Music – Page 38 – Queen City Sounds and Art

Best Shows in Denver and Beyond 05/03/18 – 05/09/18

alice_glass_sacksco — Alice Glass performs with Zola Jesus and Pictureplane at Fox Theatre on Saturday, 5/5/18. Photo courtesy Sacks & Co.

Thursday | May 3, 2018

ARIArielPink_ELIOT_LEE_HAZEL — Ariel Pink, photo by Eliot Lee Hazel

Who: Desert Daze Caravan 2018: Ariel Pink w/DIIV
When: Thursday, 05.03, 7 p.m.
Where: Moon Room at Summit Music Hall
Why: Desert Daze Caravan is the traveling mini-version of the Desert Daze festival in California that features some of the best of the more psychedelic-leaning bands existing today. While the festival happens in October, for this touring edition, Desert Daze brings along a couple of the most interesting artists playing music in its wheelhouse. Los Angeles based lo-fit mutant pop renegade Ariel Rosenberg, aka Ariel Pink, has had a varied and storied musical career that should be the subject of a book someday because it’s not short on drama, controversy and artistic achievement. In 2017 Rosenberg released Dedicated to Bobby Jameson, a collection of songs that bridge dream pop, psychedelic rock, what one might called garage soul and lo-fi funk. As with all of his records, Rosenberg plays with the form of genre with an offbeat use of sound and weaving together aesthetics that most other artists wouldn’t. At times one is reminded of some early 80s German synth pop, others of Get Lost-period Magnetic Fields and of the music of his friend and contemporary, John Maus. Unlike many of his contemporary synth artists Rosenberg isn’t trying to show how big a sound he can get with a synthesizer, he makes it serve the song as much as any other musical element and not as the basis for the composition.

DIIV became a bit of a cult band for Zachary Cole Smith when Oshin came out on Captured Tracks in 2012. Though the record felt a bit indistinct it made krautrock’s repetitive beat structure softer like downtempo with a little more emotional urgency. The follow-up, 2016’s Is the Is Are found Smith embracing the raw and vivid emotionalism of Elliott Smith’s lo-fi pop and the messy, atonal trash rock of Royal Trux. It’s challenging to hear that on the beautifully melodic songs of Is the Is Are but that the songwriting is growing beyond the band’s earliest phase is obvious and at times Is the Is Are sounds like Smith is training himself to deconstruct his own musical instincts to make something more creatively rewarding.

Who: In/Planes Radio Wave tape release w/Down Time and Kyle Emerson
When: Thursday, 05.03, 7 p.m.
Where: Lost Lake
Why: In/Planes’ music has a very soft touch and is the “Mixtapes” single from its new tape, Radio Waves, is any indication, the duo has a gift for taking fairly common experiences and making them resonate with an immediacy of the deeply personal. Joining the band for the tape release show are like-minded tender pop band Down Time and Kyler Emerson with his jazz-inflected, incisively poetic, desert-y folk pop gems.

Who: Glasss Presents the Speakeasy Series season 2: Lepidoptera, MYTHirst, Bow Shock
When: Thursday, 05.03, 7 p.m.
Where: Hooked On Colfax
Why: MYTHirst’s sound is part bright, modular-synth sounding beats with organic string sounds and textured percussion. The Denver version of Lepidoptera, not the Palm Beach, Florida band, has a dream-like guitar and minimal atmospheric sound reminiscent of mid-90s Flying Saucer Attack but not quite as noisy. Bow Shock is somewhere between improvisational electro jazz funk and whatever it is one might call Prefuse 73 with its own mixture of samples of records and live instruments in a way that expands the parameters of what constitutes electronic dance music.

Friday | May 4, 2018

TelevisionGeneration_Feb11_2018_TomMurphy — Television Generation, photo by Tom Murphy

Who: Jane Doe, Television Generation and Meet the Giant
When: Friday, 05.04, 9 p.m.
Where: Skylark Lounge
Why: Three of Denver’s best off the beaten path rock bands are playing the Skylark on this bill. Jane Doe is in the realm of post-punk but there are elements of noise rock and avant-garde jazz and performance poetry as delivered by Becca Mhalek. The latter spent some time playing with Nels Cline as well as Denver experimental bands Nightshark, MVP and Aenka. Television Generation takes the harrowing intensity of early grunge and mixes it with melodic and energetic post-punk. Meet the Giant has taken what could be fairly gloomy music and given it a driving rhythm and grit that somehow perfectly captures urban melancholy and desperation as experienced by anyone living in American west: uncertainty, disconnection, disaffection, undercurrents of fatalism and a sense of pondering whether or not its foolish to hope for things to change for the better where or not you give it a good try. All while sounding scrappy and not ready to give up on the rewards of creative expression for one’s own fulfillment. Meet the Giant’s self-titled full-length releases digitally on May 15 with a vinyl release later in Spring or Summer.

Who: Porlolo (album release) w/Land Lines and Spirettes
When: Friday, 05.04, 8 p.m.
Where: Lost Lake
Why: Porlolo released Awards on April 27 but this is the official release show. Erin Roberts, the lead singer and guitarist in Porlolo, has kept the band going for years while not exactly breaking through to a mainstream audience, Roberts’ songwriting has been noteworthy for its humor, wisdom and sensitivity. Maybe some of the roots are in folk and Americana but at this point Porlolo transcends both and has as much in common with Luna, Cat Power, Mojave 3 and Mazzy Star as it does with anything fully in the country spectrum of songwriting. Getting to see Land Lines’ experimental, string driven pop and Spirettes’ incandescent dream pop in person just makes this show three times worth seeing.

Who: SPELLS, Quits, Wild Lives
When: Friday, 05.04, 9 p.m.
Where: Streets of London
Why: SPELLS is a poppy punk band that is as much a party as a band. Wild Lives is more in the realm of punk bands from the 80s and 90s who were melodic but not pop punk. Like The Didjits, New Bomb Turks and Blatz. Quits, a little different from the rest of the lineup in being more a noise rock band than punk. Which makes sense in that every member of the band has contributed to some of the most noteworthy post-hardcore and noise rock out of Denver of the last two decades including former Hot White members Tiana Bernard and Darren Kulback as well as Luke Fairchild and Doug Mioducki who were last in a band together in the early 2000s with Sparkles who always seemed to play like they were ready to explode.

Saturday | May 5, 2018

Al_Scorch_band_by_Alexis_Ellers_2018_web — Al Scorch band, photo by Alexis Ellers

Who: Alice Glass – Snowblood tour w/Zola Jesus and Pictureplane
When: Saturday, 05.05, 8:30 p.m.
Where: Fox Theatre
Why: When Alice Glass released her self-titled EP in August 2017 it sounded like a a purging of several years of having told hold back in revealing her own truth and a declaration of her identity as an artist viable beyond any past associations with Crystal Castles. In the latter, Glass was a riveting performer and a singer that channeled perfectly the synthesis of 8-bit music, synth pop, modern dance music and hip-hop that was the essence of Crystal Castles and its being ahead of a curve in modern electronic music that embraced lo-fi and collage production as much as more conventional compositional techniques. For this tour Glass paired with one of the other powerful songwriters in electronic underground music with Zola Jesus whose own 2017 album Okovi represented her own breaking with the methodology and career path of an “indie” artist that might have been open to her. Instead, she trusted her personal and creative instincts and put together an album that was awash in ambient sounds and an hypnotic melodies and sonic structures reminiscent of classical music and black metal. Pictureplane is an old friend of Glass’s from his days as a Denver artist living at Rhinoceropolis. As an artist whose work traverses noise, electronic pop, hip-hop and dance, Pictureplane has a broad palette of sounds and sensibilities employed in his songwriting and performance style.

Who: Al Scorch (full band), Gun Street Ghost, Matt Rouch & The Noise Upstairs
When: Saturday, 05.05, 8 p.m.
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Chicago’s Al Scorch earned a name for himself as an energetic and engaging performer with his blend of punk and Americana. Sure, a ton of punks have turned country and the great Camper Van Beethoven and Green On Red, among others, set a high bar for that sort of thing. A number of punk and country artists have even threaded in some eastern European and non-Western musical ideas into their mix. But Scorch does so with an irresistible energy and charisma. His most recent record, 2016’s Circle Round the Signs, contained more than a small amount of poignant social commentary about class and the consequences of war and conflict.

Sunday | May 6, 2018

Hide_Aug13_2016_TomMurphy — HIDE in August 2016, photo by Tom Murphy

Who: HIDE, Curse, Echo Beds and Jump Scare – DJ Brian Castillo
When: Sunday, 05.06, 8:30 p.m.
Where: Mutiny Information Café
Why: Chicago-based post-industrial duo HIDE makes a return visit to Denver in the wake of the release of their 2018 album Castration Anxiety. Using samples, pounding beats and corrosive drones, HIDE’s shows are like confrontational rapidfire snapshots into our culture’s nightmares and insecurities set to a heady soundtrack and as embodied in vocalist Heather Gabel’s ritualistic performance style. Fortunately, the band’s tour intersected with that of Baltimore industrial/darkwave punk band Curse whose own synth-driven heavy music predates some of the current darkwave renaissance and yet sounds like a future form of the music. Curse recently released a split 7” with noteworthy Austin-based industrial act Street Sects. Also on the bill are local industrial noise phenoms Echo Beds and Jump Scare, which includes Anton Kruger, formerly of experimental electronic dance project Bollywood Life. Brian Castillo will DJ the night with some rare cuts from his extensive vinyl library of underground and not-so-underground darkwave music.

Yardsss_March25_2018_TomMurphy — Yardsss at Treefort Music Fest 2018, Boise, ID. Photo by Tom Murphy

Who: Flesh Buzzard, Sporehive, Morlox, Nighttimeschoolbus, Mirror Fears, Yardsss, Ghost House, visuals by Clark Nova, DJ sets by JusJo
When: Sunday, 05.06, 6 p.m., show 6:30
Where: Seventh Circle Music Collective
Why: A night of mostly local noise and electronic acts at Seventh Circle Music Collective. Patrick Urn of Morlox has long bridged the worlds of noise and electronic music production and has released a fairly diverse body of work including hip-hop and ambient music beyond the noise and industrial music for which he’s best known. Whether as a member of defunct industrial legends In Ether, as Herpes Hideaway, as Syphilis Sauna or Morlox, Urn’s imaginative compositions are highly worthy of exploring in recorded form and witnessing live if you can. Nighttimeschoolbus is an underground hip-hop duo comprised of Toby Hendricks of Otem Rellik and vocalist extraordinaire Robin Walker. The name tells you a bit about the aesthetic and sense of play involved in the songwriting but it also articulates perfectly the necessary emotional state in which you’re indulging your whimsy as a refuge from the rest of the time in life when you’re dealing with the heavier side of human existence. Mirror Fears will not be short on bringing the feels with her melancholy yet cathartic, beat driven electronic pop songs. Yardsss from Portland, Oregon in this configuration is the three-piece band so the show is more like a post-punk, industrial ritual performance than the inspired, hermetic electronic performance art piece it was when Krist Kruger performed as Yardsss solo in Denver in 2017.

Monday | May 7, 2018

MGMT_BradElterman — MGMT, photo by Brad Elterman

Who: MGMT
When: Monday, 05.07, 6:30 p.m.
Where: Fillmore Auditorium
Why: MGMT came up a time when many of the big time electronic pop acts of the 2000s were getting going. That LCD Soundsystem, Paramore, Phoenix, Arcade Fire, Matt and Kim and MGMT and the like started experiencing the first stirrings of popularity in roughly the same timeframe before chillwave became a thing should be noteworthy to future popular music historians. MGMT, though, started when Ben Goldwasser and Andrew VanWyngarden were students at Wesleyan and like many dorm/bedroom projects in the 2000s the early musical ideas were noisier and more experimental than their more developed work. But when MGMT got more accessible it also became more interesting and its weirdo psychedelic pop struck a chord with an increasingly wide audience. The 2007, Dave Fridmann-produced Oracular Spectacular took MGMT out of the underground for good and when the band returned to Denver after the release of that album it wasn’t playing the Hi-Dive, it was much larger venues. The band’s subsequent albums, Congratulations and MGMT, didn’t seem to advance the band’s musical ideas much but 2018’s Little Dark Age finds the group not returning to form so much as a re-embrace of the band’s core idiosyncratic vision of electronic pop and dance music that made it interesting in the beginning.

Who: Curse w/Echo Beds and Ghost House
When: Monday, 05.07, 8 p.m.
Where: Triple Nickel Tavern (Colorado Springs)
Why: This is your second chance to see Curse (see above) in Colorado also with Echo Beds. It’s not too common that these kinds modern darkwave and industrial bands perform in the Springs so don’t sleep on the opportunity if you’re into that kind of music.

Who: Smoking Popes (acoustic) w/The Bigger Empty (feat. Mike Felumlee)
When: Monday, 05.07, 7 p.m.
Where: Larimer Lounge
Why: Smoking Popes were one of the best of the 90s Chicago punk bands. It came out of the same scene that produced Screeching Weasels and Pegboy. But Smoking Popes was a bit more melancholy than than many of their peers even when the pace was high energy and one might even say the Popes were basically an emo band. Combining a punk edge with an emotional vulnerability wasn’t terribly common in the early 90s but the Popes did it in a way that seems more a feature of punk than an anomaly these days. The band flirted with mainstream popularity in the mid-90s but by the end of the decade Josh Caterer found his newfound strong religious convictions didn’t jibe with what the band was about the end group broke up in January 1999. Six years alter, the band played a reunion show in Chicago before which Caterer explained that songs he didn’t think he could perform again weren’t songs the band tended to play live anway. But the reunion would happen without original drummer Mike Felumlee. Over a decade later, Felumlee is back in the fold and playing this current “acoustic” tour as well as playing with opening act The Bigger Empty.

Tuesday | May 8, 2018

Curse_May3_2017_TomMurphy — Curse, photo by Tom Murphy

Who: Curse, Church Fire, Kill Your Darlings
When: Tuesday, 05.08, 7 p.m.
Where: Downtown Artery (Upstairs)
Why: Baltimore darkwave band Curse makes it to Fort Collins for a show with Denver-based electro-industrial-dance band Church Fire and Fort Collins’ industrial band Kill Your Darlings which includes Brett Scheiber of Stella Luce and formerly of dance pop band Pep*Squad and noise project Four Pins Pulled. Sure, darkwave but all of these bands have an emotional intensity on stage that may have an element of the melancholy yet never a downer.

