Music – Page 44 – Queen City Sounds and Art

Tears of Silver Brings the Music of Ken Stringfellow, Mercury Rev and Midlake to an Intimate Venue Near You

This Sunday, October 1, you have a rare chance to see Tears of Silver, a kind of super group consisting of Ken Stringfellow of The Posies and Big Star, Jonathan Donohue and Grasshopper of Mercury Rev and Jesse Chandler of Midlake. The show will happen at an intimate venue in the Denver metropolitan area announced a day or two before the show to ticket holders and you can buy tickets here. The set will consist of material from across the careers of all the musicians as well as select covers that fit in with the aim of the band to make a special evening of music that transports players and audience into wondrous emotional spaces with the aid of having the music take place in a space outside the usual environments most people are used to. For the full tour schedule please visit the Tears of Silver website. We recently spoke with Stringfellow about the tour and the group’s aims in doing a tour of venues that don’t normally host music and how that, for him, makes for a richer, more satisfying experience for everyone present.

Queen City Sounds and Art: Last year the Posies did a tour of unconventional venues which you’re doing this time too. What made you want to do that?

Ken Stringfellow: There’s quite a few reasons why this kind of tour appeals to me. First and foremost it’s aesthetically pleasing to find unusual places and warm places that don’t have that slightly seedy aspect lurking at every bar to some degree. Of course some people like the raw, underground feel of a bar because it is seedy and that gives it that kind of edge. I’m more into something more beautiful. Also, a bar, their job is to sell alcohol. That’s their business model and that’s their focus and everything that goes with it. Meaning staying open as long as possible to get the most sales in a night. They put music in bars as a loss leader to get people in. I want the focus of the evening to be the music. That’s what these shows have come to be about. It’s not a bar that has bands on now and then. This is something where we’re gathering at a place for a purpose and to share that experience and only that experience of music.

Denver has a long tradition of unconventional places that people play regularly. Did you have those kinds of experiences with live music coming up as a musician in Seattle and elsewhere?

Mostly if it was going to be an unusual [location] it would be a small festival put together for an event like Fourth of July or whatever and those places would be impromptu. But generally no, we would play the same clubs over and over again. The clubs would change names but it would be the same room. The club that’s called El Corazon now where punk bands usually play now used to be called The Off Ramp. It was called Sub Zero at one point but it’s been a few different things over thirty years. There isn’t that much variety and now touring for over thirty years coming back to the same clubs is fine and some of them take care of the bands the best they can. But we’re at cross purposes, generally. They want the shows to go from eight to two in the morning with the headliner on at midnight even if it’s a Tuesday because the longer it stays open the more booze it can sell. My audience and I on a Tuesday would pretty much be over by ten. Which is reasonable because there is no point. The only reason shows happen late is to sell beer. So I elminated that reason. It’s not beneficial for the art or the participants. It’s just beneficial to the beer companies and I don’t really care about their business and they’re doing fine without me. They don’t need my help.

With the Posies you played at churches and other places most rock bands aren’t playing.

Yeah, like empty office spaces, after hours retail, recording studios and some houses. This tour is continuing this them. I have a partner in booking these spaces, Tina Dunn, who has been finding even more spectacular places to play for this tour. There are a couple where I’ve never seen anything like it. On Saturday we played this plant nursery. This guy has a couple of acres in central San Diego, it’s mostly residential and business out there, and he has an oasis with plants and farm animals and he sells everything you need to grow food. Farmer Bill is his name and his family has a house they built in the middle of the nursery. They have a great vibe and have these seed beds in the back boxed in with railroad ties and they’re a foot high. They’re laid out in parallel rows and make natural seats over which they throw burlap sacks. Then you look up fifteen feet above you where there’s a slope, a little hill, with a flat area up there where you can set up. It’s weird because you’re fifteen feet up looking down on people four feet in front of you. It was strange and wonderful. On Monday we played this motorcycle repair place on Treasure Island. It was an old, industrial building built with thick, wooden beams. It was clean but had a gritty vibe. They put two work lights on the floor turned to not blind people sitting in front of us. We were back lit but no standard show lighting and that was really cool.

Do you find playing the environments affect the way you play?

I think it’s fairly consistent the way we play but I think it makes sure the audience knows this is something unique and will only happen once. I think that’s the subtext. I don’t know if we’ll ever play shows again in this configuration. The plan is to play the tour and put out some online tracks. It’s really just about coming and playing this music this time in a unique way, with a unique line up in a unique place.

Why did you want to work with these other guys in the band for a tour like this?

I’ve just been an admirer and I worked on Mercury Rev’s last album, contributing vocals, creating elaborate vocal landscapes, stacks of surreal vocal sounds. That’s the only way I know how to describe it. I really want ot make a distinction, especially with my solo work, that the power pop thing that comes up again and again my solo work is further away from it. It’s more an Americana jazz-o-sphere. I think if you lined up Lyle Lovett, Bill Frisell and some kind of Gershwin influence or something, that’s where I’m at. All my music has a spirituality to it that’s probably the thing that I’m getting at. The power pop genre isn’t particularly spiritual. It’s kind of a feel good kind of thing—light and romantic. Whereas there’s a gravitas to my solo work that I’ve put in there as well as spiritual, philosophical and scientific themes. I want to make sure people know that’s not power pop as I know it. Power pop isn’t a dirty word but it just doesn’t apply. People base their conception of what I do based on, shall we say, The Posies’ first album, which came out when I was a teenager thirty years ago. It would be silly to assume that I would be in the same place now that I was then with all the experiences that I’ve had and all the opportunities to grow. I’ve done my best to capitlize on growth as a person, a thinker and a writer.

