at the Denver Pavilions over the past six months, that space has regained its status as a party place. And the Pavilions’ star will shine even brighter when Spy Bar & Lounge — another project by Curt Sims, who brought us…
At the century’s turn, when he was transitioning from club sensation to full-fledged recording artist, German DJ and producer Timo Maas spent much of his free time collecting wine. Thanks to his peripatetic lifestyle, which took him to world capitals and exotic locales on a regular basis, he was able…
We’ve been trying to do a tour of cult-related sites,” enthuses Dan Snaith from a van packed with musical gear en route to Montreal. “We stopped off at the Branch Davidian complex in Waco last time we were in Texas. There are still all these foundations and all this burnt…
“What the hell you writing down there, my friend? You’re not one of those freaks writing down everything I do, are you?” Guilty as charged, Boss. As I scribbled furiously in my notebook last Saturday night at the Colorado Convention Center, it felt like Bruce Springsteen was boring a hole…
When Emma “Scout” Niblett slinks up to the mike and dribbles the refrain “Everybody needs someone to spell out their name” — as she does on Kidnapped by Neptune’s high point, “Pom Poms” — it’s hard to guess what in the hell she’s talking about. She might, of course, be…
Ryan Adams couldn’t be more full of himself if he was Mr. Creosote, as the Cold Roses packaging makes clear. These eighteen songs could fit on a single disc, yet they’ve been spread over two CDs to justify a gatefold design that mimics the classic ’70s double albums he measures…
Equal parts genius, anarchist and freak of nature, Robbie Fulks is the under-heralded king of “real” country music. Georgia Hard, Fulks’s latest effort, sports a mandolin-blessed tribute to highway escapism (“Where There’s a Road”) along with instant-classic cheater songs such as “Doin’ Right (For All the Wrong Reasons)” and the…
Phil Cunningham, rookie guitarist for New Order, had this to say about working with his childhood heroes on Waiting for the Sirens’ Call: “Sometimes they reject stuff because it sounds ‘too New Order-y.'” If that were truly the case, Sirens’ Call would be nine minutes long. And those entire nine…
What to make of the Dead Kennedys’ “Too Drunk to Fuck” done bossa-nova style with vocals by Camille, a uni-monikered songbird who twitters like a tipsy socialite? Is this concept, stretched to album length by the production team of Marc Collins and Oliver Libaus, a silly gimmick? A wry bit…
So, who, exactly, is Mike Jones? That’s a great question. Here’s what we’ve learned so far: The nearly ubiquitous Houston-based rapper apparently lives in a world of Escalades with wood-grain interiors and diamond grilles. He has a strained, nasal drawl, which he throws against both the glitzy synth lines of…
Considering the mob of generic singer-songwriters currently operating in these parts, a performer can stand out only if she or he has something to offer beyond an excess of sensitivity. Fortunately, Rogers does. Her voice is flavored by a Dallas upbringing, and that hint of twang, along with a pleasantly…
For the Holiday’s self-titled debut starts with a surge of keyboards and chiming bells that sounds positively, well, holiday-like. And the disc just gets more literal from there: “On the Bright Side” waxes luminously about candles and sunlit skies, while “Ostinato” employs the same drowsy, mesmerizing arpeggio for nearly its…
At this point, Keane falls short of fascinating, but bandmates Tom Chaplin, Richard Hughes and Tim Rice-Oxley could be headed in the right direction. After all, Radiohead, one of the group’s principal role models, wasn’t considered terribly innovative when it emerged during the first half of the ’90s, but that…
The human voice may have the most sonically complex timbre known to man, but the Bay Area’s Sound Tribe Sector 9 is hell-bent on proving that man-made instruments can be just as compelling. Actually, while the voices of San Francisco’s Audio Angel and Athens’s Kozmos do show up on Artifact,…
Way back in 2002, acts from the chilly countries of Scandinavia were hot, hot, hot in the States, and the (International) Noise Conspiracy seemed poised to capitalize. The Swedish five-piece, led by Lars Strmberg and Dennis Lyxzén, beat many of its competitors to U.S. stores with strong releases such as…
Swedes with black leather jackets and fake English accents… Whatever, dude. While a quick glance at Mando Diao might not leave a very glowing first impression, full immersion in Hurricane Bar, its sophomore full-length, will more than convince anyone of the quartet’s eruptive punch and songwriting virtuosity. Amid a prickly…
Stoned, stumped and stoked: just some of the feelings you can expect when you hear Open Hand. Bringing together elements of stoner and prog metal, acid biker rock, hardcore and punk, these rockers without borders leave you vainly groping for the right label. On the band’s sophomore Trustkill release, You…
Neither post-punk nor garage rock, the Ponys’ sound gallops somewhere in between. But instead of half-assed hybrid, the Chicago foursome’s new disc, Celebration Castle, comes across as a smooth synthesis of icy echoes and blood-boiling flux. Last year’s Laced With Romance was exactly that. But Castle goes even further, steeping…
When Tanner Olson moved to Denver from Sioux Falls, South Dakota, he brought with him quite a pedigree. As guitarist for the progressive hardcore outfits the Spirit of Versailles and Examination of the…, he’d already had a taste of forging noises both experimental and bludgeoning. But with his new band,…
When DB moved to the Big Apple in 1989, the Brit transplant essentially brought underground-dance and rave culture with him. As co-founder of the infamous NASA parties (some of the first rave parties on American soil), DB established himself as a trailblazer in the scene by being among the first…