Who: Pseudogod, Hellfire Deathcult, Abysmal Lord, Casket Huffer
When: Tuesday, 05.08, 7 p.m.
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Perm, Russia-based black metal band Pseudogod converges with like-minded bands Hellfire Deathcult from Chicago, New Orleans’ Abysmal Lord and Casket Huffer from Cheyenne for a show that, if fantastical conceits could be true, open a gate into the dimension where the Great Old Ones are partying to music like this. Pseudogod’s cover for The Pharynxes Of Hell, part humorous, part spooky, visually arresting seems to encompass the spirit of what this show will be like to see.

Wednesday | May 9, 2018

Tricky_SebastianPielles — Tricky, photo by Sebastian Pielles

Who: Tricky w/Young Magic
When: Wednesday, 05.09, 7 p.m.
Where: The Marquis Theater
Why: Tricky is one of the artists directly responsible for what came to be called trip-hop in the 90s. As an early collaborator with Massive Attack, and having contributed vocals to that band’s 1991 debut Blue Lines, Tricky demonstrated a versatile talent and when he embarked on a solo career in 1993, he brought with him a gift for borrowing musical ideas and production methods from a variety of musical styles resulting in his debut album, 1995’s Maxinquaye. A hybrid of downtempo, post-punk, dub, hip-hop, Tricky’s music was an antidote to the increasingly conformist and bland alternative rock of that mid-decade. Over twenty years later, Tricky continues to make evocative, deeply atmospheric music. Although, his 2017 album Ununiform, co-engineered by Jay-Z, finds Tricky focusing on spare, uncluttered melodies and strong, minimal beats. It has the feel of Tricky’s least abstract and ethereal record while not sacrificing his ability to set a vibrant mood.

BrazillianGirls1 — Brazilian Girls, photo courtesy Six Degrees Records

Who: Brazilian Girls w/Tiger Party (Allen Aucoin of The Disco Biscuits and Josh Fairman of Sunsquabi and Analog Son)
When: Wednesday, 05.09, 8 p.m.
Where: The Marquis Theater
Why: New York City has been a melting pot of popular musical styles for decades. But in the 2000s a particular brand of mixing Latin, African and non-Western musical ideas in general with dance music, post-punk, pop and noise emerged in various forms including the tropical pop of early High Places and the no-wave funk of bands like These Are Powers. Or, if you prefer, more above-ground acts like Dirty Projectors and Vampire Weekend who re-popularized polyrhythms and less conventional vocal styles. Brazilian Girls came in on the dance music end of that wave with its always eclectic and lively live show and songs that wove together ghostly, downtempo melodies, pulsing low end, dub-esque percussion, sex positive messaging and singer Sabina Sciubba’s otherworldly jazz vocals and enigmatic, theatrical stage presence – something akin to Björk fronting a lounge band. In April 2018 the band released Let’s Make Love, it’s first in a decade. Not as cool and sonically smooth as its previous efforts, Let’s Make Love, nevertheless, finds Brazilian Girls more thoughtful but musically more urgent, highlighting the band’s talent for reconciling contrasts.

David Foedel on LEAF 2018: Pattern Language

The latest edition of LEAF (or Lafayette Electronic Arts Festival) happens this weekend on Friday, April 27 and Saturday, April 28 in Lafayette, CO. LEAF is a showcase for the synthesis of technology and art and each iteration of the festival has featured some of the most innovative creative people in the field. The Spring 2018 event will include performances from ART391A2, John Gunther/John Drumheller, Trace Reddell, Jason and Debora Bernagozzi and Phillip Sterns with demonstration from Branger_Briz. On Friday night, after the performances, DJ Crix Madine will generate repetitive beats and abstract patterns in conjunction with live video from one of Denver experimental music’s go-to video artists, orchidz3ro. What makes the festival so worthwhile is that it humanizes the art and the technology and makes it accessible in an intimate setting.

Things kick off on Friday at 7 p.m. with the music/performative shows at the Colorado Music Festival Center For Musical Arts building at 200 East Baseline.. On Saturday the festivities continue 9:30 Saturday morning at The Collective Gallery at 201 North Public Road with the “Data Safari” demonstration showcasing the pervasiveness of data flowing through the air and the manner in which it does so from our devices and public and private broadcasting devices. Saturday evening beginning at 5 p.m. there will be a short film festival at Grimes Hall room of the 200 East Baseline location mentioned prior. For more information, please visit the LEAF website.

crix_madine — Crix Madine, photo courtesy LEAF

We recently ran some questions by festival curator David Fodel about the current edition of LEAF.

Queen City Sounds And Art: Why did the theme/concept of Pattern Language suggest itself to you for this edition of LEAF?

David Fodel: There is a well-known book called A Pattern Language by Christopher Alexander that describes and catalogs various successful patterns in architecture, urban planning, and generally community building, which has also been quite influential in the software development world too. I find this idea of hybridity and cross-pollination, of “synthesis” rather than specialization to be an important quality in art, music, design and engineering and wanted to give the festival a theme that was far-reaching, while at the same time could simply relate to repetitive beats or sequencer music, which I also love.

You have a number of artists who combine their art with computer programming and heavy technical skills. That’s not unique to this iteration of LEAF but why do you think your attention was drawn to artists who combine those skill sets at this time?

Well really all artists have specialized technical skills, and the most interesting art for me is when people explore emerging technologies, and get playful with it, seeing what happens when they combine things in ways that should not be done, not necessarily on purpose even, but because they may just not know any better. Discoveries happen sometimes, and sometimes it’s terrible, but it’s that iterative process, what’s called ‘design thinking’ that can lead to interesting new forms and refinements. A lot of the work in this year’s LEAF has deep roots in historical artistic and musical experiments and explorations, but have been refined to push those forms forward. Some of the artists have been doing this type of work for decades, and some of them are super fresh to the whole notion of making art with technology.

phillip_stearns — Phillip Stearns, photo courtesy LEAF

The Data Safari part of the festival seems especially relevant and interesting for people’s everyday lives in a way they may not be aware of. Can you tell us about how you came to be aware of Branger_Briz and that sort of, for lack of a better word, performance or demonstration? Why do you think that sort of thing is important for people to know about and what kind of awareness and change do you think having that knowledge might engender?

I have known Nick Briz for a number of years now, and have presented his work in the past here in Denver at a show called “The Emperor’s New Aesthetic.” It straddles art, activism and design and as you mentioned, it is especially relevant now due to the data breaches at Facebook. Branger_Briz is a design collective based in Chicago and Nick has deep roots in that whole kinda Midwest Glitch scene along with Jon Satrom and John Cates. They all teach at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago which has a long history of embracing new media art forms well in advance of other institutions. I got to know those guys when I was at a Live Cinema Summit in Chicago back in 2008 or 2009. They embrace the notion of technology as a potential disruptive force for change, and potential source of authoritarian control, depending on how we guide it and the social structures that enable its dissemination.

The Data Safari is yet again one of those playful ways of using technology to draw attention to bigger issues like privacy and who controls our data. The underlying artwork, called “ProbeKit” is on display at The Collective, a new gallery in Lafayette as part of the first LEAF visual art exhibition called “Machine Language.” Branger_Briz is joined by a handful of other artists that each explore the notion of the “machine” in art and I would really encourage you to check that out. The show runs through May 5th.

It’s often been said that art leads culture and society. Do you feel that to be the case?

I think it’s more accurate to say that art is part of a complex of entangled forces and expressions that manifest emergent forms, systems and behaviors.

It seems as though all the artists you have for every edition of LEAF has brought a creative use of technology to make creative work that synthesizes science and art. Why do you think showcasing that kind of art is important beyond it just being interesting to you personally?

Science is a powerful methodology and technology is a powerful tool. It’s important that we don’t leave those things in the hands of people with no sense of humor or love of nature and humanity.

Trace Reddell is a science fiction author/creator. The idea behind much of science fiction is that it’s commentary on today even when it’s projecting into the future. What do you think Trace’s contribution as a commenter on current culture and civilization is especially interesting?

Well Trace has a very unique angle on science fiction and sci-fi cinema. His work really explores how sound and language form this hybrid kind of matrix that can structurally change our brains. His work for LEAF is a performance lecture format where he will be mixing and mashing up cinema, spoken word, psychedelic music and literature to not only communicate a message, but to induce consciousness changes directly.

Best Shows in Denver 4/26/18 – 5/2/18

Parquet-Courts-by-Ebru-Yildiz-8-LORES — **Parquet Courts** performs Sunday, April 29, 2018 at The Gothic Theatre. Photo by Ebru Yildiz.

Thursday | April 26, 2018

Tune-Yards_Mar27_2010_TomMurphy — tUnE-yArDs circa March 2010, photo by Tom Murphy

Who: tUnE-yArDs w/My Brightest Diamond
When: Thursday, 04.26, 7:30 p.m.
Where: Boulder Theater
Why: When tUnE-yArDs toured in the wake of the release of the 2009 album Bird-Brains, Merrill Garbus’ soulful singing amid what seemed like a raw combination of loops, percussion and Nate Brenner’s liquid bass lines seemed like something right out of that period’s vibrant bedroom recorder world and so idiosyncratic yet accessible that the duo connected with people that wanted to see something different that didn’t fit in immediately with something we’ve all seen hundreds of times already. The band’s unconventional pop songs seemingly drawing from several musical traditions ended up garnering a wide audience after the release of the 2011 album Whokill. In 2018 the band issued I Can Feel You Creep Into My Private Life, an album on which Garbus, according to an interview with Vox, challenges her own white privilege and other privileges as an artist that has been directly inspired by music made people who didn’t enjoy a similarly privileged existence. Whatever one thinks of such gestures and self-examination and confession, as usual, the tUnE-yArDs record is still refreshingly out of step with a whole swath of popular music except rather than the lo-fi aesthetic of old, the new album has a larger, fuller sound. And Garbus’ words aren’t eyeroll-worthy examples of self-hate and self-flagellation—they’re pointed and self-critical but not cruel.

Who: Glasss Presents: Eraserhead Fuckers w/prettyinpink w/roaddawg, VC Hearts and Shamwow
When: Thursday, 04.26, 10 p.m.
Where: Mutiny Information Café
Why: If you’ve been wondering where the weirdo hip-hop has been hiding (it hasn’t been hiding), this would be a great show to check out some of the weirdest. Eraserhead Fuckers is a noise-hip-hop project that somehow lives up to the name with his confrontational performance style and brutal beats. Prettyinpink and roaddawg are doing a collaborative set and their vibe is something in the vein of Earl Sweatshirt or Vince Staples—moody, synth heavy and a little on the gritty side with the words.

Who: Glasss Presents the Speakeasy Series Season 2: Princess Dewclaw, Church Fire, Surf Mom
When: Thursday, 04.26, 7 p.m.
Where: Hooked On Colfax
Why: The Speakeasy Series edition for this week includes Princess Dewclaw, a band that combines melodic synth compositions with punk rock stridency and a clever dismantling of patriarchal tropes. Church Fire is a duo steeped in noise, electronic dance music, fiery performances and lyrics that feel like a direct line to a celebratory outage and melancholic anthems of healing through honoring the hurting. Surf Mom should probably change its name because it’s beyond surf at this point. Except for the fact that it’s a great band name. The two-piece uses a thorny pop format to comment on social issues and personal struggles in a way that comes off as punk but isn’t stuck with the musical baggage of the same.

Friday | April 27, 2018

Who: Vulfpeck, Kamasi Washington and Knower
When: Friday, 04.27, 6 p.m.
Where: Red Rocks
Why: Despite the fact that Vulfpeck is essentially trying to channel a 1970s and 1980s live concert television broadcast program format in presenting its music, and drawing upon that era for musical inspiration as well, even its session-musician-worthy chops don’t diminish its ear for lively and emotionally engaging funk. A bit like Average White Band but no horns, better low end and more unconventional chord progressions. Sharing the bill is one of modern jazz’s bright stars, Kamasi Washington. Perhaps known to many people as a musician and arranger on albums by Pulitzer Prize winning hip-hop artist Kendrick Lamar (including To Pimp a Butterfly and DAMN.), Flying Lotus, Thundercat and Run the Jewels, Washington’s own output is impressive in its own right. His 2015 album The Epic had a classic sensibility without sounding like a throwback. Rather, Washington’s emotionally expressive and musically adept compositions articulate a yearning quality, a sense of resignation to reality and the blue feeling that accompanies all such realizations, a harboring of hope and dreams of a better future glimpsed winking in the distance. It was simply a musically ambitious and expansive jazz album but one that had the accessibility of a should-have-been collaboration between Sonny Rollins, Stan Getz and Lalo Schifrin. In 2018, Washington will release his new album, Heaven and Earth.

What: LEAF (Lafayette Electronic Arts Festival)
When: Friday, 04.27 and Saturday 4.28
Where: Center for Musical Arts
Why: This multi-media festival is all ages and free and runs through the weekend with performances, art demonstrations and film. For more information, you can read our interview with festival curator Dave Fodel here.

Who: Ghost Tapes, The Milk Blossoms, Kdubbs
When: Friday, 04.27, 8 p.m.
Where: Syntax Physic Opera
Why: Ghost Tapes has been honing its dusky downtempo jazz/hip-hop/soul sound for a few years around town at house shows, DIY spaces, dive bars and smaller clubs. But even early on the band had a surprising level of sophistication in its musicianship and performance. Its 2017 self-titled album demonstrated hints of Baduizm period Erykah Badu in the poetic wordplay imbued with a thoughtfulness and wisdom that music like that doesn’t get nearly enough credit with possessing. Fitting that Ghost Tapes is sharing the stage with The Milk Blossoms, a band that incorporates elements of hip-hop, indie pop, folk and R&B into its overall sound while also seeming so idiosyncratic to the point of almost being outsider music if not for the band’s command of classic songcraft. The Milk Blossoms’ tender yet emotionally rich and affecting songs make the band pretty much impossible to forget.

Who: Neil Haverstick
When: Friday, 04.27, 7 p.m.
Where: The Tuft Theater at Swallow Hill
Why: Colorado’s dean of microtonal guitar, Neil Haverstick, is playing a rare show at Swallow Hill. Haverstick is adept at so many musical styles it’s difficult to say what his focus will be this time out but no matter if it’s avant-garde, classical, blues, jazz or whatever seems to interest Haverstick the most at the moment, it’ll be a worthwhile show to attend.