I think Mercury Rev has a spiritual depth and has a hymnal aspect to their music that is also not what a [hardcore] power pop fan would choose or want. If I were on tour with Matthew Sweet and Tommy Keane, who are on tour together know, a power pop fan might think that’s the best thing ever. And they might be disappointed when they find that my solo work doesn’t really fit. I’d rather stop that argument in its tracks and say I’m out here in a more ethereal sound [as is the case with this tour]. Whether we play in a church or not, our sound has a cathedral-sized reverb on it at all times. There’s no drums so it’s more hymn-like than it is rock or pop. Three guitars, beautiful piano and four voices sometimes doing four-part harmonies. I said in a recent interview that it’s more like if Crosby, Stills & Nash were a shoegaze band and released albums on 4AD.

I’ve seen Mercury Rev a couple of times, not since December 2008, and it felt like a spiritual experience. It was transcendent and you felt like you were in a different place other than regular, mundane earth for the duration of the show.

Exactly. That’s how I feel about what they do and I think what I do as a solo artist is a little more earthy but the sentiments and the philosophy apply well to this lofty, otherworldly playing so it’s a good mix.

You were a member of one of the ultimate power pop bands with Big Star but there was always something otherworldly about their music, especially Third.

Precisely. And we open with “Nighttime.” It kind of sets the stage because you’ve probably not heard it the way we play it before. We all know it, we all sing on it and fans know Third. I think it really sets the tone for the evening.

INVSN and the Power of Music to Subvert the Dominant Paradigm

INVSN is a post-punk band from Umeå, Sweden that has mastered the art of making radical politics accessible to a wide audience. It’s melodic yet intense compositions recall the appeal of Gang of Four who likewise made pointed social commentary with contagiously danceable songs. And like Gang of Four, INVSN isn’t short on experimental flourishes that ensure the music stays fresh and challenging.

The band’s lead singer Dennis Lyxzén is one of punk’s all time great frontmen who many of you may have seen on vocal duties in The Refused and The (International) Noise Conspiracy. Charismatic, nearly supernaturally energetic and witty, Lyxzén and his bands have exerted a lasting impact on punk and popular music. INVSN recently the 2017 album The Beautiful Stories on Woah Dad!, a reminder that punk need neither be didactic or purely created for entertainment. It can inform, illuminate and inspire. We recently had a chance to talk with Lyxzén as the band was getting its current tour under way with a stop tonight at Larimer Lounge in Denver. The show starts at 8 p.m.. We’re including the bulk of the interview in Q&A format because it felt like a conversation more than a typical interview and so many of his ideas are relevant for punk, music and culture in general today.

Tom Murphy: Some of your other projects that might be more familiar to most people like The Refused and The (International) Noise Conspiracy had obviously political content with names that suggest such and I was wondering if the name INVSN had similar connotations.

Dennis Lyxzén: Not really. With The (International) Noise Conspiracy I was pretty stoked that we had a band name that was kind of an idea what the music presented. INVSN, it could be the same for that.

At one point INVSN had Swedish lyrics but with English lyrics you can obviously command a much larger international audience. Was the the reason for the switch?

Yeah. I mean, when we started the band singing in Swedish was a very different approach. When we did two records in Swedish and we started honing in on what we wanted to do as a band we thought it was good enough to be everywhere. Singing in Swedish is fine but if you want to reach outside of Sweden it’s hard and you become nothing more than a cult phenomenon. We’re ambitious people and we wanted to do something substantial. The previous record we did we did a Swedish and an English version. With the new record we only did an English version but we worked with an American producer, Adam Greenspan and it didn’t make sense for him to fly over to Sweden, record a record and have no idea what was going on with the lyrics. He’s worked with The Veils and some Nick Cave. I met him through the last The Refused record and I asked him if he wanted to work on this record and he said yes.

With all the bands of yours that I’ve heard it seems as though you have been able to take what some people might consider radical politics and make them accessible without watering them down. Is that something you’ve done all along with your music?

With The Refused my ambition wasn’t to be accessible, but just to be radical and kind of annoying. I think that when we were a hardcore band and we were hardcore people and such an integral part of the scene, which is a very small scene. There is something very, I wouldn’t say defeatist about it, but it’s a kids preaching to the converted kind of deal. We figured with The (International) Noise Conspiracy let’s be a band that’s accessible but radical with the political ideas. INVSN is the same way but I don’t think it’s the politics or the people that we are, it’s the ideas and it’s going to shine through no matter the music we do. We just want to write great songs and the politics go hand in hand with the kind of people we are. It’s not a cynical attempt to be accessible and political. It’s the music we like and the ideas we have. No matter what I do or the music I’ll always be political because that’s the person that I am.

Yeah, and always have some commentary on things going on whether it’s overt or not.

Exactly. I have to say the art dictates how you approach the political topics. With The Refused it’s so much in your face. The music itself is so aggressive and so violent that the politics are just like they’re screaming in your face. With INVSN it’s more introspective and existential in nature even though all the political traits all shine through if you look at the lyrics. I think that’s the cool thing about having different projects—the language of the music dictates the language that you use in that music.

Right, in the way it’s presented.

Yes, exactly.

I remember seeing The (International) Noise Conspiracy and you jumped around on the railing at The Bluebird Theater, which few people do. This was around the time of the 2000 Presidential election. That was striking but even more noteworthy perhaps was how funny you were about very serious subjects. I remember you made a remark about fascism and brown shirts and maybe we prefer light brown.

