Concerts

Beach Slang Is in Love, and You’re to Blame

It’s appropriate that Beach Slang is from Philadelphia, the City of Brotherly Love, because that’s how it conducts itself with the people that come to the band’s shows. Whether it’s before, during or after the show or down the line. Frontman James Alex is known for answering letters and messages…

Concerts

The Melvins’ Basses Loaded Showcases Its Many Faces

In its seemingly never ending pursuit of keeping things fresh for itself and fans, veteran rock band the Melvins are releasing their latest record, Basses Loaded, on June 3 through Ipecac Recordings. The record will feature six separate bass players across twelve songs. This will include Steve McDonald of Redd…

Concerts

They Might Be Giants and the Resurrection of Dial-A-Song

They Might Be Giants is one of the most well known bands from that pre-alternative rock era in the 1980s when there wasn’t an all-encompassing, vague umbrella term for music that wasn’t punk, wasn’t mainstream pop, not quite straight-ahead rock and yet accessible. The band’s self-titled 1986 debut album was…

Concerts

Joe Strummer Is Eleanor Friedberger’s Spirit Animal

Eleanor Friedberger was once a member of experimental rock band Fiery Furnaces with her brother Matthew from 2000 until 2011, when it went on indefinite hiatus. In that band the Friedbergers seemed to try out any crazy, creative idea they pleased from record to record, establishing themselves as one of…

Concerts

Freakwater on War Stories and the Power of Memory

Throughout its long career, irreverent humor and compassion for the human condition is at the core of Freakwater’s alternative country music. On its latest record, Scheherazade, its first album of new material since 2005’s Thinking Of You, founding members Janet Beveridge Bean and Catherine Irwin explore modern myths and archetypes…

Concerts

Afrika Bambaataa Brings Electrofunk to City Hall

Afrika Bambaataa is one of the architects of hip-hop culture as we know it. He was there when DJ Kool Herc and Kool DJ Dee were throwing the parties that were the foundation stone of hip-hop in New York City in the 1970s. The term hip-hop was coined by Cowboy…

Concerts

Speech, of Hip-Hop Veterans Arrested Development, Keeps Growing

Arrested Development, which performs on Saturday, December 19, at Ophelia’s Electric Soapbox, was one of the earliest incarnations of alternative hip-hop, as it would come to be called by critics. That designation is, of course, problematic when part of the reason the group wasn’t immediately embraced by hip-hop culture was…

Concerts

!!! on Its Stereolab Cover Band and Hiring Crystal the Monkey

!!! (aka ChkChkChk, if one is trying to do an Internet search) performs today, Monday, December 14, at Larimer Lounge with DJ Trundle and a Stereolab cover band called Stereolad composed entirely of members of !!!. !!! came together in 1996 in Sacramento, California, after two earlier bands, the noisy,…

Concerts

Ten Emo Songs to Cry Over at Taking Back Tuesday

Break out your studded belt and that old pair of Converse signed in marker by Bert McCracken and Kenny Vasoli, because Emo Night LA is coming to Denver. On Tuesday, December 8, twenty-somethings and former scene queens can cry their eyeliner off for Taking Back Tuesday at the Marquis Theatre…

Concerts

Electronic Artist Slow Magic on the Paradox of an Anonymous Identity

Slow Magic makes another appearance in Colorado at the Gothic Theatre on Thursday, December 3, with like-minded electronic pop artists Giraffage, Lindsay Lowend and Bollywood Life. Performing in a costume and striking mask, Slow Magic aims to direct the audience’s attention to the music and the show’s visual art. The mask…

Concerts

Beach Slang Wants to Make Friends, Not Fans

Philadelphia’s Beach Slang has spent the last few years writing songs that are so emotionally charged, raw, sincere and thoughtful that they transcend mere rock and roll. The name of the group’s latest record, The Things We Do to Find the People Who Feel Like Us, may be long —…

Concerts

Flaural Favors Making New Music Over Trying to Fit a Genre

Flaural is releasing its debut EP, Thin King, tomorrow at the Hi-Dive. It’s a project that’s come together relatively quickly: Until last year keyboardist Connor Birch, drummer Nick Berlin and guitarist Noah Pfaff were members of the promising indie rock outfit A Band In Pictures and singer/bassist Collin Johnson was…