Who: Commander Cody w/Howlin’ Goatz
When: Friday, 04.27, 7:30 p.m.
Where: The Caribou Room, Nederland
Why: Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen formed in 1967 in Ann Arbor, Michigan and in its early incarnations operating at a time when Ann Arbor and Detroit were experiencing a kind of golden age of music. Between Motown, Alice Cooper, MC5, Stooges and other notables of the time, that part of the country was the place of origin and home to some of the most important music of the era. It would be an exaggeration to say that Commander Cody and his country rock band was as long term impactful as the aforementioned. But it did yield a couple of novelty hits in its career that are well-remembered by anyone that heard them. “Hot Rod Lincoln” from the band’s 1971 debut album Lost in the Ozone was in the US Top 10 and its 1981 hit “2 Triple Cheese (Side Order of Fries)” from the 1980 album Lose It Tonight had a music video that reached anyone that saw Turkey Television on the Nickelodeon network in the early 80s. There’s a good chance Commander Cody will play both even without His Lost Planet Airmen among a choice selection of his extensive and prolific back catalog.

Saturday | April 28, 2018

AnimalObject_Dec6_2017_TomMurphy — Animal / object circa December 2017, photo by Tom Murphy

Who: FoCoMX pick: Animal / object (Kurt Bauer and Karen Sheridan)
When: Saturday, 04.28, 6:30 p.m.
Where: The Dome
Why: FoCoMX is an annual music festival held in Fort Collins that mostly showcases Colorado-based acts along the front range from a broad spectrum of musical styles. Perhaps not booked at enough local music festivals is Animal / object. The latter is Denver’s premiere spontaneous composition band. Lead by Kurt Bauer formerly of 1980s post-punk band Susan and God, the group has included sculptor/painter Steven Gordon (who will not be performing this particular show), winds player Paul Mimlitsch, novelist Gordon Pryor, experimental electronic musician/graphic designer David Britton, prolific outsider musician Chris Culhane of Lords of Howling and Violent Femmes frontman/guitarist Gordon Gano. For this show, Bauer will perform with Karen Sheridan, formerly of Denver death rock/punk band Your Funeral and atmospheric noise/industrial project Corpses As Bedmates. Always a different show, always interesting and rewarding.

Who: Of Feather and Bone w/Suffering Hour, Wayfarer and Many Blessings
When: Saturday, 04.28, 8:30 p.m.
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Of Feather and Bone’s new album Beastial Hymns of Perversion should solidify the band’s reputation as one of the most interesting and innovative grindcore bands going today. Yes, the sonic brutality is there, the relentless pace and the animalistic vocals. But there is a hauntedness, a spookiness to much of the group’s music. Like the darkness is coming from a personal place. Yes, the disgust with human civilization is abstracted a bit through fantastical song titles and the flood of sounds but its visceral and real. Of Feather and Bone celebrates the release of the album with fellow purveyors of extreme, heavy sounds Suffering Hour and Wayfarer. Many Blessings isn’t a grind band per se even though Ethan McCarthy is in one of the heaviest bands in the world in Primitive Man. Many Blessings is an atmospheric noise project with its sound generation based in tools similar to those McCarthy employs with his more well-known projects. But it’s just as heavy as anything else on the bill.

Who: Of Montreal w/Locate S, 1
When: Saturday, 04.28, 8 p.m.
Where: The Bluebird Theater
Why: Of Montreal is an older band but it’s basically like the psychedelic pop equivalent of Ty Segall in some ways in terms of its prolific and diverse output. And that that prolific stream of work is actually worth exploring. For the 2018 album White is Relic/Irrealis Mood, band leader Kevin Barnes dispensed with the old band format approach to recording and composing so that the record sounds like something that might have been crafted in a virtual environment with Barnes having access to some futuristic, immersive form the the internet in which he can take in/experience knowledge in a way that is more and deeper than mere 3D. Musically it sounds like an indie pop Howard Jones album with touches of glam rock. Most Of Montreal shows are wonderfully colorful and weird and a real experience and with the material for the new album, Barnes and company probably have something spectacular and unexpected for the live show.

Who: Blockhead w/MIDIcinal, Big J. Beats, Lost Glory
When: Saturday, 04.28, 8 p.m.
Where: Cervantes’ Other Side
Why: Tony Simon aka Blockhead is a DJ and record producer whose name is often associated with production he’s done for Aesop Rock. His music separate from production work he does for other artists tends toward an imaginative downtempo approach like a radio station for an ultra hip radio station in a hidden part of a city in a weird multiple user video game. Any of his albums will do, whether it’s 2007’s Uncle Tony’s Coloring Book or 2017’s Funeral Balloons, for a trip into a brighter, more chill, yet not soporific, universe.

Who: Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever w/Turvy Organ and Serpentfoot
When: Saturday, 04.28, 8 p.m.
Where: Larimer Lounge
Why: Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever from Melbourne, Australia was a band that you could either like or find meh based on your feeling toward modern indie rock. Its post-surf post-punk jangle rock, at least through the 2017 album The French Press, was reminiscent of The War On Drugs in that you could hear the influence of 80s power pop and maybe even Bruce Springsteen and Tom Petty. And there seemed to be so much more emotional depth to the songwriting than some you’d get out of some kind of half-baked party rock band. In that way Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever has much more in common with Beach Slang than so many of the neo-pop-punk bands. And hey, sometimes the most interesting period in a band’s life is when it’s still trying to figure out its own voice. On its forthcoming Hope Downs the group strikes a New Romantics tone on the Talking Straight single and in moments has a vibe akin to that of Soft Boys or even solo Robyn Hitchcock.

Sunday | April 29, 2018

KeldariStation_Oct30_2015_TomMurphy — Keldari Station circa 2015, photo by Tom Murphy

Who: Textures: Hymen, Keldari Station and Shawn Mlekush
When: Sunday, 04.29, 7 p.m.
Where: Mutiny Information Café
Why: Shawn Mlekush will perform a set of ambient improv for this show. But he’s known around certain Denver circles as a non-conventional composer of electronic music and his not very active band Jackson Induced Mutant Laboratory fit in with the noise scene even if it was more in the realm of avant-garde electronic music. Keldari Station is an unlikely yet vital combination of dub, glam rock, synth pop and post-punk.

Who: Parquet Courts w/The Teeth of the Hydra
When: Sunday, 04.29, 7 p.m.
Where: Gothic Theatre
Why: It would be facile to say Parquet Courts is like a new version of Pavement. Because the bands aren’t much alike except for a fearless and creatively musical use of atonality in guitar and vocals, a nearly reckless employment of imprecision in crafting interlocking guitar melodies and a nearly unpredictable high energy and tripping, hanging moments. Like machines on the brink of collapse trying desperately to cross a bridge on the verge of the same. In both cases the result has been some of the most interesting and eclectic rock music of their time. On May 18, 2018 Parquet Courts will release Wide Awake! So chances are you’ll get to see some of the new album live before it’s out.

Monday | April 30, 2018

Who: IAMX
When: Monday, 04.30, 7 p.m.
Where: The Bluebird Theater
Why: When Chris Corner went solo following the dissolution of his well-known trip-hop band Sneaker Pimps in 2004, he was able to not only push his music in a more experimental direction but he was able to fully incorporate the sonic and visual aesthetic of his art into a unified multi-media and theatrical presentation not limited by any preconception of musical genre in which he’d need to fit his music. The resulting musical output has been eclectic but consistent with Corner’s desire to create a theatrical and immersive musical experience. The latest IAMX album is 2018’s Alive In New Light, coming on the heels of the September 2017 album Unfall.

Who: God Save the Queens: Queer Punk Night at Hi-Dive hosted by Noveli and DJ Junkyard
When: Monday, 04.30, 9 p.m.
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: The title of the event says it all. So you’ll probably hear a little Bikini Kill, Pansy Division, Green Day, Crass, Los Crudos, Big Boys and a whole lot more great queer punk on a sound system that is more robust than the one you have at home.

Who: Morbid Angel w/Dreaming Dead and Hate Storm Annihilation
When: Monday, 04.30, 7 p.m.
Where: The Marquis Theater
Why: Morbid Angel was one of the foundational bands of death metal. Based in Tampa, Florida and putting to tape most of its iconic recordings, including its influential 1989 debut full-length Altars of Madness, at Morrisound Recording? Founded the same year, 1983, as Death from Orlando, Possessed from San Francisco and Necrophagia from Wellsville, Ohio? Seems like some dark cosmic energy that Death metal’s early big hitters emerged so close together. Trey Azagthoth’s brutal yet psychedelic guitar sound has been the constant of the band from the beginning but this time around later-era singer Steve Tucker has returned and provided vocals on the 2017 album Kingdoms Disdained. Live there actually is a spooky quality to the music and both Tucker and former singer David Vincent provided a sepulchral vocal style that could be silly but never Cookie Monster enough to not find somewhat discomforting and perfectly suited to the music.

Tuesday | May 1, 2018

OkoTygra_Nov27_2017_TomMurphy — Oko Tygra circa 2017, photo by Tom Murphy

Who: Gus Dapperton w/Oko Tygra
When: Tuesday, 05.01, 7 p.m.
Where: Lost Lake
Why: Gus Dapperton isn’t breaking and new ground with his pop songs. Post-surf rock jangle guitar? Jazz-lite rhythms? Bright, melodic synth flourishes? De rigueur with modern indie rock. But something about how he pulls it all together with his band has a simple charm that sets it apart as does Gus Dapperton’s off the cuff yet confident stage banter. Opening the show is Denver dream pop/post-punk band Oko Tygra. Joshua Novak’s command of mood and the warmth of his vocal delivery gives music that can sometimes be beautifully icy a human core that elevates the mood. Also, in the last two or three years the band has pared back and simplified its sonic signature making for more spacious and emotionally stirring songs.

Wednesday | May 2, 2018

Who: Dessa w/Monakr
When: Wednesday, 05.02, 7 p.m.
Where: The Bluebird Theater
Why: Though not a founder of influential hip-hop collective Doomtree Dessa has been an integral part of that crew for years. She is after all CEO of Doomtree these days. But as a solo artist she is able to demonstrate her gift for producing beats and a deft and creative use of words shifting between singing, rapping and spoken word. There is a confidence and fluidity to her delivery that bring to her evocative storytelling a vivid quality as though she’s conceived of her albums as a films she’s directing and in which she’s acting. Her new album, 2018’s Chime, her first in five years, has spare titles but inside each track her words are incisive and impactful and the beats cinematic.

Who: Open to the Hound, The Lacuna Brotherhood and Room 204
When: Wednesday, 04.30, 7 p.m.
Where: Lost Lake
Why: Open to the Hound sounds like the band all got together and went off to a cabin in the mountains to write their songs and had plenty of time to be away from the haze of civilization and touched by starlight and moss. Sometimes the results are trippy, fuzzy grunge rock, other times, introspective and minimal freak folk/indie pop campfire compositions. They even have some ambient-rock-downtempo songs that some musically unsophisticated people might call “shoegaze.” The trio lists The Microphones as an influence and the part-rock-song-part-sound-collage aesthetic of some of the band’s music bears this out in a way that is refreshingly not so obvious.

Best Shows in Denver 4/19/18 – 4/25/18

Khruangbin_byMaryKang1 — Khruangbin performs Monday, April 23, 2018, at The Bluebird Theater , photo by Mary Kang

Thursday | April 19, 2018

Atari_Sep6_2017_TomMurphy — Atari, photo by Tom Murphy

Who: Glasss Presents Speakeasy Series Season 2: Atari and Pythian Whispers
When: Thursday, 04.19, 7 p.m.
Where: Hooked On Colfax
Why: This latest edition of the Speakeasy Series Season 2 will be an early and short show from Denver ambient artists Atari and Pythian Whispers. Being in the latter, no comment. Atari, though, is David Bridges, a DJ who manufactures records to create truly unique beats in an analog format. He uses some electronic components in his beatmaking but its that he has been known to cut records apart and put them together in different arrangements for a show or recording. The result sounds like tape collage, ambient industrial but the craft involved is a step beyond what most musicians making similar music would be willing to undertake.

Who: Glasss Presents: Gold Trash, Church Fire, EVP and Mirror Fears
When: Thursday, 04.19, 8 p.m.
Where: Syntax Physic Opera
Why: Sort of an all-star experimental electronic pop lineup. Mirror Fears set a high bar for emotional intensity and a complete synthesis of dream pop, industrial and noise with her 2018 album Eaten. Church Fire similarly doesn’t skimp on the emotional singing in its live show and on its albums but its style is more embodied in the band name because Shannon Webber has a fiery performance style that is impossible to ignore. EVP channels a lifetime of anger into its music even though some of it sounds like it could be a companion piece to what Grimes has been up to lately. Gold Trash sounds a bit more raw and chaotic than the other acts on the bill, it’s sound seeming to have been informed by the sonic brutality and, yes, trash culture embrace vibe of both Atari Teenage Riot and Royal Trux.

Friday | April 20, 2018

front_242_photoCourtesyFront242 — Front 242, photo courtesy Front 242

Who: Front 242 w/Blackcell, EVP and DJ Slave 1
When: Friday, 04.20, 7 p.m.
Where: Summit Music Hall
Why: Front 242 was the first band from Belgium most people outside of Belgium had ever heard about. Which is interesting because Front 242 remains a bit of a cult band. But the group pioneered the style of electronic industrial music called Electronic Body Music, or EBM. Developing alongside peers like Skinny Puppy, Ministry, Nitzer Ebb, D.A.F. and Front Line Assembly, who were making likeminded music from the early to mid-80s going forward, Front 242 enjoyed a brief period of commercial success by the early 90s. Its single “Rhythm of Time” appeared in the 1992 thriller Single White Female boosting the band’s profile at a time when alternative rock had opened the doors into the mainstream for all sorts of leftfield music that could fit under that umbrella including Front 242.

After 1991’s Tyranny For You, Front 242’s musical style evolved rapidly and dramatically as embodied on a twin 1993 release of both 06:21:03:11 Up Evil and 05:22:09: 12 Off. The big beats that were the driving engine of the band’s earlier music seemed gone but not the robotic, distorted vocals. The tracks seemed less stark and revealed the influence of more sample based composition. Through the rest of the decade and into the 2000s, when Front 242 released music it was obvious the group was learning from the new electronic groups or the era including the IDM, “Big Beat” and house/techno/rave artists that dominated the electronic music world of the 90s and 2000s. Front 242 hasn’t released a new full album worth of material since 2003’s excellent Pulse, its then first album in a decade. But that means that if you’re going to the show you’ll probably get a nice slice of its classic material.

Who: Afroman w/David Frederick, SwizZy B and guests
When: Friday, 04.20, 4:15 p.m.
Where: Gothic Theatre
Why: Since April twentieth in Denver is basically a punchline for a fake holiday there are too many events “celebrating” legal recreational cannabis. Afroman, more than many artists of the past two decades, made more of his 2001, what might be considered a novelty, hit “Because I Got High” than anyone had in years. Since then Afroman has been kind of a mascot for legalization of cannabis so even if this show is basically about that it should be entertaining anyway.