I think the way to approach music like that when you play shows sometimes it’s serious but you have to add a sense of humor to it because if it’s too heavy-handed people won’t respond well to it. Especially when when play in INVSN and there aren’t a lot of people, you have to be able to be personal and approachable. And joke about being tight-pantsed communists from Sweden. I’m a very serious person and so are many of my lyrics. But I like to joke about myself. I think it’s important to be able to make fun of yourself. Otherwise you become insufferable.

I’ve never been to Sweden, despite being part Swedish, but is there anything integral to your life early on to your development as a musician that might not be obvious to people who know little about the culture and society there?

I think where you grow up and where you live affects how you view the world. We didn’t even even grow up in Umeå, which is the big city of one hundred twenty-thousand people, we grew up in the villages around it, in the countryside. There is something really sparse about it that gives you a sense of isolation and it affects how you approach music and life. Sweden also has really great, communal music schools. When you’re a a kid at twelve and you want to play guitar, there’s always a practice space and a place to play guitar. That’s how we got to play music and an early age.

Just starting my first band with my friends there was a youth center you could go to and they had a practice space fully set up. We didn’t know how to play but someone came in and showed us the chords to “Smoke on the Water” or whatever. I think that was super important and I think that’s why so many Swedish bands are good at what they do.

I wish every society had that. They had instruments to play too?

They had a complete set-up with the P.A. and everything. You had to book your time but we eventually got our own practice space. We had study circles and borrow a P.A. and suddenly you have your own room and your own equipment.

What kind of places did you have to play for other people?

We had a lot of youth centers. I remember when we started The Refused across the city of a hundred thousand people they had maybe eight youth centers and they had shows. Every other weekend you could play a show at the youth club. And then go see other bands. It was a way to really hone your chops. It’s different from America where you have to do everything for yourself. We had communal music schools and then the youth centers and then the city provides you with good practice spaces. It’s a good thing. It makes people good at what they do. It’s set up to help people. That’s part of the setup of Swedish society—it’s set up to help everyone. If you have an interest we help you with that—if you want to play music, play football, set up a study circle. When we toured and saw the rest of the world we realized it wasn’t anything like Sweden. When you’re at home and find shit you’re concerned about and when you get out into the world you find out how you have it pretty good.

Your new album has a song called “Immer Zu.” What does that refer to?

Oh, that was a joke, it means “Forever.” The song has an industrial and crazy sound. I was joking, because of industrial music like Einsturzende Neubauten from Germany, that I was going to scream the chords in German. And then I did. It was an experiment to mix languages and there was a little bit of Swedish and a little bit of German. Why not?

“I Dreamt of Music” is an interesting title too given the current cultural climate in much of the world because many of us are not encouraged to dream of or aspire to anything that doesn’t serve the interests of big money. I think it’s a radical act to aspire to something that isn’t dictated to you.

The quote “I Dreamt Music” is from Blade Runner. I thought that’s so rad because it’s a sign that you’re a conscious person somehow. As you said, you need to find things that matter in a world that’s been so devoid of ideas, especially political ideas. I think music and art and culture has a huge gap to fill and I think it’s great that with music we can inspire people and make them think about ideas.

Music is one of the few things that can cut through cultures and conditioning. And that’s why it’s been trivialized as a product whose main purpose is entertainment. I think it’s potentially much more powerful and significant than that.

I think so too. I think music has a huge potential to subvert the society we’re in. It’s so powerful and hits you right in the gut. Music doesn’t have to be intellectual, it just has to hit you right. I think that’s why it’s been commercialized as a cheap form of entertainment. Look at punk rock. There are so many punk rock bands that don’t talk about politics or anything. They’re just entertainers. Which is kind of weird because when I was growing up punk rock music was rebellion. Sometimes maybe not focused or directed but always about rebellion. I like to hold on to the idea that music can lead you into [a different way of being].

I remember when punk rock was widely rejected by mainstream society and you might even get beat up or persecuted for being part of that subculture. Now it’s definitely been assimilated into the mainstream even if it still has the potential to be subversive.

I think music still has that potential. Now every fucking fashion designer, every TV show, has the “punky” and “edgy” element. But the music is important and it holds merit. In the 60s with the civil rights movement and the hippies where the music and a mass movement could be close together, I don’t think we’ll have that again. Music still has power but maybe it’s not as visible as it was back then.

That potential power is why our culture seems so set on trivializing creativity and art generally. Whether a conscious effort or otherwise, it is geared toward undermining and neutralizing that power, that influence, over society. But it can’t truly be contained.

For sure. And I think that’s why I’m still obsessed with it. With the idea that music can still reach people that we can’t otherwise. I’m still obsessed with this tribal way of communicating with people. Every night I feel so privileged to do that and get on stage and create something that other people can make their own.

Best Shows in Denver 9/15 – 9/20

Now that Trump and the Democrats have struck a bargain about the budget and DACA, maybe we can all take a break and check out a great show happening in Denver (or beyond as some of the acts listed below are on tour).

