At first blush, Tim Rutili’s five-song EP about disaster, grace, dumb luck and fear of machinery might seem like a cynical prayer for peacenik John Lennon. Consider the hollow, resonating piano of the disc’s opener, “Electric Fence,” and its narrator’s vocal resemblance to the Fab Four’s often acid-tongued martyr: “Jesus…
Christian missionaries have long believed that of the many requirements that must be met on the road to salvation, converting the savage masses is pretty high on the list. Slim Cessna’s Auto Club — whose lyrical preoccupation with the Good Book can be viewed as either a stern insistence on…
Apoptygma Berzerk, Tuesday, September 19, at the Gothic Theatre, with VNV Nation and Noxious Emotion, is proof that Norway has a sinister side thats barely hinted at in all that Viking lore. Bearing a moniker that translates to dead man moving,: the abrasive, beat-heavy industrial band springs from the prolific…
Although theyve played only a handful of gigs to date, the Cool-Rays, Saturday, September 16, at Seven South, with the Down-N-Outs, have nearly perfected a hard-rockin guitar-driven sound thats chock-full of distortion, yet pleasant in a pop sort of way. With influences that include the Ramones, the Kinks, Iggy and…
Those performers who toiled in vaudeville and burlesque circles after the turn of the century knew you had to have a gimmick — hence the introduction of battery-operated lingerie and fetishism to striptease. Around the World in 80 Girls, Saturday, September 16, at the Gothic Theatre, continues the tradition by…
It’s 3 o’clock in the afternoon. Isaac Brock, lead singer, guitarist and lyricist for Modest Mouse, wakes and wipes the sleep syrup from his eyes for the second time today. After a morning spent drinking beer and a mid-afternoon nap, Brock has awakened to discover he has a strange, unattributable…
The Haywoods have one obvious connection to the Front Range music scene: Their debut release, Drinkin’ Cryin’ & Moanin’, appears on Wormtone Records, the Denver label run by rockabilly impresarios (and husband-and-wife team) Kurt and Karen Ohlen. But for Haywoods frontman Chad Silva, the connection to Colorado goes far beyond…
Okay, it may be more than a leeetle hard for most people to believe that the forthcoming album by the Hate Fuck Trio represents a new level of maturity for its members. After all, their latest is called Good Songs to Fuck To, even though, as singer/guitarist/provocateur Sam DeStefano concedes,…
The secret is out. After two years without an American record label to call its own, 16 Horsepower is releasing Secret South on the New York-based major-minor Razor & Tie on Tuesday. Though the release has been circulating and selling well in Europe since April — shortly after David Eugene…
Just how does a one-man musical show expect to entertain an audience at the acoustically sensitive Red Rocks Amphitheatre? Moby will answer that question when he performs at the historic venue September 8 with Rabbit in the Moon. The composer-slash-DJ (né Richard Hall) will have backup vocal help as he…
You have only one night — Thursday, September 7, at the Boulder Theater — to absorb The Theory of Everything. The evening of improvisational music mates five of Boulders favorite genre-jamming sons: Kyle Hollingsworth (pictured) and Michael Kang of the String Cheese Incident; soon-to-be-departed Leftover Salmon bassist Tye North; Tony…
You might want to call ahead before lugging your gear down to the 13th Street Workshop, Monday nights at Tulagi in Boulder, or face the possibility of lugging it right back home untouched. Since its inception earlier in the year, the weekly open-stage event has maintained a buzz that Tommy…
Before there was Britney, before Christina, Denver-based pop singer Ciria Arellano was poised for teen stardom. She had a chance to join the ranks of the cute little Mousketeers on the new Mickey Mouse Club — a program that has, in the past several years, served as a kind of…
The business of making music and all that it entails — touring, finding a decent record label that you can trust, keeping your band together and somewhat sane — can be backbreaking work. Just ask John Hulett, singer/guitarist for the East Bay punk act Automatic 7. When Hulett was only…
In three weeks, the Black Heart Procession finishes the solo leg of its U.S. tour and hooks up with Man or Astro-Man? for a series of dates in the Northwest and along the East Coast. Man or Astro-Man?, as you may be aware, plays manic, intergalactic surf music, Dick-Dale-on-crank instrumentals…
The sometimes-shlong-bearing Kevin Bacon (remember Wild Things?) really screwed up cocktail hour for a nation of stoned cinemaphiles and desperate party hosts with his recent appearance in the inexplicably stinky flick Hollow Man. Starring alongside an invisible person kind of complicates the playing of “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon.” Think…
Barnyard blues for ballin. Thats what you might call the one-man mutated backcountry stomp offered by Bob Log III, who performs Friday, September 1, at the Ogden Theatre with Maraca-5-0 and Frank Hauser Jr. Stuck somewhere between Captain Beefhearts codpiece and the front-porch funk of Mississippi Fred McDowell, the Tucson-based…
Siúcra, Thursday, August 31, at Trilogy in Boulder, is an act with a deceiving handle. Siúcra is an Irish word meaning sugar,: and while this band has certainly mastered Irish music, the sound it creates is anything but sweet. True, the threesome (Beth Leachman on vocals and bodhran, Shannon Heaton…
Documentary filmmakers view rock and roll as an inexhaustible well of material, and their efforts to chronicle important musicians have resulted in some mighty fine cinema, including Dont Look Back (1967), which managed to show a young Bob Dylan as both a genius and a brat, and Gimme Shelter (1970),…
Maybe it’s his rubber-tight britches — pants so snug they’d make the Michelin Man squirm. Or maybe it’s his countrypolitan image and those knock-kneed maneuvers he’s made famous — Presleyan gyrations that make the ladies smile and the men snicker. Whatever the reason, despite his place as a trailblazer in…
In the rock-and-roll food chain, music producers get more grief than groupies. From tantrum-throwing prodigy Phil Spector and classical innovator George Martin to indie upstart Steve Albini and funkadelic mixmaster DJ Muggs, even the biggest hitmakers are eclipsed by the very artists they help launch to fame and fortune. There…
A couple of weeks after Melissa Ferrick won a Boston Music Award for Outstanding Female Singer/ Songwriter in April, she wrote about it in her online journal. But instead of waxing poetic on the magic of her moment — when her name was announced, maybe, or how she felt when…