Who: Alphabet Soup #32: MYTHirst feat. Nancy A. Finney, Suffers Beats, DaShwoo, R A R E B Y R D S $, Brother Saturn, Babah Fly, Bentstickremedy
When: Friday, 04.20, 8 p.m.
Where: Deer Pile
Why: The Alphabet Soup series has been a sure fire way to see some of the most forward thinking hip-hop / beat driven electronic music makers in Denver. This edition is no different but included are ambient/dream pop artist Brother Saturn. Otherwise any show with R A R E B Y R D S $ and Babah Fly indicate that someone somewhere in putting together the lineup knows Denver underground hip-hop history while being aware of the most interesting new crews operating.

Who: Zigtebra, Gort Vs. Goom and f-ether
When: Friday, 04.20, 9 p.m.
Where: The Skylark Lounge
Why: Chicago’s Zigtebra has blended the aesthetics of 8-bit video game music composition, EBM and indie pop. It’s the sophisticated lo-fi musical equivalent of inspired collage art. Gort Vs. Goom is a bass and drums prog punk band. Probably sounds counterintuitive but this duo makes it work and comes off more like Minutemen than Primus. F-ether’s musical output is fairly diverse. But one might describe the overarching sound as one of minimal synth environments reminiscent of a less abstract Pole or of early IDM artists. Except there’s more modern glitchcore to some of his denser songs. But all within the realm of modern underground dance music.

Who: Coastlands w/Altas and The Leshen
When: Friday, 04.20, 8 p.m.
Where: Streets of London
Why: Coastlands is a Portland, Oregon-based post-rock band. It’s sound is more melancholy and downtempo than its more rock-oriented kin. More Hammock than Explosions in the Sky. Also playing this show is Denver’s Altas. The instrumental rock band is like its own traveling sonic cinema rooted in guitar and synthesizer music. The group’s 2014 album Epoca De Bestias was full of songs that suggested short, epic science fiction films in miniature themselves. As in not inspired by film but inspiring them. We’ve heard lots of post-metal/heavy post-rock and The Leshen fits under that umbrella fine. But intentionally or otherwise the duo has brought in elements of industrial and sludgy blues rock without compromising an interesting sound.

Who: Cigarettes After Sex
When: Friday, 04.20, 8 p.m.
Where: Boulder Theater
Why: Despite a completely underwhelming showing opening for Garbage in the summer of 2016 and a fairly sparse eight years of output prior merely hinting at what was ahead, Cigarettes After Sex released a respectable self-titled full-length in 2017. It can sound of a piece and yet the dusky tone and Greg Gonzalez’s androgynous vocals are engaging and interesting enough to warrant repeated listens. Even if the live show hasn’t improved, but chances are it has, being enveloped in the ghostly embrace of this music should reward the effort to show up.

Who: 4/20 Funk Fest: Rowdy Shadehouse w/Log and DJ Lucky Luck
When: Friday, 04.20, 7 p.m.
Where: Globe Hall
Why: At least if you come to this show, overtly state them aside, it’ll be enough of a celebration of the bombastic and absurd to be fun. Jon Thursday’s melodramatic, hypersexualized stage persona may split the crowd but at least it won’t be boring or forgettable. His band Rowdy Shadehouse has been through some lineup changes but Thursday is able to bring together some real talents to execute his version of funk.

Who: Esmé Patterson w/Slow Caves and Silver & Gold
When: Friday, 04.20, 8 p.m.
Where: Downtown Artery | Fort Collins
Why: Esmé Patterson will bring her literary and penetratingly insightful pop songs to the Downtown Artery for a show with hometown heroes, the surf-y garage rock band Slow Caves and Greeley’s Silver & Gold, a band that sounds like it worked through its emo, alt-country and neo-classic rock roots to make a the kind of alt/indie rock band with an earnest energy and big hooks.

Saturday | April 21, 2018

MC_Chris_MaraRobinson — MC Chris, photo by Mara Robinson

Who: MC Chris w/Bitforce and An Hobbs
When: Saturday, 04.21, 8 p.m.
Where: Cervantes’ Masterpiece Ballroom
Why: MC Chris and his music has been a part of a certain segment of modern American counterculture through his association with Adult Swim through the Aqua Teen Hunger Force, Sealab 2011 and The Brak Show. Among other projects. Though MC Chris is with some people synonymous with nerdcore, his music goes beyond nerd culture and the nerdly events at which he has performed. Yes, there are 8-bit sounds all over his music and references to video games and RPGs but his production and songwriting is much broader and sophisticated than a narrow subgenre straightjacket could fully encompass. In that way his songs have more in common with other hip-hop than nerdcore. MC Chris’s music may be steeped in and a product of nerd culture but not limited by it. His most recent album, 2017’s Marshmellow Campground, is an irreverent collection of songs about the perils and challenges of childhood and its rituals and experiences that many of us share.

Who: Sugar Skulls & Marigolds album release w/Muscle Beach and Cult of the Lost Cause
When: Saturday, 04.21, 8:30 p.m.
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Sugar Skulls & Marigolds is celebrating the release of its new record, ‘Til Death Do Us Part on Sailor Records. The hard rock duo would probably be considered metal by most people that see them but for the past few years, and probably from the beginning, the band has created some songs that transcend limiting genre labels by taking the harder edged sounds into more atmospheric vistas. When Sugar Skulls & Marigolds opened for Xasthur in 2017, it was supposed to be an “acoustic” show but it just sounded like a great shoegaze or dream pop band with more grit than usual and revealed these guys had more to offer than being just a talented extreme metal band. The new record is finds both creative impulses informing each other for one of the most interesting heavy albums of the last few years. Also, two of the best heavier bands in Denver or anywhere share the bill with the more punk oriented Muscle Beach and the more instrumental metal/posthardcore Cult of the Lost Cause.

Who: The Book of Love w/Eloquent and The Siren Project
When: Saturday, 04.21, 7 p.m.
Where: Herman’s Hideaway
Why: The Book of Love is a band from the 80s and early 90s synth pop world that like groups from that era like Let’s Active and Game Theory who were maybe big on college radio with flirtations with mainstream success, including two tours with Depeche Mode in the mid-80s, but never quite broke through to the audience one might think would be obvious. It wasn’t for lack of quality material and its music was not even as dark as that of Depeche Mode. So The Book of Love became a bit of a cult band in the Goth world of the 90s even after its initial 1994 breakup. Since 2013, The Book of Love has been touring on the strength of its back catalog. Joining The Book of Love for this show is Denver-based Euro-dream-pop-post-punk band The Siren Project, a band that has also yet to garner the attention it richly deserves for its body of work that conjures imagery of hanging out in a fog-enshrouded café in some romantic city on the Continent contemplating the meaning of life and dreams of the future.

Who: Diners, Dingbat Superminx, Petite Garçon, Wrinkle and The Tickles
When: Saturday, 04.21, 8 p.m.
Where: Dateline Gallery
Why: The term indie pop may have lost some of its meaning or significance since the early 2000s when some of the most inspired and idiosyncratic pop music made was coming out in the underground. Well, these bands all embody that spirit of not looking to the mainstream to define what makes pop music and Wrinkle, even though clearly a punk band, is not short on hooks. Denver’s Petite Garçon is mostly difficult to categorize except that its songcraft is a not so self-conscious to be a deconstruction of pop but a use of that structure employing sounds in a way most bands in the classic mold would not. It’s also a chance to see a show at the excellent Dateline Gallery so it is for sure all ages.

Who: Oddfellas, Drink Drank PUNK, Sliver, The Pollution and Church Van
When: Saturday, 04.21, 9 p.m.
Where: Bar Bar
Why: Is this a punk show? Pretty much except that Sliver draws a great deal from DC posthardcore and late 80s and early 90s grunge and northwest punk in general: Nirvana (from whose song the band got its name, natch), Tad and Wipers. And The Pollution includes DC punk band United Mutation’s bass player Jay Fox and thus an unusual and interesting mix of punk, psych and krautrock.

Sunday | April 22, 2018

Ho99o9_Hadas-Di — Ho99o9, photo by Hadas Di

Who: 3Teeth w/Ho99o9 and Street Sects
When: Sunday, 04.22, 6:30 p.m.
Where: The Marquis Theater
Why: 3Teeth wears some of its influences on its sleeve pretty heavily: Nine Inch Nails, KMFDM, Stabbing Westward and Marilyn Manson. But it lacks the utter camp of Manson and KMFDM. Just abrasive, crunchy industrial rock guitar and a bit of a throwback to the 90s in that regard yet still not really coming off like a band tapping into nostalgia. Street Sects is almost a performance art band in how confrontational it sounds and the nature of its fog-enshrouded live shows. Like a breakcore band with more identifiable and visceral low end. Ho99o9 is what might be called an industrial hip-hop act. Obvious comparisons have likely been made with Death Grips and Dälek, none of the three groups sound at all like each other except in their use of sounds in a hip-hop context most other hip-hop artists wouldn’t use like industrial beats and darker undertones in the synth lines. Maybe Sole, The GZA, Eyedea & Abilities, Earl Sweatshirt, Tyler the Creator, Vince Staples and the like. Wherever Ho99o9 fits in, its menacing and socially critical music has been the perfect soundtrack to the last few years. It’s latest release is 2017’s United States Of Horror, a title that just about sums up the national and international mood of late.

Who: Joe Jack Talcum w/Coolzey, Mister Zach and Daywish
When: Sunday, 04.22, 7 p.m.
Where: Herman’s Hideaway
Why: Joe Genaro aka Joe Jack Talcum is perhaps most widely known as the guitarist and one of the vocalists in punk rock band Dead Milkmen. But since 1984 he’s written songs and albums and performed live as a solo artist. Not folk, not conventionally singer-songwriter, but more akin to Robyn Hitchcock or Billy Bragg in that he can be political but also write about love and life in a way that goes beyond tropes. And hey, he may do a Dead Milkmen song or two.

Monday | April 23, 2018

Carpenter Brut Roadburn Festival 2017 Andrey Kalinovsky — Carpenter Brut, photo courtesy Carpenter Brut

Who: Carpenter Brut w/Jean Jean
When: Monday, 04.23, 7 p.m.
Where: Gothic Theatre
Why: Franck Hueso, aka Carpenter Brut, is a French synth artist who has been on the forefront of making the kind of music that one might have heard in 80s horror and science fiction movies, and thus perhaps an explanation of part of the project’s name by invoking director John Carpenter whose own synth-based soundtracks for his own films are a clear inspiration to Carpenter Brut and his musical peers in Perturbator, Magic Sword and Kavinsky. On the 2015 release Trilogy, the titles suggestive of horror storylines and the strong, bright compositions nail the combination of camp and compelling songwriting. Hueso has done some soundtrack work but the vast body of his songs are separate from that context and those songs suggest narratives and aesthetic that recent films like Drive, The Guest and others have manifested. 2018’s Leather Teeth pushes the absurdity factor further in terms of subject matter (“Inferno Galore” and “Hairspray Hurricane” being clear indicators) but Hueso’s mastery of the musical form has progressed even further and the live show looks like an immersive experience.

Who: Khruangbin w/The Mattson 2 bluebirdtheater.net/events/detail/348081
When: Monday, 04.23, 7 p.m.
Where: Bluebird Theater
Why: Khruangbin’s website airkhruang.com offers visitor a playlist for a trip from any place in the world to another which one can also save to Spotify. Asked for various aspects of the trip, the curated selections are uncannily apt. It also more than hints at the band’s cross-cultural appeal. The trio got started when bassist Laura Lee and guitarist Mark Speer were on tour with Yppah in 2010 during that artist’s run with Bonobo and recognized similar musical interests. After recruiting drummer Donald “DJ” Johnson the group started writing its earliest songs and garnered some attention for its early singles. With what looks and sounds to English-speaking eyes and ears as an exotic name the expectation for the project might have been some resurrection of non-Western versions of Western pop. Instead, Khruangbin’s sound is that of downtempo jazz, surf-rock-esque-yet-smooth-and-moody guitar and smoky funk. Currently touring in the wake of the release of its 2018 album Con Todo El Mundo, Khruangbin has brought along like minded, San Diego-based duo, Mattson 2, a band comprised of identical twin brothers Jared and Jonathan Mattson. The brothers released a collaborative album with Chaz Bundick of Toro Y Moi fame in 2017 and in March 2018, an album of covers of Japanese jazz originals called Vaults of Eternity: Japan.

Who: Impiety, Gravehill and Divine Eye
When: Monday, 04.23, 8 p.m.
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Impiety started in 1990 as a kind of black metal band. But in Singapore being in such a band was probably a dicey proposition and remains so in a country that banned “Puff the Magic Dragon” in 1963 and the 2001 Janet Jackson album All for You due to its racy album cover and lyrics. Nevertheless, Impiety and other extreme metal bands have operated out of Singapore for years. Since its earliest releases, Impiety has evolved a bit from its early black metal roots to its current deathgrind style. But its musical vision of audio-violence and lyrics that combine an irreverent attitude toward organized religion with cartoonishly occult imagery will ensure Impiety will alienate casual metal fans. Gravehill from Anaheim, California and its 2018 album The Unchaste, The Profane & The Wicked is a bit of a throwback to a time when thrash and death metal weren’t so far apart in sound and the brutal imagery of the lyrics.

Tuesday | April 24, 2018

Das_Mörtal_christinemcavoy-01 — Das Mortal, photo by Christine McAvoy

Who: Das Mörtal w/Church Fire
When: Tuesday, 04.24, 9 p.m.
Where: Streets of London
Why: Das Mörtal often gets lumped in with the modern synthwave movement and not without reason. His sensibilities as a songwriter are, according to a July 2017 interview with Get Some Magazine, inspired in part by 80s movie soundtracks as well as 8-bit and 16-bit video game music. But this project sounds less like other synthwave stars like Carpenter Brut, Com Truise, Kavinsky and Perturbator and more like a pop-oriented rock band like Cut Copy whose New Order and OMD influences showed pretty strongly on its 2004 album Bright Like Neon Love. And like Cut Copy, Das Mörtal has evolved into his own sound as evidenced by his 2017 album Always Loved. With nods to mid-90s IDM and mid-80s EBM, Always Loved is packed with songs that pick up where nostalgia isn’t enough of an appeal with an updated take on electronic dance music grounded in songwriting rather than merely well-crafted beats.