P.S.: “Goddamn-dipshit-Rodriguez-gypsy-dildo-punks. I’ll get your ass.” — RIP Harry Dean Stanton

Who: Church Fire, Giardia, Deer Creek and The Pollution
When: Friday, 9.15, 7 p.m.
Where: Tennyson’s Tap
Why: The Pollution is essentially a psychedelic punk band done by people who are punks who like Hawkwind. Bassist Jay Fox was (sometimes still is) in DC hardcore band United Mutation. But given his having spent a great deal of time in the Southern hemisphere including New Zealand, Fox’s musical tastes are eclectic and there’s plenty of that Kiwi rock influence in his music today. Meaning The Pollution could never be a standard punk act. Church Fire makes synth-beat-driven pop music with a passionate intensity worthy of any the heavier rock bands on this bill. And yet, somehow, singer Shannon Webber amidst her ritualistic performances, manages to inject just a twinge of humor—a quality welcome in music that, while immediately danceable, addresses serious social and political issues with an unblinking ferocity. Okay, maybe some blinking.

Who: Speakeasy Series: Rare Byrd$, Abeasity Jones
When: Friday, 9.15, 6 p.m.
Where: Hooked On Colfax
Why: Experimental hip-hop show in a basement of a coffee shop? Not the first time but in this case you’ll get a chance to see one of the most promising acts in Denver or anywhere with Rare Byrd$. The group has incredibly soulful flow and its beatmaking combines the finely sculpted low end of 90s gangsta rap and ambient and psychedelic music in that it’s as hypnotic as it is mind-expanding. Easy to compare to cLOUDDEAD, Deep Puddle Dynamics and early Atmosphere but only in the sense that all are rooted in imaginative soundscaping and poignantly truthful poetry.

Who: Post-Punk Piano/Vocal Covers Night w/Todd Loomis of The Twilight Garden and The Siren Project
When: Friday, 9.15, 8 p.m.
Where: Mercury Café
Why: Todd Loomis of Goth/dark dream pop band The Twilight Garden along with like-minded Denver-based act The Siren Project will perform songs by the likes of INXS, The Cure, Depeche Mode, Radiohead, Switchblade Symphony, Joy Division, Tears for Fears, Morrissey, Bauhaus, Ladytron, Garbage and more. Loomis will also play some songs you wouldn’t expect by artists like Roy Orbison, Elvis, Otis Redding, John McLaughlin, Metallica and Sinead O’Connor. What makes this different from cover bands playing the usual sort of gig is that neither set of artists generally does covers and the interpretations are likely to be interesting.

Who: Blanket Empire w/Silver Face and Quantum Creep
When: Saturday, 9.16, 9 p.m.
Where: The Skylark Lounge
Why: Blanket Empire is releasing its latest album, Hymn For the Heartless at this show. Superficially Blanket Empire sounds like its members recently ditched that wave of music miming classic rock in favor more unusual influences and embraced modern sensibilities as much as those classic. Maybe these guys listened to a lot of T. Rex, Roxy Music and Led Zeppelin for big, warping sounds. But the lo-fi charm of its album is reminiscent of Jay Reatard’s masterful blend of raw rock and roll and a sophisticated sense of melody and songwriting has been a massive influence on underground music even before his untimely passing in 2010.

Who: Vic N’ the Gnarwhals, Surf Mom and Monocle Stache
When: Saturday, 9.16, 9 p.m.
Where: Syntax Physic Opera
Why: Vic N’ The Gnarwhals do that rare thing where the music has a familiar vibe, one might dub it psychedelic surf rock for the blend of styles, and thus very tangible. But there’s a mysterious undertone to its songs suggestive of noir cinema even when its songs get a little out there. Surf Mom used to be kind of a surf rock band, sort of still is, but the band has evolved greatly since it debuted a couple of years go. How many surf rock bands cover Christian Death? But the influences with this duo are broad ranging and since its members are still in high school you have to think they’re going to outgrow what inspires them now or at least take the music in new directions.

Who: Lotus w/Com Truise and Nosaj Thing
When: Saturday, 9.16, 9 p.m.
Where: Red Rocks
Why: Lotus is basically an EDM jam band. For some people this sounds like the combination of two terrible things. And Lotus may not be for you. Lots of jazz overtones like an electro version of Galactic. But what would you expect of a jam band? Nevertheless, Lotus is respectable live band. But if you want to catch some of the more interesting electronic acts playing more mainstream venues these days, check out Nosaj Thing and Com Truise. The former is a hip-hop artist who has done production work for Kendrick Lamar, Busdriver and Chance the Rapper. His own albums, though tend to be more like ambient dance music with deep low end coursing over and under drifting, vivid melodies. On his 2013 album Home, he featured Blonde Redhead singer Kazu Makino on the song “Eclipse/Blue.” So his musical range and interests are not limited to just a single genre of music. Com Truise came to prominence in the underground through fans of analog synth-based dance music several years back. But his science fiction themed albums caught on with a wider audience not just because Seth Haley is a talented songwriter but he was able to take what could have been simply a lo-fi aesthetic best experienced in a small venue with small sound system and render it suitable for a much larger format of presentation.

Who: Stiff Little Fingers w/Death By Unga Bunga
When: Saturday, 9.16, 8 p.m.
Where: The Marquis Theater
Why: Stiff Little Fingers, from Belfast, Ireland, were an anecdote in the film High Fidelity for a reason. It’s scrappy, melodic outbursts, as found on its classic, aptly titled, 1979 album Inflammable Material, found an immediate influence but its enduring impact was on the early pop punk scene in America. Although the band broke up in 1982, it reconvened in 1987 and have been actively releasing albums and touring since. Plus, if recent shows are any indication, these guys still play like the world could end tomorrow.

