Critic's Notebook

In August, SubRosa released For This We Fought the Battle of Ages, one of the most fascinating rock albums of the year.

When Flux Capacitor opened the first week of December 2014, no one thought it would last more than three months. But the DIY venue has become a staple of the Colorado Springs music scene, with a national reputation for quality, wide-ranging shows and good times. The diversity of musical styles…

“Protest songs in response to military aggression, Protest songs to try and stop the soldier’s gun, But the battle raged on.” Against Me! – “White People for Peace” From the onset of human endeavor, people have been at war. We as a race have done terrible things to each other…

The Fray released its first greatest hits album, Through the Years, on November 4, 2016. Often a greatest hits album signifies a band either in need of a late-career shot in the arm or a way to mark a milestone in the group’s career. For the Fray, it seems more of a celebration of how far the group has come, and the compilation includes three new songs. “Throughout the career at certain points we kind of had our head down in the game focusing on one record or one song or one tour or whatever,” says drummer Ben Wysocki. “This is the first time we’ve been able to step back and look at the whole arc of what we’ve done and what the bands have provided to us, and it’s been really amazing.”

Beloved Denver spot My Brother’s Bar was a hangout for the Beats, including Neal Cassady, who left an outstanding bar tab.

Mannequin Pussy’s latest album, Romantic, was the product of conversations the band was having about the nature of romance — and the parallels between the modern era and the tumultuous Romantic era of the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

Rüfüs Du Sol has a love affair with Colorado. In the past five months, the band has played three venues and four shows in the Centennial State — including the two-night run last weekend at the Gothic Theatre. Besides frequenting Colorado to perform, the band has been busy this year. Since the release of the group’s second album, Bloom, the band has gained momentum: performances at festivals such as Coachella and Lollapalooza, supporting for Odesza at Red Rocks, and now a North American tour in which “sold out” accompanies nearly every stop listed. It’s surprising that Rüfüs have time to even eat.

An outline of the present state of affairs concerning the Colorado Symphony, including its financial status, labor relations, and plans to move to a new concert hall.

By now, we’ve all said our long goodbyes to summer and festival season. Red Rocks will reopen for a couple of icy shows this winter, but outdoor venues have begun hibernation. Now’s the time to make your indoor entertainment plans for the months ahead. Though its concerts might not make our usual lists of the hottest shows of a given week, we’re spotlighting this season of the Colorado Symphony Orchestra, which hosts a variety of events for different ages and tastes, and often upend our ideas of a traditional classical concert. Below are eight reasons to check out Denver’s symphony this year.

They say the personal is political, and the political can be popular music. There’s a long history of mainstream music expressing discontent with government and society. But when we step away from our Facebook soapboxes to join a march, “Fortunate Son” isn’t exactly the most seamless rallying cry for the…

Paint it black, indeed. Black Box, the new tenant of the music venue at 314 East 13th Avenue, has painted over the colorful mural of Jerry Garcia that’s glowered from the side of the building since 2012. With fresh black paint, the venue bids a final “fare thee well” to its…

This weekend, Coloradans will celebrate the legacy of Walt Conley, Denver’s “grandfather of folk music,” at Waltfest, which takes place at Sheabeen Irish Pub, an unassuming Aurora bar that’s been hosting the event for the past thirteen years. But like the venue and Waltfest itself, Conley — and his role in developing the robust Colorado music scene we know today — might be under your radar.

Denver’s Soiled Dove Underground started as a dueling-piano bar.

Maria “Masha” Alyokhina and Alexandra “Sasha” Bogino, members of Pussy Riot, brought great humor, poise and warmth to the conversation and Q&A held at the Oriental Theater last night, Monday, November 14, 2016. Hosts Ru Johnson and Bree Davies (former and current Westword contributors) facilitated a lively and engaging presentation.

Throughout the election cycle, I hungered for this sort of experience of validation in the political realm. Exhausted after a long day, I’ve thought, I’m so tired I just want to watch Samantha Bee talk shit about Donald Trump.

Over the past two decades, Italiano and his wife, Pam, have hosted more than ninety nationally and internationally touring rock acts at FashioNation, a Denver clothing and shoe boutique that they’ve co-owned and run together since 1987.

When Lukas Graham released the single “7 Years” in the summer of 2015, it expected the song would hit big only among northern European audiences, the band’s main supporters. But by fall, the song had gone viral and made the Danish band international pop stars.

The memorial event for musician Tyler Marchant Despres, who died on November 1, 2016, was held Saturday afternoon at Larimer Lounge. It began with speakers who talked about Despres’s life and his impact on them and the world around him. Speakers included relatives and friends like Jonathan Bitz, who booked the Meadowlark during Despres’s tenure co-running the open-mic night with Maria Kohler and others. That open-mic night fostered a section of Denver’s underground music scene that allowed for a wide spectrum of musicians to have an accepting place to try out new material and develop their art.

As music journalists, we often turn to songs for catharsis and for direction, so we compiled a list of songs that we hope readers might find useful in these times. You’ll find punk, hip-hop, soul, pop and more represented in these songs. Some of them are overtly political, some are not. The music itself can cause discomfort, but if speaking truth to power requires driving bass lines and the itch to get out of our seats, and if urgent lyrics and catchy melodies can push us forward into progress and peace…well, then crank it up.

Bob Dylan said of Leonard Cohen, who passed away yesterday, November 10, 2016, at the age of 82, is “very much a descendant of Irving Berlin,” in that both are “incredibly crafty. Leonard particularly uses chord progressions that seem classical in shape. He is a much more savvy musician than you’d think.” The many, many covers of Cohen songs, by artists both expected and unorthodox, prove his latter observations to be true. But like Dylan’s body of work, Cohen’s compositions have been transformed in the hands of other people, and functioned as malleable source material ripe for interpretation and illumination.

The masterful jazz guitarist Joshua Breakstone thinks the ultimate thing in jazz isn’t how fast you play or how great a guitar player you are. Rather, it’s how well know your instrument.

Denver is brimming with bands taking it to the next level, and November 2016 is particularly bountiful with new album releases. Here are fifteen of the noteworthy albums and EPs being released by Colorado artists this month. Let us know what else should be on our radar.