Wednesday | April 25, 2018

Who: King Krule w/Standing On the Corner
When: Wednesday, 04.25, 7 p.m.
Where: Ogden Theatre
Why: In a time when genre bending and multi-genre artists are becoming more common, King Krule is a standout. Like Deerhunter more than a decade ago, King Krule’s music invites you into a universe of its own as it is not simply rock or a subgenre of electronic pop music or hip-hop. It has elements of all of that and more but is not limited by a need to fit in with something other than Archy Marshall’s expansive imagination. 2013’s 6 Feet Beneath the Moon probably got interpreted as being part of the psych-and-punk-garage revival of the time. But Marshall sounded like he was channeling Old Dirty Bastard singing for a weirdo jazz band making its own version of indie rock. Four years later, The Ooz finds the band weaving in more musical DNA to mutate its sound further. Bossa nova and dub underpin the “Dum Surfer” single and the beatmaking compositional element is stronger across the whole album, giving it a soft and hypnotic quality even in its moments of peak emotional intensity.

Who: Whores, Bummer, Bland Canyon
When: Wednesday, 04.25, 8 p.m.
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Whores is a sludgy noise rock trio from Atlanta. Reminiscent of Big Business, KARP (naturally) and a less sonically surreal Jesus Lizard, Whores perform with the edgy energy of a posthardcore band rather than with the quickened tar pace of many bands projecting a similar aesthetic. Not as overtly so, Whores shares KARP’s proclivity for humor and irony. After all, on its latest album, 2016’s Gold. there are song titles like “I See You Are Also Wearing A Black T-Shirt” and “Mental Illness As Mating Ritual.” Bummer is a sludge rock band from Kansas City that sounds like what would have happened had Ministry followed a trajectory suggested by the Filth Pig album. Bland Canyon from Denver comes right out of the local post-hardcore scene with former Mustangs and Madras members Nick Krier and Tom Chagolla as well as Matty Clark from Trees. Danny Aranow from Sugar Skulls & Marigolds and Justin Hackl who has played in several local bands including in Native Daughters with Chagolla. It’ll be heavy but also oddly catchy.

Who: Dreamdecay, Product Lust, Weaken, Old Sport
When: Wednesday, 04.25, 8 p.m.
Where: Bar Bar
Why: Dreamdecay is a noise post-punk band from Seattle. Its urgent, thorny songs don’t fit in with the hardcore scene one might expect the band to come from though it probably plays a number of those kinds of shows. Its grittily atmospheres and meditation on the quandaries of existence in a pre-apocalyptic society should appeal to fans of Silver Daggers, Live Skull and Arab on Radar. Its 2017 album YÚ isn’t all the same tempo, tone or texture throughout making it rewarding repeat listening experience. All the bands on this bill have their roots in punk but did us the favor of exploring sounds, rhythms and styles beyond the outworn fashion of punk circa any “classic” year of the past.

Who: Big K.R.I.T. W/Cyhi the Prynce, Childish Major
When: Wednesday, 04.25, 7 p.m.
Where: Cervantes’ Masterpiece Ballroom
Why: Justin Scott a.k.a. Big K.R.I.T. has always used interesting beats to go along with his words and he has aimed at making poignant observations about life that transcend the specific context and situations he references. And he’s mostly made good on that ambition. For his 2017 album, 4eva Is A Mighty Long Time, Scott delivered twenty songs divided into two sides of the record, the Big K.R.I.T. side and the Justin Scott side, with each embodying a side of Scott’s songwriting identity. The title is a clear nod to Prince’s “Let’s Go Crazy.” Though that song is a celebratory party song it is also a fascinatingly thoughtful and insightful exploration of what one must do to propel yourself out of life’s lowest moments. It is that spirit that flows through Scott’s record as well with an eclectic array of music to set the mood for both the party and contemplation of the meaning of it all.

Short Takes #1: April 2018

This is the debut of our record reviews column. It has that name because each review here will generally be a brief set of impressions on each album. Because that might be more useful to most readers than an extended analysis. It may include releases that came out earlier in the year and each column will be updated as we add reviews. The featured album will usually get more attention and for April 2018 it is the new Black Moth Super Rainbow record Panic Blooms, out May 4 through the band’s own Rad Cult imprint.

Black Moth Super Rainbow – Panic Blooms – Rad Cult
Why is the new BMSR album the featured album? Because Tobacco and company are making some of the most idiosyncratic pop music today and the world needs more art that isn’t so easily nicked and dumbed down for people who can’t meet the art on its own terms, enjoy it thusly and perhaps be changed by it in some way.

It’s tempting to call Black Moth Super Rainbow the American Boards of Canada for its masterful recycling and repurposing old electronic music sounds into interesting new shapes that are as retrofuturistically alien as they are comforting. Panic Blooms makes more obvious BMSR’s use of hip-hop production styles in the mixing and beatmaking. But rather than some as-yet-to-exist abstract trap IDM record, this album comes off like the band is trying to reconnect with the musical spirit that first inspired it to make music. Like a search for a reason to keep doing this stuff. There’s always been an element of self-effacing humor in the band’s song titles and lyrics so “Bad Fuckin Times” makes sense. But “Rip On Through,” “One More Ear,” “We Might Be Back,” “New Breeze” and “Bottomless Face” hint at an artistic existential crisis. And yet, this set of songs has a coherence that wasn’t quite there on the 2016 Seefu Lilac EP. Panic Blooms, the title, suggests coming to the realization that maybe one is out of ideas and that very fear that shakes you to the core of your being, cutting you to the psychic quick, can either sink you or blast out yet another vital wave of creativity. The latter seems to be the case here and track to track, it’s a Black Moth Super Rainbow classic on par with 2007’s masterpiece, Dandelion Gum.

Breakdancing Ronald Reagan – Harsh Noise – Self Sabotage Records
Johnathan Cash, aka Breakdancing Ronald Reagan, is too much of an irreverent performance artist to take his sound mashups and collages at face value. Processed and pitch shifted vocals and cut-up short stories amid blasts of echoing white noise make “Playing Windchimes With My Feet” a bit humorous as it is disturbing. Rather than take himself too seriously, Cash has a song called “You Can Tell A Noise Act Sucks If All Their Tracks Have Really Long and Stupid Titles,” which he performs live, in which he describes what makes so many noise acts boring while embodying the same. Meta. The whole Breakdancing Ronald Reagan thing is meta. Equally ironically, Cash’s pieces on this album embrace the shittiness he mocks and pushes the concepts to their ridiculous logical conclusions while having made something worth listening to. Unironically, or so deeply ironic it isn’t, is that there actually is a lot of harsh noise on this tape including negative real or faked audience reactions.

Drinks – Hippo Lite – Drag City
Cate Le Bon and Tim Presley cut out most of the civilized world’s multifold distractions to write the follow up to 2015’s excellent DRINKS album Hermits on Holiday. Not getting poisoned by the incessant inundation of mediocre ideas resulted in one of the most fascinatingly eccentric pop albums in recent years. “Real Outside” has the kind of borderline atonal, unconventional percussion driven, non-standard rhythm that made Young Marble Giants, Liliput and, well, certain songs by Crass so listenable. Many musicians would sequester themselves and come up with the same old stuff they always do, Le Bon and Presley came up with a freak folk pop world or labyrinthine textures and warping tones and melodies to get lost in.

MIEN – MIEN – Rocket Shop
Opening track “Earth Moon” hints that you’re in for a record that was obviously informed by Screamadelica-period Primal Scream, the more gently psychedelic Brian Jonestown Massacre songs and pre-A Northern Soul era Verve. But the kosmische vibe of “Black Habit” breaks that impression. The driving/droning bass and tom heavy drumming and synth swells take the songs right out of what you’d immediately expect of musicians who are also in The Black Angels, The Horrors, Earlies and Elephant Stone. And from there album dives right into different realms of sound in terms of music and production. If “psych” is to continue to have any real meaning it’s going to be more like this in which the musicians clearly want to place themselves into alternate states of consciousness through the music they make rather than imitating someone else’s style completely. Sure there are familiar, comfortable elements if you’re familiar with the band members’ other work but they can’t help but be who they are and that also includes being seekers of experiences that expand the mind and stretch one’s creative capabilities. The album isn’t aimed for a mainstream audience, it’s aimed at the heads that crave something as different as maybe the first time they heard The Black Angels at a time when psychedelic rock just wasn’t in the general zeitgeist. But here there are more overt electronics in the mix and an electronic aesthetic to give a new dimension to what we already expect from the people in this band.

Mondo Obscura – Focus On Black – Symbolic Insight
Mondo Obscura doesn’t sound dated but its mixture of dub, IDM, ambient, dub and techno might have fit in more with the world of music that existed in the early-to-mid-90s when bands like Meat Beat Manifesto, Underworld, The Orb, Faithless, Rabbit in the Moon and Future Sound of London were blurring the lines between experimental electronic music and the more dance-oriented faire you might have heard at rave or a club catering to that kind of music. Particularly so with Focus On Black. Samples flow in a stream of tones buoyed by progressive beats driven by dubby bass lines. It has the structure of cinema with short chapters, fluid, fast cuts, some long takes like a Danny Boyle film or early Matthew Vaughn. Think progressive trance without the wack, safening elements blended in. Perfect after hours music for the chillout zone.

Night Grinder – Animus – Fourfold Records
An angry, prog-inflected industrial concept album is probably the last thing anyone would expect to be worth listening to in 2018. And yet, this sophomore Night Grinder album is such fascinating take on bringing all those ideas and more to bear on the miasma of social ills plaguing us all at once lately. By channeling that overwhelming feeling and refusing to be blasé about events we would have collectively reacted to with horror and utter outrage rather than resignation, Brad Schumacher (aka Night Grinder) has delivered a non-didactic statement across fourteen tracks regarding, yes, the dual meaning of the title, Animus, which means both “hostility” and “motivation to do something.” Schumacher makes no overt suggestions, but honors the fact that the paralysis of Americans in particular and the world generally in the face of the need to do something practical and productive about the seemingly endless internecine conflict across political and cultural divides is only ensuring more of the same evolves into worse. An updated on the Edmund Burke quote about how “All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.” Evil, as it were, may not be triumphing per se, but the shittiest people sure seem to be prevailing, Schumacher just sees an end, not so difficult if complicated, to that trend and articulates that idea throughout Animus without hitting you over the head with an annoying level of messaging.

Solypsis-Devisor_cover — Solypsis – Solypsis-Devisor cover

Solypsis – Solypsis-Devisor – Component Recordings
Out of James Miller’s prolific and diverse body of work, this one seems closest to synthesizing a bit of his Foetus-esque industrial noise beats with his knack for generating unpredictable melodies. Or maybe it’s just that he ties the melodic structure to borderline chaotic beats. There’s plenty of noisy breakcore composition across the album, as in “Death Threat,” and melancholy industrial dub the likes of which is represented well in “Life In A Hole,” but this Solypsis album shines best when Miller seems to go off his own deep end. “Straight From My Heart” is the sound of a songwriter who has hit bottom and still managed to laugh at the absurdity of heartfelt despair. “We Make Our Own Monsters” is uncommonly insightful as a title but is it a bit of a pun when the track is itself a fuzzy, lumbering, monstrous beat that Miller wrote himself in a life of musical output that isn’t exactly short on menacing work? In ending the album with “Wrong Tube,” Miller lets us know that even in his worst personal moments his humor is never completely gone nor is his ability to use the manipulation of minimalist elements to get under the skin of anyone that takes the time to delve into this album.

Atmosphere’s Colorado Tour in December Proof the Duo Still Values Its Underground Roots and Connection

02Atmosphere_Dec10_2017_TomMurphy — Atmosphere at The Ogden Theater, 12/10/17. Photo by Tom Murphy

December 10, 2017. It wasn’t a particularly cold, late fall night when the line to get into the Atmosphere show at the Ogden ran two blocks. The previous time the hip-hop duo played in Colorado it was probably headlining at Red Rocks or a similarly large venue. At the end of the line an unpre-possessing guy who came up to say hello to people. He was dressed like everyone else but he had an artist’s badge on and at first a number of people in line didn’t really knew who he was because he sure didn’t say, “Hey, it’s me, Sean Daley, Slug, you’re coming to see me tonight.” He just talked to people and said thank you for coming to the show and took as many pictures and shook as many hands as he could until he had to leave to go get ready for the performance. Not many artists do this sort of thing but maybe more should.

06Atmosphere_Dec10_2017_TomMurphy — Atmosphere at The Ogden Theater, 12/10/17. Photo by Tom Murphy

Later, throughout the powerful and playful performance, song by song, Slug and Ant laid out a sensibiliy in the music that goes beyond the whole “we’re just like you” presentation. More than a poetic stream-of-consciousness diary entry set to beats aesthetic. More than the “we’re only here because of you” gratitude platitude. It was we’re here with our people who identify with our expressed flaws, potentially problematic feelings at different times of our lives because that level of reality and coming to terms with our entire selves is more important and relatable than a manufactured, finely curated image. There is some of that because it’s a show, after all, and not some hyper real documentary that wouldn’t really be interesting to see on stage. But from demonstrating a very human care for fans as people earlier before the show to the beautiful, short-Colorado-tour-specific merch (see below for the t-shirt), Atmosphere let us know they mean it.

05Atmosphere_Dec10_2017_TomMurphy — Atmosphere at The Ogden Theater, 12/10/17. Photo by Tom Murphy

Even though Atmosphere is kind of big time hip-hop act these days, it spent many years incubating in the underground either as Atmosphere or in previous projects where grassroots connection with fans is all you have. Good thing to know Ant and Slug remembered what it felt like to have that connection even if you can’t talk to literally everyone after a show and some of the boring merch some bands peddle with just their name and maybe a merely okay design. It’s the details and touches that aren’t so obvious that distinguishes Atmosphere from some of their peers. With an extensive set list that spanned much of the group’s career, Atmosphere didn’t skimp on on the fans in that regard either.

07Atmosphere_SetList_Dec10_2017 — Atmosphere set list for The Ogden Theater, 12/10/17. Photo by Tom Murphy

08AtmosphereT-ShirtFront_Dec10_2017_TomMurphy — Atmosphere Colorado tour shirt 2018 [front]

09AtmosphereT-ShirtBack_Dec10_2017_TomMurphy — Atmosphere Colorado tour shirt 2018 [back]

Best Shows in Denver 04/13/18 to 04/18/18

SharoneAndTheWind_NicSmithPhotography_web — Sharone & The Wind, photo by Nic Smith Photography

Friday | April 13, 2018

FeverDreams_Jul6_2017_TomMurphy_web — Fever Dreams, photo by Tom Murphy

Who: Fever Dreams, Galleries, Baby Baby, Hair Club
When: Friday, 04.13, 9 p.m.
Where: Lion’s Lair
Why: The psych rock and neo-classic rock wave that energized and later burned out in an underground music world in America and beyond perhaps inadvertently spawned a post-wave of rock bands who took those roots and did something more interesting and original. That’s what this show represents. Fever Dreams is a noisy psychedelic band in a gentle mode. Not dream pop because it’s more gritty than that, but fans of that music will find much to like with Fever Dreams. Galleries came out of some guys who listened to a whole lot of Led Zeppelin and fuzzy 90s rock but through the process chamber of imagination and practice Galleries manages to not really sound like their forebears.