Who: Sonic Vomit, Condor & Jaybird (IA), Harikiri (MN) and Kwantsu Dudes
When: Saturday, 9.16, 7 p.m.
Where: Mutiny Information Café
Why: Pueblo’s Sonic Vomit probably gets broad brushed as a death metal or grindcore band. But it’s avant-garde and jazz side aren’t exactly subtle or hidden. It just makes the band’s music more unsettling and, frankly, more interesting than something straight ahead couched in a heavy metal subgenre. Which makes its pairing with Condor & Jaybird, a psychedelic band from Iowa rooted in that kind of psych that could have come out of a cult like The Source Family with folk song structure but one using non-Western instrumentation and sounds.

Who: TOPS w/She-Devils
When: Saturday, 9.16, 8 p.m.
Where: Larimer Lounge
Why: Superficially, TOPS is a Canadian band that makes the kind of light pop music reminiscent of the kind that did well on record charts in the mid-to-late 70s through the 80s. But the secret of many of the songs from that timeframe too is that, yes, discussed the usual everyday life struggles, but in a way that commented on the emptiness and dissatisfaction that is at the core of every society in which the best most people can hope for is a job that doesn’t suck too bad, spending the rest of one’s life with someone you get along with okay even after the rush of early love has long since passed and resign oneself to a beige reality knowing deep down it never needed to be that way. TOPS’ music sounds like the sinking realization of that sort of thing but with more than a shade of the knowledge of what could make life be more fulfilling. That aside, the band’s songs are true gems of indie pop songcraft with words that dig more than a little deeply at the quiet desperation of 21st century urban living.

Who: Micah Schnabel, Sour Boy Bitter Girl and The Swindlin’ Hearts
When: Sunday, 9.17, 8 p.m.
Where: Lion’s Lair
Why: It’s difficult to say whether, at this point, Micah Schnabel is better known for his solo career or for his band Two Cow Garage. Either way, Schnabel’s take on alt-country is self-critical and he has a real gift for puncturing his own pretensions of years past and foolish notions he might entertain in the present. In that way one might compare him to comedians like Patton Oswalt and Maria Bamford who are keenly aware of their own shortcomings and turn them into their best work. Sour Boy Bitter Girl couldn’t be a more well-named band considering the music. Benjamin Buttice seems to have few qualms in laying out his twitchy psyche out for the audience. Every neurosis, fear and flaw is mixed in with his honest and poetic portrayal of life as its experienced, the only filter seeming to be to make it relatable to other people. The band probably gets labeled alt-country or the like as well but like Schnabel’s, Buttice’s songwriting transcends simple genre designation. It just feels vitally authentic in a format of music tends to hold few surprises.

Who: Witchtrap (Colombia), Nekrofilth, Weaponizer and Skeid
When: Sunday, 9.17, 8 p.m.
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Colombian thrash band Witchtrap makes an appearance at the Hi-Dive. Also on the bill are death grind band Nekrofilth, black metal thrashers Weaponizer and “Barbarian black metal” band Skeid. What is that whole Barbarian business about? Listen to their 2017 split release with Morgue Whore and it makes sense because it sounds like the kind of pulsing, low-end heavy stuff Conan would listen to if he could.

Who: GGOOLLDD w/Time Scale
When: Tuesday, 9.19 7 p.m.
Where: Larimer Lounge
Why: Before starting GGOOLLDD with her bandmates in 2014, Margaret Butler was someone who got out of high school and got out of her home town of Baton Rouge, Louisiana. After a stint of subsistence living in Portland, Oregon, she was invited by friends to spend some time in Milwaukee, Wisconsin but it was there that things came together for Butler when she heard the right music that made he want to sing along and soon enough GGOOLLDD became a bit of a local phenomenon before taking its synth pop, crafted to cinematic proportions to stages far and wide. The band isn’t yet playing large theaters regularly but its music is written to that scale. In December the band will release its latest EP, Teeth on Roll Call Records.

Who: Widowspeak w/Death Valley Girls and Clearance
When: Tuesday, 9.19, 8 p.m.
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Death Valley Girls have done a magic trick in turning campy musical and performance elements into a powerful live band that has the kind of bombast and raw power of L7 or Bikini Kill complimented by an elegant atmospheric side that recalls Cocteau Twins. It’s a combination that shouldn’t work but it just makes DVG more interesting than any surface level assessment of the band could convey outside the live setting even though the band’s records capture some of this essence nicely. Headlining the bill is Widowspeak, a band also known to upset expectations in the best way. Its’ ethereal melodies have an introspective shimmer reminiscent of Mojave 3, The Sundays and Mazzy Star. Its latest record, 2017’s Expect the Best out on Captured Tracks, finds the band exploring a broader palette of sounds seemingly emphasizing texture and rhythm as much as tone and its signature sweeping vistas of dreamy melodies.

Who: Ride w/Lo Moon and DJ Paul Italiano
When: Wednesday, 9.20, 7 p.m.
Where: Summit Music Hall
Why: In June 2017, British shoegaze legends Ride released Weather Diaries, its first album in twenty-one years. This in the wake of a successful reunion tour in 2015. And like its contemporaries, Slowdive, the new record is a worthy entry in its already respectable extant catalog. The term “shoegaze” is known to have been an insult to bands operating pedals in order to execute their mindbending sounds. What is missed in such a nickname, now minus the negative connotations, is that many of those bands, Ride in particular, did more rocking than shoegazing. As several bands in the 2000s embraced the visceral sound sculpting of 90s shoegazers, the old guard has enjoyed a renaissance and to the credit of most, they came back with new musical ideas that didn’t sound like a tired second act. Those fortunate enough to have caught Ride since it’s been back got to see a band that re-established its reputation as one of the great live bands of its era. Also on the bill is Los Angeles-based dream pop phenoms, Lo Moon. The band has released a few singles that hint at the kind of band that has the sophisticated songcraft and soulfulness of a band like Talk Talk and the knack for crafting evocative atmospheres that have made Perfume Genius one of the most interesting modern artists. But Lo Moon isn’t standing in anyone’s stylistic shadow and its beautifully brooding songs may yet be released on a full length album before the year is out. Get to the show early and catch one of the most promising new bands of the last several years.

