Music

What are you doing this weekend? If you’re a music fan, I’m guessing you’ll be at Red Rocks for Monolith. And if you’re not planning on heading up there, you should: This year’s lineup is simply murderous. There are so many killer acts playing, I’m getting a migraine just trying…

A lot of former emo-turned-indie-rock kids take a bad turn when they get bored with the artistic limitations of punk rock’s bastard child. Fortunately, Young Coyotes (due at the Bluebird Theater on Friday, September 12) didn’t slide into slackardly alt-country or half-assed neo-classic rock. Rather, these guys wisely chose to…

Heart Gone Sober, Jason Vigil’s last album (released in 2006), was so gosh-darn earnest that anyone who’s even mildly cynical probably recoiled like a vampire in the sunlight at the sound of it. Misanthropes should know, then, that Sometimes Always, the subject of a Saturday, September 13, CD-release party at…

On this latest To Be Eaten release, the band proves once again that it can play razor-precise riffs and rhythms while infusing each song with a level of nuance and atmosphere not often heard in anything this heavy. The guitar and rhythms interlock for a savage, almost stridently brutal sound,…

For the bulk of their band’s career, the members of DeVotchKa have been viewed as curious outsiders because of their unorthodox instrumentation and their deliberate, unlikely melding of disparate styles. In searching for ways to describe the act’s unique, rapturous sound, ambitious music scribes across the country have crafted effusive…

Divine inspiration brought the Blind Boys of Alabama together in 1939 at the Alabama Institute for the Negro Blind, a school that taught blind youth of the beleaguered South Braille and trained them for rudimentary careers making broom handles and chair bottoms. Leader Jimmy Carter is the sole remnant of…

The backlash against the sort of angsty emo that’s dominated the modern-rock landscape in recent years is in full swing, and Danger Radio’s definitely dialed to the current wavelength. Although the band, joined on this date by Farewell, Brighten and Red Care Wire, hails from Everett, Washington, in the middle…

There’s no right way to make a splash in the world of music, and Portland’s Slants definitely didn’t take the route one would expect of an electroclash-glittered post-punk band. Touring the U.S. on the strength of its draw at anime conventions, the band has reached a broad fan base most…

With its fusing of the best of analog and early digital synth-based music with a modern aesthetic, Baltimore’s Future Islands might seem like a contemporary version of new wave to an uninformed listener. Really, though, the act is a closer musical cousin to Architecture and Mortality and Dazzle Ships-era Orchestral…

Alicia Keys is the musical equivalent of a five-tool player in baseball: She excels at singing, writing, playing, producing and performing in concert — and as a bonus, she’s the rare diva who’s blessed with both a photogenic exterior and a brain that can be described as “fully functioning.” No…

This is exactly the record Metallica needed to make in 2008. Real metal’s back, and sure, younger bands have rage and technical aptitude on their side, but Metallica’s riffs can level skyscrapers. Opening trilogy “That Was Just Your Life,” “The End of the Line” and “Broken, Beat & Scarred” combines…

When fans think of 16 Horsepower founder David Eugene Edwards, the singer-songwriter behind Wovenhand, “accessibility” isn’t the first word that leaps to mind. Nonetheless, Ten Stones comes across as quite user-friendly — by his standards, at least. Edwards’s key collaborator appears to be Norway’s Emil Nikolaisen, whose brawny guitar helps…

In 1965, after attending college in Seattle, a 22-year-old Larry Coryell headed to New York. He stopped in Denver first, though, where he heard the organ trio was all the rage. As he made his away around Five Points jazz clubs asking to sit in, he met drummer Buddy Miles…

Last year, Radiohead released In Rainbows on its website using a pay-what-you-wish model. A few months later, Nine Inch Nails released Ghosts I-IV employing a similar scheme, only with more business savvy: There was a tiered scale with prices ranging from free (low-quality digital audio files) to $300 (which included…

Richie Hawtin may not be human. His most common alias, Plastikman, certainly seems to imply there’s something inorganic at his core. He looks human enough, but the music he makes moves, pulses and breathes with such an alien, biomechanical grace and precision, it’s hard to believe it’s the work of…

SOUND BITES Adele, 19 (Columbia). Obviously, Adele has the pipes to jump the queue and the comparisons among the crowded pack of Brit neo-soul fillies. But most impressive on this stunningly minimalistic debut is her writing, which suggests a career that may avoid self-destruction or caving in to the image…

Denver’s DeVotchKa headlines Saturday night. Monolith Festival, owners of perhaps the most aflame lineup of bands in 2008, starts Saturday at Red Rocks, and Backbeat will cover it end to end – with reviews, photos, and all the beer-fueled musings fit to print. Check back here on Saturday and Sunday…

Monolith is this weekend, as you’re undoubtedly already aware. And while there’s a palpable sense of excitement surrounding this year’s edition, there’s also an underlying sense of dread attached to the proceedings for the portly, woefully out of shape, chain-smoking acolytes among us, spurred by the thought of trudging up…

Foo Fighters, with Year Long Disaster September 8, 2008 Red Rocks Earlier this summer, in a review of KTCL’s Big Gig, I confessed to having underrated the Offspring simply because the band’s been so damned consistent and reliable for so long. Ditto that for the Foo Fighters. In my preview…

The younger Dave Grohl. Prior to seeing (and being knocked out by) the Foo Fighters during their September 8 Red Rocks show, I’d only seen the band once: back in 1995, during its first-ever Denver appearance. It’d only been a year or so since the suicide of Grohl’s old boss,…

Mourning Sickness Mourning Sickness and The Silver Cord Saturday, September 6th, 2008 Larimer Lounge, Denver Better Than: Morning sickness, or so I would imagine. Mourning Sickness was a three-piece act with the usual rock arrangement of drummer, guitarist and bassist. But the music this trio played was far from “usual.”…