Who: Sharone & The Wind album release w/Mr. Atomic, The Undertakers and Amalgam Effect
When: Friday, 04.13, 7 p.m.
Where: Marquis Theater
Why: Sharone & The Wind releases its powerful sophomore album, Enchiridion of Nightmares tonight. Check out our interview with Sharone here.

Who: Diva 93 (Minneapolis), 269 Bone (Minneapolis), Merma & Roberta (ABQ), Polyurethane
When: Friday, 04.13, 8 p.m.
Where: Mutiny Information Cafe
Why: Minneapolis, Minnesota-based Diva 93 sounds like a combination voice sampling, tape collage infused minimal synth band. What public access stations were to cable conglomerates in the 80s and 90s, Diva 93 is big, synth pop bands—making a virtue of lo-fi, low budget sounds with sheer creativity.

Who: Big City Drugs, DJ Erin Stereo, Mara Wiles, Louis Johnson and Adam Cayton-Holland, benefit for Corey Rhoads who needs a new kidney
When: Friday, 04.13, 10 p.m.
Where: Mutiny Information Cafe
Why: Some heavy hitters in the local comedy and music world are coming together for this event to benefit Corey Rhoads who needs a kidney transplant. In a sane world, events like this wouldn’t be necessary but we haven’t lived in one for a long while now. So if you show up you get to see Denver-based comedy stars Adam Cayton-Holland, Mara Wiles and Louis Johnson as well as DJ sets from Erin Stereo and a musical performance from Big City Drugs, a band that is comprised of comedians but whose take on punk rock is cathartic and not trying to fit into some subgenre of punk with riveting results.

Saturday | April 14, 2018

JonnyFritz1_horse_web — Jonny Fritz, photo courtesy jonnyfritz.com

Who: Meet the Giant, Plastic Daggers, Dead Orchids
When: Saturday, 04.14, 8 p.m.
Where: Lion’s Lair
Why: Meet the Giant is releasing its “Drive” single this night. The Denver-based post-punk band makes some pretty lush and moody music for a three piece. “Drive” in particular is reminiscent of the criminally overlooked L.A. 80s post-punk world and bands like 3D Picnic and Opal. Except that Meet the Giant doesn’t sound dated or retro. Also on the bill are Plastic Daggers, a punk band with a drop of rockabilly in its sound without sounding like they’re trying to cop some neo-classic rock vibe, and Dead Orchids. The latter has a kind of chamber pop quality except the music sounds more like the members of the band are more than passingly familiar with Crime and the City Solution and its raw emotional quality is enhanced, not tempered, by melancholy melodies and introspective atmospherics.

Who: The Residents
When: Saturday, 04.14, 8 p.m.
Where: Bluebird Theater
Why: The Residents have been outweirding most other bands since 1969. This is the legendary avant-garde pop/performance art troupe’s first time in Denver and you can read more in our interview with The Residents’ art director Homer Flynn here.

Who: The Still Tide (EP release) w/Panther Martin and Bluebook
When: Saturday, 04.14, 8 p.m.
Where: Lost Lake
Why: The Still Tide have long been one of the most interesting pop bands in Denver. So it comes as no particular surprise that the band has developed a bit of a following outside the Mile High City as well. Anna Morsett’s voice, seemingly well suited to Americana as well as rock, with her widely expressive intonations is immediately striking but inside the context of well-crafted melodies that balance a sense of yearning and acceptance. The group’s new EP, Each, After is more introspective and sparse than 2017’s Run Out but not short on that EPs energetic quality. Since art-folk band Bluebook is also on the bill, perhaps Julie Davis will join The Still Tide on a number or two.

Who: Amigo the Devil w/Jonny Fritz, Hang Rounders and DJ Brian Buck
When: Saturday, 04.14, 8 p.m.
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Amigo the Devil took the Gothic Americana thing and focused on the murder ballad tradition of the blues that influenced that music to produce a pleasant-sounding but disturbing body of work about the musings of serial killers and the like. Denver’s Hang Rounders aren’t exactly mining similar thematic territory, it’s just a legit country band from people who aren’t short on a healthy sense of humor and irony. But there’s really no irony here. 2017’s Outta Beer, Outta Here may have an amusing title and maybe the musicians don’t take themselves too seriously but it’s a refreshingly not pop-country or overly retro country offering. Jonny Fritz is to modern country what Ray Stevens was to an earlier era of country. That is to say he takes anecdotes and stories from life most other songwriters among his peers wouldn’t use for fodder for songs. Also, an impeccable sense of melody and the ability to engage the audience with a truly idiosyncratic performance in an established musical style. Turns out Ray Stevens is not just the novelty songsmith for which many may remember him, he’s a talented songwriter with an interesting body of work and the same could be said of Jonny Fritz.

Who: Trevor Green
When: Saturday, 04.14, 12-4 p.m.
Where: Mile High Spirits
Why: Trevor Green is a multi-instrumentalist solo songwriter who performs with a brace of guitars, some didgeridoos and various other instruments that he brings into the mix as he performs. He looks like a guy who wandered into town from looking for the Lost Dutchman’s Gold Mine but got mixed up with Native American mystics in the desert and decided to seek his fortune in making music that reflected the sounds and ideas he learned there rather than delusions of some modern day quest for Cibola. All fanciful references aside, Green’s 2016 album Voice of the Wind is a rewarding hybrid of New Age world music and Americana-inflected rock. That Green can pull this music off live with some creative stage set-up is impressive in itself.

Sunday | April 15, 2018

TrevorGreen_WillThoren_web — Trevor Green, photo by Will Thoren

Who: Trevor Green
When: Sunday, 04.15, 10 p.m.
Where: Mountain Sun
Why: See above for 4.14.

Who: The Jinjas, JINMO (Tokyo) and Gothsta
When: Sunday, 04.15, 8:30 p.m.
Where: Lion’s Lair
Why: JINMO is a prolific avant-garde guitar and synth composer from Tokyo who is currently touring throughout the US with musical performances and demonstrations of the methods and technology he uses to make his often ambient and soundtrack-y songs. Denver’s The Jinjas is a synth/dance rock duo. Who even knows what exactly to call Gothsta except anti-climate and environmental destruction and how she more or less describes herself as “Depression melodica, polka Euroamericana.” Which tells you you’re in for something different than any one of those singly could completely encompass.

Monday | April 16, 2018

CradleOfFilth_Artūrs-Bērziņš1_web — Cradle of Filth, photo by Artūrs Bērziņš

Who: Cradle of Filth w/Jinjer and Uncured
When: Monday, 04.16, 6:30 p.m.
Where: Summit Music Hall
Why: Cradle of Filth has been placed in various heavy metal subgenre buckets. But it doesn’t really fit the black metal mode because Dani Filth has never taken the Satanic imagery itself too seriously—it’s part of the theater and it’s amusing to somehow still rankle stuffy, conservative religious folk without really trying. Maybe Cradle of Filth was in the beginning and certainly now more akin to the kind of Gothenburg death metal sound. Except Cradle of Filth is from England and not tapping into that whole “viking metal” thing either. Is it Goth metal? What does that even really mean? Cradle of Filth is also part punk and the political subtext of much of the band’s music along with its embrace of the feminine in spirituality from its 1994 debut album The Principle of Evil Made Flesh to its most recent record, Cryptoriana – The Seductiveness of Decay from 2017. But whatever one might think of the music, Cradle of Filth brings theater to all its shows in a way that some of its more commercially successful peers don’t.

Wednesday | April 18, 2018

Breeders-by-Marisa-Gesualdi-1-web — The Breeders, photo by Marisa Gesualdi

Who: The Breeders w/Flasher
When: Wednesday, 04.18, 7 p.m.
Where: Ogden Theatre
Why: Kim Deal of Pixies started The Breeders in the wake of the release of Surfer Rosa as an outlet for releasing music she wrote. Early on she recruited Tanya Donelly of Throwing Muses and various other musicians to record the first album, 1990’s Pod, and the follow up EP, 1992’s Safari. While the records found an audience on college radio it wasn’t until the 1993 post-Pixies album that The Breeders found a wide audience with the release of Last Splash and its hit single “Cannonball.” While, in terms of publically-released music, The Breeders haven’t been the most prolific band all of its albums have been imbued with a swagger, honesty and sense of humor along with finely crafted, fuzzy rock songs that have a warmth and relatability that many rock bands lack. All Nerve, the group’s 2018 release, its first in a decade, is surprisingly vital and a showcase for Kim Deal’s ear for expressive nuance in tone and creative song dynamics. It’s a mature record without sounding like Deal is toning things down.

Sharone & The Wind’s Enchirdion of Nightmares Represents a Darker and More Confident Rebirth for the Band

On Friday, April 13, Denver based hard rock band Sharone & The Wind releases its sophomore album, Enchiridion of Nightmares. That the record is coming out on Friday the Thirteenth is fitting given the horror themes as metaphors for life’s horrors contained within. The album is all but formally structured as a kind of horror anthology, literary or cinematic. The project fronted by Sharone has come a long way from a rock band borne out of Sharone’s 2016 solo EP to the current lineup which has turned a promising early version of the band to a confident outfit with theatrical live shows that might remind some of a much smaller scale sort of thing Alice Cooper does with his own concerts.

The band’s 2017 debut album, Storm, sounded like a songwriter speaking her truth for the first time in a way that got her out of the solo, sort of singer-songwriter presentation of the music. Though, to be fair, Sharone’s 2016 solo EP and performances of those songs struck a chord with people that got to see those shows at Seventh Circle Music Collective and other places Sharone found to perform. And the incarnations of the band that existed during the writing, recording and performing of the songs from that album helped establish Sharone as a performer who not only sang but played keyboards and guitar until she was able to recruit musicians to play those instruments toward the end of that phase of the band’s life.

By early 2017, Sharone & The Wind, as it had been, was no more and the suddeness of that loss and the way in which bands often dissolve left Sharone feeling angry, sad and fearful of the future of her ability to keep doing music. But the split ended up forcing Sharone to move forward as an artist and finding a new lineup of people who believed in her vision. The result was a darker, more confident sound with Sharone’s vocal range expanding in pitch and dynamism, which manifested strikingly on the new record. It also meant live shows that more closely reflected what Sharone had been imagining for her band from early on.

“As soon as the lineup change happened I felt more creatively free and open to express myself artistically,” says Sharone. “I’ve always had these ridiculous ideas like bringing a lifesize coffin on stage and have demons dance on stage with us like we did at the Halloween show [in 2017]. I was never in a situation before to bring those ideas to life, I always felt judged. I just feel very comfortable with the current lineup and any crazy idea that comes to mind they’re all about it.”

While the band was coming together, Sharone kept writing music and the emotions haunting her paralled her interest in old horror movies and horror fiction. “Basically all the emotions people get from reading horror books or watch a horror movie or go to a haunted house,” says Sharone. “Because I was going through those feelings in my life and because I was interested in horror at the time it fit very well together [because] I was as afraid of what was going to happen in the future as I was afraid of what was going to happen to the little kid in the house in a story.

The writing and recording of the record with a new band was “like one, long therapy session” that Sharone desperately needed. It also lead to a cooperative transformation of the band to have a genuine image to present to fans to stir the imagination and for Sharone it freed her from her early inhibitions as a songwriter of promise to one comfortable in her own body and abilities.

“[Writing and recording Enchiridion of Nightmares] let me step from this very timid, vulnerable place with Storm and come to the other end of the spectrum with all these angry feelings and horror themes,” says Sharone. “Personally having done these two extremes I’m figuring out where I stand with what The Wind is and the direction I want to go from here. The last few weeks I’ve been writing new stuff that’s very open, raw and wearing no disguise of any theme, just honest.”

In March the band released a video, produced by photography, Nic Smith, for the song “Demons” in which each personal demon portrayed as taunting the various band members, “represent mental illness and how people express them.”

“I think it’s a song a lot of people can relate to in a lot of different ways because we all have internal demons with which we struggle,” says Sharone.

For the show at The Marquis the band will debut live the songs “Cursed,” “Exorcist” and “Death of a Clown” and you are invited in to share the catharsis the music brings to Sharone & The Wind.

Sharone & The Wind w/Mr. Atomic, The Undertakers and Amalgam Effect at The Marquis Theater, Friday, April 13, 2018, 7 p.m. doors

The Residents Bring Their Weird and Wonderful Multimedia Show to Denver

ResidentsInBetweenDreamsPhoto2500px_web — The Residents photo for In Between Dreams Tour, image courtesy Homer Flynn

The Residents | Saturday, April 14, 2018 | Bluebird Theater | 8 p.m.

Most people have never heard of The Residents. The band has had no commercial hits and arguably its most famous, iconic song is a cover of “Istanbul (Not Constantinople),” a 1953 novelty hit by Jimmy Kennedy and Nat Simon. Founded in 1969, from the early days, The Residents have performed in various costumes—most notably wearing giant eyeball masks with a top hat. The speculation on the identity of the members of the band have included people “knowing” Frank Zappa, Les Claypool and Gerald Casale and Mark Mothersbaugh of Devo are members of the band. There is a rumor that Homer Flynn, the band’s longtime art director, and designer of most of the album covers, is in the band as well. All of which has been denied or ignored by representatives of The Residents.

Whatever the identity of the band members or its relative obscurity, its deconstructing and reconstructing of American popular music has given the world some of its most unusual, fascinating and brillint music of the modern era. For example, The Residents have done albums dedicated to American composers like John Philip Sousa and George Gershwin. The Residents have reworked songs by Elvis and James Brown and, as on its 1978 classic Duck Stab, traditional songs like “Old MacDonald Had a Farm” as a warped and spooky song called “Farmers” which weaves in “Mary Had a Little Lamb” and “Three Blind Mice.” By following their creative instincts, The Residents, whether as interpreters of song, a long tradition in American music, or in crafting original songs, have established themselves as one of the most original and unusual bands on the basis of their recordings alone.

Live, The Residents always incorporate multimedia elements from costumes to video projections and stage sets if the tour, such as the disastrously expensive 1983 The Mole Show tour whose production cost and execution nearly did in any other touring for the band.

“They lost so much money and it was so difficult they said they would never tour again,” says Homer Flynn. “They definintely ranged it back, otherwise they wouldn’t have lived this long. That idea, though, has always been part of their planning for a show.”