The Haunted, “High Desert Psych” of Sun Blood Stories

Sun Blood Stories makes its latest appearance in Denver tonight, 9/15/17, at Lion’s Lair with Big Dopes and Serpentfoot. The former quintet now trio from Boise, Idaho, has been creating its experimental psychedelic music since 2011. Though the band emerged around the time when the most recent wave of psychedelic rock was headed toward its peak, Sun Blood Stories seemed to come from a different place. Its shows feel a bit like you’re seeing what a traveling, shamanistic musical ceremony might be like. Its songs, some rock, some weirdo folk but all informed by an attempt to create a mood and an experience as much as, or more so, than melody.

The 2017 album It Runs Around the Room With Us has a title that suggests the supernatural and the songs themselves are often melancholic compositions haunted by memories, dreams and experiments in crafting atmospheres that stir the imagination and don’t seen leave the mind. We recently caught up with the band via email to discuss some of its history, inspirations and perspectives in creating its riveting body of work. Where a specific band member responds the name will precede that response otherwise assume it’s a collective answer. But you can figure that out because you’re smart.

Queen City: What brought you together to form Sun Blood Stories?

Ben Kirby: I played as a solo act for awhile and really just wanted a band because that’s a shit ton of work and pressure for just one person. Delegation is key.

Jon Fust: He actually just wanted a bunch of mindless fools to do exactly what he told them.

Amber Pollard: Which totally backfired because what he ended up getting was a bossy chick and a drummer who can literally never make a decision about anything.

Ben: Anyway, through a couple line up changes and stylistic progressions, we arrived at this band.

The name of the band suggests that maybe you have a narrative element to your songwriting. Would you say that’s true? What kinds of stories tend to make their way into your songs?

There’s definitely a few continuous themes that tend to push their way into our music: time and death, dreams and wonder, pain and dealing with it. Oh and politics.

Amber: I write a lot about my own personal experience and how that relates to the current political climate. This comes pretty naturally as I am a loud activist in our community. On this newest album we touch on themes like the Black Lives Matter movement, climate change, the confederate flag, the lack of adequate healthcare for the underinsured, police brutality, human trafficking, LGBTQIA rights, etc.

Were you in bands before SBS? What kinds of bands?

Jon and Ben were in a band called Talk Math to Me which was loud and garage rock-y which was active from 2010-2011. When Talk Math to Me dissolved Ben started playing solo as Sun Blood Stories.

When you started out were there really any bands locally that seemed like-minded? What kinds of places did you play early on and did any of them play an important role in your development as a band?

Jon: I feel like Boise has a really good community and the bands are all friends but there aren’t too many overlapping genres here.

Ben: We played really everywhere we possibly could.

Amber: Treefort Music Fest has really given SBS a yearly goal to just play better. The first year of the festival [2012] was Ben’s first year of performing as Sun Blood and every year since we’ve worked really hard to ensure that we are growing and trying to keep up with Treefort’s cool.

What bands or other artists that had a particular impact or influence on what you’ve done with SBS?

Jon: My natural instinct is to say The Velvet Underground because they make me wanna make weird noise.

Ben: I’ve learned a lot from Deerhoof both from seeing them play and reading interviews about how they actually run the band.

Amber: Can I just pick a genre? Cause I listen to A lot of 90s R&B and Hip Hop. It’s taken a lot of strategy and smooth talking to convince the band to let that influence our music.

Having traveled around on tour, what have you come to appreciate about Boise and being based there?

Amber: 1, I can go out and not see anyone I know or I can go out and be surrounded by friends. It’s small enough and big enough for both. 2, I can ride my bike any where in the city. 3, cost of living is pretty low in comparison to other Metro areas which makes supporting this band a lot easier on us a family.

Jon: I like Boise because the music scene is in a cool stage of growth right now and I feel like we’re right in the middle of it.

Ben: Um, I’ve loved many of the towns and cities we’ve gone to but I always just want to come back home.

It’s always awkward trying to describe someone else’s music much less your own, but why do you shorthand describe your music on your Facebook page as “High Desert Experimental Psych-Fuzz”? Certainly that kind of description could be used to describe Spindrift, some aspects of Black Mountain or a trippier, harder edged Ennio Morricone.

Amber: At Treefort 2015 Wolvserpent posted a picture of us performing on Instagram. Their caption described our sound as “High Desert Psych,” and I just embraced that. I added in the experimental descriptor because sometimes we don’t know what we’re doing but it always sounds good. After a bit I needed to add in the Fuzz part because who doesn’t love fuzz?

Ben: Also it was the coolest 5 words we could think of at the time.

Jon: We have a Facebook page?

Your music has always had experimental underpinnings. You could have followed the psychedelic rock trend of the last 7 years and done okay for yourselves. But you seem to have really embraced what some might consider the weirder side of your songwriting as part of the whole. Why is that such an important aspect of your music and what do you think got you interested in exploring that richly as you have?

