To listen to country radio in recent years, you’d think human frailty had been tossed on the ash heap of history, for nearly every story pays off with an upbeat, morally uplifting climax. Lee Ann Womack, however, dominated this year’s Country Music Critics’ Poll not only by reviving the classic…
Jon Mikl Thor first came to prominence in the early ’70s as a completely unabashed impersonator of the Norse god Thor. Since then, the Canada native — whose albums are rife with, at best, second-tier epic metal that would make even the most shmaltzy of metal bands blush — has…
The word “clit” entered into the Star Wars fans’ lexicon a few years back when Los Angeles-based street-punk outfit Clit 45 quarreled with some Lucasites outside the premiere for Star Wars II: Attack of the Clones. Sci-fi geeks had been in line for days waiting for the opening of the…
Most folks would rather shove their hand into a whirring garbage disposal than check out other people’s vacation snapshots. But not singer-songwriter Jason Trachtenburg, who uses photographic slides — a previous generation’s chosen method of preserving memories — as musical inspiration. (Judged by this standard, Head Like a Kite, which…
Shortly after A Tribe Called Quest released its final album, 1998’s Love Movement, the animosity within the group was so prevalent that it would have taken a miracle for the members to talk to each other again. But now, after a couple of solo albums and side projects, Q-Tip, Phife…
Like a 10 p.m. buzz deteriorating into a 2 a.m. depression, Centro-Matic’s raucous, feedback-drenched hootenannies career headlong into perfectly twangy, tear-in-your-Lone Star balladry. Exhausted coal miners drink somber toasts to fallen friends while nostalgic grandmothers teach their grandchildren the two-step. When Will Johnson and Centro-Matic take the stage — be…
Although King for a Day (due at the Exchange Tavern on Saturday, September 9) sounds like it could come from Manchester, England, the three-piece actually hails from the unlikely environs of Broomfield, Colorado. Sharing a similar propulsive, upbeat melodicism with the kind that propelled acts like Oasis, Suede and the…
Evolution bit the big one a few months ago when the owners of the gay-centric club at 821 22nd Street (you know, in the other part of downtown) decided to close it down for good. But the address wasn’t out of circulation for long. With some fresh paint and new…
In an absolutely brilliant act of subversion (headslap! — why the hell didn’t someone think of this before?), Banksy, one of the world’s most infamous and prolific grafitti artists, has directed his aim towards the most vapid and inexplicable of American celebrities, the would-be-pop princess who is Paris Hilton. A…
Props to whoever was responsible for putting together the Subversiv* Records Tour flier that we snagged from a lamppost at 11th and Broadway this morning. Although the handbill hyping a July 14 date at Old Curtis St. featuring Epic, Brzowski, Matre, DJ Chaps, K the I and Ancient Mith was…
Kirk Rundstrom, songwriter, singer and guitarist for the Wichita, Kansas, punk-grass band Split Lip Rayfield, has built a career on graphic country travesties of drinking, drugs and devastation, weird songs that mock and make merry with death like a white-trash Día de los Muertos pageant. The band, featuring Eric Mardis…
I think I just offended Gerald Albright. The saxophonist is behind the wheel of his truck, talking on his cell phone about the artists who influenced him when he was growing up in South Central Los Angeles. He mentions both Maceo Parker and Cannonball Adderley as early touchstones in shaping…
In a critique of the current American Idol tour, Miami Herald reviewer Howard Cohen had fairly nice things to say about Boulder’s own Ace Young, who finished seventh in the competition. Still, Cohen couldn’t resist noting that “there’s too much crushed testicle” in Young’s “lightweight vocals.” So, dude — are…
Most casual music fans have that one person in their life whom they turn to before they buy new music — a guru who keeps up with the trends, reads the mags, goes to the shows, surfs the ‘net and has taste that aligns with theirs. It could be a…
“Are you Asian?” Chan Marshall asks me over the phone. “Yes,” I reply. “I am.” “You are!” Marshall exclaims. “You sound Asian.” “I don’t know what that means. How can you tell?” “I don’t know,” she says with a squeal. “I guess I’m psychic.” Or maybe she picked up on…
The 2004 Nelly collaboration “Tilt Ya Head Back” seemed sure to be the first, last and only decent song in Queen Christina’s catalogue. But, shockingly, there’s more where that came from. Although Basics isn’t a consistent pleasure — there’s plenty of cheese on these two platters — the set’s got…
Nashville doesn’t make musicians; Nashville makes music. The city crafts songs, lyrics, notes and chords — but not one person can lay claim to any of it. This is the bitter truth of the music mecca, and there’s not a better band than Lambchop to wholly embody the Nashville way…
Remember how the indie-rock masses wept with joy when the Postal Service’s Give Up spontaneously combusted onto their iPods? Classics, the second album by Brooklyn duo Ratatat, should have a similar effect, only ditch Ben Gibbard’s completely un-ironic cheeseball vocals and insert spacious arena-rock guitars spread over angular beats and…
If Chris Carrabba became obsessed with Casios and Coldplay, his next album might sound a lot like Illuminare. Largely the brainchild of singer-songwriter Scott Windsor — who has previously recorded under the Lyndsay Diaries moniker — Umbrellas is the squeaky-clean soundtrack to every indie kid’s imaginary alterna-prom. Hearts are worn…
When Neil Keener and Chuck French of Planes Mistaken for Stars teamed up with former White Dynamite/Sparkles frontman Luke Fairchild and Handsome Bobby to form Git Some, bedlam was expected — and this debut effort doesn’t disappoint. Unlike many records from comparably passionate, dynamic bands, Yes, Have Some deftly captures…
Frontside Five Thank God for punk rock. Simple and cheaply executed, it’s a musical haven that is mutually exclusive for disgruntled adolescents and jaded, aging rockers. Punk, an ode to thee: How you make anger palatable and cynicism worthwhile! When you die, your many offspring will remember you as the…
Kelly Joe Phelps, Tunesmith Retrofit (Rounder). Those who dig fast-paced, up-tempo music should steer clear of Kelly Joe Phelps’s Tunesmith Retrofit. The seventh album from the Portland singer-songwriter is more ambience than flash. Tunesmith finds Phelps producing lyrical poetry set to acoustic folk melodies that are substantive, if not always…