The most elaborate shows Flynn says require a more stable setting with a production company coming in to help with the execution in a setting that wouldn’t really work for a touring show. But even the more scaled back presentation is striking and on the highly theatrical 2002 tour for Demons Dance Alone and even the more modest set of 2016’s Shadowland tour it was obvious that you were witnessing a band whose storytelling and persona mythmaking involves a rich creative exercise that most other bands don’t undertake.

The Residents have several high profile fans including their friend Penn Jillette, Simpsons creator Matt Groening and the aforementioned Les Claypool whose band Primus has covered Residents songs including “Sinister Exaggerator” on the 1992 Miscellaneous Debris EP. Even though such deeply imaginative music and shows rarely result in mainstream success, The Residents remain a much respected group to those who have had a chance to delve into any of their albums and seen a show. In an age when there seems little mystery left in art and music, The Residents have retained the mystique and not just because the identities of the members of the band remains a public mystery.

No one writes albums quite like 1988’s lurid yet mystical God in Three Persons or any of The Residents’ several story style albums since the 80s. In the mid-90s few adopted new technology and utilized it as fully as The Residents did for the 1994 CD-ROM edition of 1990’s Freak Show. Podcasts are a common thing of the past several years but The Residents released a noir story album as a podcast in 2006 with The River of Crime. In 2015 a documentary film about The Residents called Theory of Obscurity told the band’s story using previously inaccessible archival footage and interviews with Flynn and other partners in The Cryptic Corporations as well as many of the band’s fans, famous and otherwise.

Currently the band is in the middle of its In Between Dreams Tour making its live debut in Denver at The Bluebird Theater on Saturday, April 14. We had the chance to talk with Flynn about the band, its inspirations in some of America’s most flamboyantly theatrical performers, how The Cryptic Corporation was essentially saved by fans of the band and Flynn’s early experiences with finding music in suburban Shreveport, Louisiana, where the band started before relocating to the San Francisco Bay Area.

Queen City Sounds and Art: Did you have access to non-mainstream music or art when you were growing up?

Homer Flynn: Basically, no. I grew up in pretty straight, white, middle class suburbs. I was always a music fan and I was always seeking out new music. At that time radio was really the best exposure that you had. So I had a handful of stations that I would listen to. Back then there were certain stations you could listen to late at night. It has something to do with atmospheric conditions after a lot of other stations signed off. I would listen to stations like WNRE in New Orleans that I listened to regularly. Also WLOS in Chicago and XERF, which was Wolfman Jack, from Mexico. For me that was the only way I could get exposed to new stuff. There was a very mainstream culture at that time.

Some people take for granted that didn’t exist back then like any viable alternative kind of radio station. Although, until the early 90s, late at night some stations relaxed their control over what DJs played so you could hear a very different kind of programming than the normal faire.

Exactly. When I first came to San Francisco it was wide open. It was just as FM was starting to take off. The reality is that the corporate powers that be hadn’t figured out how to make a lot of money at it yet. So you would have a DJ that would be on for four hours playing whatever seemed cool. In a lot of ways FM at that time was kind of like how the Internet is now—more open with a lot more stuff available.

What prompted you to make the move

There were two things going on for me. One, those were George Wallace times back in the South—the original Trump. Most of the people I knew at that point had escaped or left. For me, I’d always said that I was ready to get out of the South. The main thing upon leaving is that you have to have a landing spot. I had a good landing spot in the Bay Area. If I’d had a landing spot in New York I could easily have gone there.

The Residents have deconstructed and reconstructed Western popular music for much of its career. Overtly with stuff like The King & Eye from 1989, [1984’s George and James and “Farmers,” with traditional songs. Why was that important to the band?

The Residents have always had a great love for music. All kinds of music. Even though they’ve been mainly marketed as a rock act, their taste has always been much broader than that. Things like the American Composers series allowed them to stretch out in ways that weren’t necessarily expected.

Many of The Residents’ albums from the 80s going forward seem like fascinating and imaginative works of fiction presented in a multimedia format rather than through prose.

I think that’s true. I think for The Residents they always felt like there were stories inherent in the lyrics. The lyrics would be sung by characters The Residents had in mind and those characters would have a whole story. As they matured, they started developing those stories more and more. In a lot of ways that became more full with their CD-ROM stuff in the mid-90s which offered so much in the way of presenting that storytelling.

One person that influenced them is Sun Ra. I got to see toward the end of his life and found out about him around the same time I learned about The Residents. Did you get to see Sun Ra perform?

I was a huge Sun Ra fan and the first I saw Sun Ra was at the Berkeley Jazz Festival sometime in the early 70s. This was at a small amphitheatre in Berkeley and he blew that place off the planet. Everyone else seemed like they were totally straight and going out there playing their jazz stuff and improvising or whatever. All of a sudden Sun Ra came out and it was like the whole stage levitated. I saw him several more times. I’m a huge Sun Ra fan but I can’t say I’m a huge fan of all the recordings because some of these recordings sound like, “We just did a gig, we’re all high so we’re going to go back to the hotel room and play some more and turn on a cassette recorder in the bathroom.” While a lot of that music may have been great if you were there with them it doesn’t translate well to the recordings.

Definitely. I remember seeing him on an episode of Sunday Night with David Sanborn hosting that a friend had recorded and shared trying to convince me to go to the show in Chicago and thinking, “Who is this guy? He looks like a wizard throwing glitter!”

Right, and wearing a hubcap for a belt buckle.

You have to love that. Why do you think he had such an impact on The Residents?

One of the things that had such an impact on The Residents, and I could say exactly the same thing about Liberace, not many people would compare Liberace and Sun Ra but the cool thing is that they’re both incredible showmen at a time when so many people felt like, “We’re a band and we’re going to go up on stage with just our blue jeans and t-shirt on.” And they’re indistinguishable from the audience. The Residents felt that if you’re a performer you should look like a performer. Nobody ever mistook Sun Ra for a guy that came up out of the audience and got behind the keyboards.

For the Demons Dance Alone tour in 2002 it seemed like there was a lot of production for that show and then for the Shadowlands tour was a smaller scale production. Now it’s a four member band rather than that three-member?

They’ve kind of reconstituted the current version as a classic four-piece: guitars, drums, keyboard and vocals. It’s almost like a modern retro. It’s all very electronic, as you might expect, the drummer who is an excellent drummer is playing electronic drums. He looks like he’s playing drums but they’re really MIDI triggers and can make any sound in the world.

On the Shadowlands tour in 2016 there was an object on stage like a sculpture or sphere-topped pedestal on which to project images. Has 3D mapping become part of the show?

No, I don’t think they’ve actually done any 3D mapping. They’ve done several projections the last couple of [tours]. There’s nothing particularly unusual about the projections. Probably the most interesting thing is that for the “Talking Light” show they used a small, handheld projector and they had three circular screens on stage. So the singer would kind of go to one of those circular screens to another projecting mainly short videos of stories told by the characters. Various characters told ghost stories on those three screens. What was nice about the three screens is that the light people love them because special light things could happen when there’s not a projection so it becomes another nice visual exclamation point on the stage.

The Ghost of Hope was from 2017. Are most of the albums put out through Cryptic Corporation these days?

I had a partner, a guy named Hardy Fox, that I worked with for about forty years. He and I kind of formed the Cryptic Corporation together with a couple of other guys. Hardy decided he’d had enough and wanted to retire a couple of years ago. So ultimately he wanted me to buy him out but I couldn’t afford to do that so I had to look for new partners. I found two new partners, one was MVD, Music Video Distributors. We worked them in the 80s, they sold lots of Residents VHS cassettes in the 80s, DVDs in the 90s and CDs and LPs more recently. I talked to them two or three years ago saying I was having these problems with figuring out how to do it and they said they might be interested in doing it. They said they had another partner that might be interested, which ended up being Cherry Red Records in London. Each of them bought half of Hardy’s half of The Cryptic Corporation. I still own 50%. Most of the product that is coming out at this point is being created by Cherry Red and being marketed and distributed mainly by MVD in the United States and Cherry Red in Europe. The real stroke of luck in the whole thing is that there’s a guy there named Richard Anderson who’s a project manager at Cherry Red. Turns out Richard is a huge Residents fan so it’s been a real pleasure working with him on the new material and all the back catalog that’s coming out. Richard brings a huge amount of care to the product so things are going really well at this point.

Best Shows in Denver 04/05/18 – 04/11/18

KittyCrimes_LindseyWebb_web — Kitty Crimes, photo by Lindsey Webb

Thursday | April 5, 2018

FrankieCosmos_LorotoProductions_web — Frankie Cosmos, photo courtesy Loroto Productions

Who: Frankie Cosmos w/Lomelda and Ashley Koett
When: Thursday, 04.05, 8:30 p.m.
Where: The Fox Theatre
Why: Frankie Cosmos released its third album Vessel on March 30, 2018. Like it’s predecessors there’s a tender sensibility to the songwriting that recalls the lo-fi introspection of Exile In Guyville period Liz Phair and the peek-into-a-strikingly-insightful diary quality of Casiotone for the Painfully Alone. Sure, Kline had famous parents (Kevin Kline and Phoebe Cates) and was once a member of Porches. But Frankie Cosmos doesn’t sound like it’s resting on any of those laurels. Kline uses everyday details as a vehicle for exploring feelings and thoughts long hidden. The results are a refreshing frankness and intimacy even in the context of a pop song without the overpolishing and overproduction that the musical form often gets.

Who: Glasss Presents the Speakeasy Series 2: Brother Saturn and Vahco
When: Thursday, 04.05, 7 p.m.
Where: Hooked On Colfax
Why: This edition of the new season of the Speakeasy Series (all in the basement of Hooked on Colfax) includes some of the most mind-calming artists of the entire programme. Brother Saturn’s dreamlike soundscapes are an entrancing synthesis of ambient and dream pop. Vahco is the solo project of Vahco Before Horses from Demoncassettecult and Gold Trash. Whereas those other two are more in the realm of noise and experimental electronic music, Vahco is more in the realm of pop music with soulful vocals.

Who: Liza Anne w/Valley Queen and Down Time
When: Thursday, 04.05, 7 p.m.
Where: Globe Hall
Why: Liza Anne’s 2018 album Fine But Dying may sound upbeat and bright and, well, like a conventionally commercial pop record I some ways. But not at all beneath the surface of the music is the fact that, according to a recent interview with Billboard, Anne just laid out her struggles with “panic disorder and depression,” articulating them in a way that could be relatable to almost anyone and hopefully at least putting to rest some of her own anxiety and shame regarding those issues. In putting the struggle in very specific personal terms without sensationalizing it or making it seem like a special taboo subject, Anne brilliantly makes it all seem like something anyone might experience without judgment. Joining Anne for this tour is Los Angeles’ Valley Queen who take a folk/acoustic music foundation to songwriting and make it warm and energetic. There’s plenty of post-neo-Laurel Canyon stuff around in the world today but Valley Queen frontwoman Natalie Carol doesn’t sound like she’s copping someone else’s vibe. Rather, her voice, sometimes quavering from the well of emotion, provides a compelling narrative and vivid imagery. One might compare her in that regard to Esmé Patterson’s own knack for creative storytelling that aims at bigger issues through the language of personal experience.

Who: Ty Segall w/Dirty Few ogdentheatre.com/events/detail/347251
When: Thursday, 04.05, 8 p.m.
Where: The Ogden Theatre
Why: Probably anyone that’s been paying attention to modern rock music knows who Ty Segall at this point. If not, pick up pretty much any of his records (they’re all worth listening to) and you’ll get an idea of what music Segall makes but keep in mind that he is clearly a songwriter who wants to explore a wide variety of tones, moods, dynamics and songwriting styles. On his 2018 album, Freedom’s Goblin, Segall explores a more lush songwriting style without waxing into the fake soul and ersatz R&B that is being peddled a little too much of late. Covering Hot Chocolate’s 1978 hit “Every 1’s a Winner” was an interesting choice for the record but it all fits in with an album that sounds like Segall is trying to create for himself an emotionally comfortable space in which to express feelings that are out of step with some of the more hard-edged rock and roll that some may have come to expect from Segall who is too much of a creative chameleon to ever fully embody, all the better for fans of musicians who evolve whether their fans are ready for the changes or not. People have been trying to pigeonhole Denver’s Dirty Few for any manner of reasons for years as just rock and roll hooligans. And they are that but bottom line, the band actually writes solid, surprisingly thoughtful, songs that fit in the context of a rowdy live show.

Who: Kitty Crimes album release w/GVgrace
When: Thursday, 04.05, 8 p.m.
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Maria Kohler has been performing as Kitty Crimes for several years now and it seems as though many of her fans never really knew her as a talented musician and singer in various past bands including Houses, Science Partner and Mercuria and the Gem Stars. Kitty Crimes sometimes seemed like a goof and a gimmick. The whole white-presenting woman doing “dirty” rap thing. But Kohler isn’t someone easily clowned and she turned an interesting project into something powerful and well-composed beyond the obvious appeal. Her new record, Crimes of the Kitty, Volume 2 has soul, the expected deft wordplay, personal insight and lush production. For fans of K’Valentine and Kari Faux.

Who: Entrancer, Cities of Earth, Staggered Hooks, Glissline
When: Thursday, 04.05, 8 p.m.
Where: Syntax Physic Opera
Why: This fundraiser for Project Worthmore, an organization dedicated to aiding the refugee community, is also a great chance to catch some of Denver’s most interesting experimental electronic projects. Entrancer’s music is grounded in the production and sensibility of 90s hip-hop and Detroit techno as well as the full breadth and depth of synthesizer music as someone who has more than a passing experience with modular synths. Cities of Earth’s Tangerine Dream-esque IDM sounds like what should be on the soundtrack to a documentary about Warp Records. At least if his 2017 EP Tangra is any indication. Staggered Hooks is probably the latest project from Dean Inman whose up-to-now-most-recent project, Dream Hike, was responsible for some of the most beautifully hypnotic deep house/ambient going. Glissline is the name Tommy Metz (formerly under his given name as well as Iuengliss) is using for his music these days. Metz has a gift for melodies that soothe the mind and his beats seem to employ the interval that releases endorphins. But whatever his music really does, fans of Aphex Twin and Clark should make an effort to see Glissline sometime if not tonight.

