Music

Huh. What do you know? Looks like this may truly be the season to be jolly after all. Just received word that one of my all-time favorite hometown bands is getting back together. Sure, it’s just for a few nights, but, hey, I’ll take whatever I can get…

Two years ago, Seattle singer-songwriter David Bazan retired the Pedro the Lion moniker and embarked on a solo career under his own name. Practically speaking, the switch wasn’t that significant. For a decade, he was Pedro the Lion, writing all the indie-rock outfit’s material, recording and touring with an ever-mutating…

More than two years have passed since Team Sleep last toured, and it’s likely that just as much time will go by before the group ventures into venues again following its current jaunt. After all, says Chino Moreno, the Deftones frontman who captains the Team, “We’re not putting out a…

The new one from Hot Chip doesn’t hit stores until next year, but thankfully, the London act is throwing its fans a bone. Put that secondary e-mail address to good use and sign up for the band’s mailing list at its MySpace page (www.myspace.com/hotchip). In return, the Chip will reward…

Writing in 5280, Pulitzer Prize winner J.R. Moehringer declared that singer-songwriter Jeff Finlin, who headlines at Lannie’s Clocktower Cabaret on Friday, November 30, “might be one of the finest American troubadours since Bob Dylan.” That’s a bold statement, which Moehringer backs up with references to fans such as Bruce Springsteen…

The music of Brett Johnson is wholly and joyously electronic. There’s never a question of whether the player is live on his records or mixes; the tonalities are purely electronic. While this might seem like a limitation, Johnson manages to find plenty of variety without ever leaving the circuit boards…

I was one of a few hundred people to see Radiohead at the Mercury Cafe in June 1995. To be honest, I don’t remember a damn thing about the actual show; I can only recall brushing up against Thom Yorke, the group’s singer, on the way out of the building…

As Beasts of Burden’s title implies, Workhorse, which joins Front-side Five and Pitch Invasion at the Bluebird Theater on Friday, November 30, is no pretty filly. Rather, it’s an animal willing to do the heavy lifting — emphasis on “heavy.” “Moonshine Mayhem,” the first track, opens with modified calliope music…

Two autumn releases offer glimpses into the folkie-infested Boulder of the ’60s and early ’70s: Karen Dalton’s Cotton Eyed Joe, a collection of live material recorded at the legendary Attic, and a deluxe reissue of Propinquity’s sole LP from 1972. Emerging from Sing-In Boulder, an annual “high school folk music…

Sebastian Bach, Angel Down (Caroline Records). This long-overdue slab of meathead metal from the former Skid Row singer sounds like it could easily be a totally forgettable record. It’s not, though, because Bach somehow got his current BFF Axl Rose to sing on it, and the pair’s duet on Aerosmith’s…

In Defense of the Genre, Say Anything’s 27-song, two-disc quasi-concept album — which is twice as long and nowhere near as good as its predecessor, 2004’s Is a Real Boy — is about Max Bemis’s struggles with drug abuse and his very public bipolarness. (He was busted in NYC last…

Sorry, ’80s nostalgists, but Duran Duran was never a great band, or even a particularly good one. The Duranies gained fame as sleek, sleazy showmen with a strong visual sense and the ability to transform other people’s ideas into garish pop readymades. “Girls on Film,” “Hungry Like the Wolf” and…

What made so many of the rap-rock bands of the past fifteen years so risible is the fact that their music often wasn’t a genuine mixing of genres. In recent years, however, artists like Why? and M.I.A. have employed sounds from a wide variety of styles to craft hip-hop rooted…

Youssou N’Dour gives world music a good name. For almost thirty years, the Senegalese musician has been blending traditional sounds and instruments with influences as far-ranging as American jazz, Afro-Cuban dance rhythms and Western pop music, arriving at something infinitely greater than the sum of its parts. Known in his…

According to legend, Ian Astbury disbanded Southern Death Cult because of overwhelmingly positive press. Fact or fiction, it does explain how he and longtime sparring partner, guitarist Billy Duffy, have methodically alienated their fan base several times. The Cult abandoned gothic frippery for metal at a time when Ministry’s Al…

For a simple idea to last rather than annoy, it’s got to be a mighty good one — like, for instance, the concept behind Shonen Knife. Since the early ’90s, when the band regularly opened for Nirvana, sisters Naoko and Atsuko Yamano have built their music upon rock and punk…

Like a vintage edition of Reader’s Digest, the lyrics heard throughout Population, the latest disc by The Most Serene Republic, are capable of increasing the average person’s word power. “Solipsism,” “entropy,” “declamations” and “neurasthenia” are only a few of the terms that prove these brainy Canucks attended their college classes…

Ron Miles and Bill Frisell November 27, 2007 Old Main Theater, CU-Boulder Better than: Seeing these guys in New York There was a guy sitting behind me who’d just come in after the first set was over, and he was on his cell phone trying to convince his buddy to…

Why be fair and actually listen to five albums when you can be an ADHD smartass? Burial Untrue Hyperdub 00:48-1:32 of “Untrue” Boy was my assumption about this one wrong. I was positive I was going to get a Buck 65 style hip-hop deal but no, Burial had to go…

This past July, when Anti- Records announced it would be issuing DeVotchKa’s How It Ends in Europe, it almost seemed like a forgone conclusion that the imprint would also end up working with the outfit here in the States. (Uh, let’s see… DeVotchKa… Grammy-nominated, universally lauded by fans and critically…