Jon: It just felt natural.

Ben: I’ve always loved deeply weird music. The fact that we’re considered a psych band is really interesting to me because it’s almost just a coincidence that the psych thing was happening as we were beginning.

Amber: The Residents and captain Beefheart have really held a place in Jon’s heart since he was very young. Fitting into a genre is just not our jam. I’m much more interested in carving out our own space and I think we do a pretty good job of that. Like when we release a new single and people hear it on the radio, people who have listened to our album or seen our show can tell right away that that’s Sun Blood playing through their speakers. I don’t want that to change.

It Runs Around the Room With Us is very different from Twilight Midnight Morning. Neither would be considered a straight ahead rock record, for sure. But It Runs Around the Room With Us not only suggests the presence of spirits in the music with the title, it’s more overtly ambient/deeply atmospheric. What inspired that approach to the songs for the album? What sorts of feelings and ideas spawned that set of songs?

Ben: Much of the difference between the two albums is the lineup change that occurred between the recording of each. We went from being a quintet to a trio and there was considerably more space within the sound. We tried to reign in some of barreling cacophony and focus more on the development of the pieces themselves.

Jon: Yeah I feel like the line up change had the most significant impact, at least for me and what I’m playing. Having two less members opened up a lot of space in the music, which forced us to get more creative with how we filled that space, and allowed me to start playing keyboards along with the drums.

Amber: I kind of feel like the tracks on It Runs were all loosely based on “Misery is Nebulous,” the final track of Twilight. The elements of that song that really stood out for us were the build, the spaciousness, the beauty and the pain. We took those elements, expanded on them, and used them as the foundation for this album. Creating this album was a healing experience and playing it live is like a therapy session.

Soft Kill’s Post-Punk Roots Remain in the Underground

SoftKill_JoannaStawnicka1_900 — Soft Kill, photo by Joanna Stawnicka

Portland, Oregon-based post-punk band Soft Kill is currently on tour with Chameleons Vox. For the Denver date at The Bluebird Theater on Wednesday September 13 the bill include Denver’s own industrial punk band Echo Beds and beat-driven, post-punk shoegazers Voight. It is, frankly, a show that represents a respectable spectrum of a wave of bands that have come along over roughly the past decade that comprise what could loosely be considered a new incarnation of the kind of music that came in the wake of punk when many creative types realized they didn’t need to adhere to an established mode of musical expression. Industrial developed alongside punk with the advent of Throbbing Gristle, but both musical impulses were anti-establishment and made a lifestyle alternative to mainstream mundanity viable.

By the 1980s industrial, post-punk, death rock, dark synth music, noise and even punk were still relatively underground phenomena even as bands like U2 and Echo & The Bunnymen took post-punk into the mainstream, Fad Gadget influenced Depeche Mode who took avant-garde synth music and gave it pop accessibility and both Skinny Puppy and Ministry proved that challenging music could find more than a simply niche audience. When the alternative music explosion of the early 90s changed the face of popular music some of the aforementioned bands benefited while much of the rest became sequestered to the “Goth scene” or largely forgotten.

The so-called post-punk revival, including “dance punk,” of the mid-90s to the early 2000s brought atmospheric, moody music into the mainstream but began in scattered underground scenes around the country. Groups like !!! (Chk Chk Chk) in Sacramento, The Faint in Omaha and The Prids (initially in Missouri, then Nebraska and for around two decades now, Portland, Oregon) created some of the most compelling post-punk in the history of that music. As did New York-based bands such as Interpol, The Rapture, The Strokes and LCD Soundsystem. Perhaps you’ve heard of some of them. All of those bands knew their musical roots in 70s and 80s post-punk, no wave, early darkwave and Krautrock but at that time many of their fans eschewed the term Goth and those so self-identified seemed to dismiss the post-punk revival bands as simply indie rock. The connection between post-punk, Goth, industrial, minimal synth and related music seemed lost.

That is until a generation of musicians, mostly born during the heyday of post-punk and industrial, rediscovered that music and embraced it as something vital that stirred the imagination. That there was an overlap with the noise scene that survived in the depths of the underground didn’t hurt. It was from there that Tobias Sinclair, one of the guitarists and singer in Soft Kill, emerged as a fledgling musician in the larger DIY music scene in New England. He had attended shows at the influential DIY space Fort Thunder in Providence, Rhode Island where, according to Sinclair, “Every other warehouse seemed to have someone with a P.A.” as well as places like Munch House and Dirt Palace.

Going to these unconventional spaces to experience music left an indelible mark on Sinclair.

“It was really inspirational without a doubt that people could just hold their own shows without all the bullshit of a bar,” says Sinclair.

At a memorable show that included now Denver based artist Mat Brinkman, Sinclair experienced the kind of creative expression that one rarely experiences anywhere else.

“With Forcefield he and seven other guys would knit these seven foot tall outfits and play oscillators,” recalls Sinclair. “That completely blew my mind compared to all the other conventional trappings. All that stuff is more important to me probably more than obvious influences on Soft Kill. hat was really inspirational for me because somebody that didn’t ever have lessons or what I perceived at that time as an inherent talent, I loved the lack of those limitations and I could kind of go nuts with it and teach myself to play an instrument based off of what felt and sounded cool rather than what was in a book.”