Who: Built to Spill w/Rituals of Mine, Black Belt Eagle Scout
When: Thursday, 04.05, 7 p.m.
Where: Gothic Theatre
Why: Coming out of post-punk/post-hardcore band Treepeople, Doug Martsch put together a band that could synthesize his musical interests and a path of sonic curiosity that wouldn’t fully congeal in underground culture in quite the same way until the late 90s/early 2000s. He cited Caustic Resin as an influence and brought that band’s brilliant guitar player into the new band, Built to Spill, on bass as well as Ralf Youtz on drums. The group’s 1993 debut album Ultimate Alternative Wavers was an oblique thumbing of the nose at how their music culture had been co-opted and marketed as product rather than a culture parallel to the mainstream. The music sounded like a blend of Neil Young, Dinosaur Jr (a band clearly influenced by Young) and underground Pacific Northwest rock. But inside all of that, Martsch had found a way to bring in extended guitar jams that were emotionally charged and expressive rather than purely self-indulgent and wanky. The development of that sound and dynamic perhaps reached its apex on Built To Spill’s 1997 masterpiece, Perfect From Now On and the 1999 follow-up, Keep It Like A Secret. Along with the visionary indie pop of the Elephant 6 collective, the bands on Merge Records, K and Kill Rock Stars, and unlikely “alternative rock” star bands post-alternative collapse like Pavement, Built To Spill helped to shape indie rock in the first decade of the 2000s by offering yet another alternative vision to what was being pumped by large commercial outlets for music.

Seeing Built To Spill in 2018 is a bit like a glimpse back to a time when it was more easily possible to have a viable career in music without having to get commercially huge or over compromise or have to fit in with a trendy subgenre of the moment and ride that wave. Sure, BTS has been on Warner Brothers since Perfect From Now On but if they’re being encouraged to get more commercial you sure can’t tell from even its most recent record, 2015’s Untethered Moon. If the group’s showing at Treefort Music Fest 2018 is any indication, the trio is still capable of weaving its gritty, hypnotic magic today. And its sonic DNA is in music of most modern indie rock bands whether those bands know it or not.

Friday | April 6, 2018

What: Immediate Music Festival
When: Friday, 04.06, 7 p.m.
Where: Metropolitan State University of Denver
Why: The Immediate Music Festival celebrates collaborative improvisation. Throughout the day (for more information click here) there will be workshops on group improvisation, soundpainting, noteworthy avant-garde musician Pauline Oliveros’ presentation Deep Listening. That night, at the King Center, there will be a concert from the avant-garde-improv band Sone which includes some of the local luminaries of that world with Jane Rigler, Janet Feder, Evan Mazunik, Gil Selinger and Mark Harris as well as a performance from Grammy-nominated jazz drummer extraordinaire Matt Wilson.

Who: Dead Meadow w/Mad Alchemy Liquid Light Show, Grass and Palehorse/Palerider
When: Friday, 04.06, 8:30 p.m.
Where: Globe Hall
Why: Dead Meadow is one of the pioneers of the recent psychedelic rock resurgence with its mixture of heavy rock, droning blues, freak folk and densely flowing psychedelia. Read our piece on/interview with Jason Simon of Dead Meadow here. Also on the bill is Palehorse/Palerider, Denver’s own masters of heavy, mind-altering rock that blurs lines between doom, heavy shoegaze and post-rock.

Who: Steve Gordon Art Show
When: Friday, 04.06, 6-9 p.m.
Where: Vertigo Gallery 960 Santa Fe
Why: Master sculptor, painter and drawing artist Steve Gordon is having what may be one of his last art shows into the foreseeable future. Gordon is also a significant artist in Denver’s experimental music world mostly notably with improvisational composition band Animal / object, which often includes Violent Femmes frontman Gordon Gano.

Who: Doug Spencer: Cave Lovers
When: Friday, 04.06, 6-11 p.m.
Where: Dateline Gallery 3004 Larimer St.
Why: This is the latest art show from painter Doug Spencer whose creative use of texture and lighting has made his work desired by connoisseurs of the artform wherein Spencer combines 2D design with 3D, sculptural/diorama elements to create truly unique works. Some may know Spencer as the imaginative guitarist in notable Denver and Fort Collins rock bands Snake Rattle Rattle Snake, Monofog and Sweet Tooth Meat Tooth.

Who: Nocturnal Presents: Exos w/Talien and Alex Whittier
When: Friday, 04.06, 11 p.m. – 5 a.m.
Where: TBA
Why: Nocturnal is a long-running event that puts together deep house/experimental electronic dance events akin to a classic rave. So there will be long sets with the artists listed above going from late night until the early morning.

Who: Slugger, Henry and the Kissingers, Galleries, Pelvis Presley
When: Friday, 04.06, 9 p.m.
Where: Mutiny Information Cafe
Why: After too many bands embraced the less interesting aspects of 60s and 70s rock a little too much a group of bands were bound to come along that embraced the more interesting aspects of that music including original songwriting that isn’t so obviously beholden to an earlier band. This is a show that includes a handful of those groups on the local level including Slugger, the band fronted by former Silver Tone songwriter/guitarist Gabriel Albelo.

Saturday | April 7, 2018

CUT-CHEMIST_JosephArmario_Web — Cut Chemist, photo by Joseph Armario

Who: Cut Chemist w/El Dusty and Chris Karns (Pretty Lights Live Band)
When: Saturday, 04.07, 8 p.m.
Where: Cervantes’ Masterpiece Ballroom
Why: Cut Chemist is perhaps best known for his long term stint as a DJ/turntablist in Jurassic 5 and his involvement in the early era of Ozomatli. His tasteful breaks and ear for unusual and evocative samples brought a an uncommon elegance and depth to Jurassic 5’s beats. But the call to do something outside the context of the influential hip-hop group drew Cut Chemist to a solo career in 2004. His 2006 debut album under his own name was an eclectic and borderline world music and downtempo record called The Audience’s Listening. Since then the turntablist has served as a producer on numerous records, performed live DJ sets including opening for Shakira on her 2007 tour, collaborated with DJ Shadow and, in 2017, started doing a bi-weekly radio show, A Stable Sound, on dublab / 99.1 FM KZUT. In March 2018, Cut Chemist released his second solo album, Die Cut. The record continues Cut Chemist’s masterful treatment of samples into songs with a Dilla-esque use of motes of white noise in the mix, samples processed to sound like you’re getting intermittent transmissions of old radio programs, vintage television shows and commercials and ambient IDM glitch-hop.

Who: Nina Storey w/Michael and Sarah Hornbuckle
When: Saturday, 04.07, 7 p.m.
Where: Soiled Dove Underground
Why: Nina Storey spent years cultivating her sound, songwriting and live show in Denver before relocating to Los Angeles in the 2000s. If you caught Storey in the 90s you probably got to see a singer whose voice was perfectly suited to the bluesy rock music she was writing then. Also, that her powerful voice seemed unlikely coming from someone with such a relatively small frame. Since then (and likely even at that time), Storey has explored the range of her voice and where it fit in and discovered it was well-suited to jazz and R&B as well. On her most recent full-length album, 2013’s Think Twice, Storey blended all her musical impulses into well-crafted modern pop songs. These days Storey still comes through Denver and on this date she is joined by local luminaries in the Denver blues world, Michael and Sarah Hornbuckle.

Who: Suss Law, Rotstrotter, Sentry Dogs, Berated and Florida Man
When: Saturday, 04.07, 8 p.m.
Where: Bar Bar / Carioca Café
Why: Portland, Oregon’s Suss Law could be where power violence, noise and grindcore meet. Its recently released seven inch is a chaotic and relentless assault on the senses with few concessions to accessibility. If you go to this show you can also catch local grind/hardcore luminaries like Rotstrotter and Sentry Dogs. And given the set times of most of these groups, who don’t waste our time by dragging things out, the show may be over by midnight even with five bands.

Monday | April 9, 2018

AcidMothersTemple_Apr10_2013_TomMurphy_web — Acid Mothers Temple circa 2013, photo by Tom Murphy

Who: Acid Mothers Temple w/Yoo Doo Right and Emerald Siam
When: Monday, 04.09, 7 p.m.
Where: Larimer Lounge
Why: Acid Mothers Temple in its Melting Paraiso U.F.O. incarnation is now on the Electric Dream Ecstasy Tour. The long-running Japanese psychedelic rock band manages to continuously bring a unique show every tour because its roots can be traced back mainly back to fairly experimental western music whether rock or avant-garde (i.e. Can, Karlheinz Stockhausen and King Crimson) but members of the band past and present have been instrumental, literally and figuratively, in comprising and shaping underground music and noise in Japan. The composition of the band’s songs is influenced more by concept than technique. It is bombastic and wild and simultaneously as gorgeous and as mysterious as an other-dimensional spirit incarnate. A list of the band members and their official role and their real title clues you into the fact that leader Kawabata Makoto has a sense of humor to match his imagination and technical prowess as a musician.

Kawabata Makoto : guitar, voice, synth, voice, speed guru
Higashi Hiroshi : synthesizer, harp, noodle god
Jyonson Tsu : vocal, guitar, bouzouki, electronics, midnight whistler
Satoshima Nani : drums, another dimension
Wolf : bass, space & time

Prepare to be taken to otherworldly emotional spaces during the show if you surrender to the music some. Also on the bill is Denver’s Emerald Siam which has become refreshingly difficult to pigeonhole. Ever since singer/guitarist Kurt Ottaway and the rest of the band has seemingly tapped deeper into a creative muse, the songs have gotten darker yet more open and spacious. Expect a full-length release in 2018.

Who: Primitive Man, Spectral Voice, Prison Glue and Cadaver Dog
When: Monday, 04.09, 9 p.m.
Where: Syntax Physic Opera
Why: Primitive Man is celebrating its return from a long tour with this show at Syntax with like-minded death/doom/grind band Spectra Voice. Joining both bands will be hardcore band Cadaver Dog as well as noise/performance artist Prison Glue.

Tuesday | April 10, 2018

Luna_web — Luna, photo courtesy Grandstand Media

Who: Luna w/Flaural
When: Tuesday, 04.10, 8 p.m.
Where: Fox Theatre
Why: Luna split for around ten years after its 2005 tour. The disappointment and despair and reality of the music industry at that time is documented in the 2006 film Tell Me Do You Miss Me. If you got to see Luna on that until now final tour, those feelings radiated from singer/guitarist Dean Wareham’s eyes when he looked out into the crowd. And not just because the late-night-hours lush pop that has been Luna’s hallmark ever since Wareham left influential dream pop band Galaxie 500 (which also never got its due during its time together or much since except by aficionados of deeply evocative, melancholy and ethereal gorgeous guitar rock). Wareham genuinely seemed like he was looking out on the last days of his career with plenty of life left to lead knowing he’d created some great music that would only be appreciated in the past tense. You couldn’t help but feel for him unless you’re one of those people for whom music is merely entertainment made not by humans but by functionaries of some kind of Distraction Industrial Complex.

But Wareham didn’t give up. He wrote music with then bandmate now wife Britta Phillips as well as noteworthy solo albums. He also wrote one of the best and most well-written and thoughtful rock autobiographies of all time with 2008’s Black Postcards. The book reads like all the music Wareham has been a part of making, warm and not detached but able to examine one’s feelings and intimate thoughts and express them in a way that is immediate relatable with a passionate yet gentle spirit even when the music is in moments of high feeling. Luna reconvened in 2015 and in 2017 released an album of interesting and not predictable covers called A Sentimental Education as well as an EP of originals, A Place of Greater Safety. That latter being some of the best music Luna has yet released so this would be a tour on which to catch one of the great rock bands of the last 27 years.

Who: Animal / object live on KGNU Radio Kabaret: Kurt Bauer, Steven Gordon, George Figgs and Karen Sheridan
When: Tuesday, 04.10, 7-8 p.m.
Where: Streaming on KGNU.org and broadcast on radio
Why: Animal / object is Denver’s premiere avant-garde acoustic instrument band. For the last several years the group around the current core of Kurt Bauer, Steven Gordon has had a prolific and varied recorded output captured with various other noteworthy collaborators including the likes of Gordon Gano of the Violent Femmes, Gordon Pryor, Paul Mimlitsch and for this show, Karen Sheridan formerly of all-female deathrock band 1980s Denver band Your Funeral, experimental rock band Corpses as Bedmates and R.O.C., a kind of deconstructionist pop band that incorporates elements of electronic industrial music and sampling. Over the weekend Sheridan did vocals for an incantation at Steven Gordon’s art show at Vertigo Gallery. So tune in to KGNU for this special performance from one of Denver’s great experimental bands.

Who: Lo Moon w/Kraus
When: Tuesday, 04.10, 8 p.m.
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Lo Moon spent a great deal of time developing and percolating its sound and then waiting for the right opportunity and format to even let out its September 2016 single “Loveless.” A little under a year and a half later, the full-length self-titled album comes out on on Sony. The single came out at a time when many of the dream pop and neo-shoegaze bands were not drawing on the same inspirations as Lo Moon so it seemed especially sophisticated and sonically and emotionally deep by comparison. The full-length album including “Loveless” doesn’t capitalize on the promise of the single so much as showcase a sound the band had cultivated and perfected in this first stage of its development as a band. The record didn’t exactly blow the minds of critics but it was interesting to see a band not succumb to the pressure of putting out its music as quickly as possible, given the avenues in which to do so, before developing that music to the point it needed to be and without fully submitting to the de-mystifying tendency of the social media game most bands use to garner any excitement for its new material these days. Lo Moon distinguished itself playing larger venues when it toured with Ride in 2017 and getting to see a band with this large a sound on the small stage now would be a great time to see a group that may not be regularly playing such small clubs in the future.

Who: Timber Timbre w/Thor & Friends
When: Tuesday, 04.10, 7 p.m.
Where: Globe Hall
Why: Timber Timbre has been described as psychedelic folk. But if that’s the case then its 2017 album, Sincerely, Future Pollution is more brooding and darker than that designation would suggest. More akin to Midlake’s artistically ambitious compositions or those of Six Organs of Admittance than Vetiver and early Animal Collective. Thor & Friends is a band lead by Thor Harris who some may know from his stints in Shearwater, Swans and Bill Callahan. Though largely known for his skills with a broad spectrum of percussion instruments, Harris is a multifaceted artist and multi-instrumentalist and this band displays that especially well with creative use of marimba prominent in the mix of percussion heavy, yet gently beautiful and atmospheric music.

Wednesday | April 11, 2018

EthanMcCarthy_Jun6_2017_TomMurphy_web — Ethan McCarthy of Vermin Womb performing as Many Blessings in 2017, photo by Tom Murphy

Who: Wake, Vermin Womb, Call of the Void and Full Bore
When: Wednesday, 04.11, 8 p.m.
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Wake is a deathgrind band from Calgary, Canada. Currently on tour in support of its towering, brutal 2018 album Misery Rites, Wake is joined on this Denver date by like-minded locals. Vermin Womb is a band that includes Ethan McCarthy from Primitive Man as well as former Clinging to the Trees of a Forest Fire drummer J.P. Damron. Call of the Void took the blunt, abrupt, savage dynamic of deathgrind to another level of creative sonic violence.