Around that time, Sinclair and his friends saw the 2001 Friends Forever documentary which shared some of the experiences of the Denver-based noise/performance art band that toured, or even played locally, in a van that often served as both transportation and impromptu stage. After catching Friends Forever at a venue in Western Massachusetts, Sinclair became friends with Friends Forever’s Josh Taylor. It was then that Sinclair and his band Night Wounds relocated to California and played numerous times at long-running DIY space The Smell in Los Angeles. By a strange quirk of fate, Taylor, who was involved in running Monkey Mania, a beloved DIY venue in Denver, moved to Los Angeles to help run The Smell and work at Amoeba Records at the same time Sinclair, who had worked at Amoeba, moved to Denver into Monkey Mania in 2006.

At that time Night Wounds was still an active band that toured the DIY music circuit that had been, and remains, so inspirational to Sinclair and it connected with like-minded noise rock bands like Chicago’s Coughs, Montreal’s AIDS Wolf and Vancouver, British Columbia’s Mutators. All of which were big names in the small realm of DIY noise rock. Also during that time, Sinclair was deep into a thirteen year struggle with drug abuse that ended in 2016. Although his experience with hard drugs took its toll on Sinclair in various ways, access to substances is what anchored him to cities like Denver and his now home of Portland, Oregon. “I wasn’t aspiring to go to a place to go be fucked but I definitely stayed longer because of that, if that makes sense.”

Sinclair admits that the drugs are part of the reason Soft Kill has taken a lot longer to blossom into the band it has striven to be, it also coincidentally pushed his timeline as a musician into developing the ideas and sounds for which Soft Kill is now known. But before Soft Kill, Sinclair had, alongside Night Wounds, been part of a Goth-y punk band called Blessure Graves.

“When I started Blessure Graves the big thing was the lo-fi garage rock revival,” says Sinclair. “And there was this very small niche out of that which was Goth music made with a similar fidelity. It felt like a quick, flash in the pan. What happened with us was when I started Soft Kill in 2010 we did one album and then my demons got the best of me and I started getting locked up and having to take a long time to stray away from music. When I got out, I started seeing that a bunch of people saw An Open Door as one of the top two or three records that had come out in recent years out of that type of music. That influenced me and people in the band now to put more energy into it in 2012. But by the time we really got momentum was 2014. By that point we realized that our first record had been celebrated as one of the integral releases in post-punk records of the past ten years—they said it was top tier. We thought whoa, that’s crazy, it must be because there aren’t other bands doing that.”

“We started going out and touring and we were blown away by how many bands there were. And from there onward, for the first time in forever I felt there was a large, legitimate scene with dots connected much more than they’d been in the past 15-20 years. There’s a lot of labels that cater to it. Some of the bands have become popular and it’s not been limited to just one style. Not all these bands sound like Joy Division.”

The larger scene that Sinclair had discovered included a constellation of bands and labels across the country and around the world. Imprints like The Flenser, Dais, Sacred Bones, Dark Entries and Beläten are just a few of the labels releasing the music. Bands such as Curse, Beastial Mouths, Troller, Some Ember, All Your Sisters, Burning, Youth Code, Pop. 1280, Echo Beds, Voight, Church Fire and numerous others have been touring and finding an audience eager for sounds and a culture that maintains a connection to its underground roots and experimental music that has yet to be completely co-opted and tamed by mainstream commercial interests.

2016 represented a landmark year for Soft Kill. Its arguably best album to date, Choke, was released on Profound Lore. Best, because it most fully realizes the band’s love of hypnotic beats, driving bass and rich, expressive, evocative tones. Sinclair had booked a Chameleons Vox tour in 2015, through simply contacting vocalist/bassist Mark Burgess. In 2016 Sinclair went on to book two other of the most influential bands for Soft Kill in Sad Lovers and Giants and Modern English, the latter performing its classic 1981 album Mesh & Lace in its entirety for the first time as the group had not toured on the record the first time around. He also booked Clan of Xymox for the third edition of the Out of the Shadows festival alongside Denver-based darkwave band Tollund Men, who released his favorite tape of recent years—Autoerotik.

“When we played Denver the first time at Leisure Gallery they played and we were like, ‘No way, this can’t be happening!’ I think they were really taken aback by how into their band we were. We showed up superfans. They played with us the next time we played there and I think they disintegrated after that.”

“I really like repetitious stuff in general but there’s this slow burn to that whole tape. It’s got hooks and it’s dirty as hell but I can put that on and crank it up and it’s the perfect background music for me. I dug the tones that he gets out of distorting everything to the maximum degree. It was a band I always loved but that particular tape I’m really glad they did that last and went out on that note. He showed he wasn’t beating a dead horse, that he had mastered the vision that he had so it makes sense that he moved on from there. I respect that because I know he could have taken many an opportunity that he didn’t. I love when people don’t give into that bullshit.”

Sinclair’s soft spot for Denver, born of his experience living in the Mile High City and experiencing Friends Forever in New England, extends to the underground metal and hardcore scene in Denver and he expresses an appreciation for acts like Blood Incantation and Civilized. In the near-ish future Soft Kill will also put out a split with Denver death grind heroes Primitive Man, whose Ethan McCarthy shares the history with Sinclair of having lived in and operated Monkey Mania, though not at the same time. But, as is the way with the informal, DIY there is no pressure to put out the split release to fit some record label release schedule. Sinclair met McCarthy and so many other musicians who have impacted him through the underground music route.

“Ultimately, this is how I met all these people and this is the world that we want to exist within and regardless that we sound nothing like Echo Beds, that’s a band we would go on tour with before whatever people think makes sense,” says Sinclair.