Cat Casual & The Final Word, photo courtesy the artist
Cat Casual & The Final Word’s “Asphalt” sounds like an artifact from the early 80s when the music world hadn’t completely sorted out where the line between post-punk, psychedelia, New Wave and power pop lay. The urgent, clipped rhythm guitar riff, tripped out keyboard work, William Benton’s impassioned vocals and serpentine and fiery guitar solo at the end sound like the band has deconstructed the modern instinct for tapping into music’s past not to cop a classic aesthetic so much as to create something different inspired by music from a time before everything popular in the mainstream was somewhat a product of mediated tastes. This gives the song and the band’s sound in general a certain freshness along with an air of the classic. Listen on YouTube as well as watch the performance video and follow Cat Casual & The Final Word at the links below.
In calling its new single “Leonard Nimoy,” CHAD from Portland, Oregon casts an interesting image. Most people who know who Leonard Nimoy is sees him as Mr. Spock from Star Trek, a character who seems devoid of emotions played by a highly emotional human. But even in the Star Trek universe the Vulcans have merely tightly controlled their emotions through social engineering to avoid the violent conflicts of their distant past. This song is about the desire to have that kind of control but how as a real human you can’t fully escape your feelings and at times we feel like we’re controlled by them. In the context of certain relationships this emotional conflict takes on the metaphor of a storm when weather systems come together. Musically its like a baroque kind of pop the likes of which you might hear on a Chromatics record or something Julee Cruise might do if she’d come up through listening to 90s indie pop. Although melancholic and wistful the song is brimming with regret that things can’t and won’t work out, giving the tone of the song an emotional complexity that isn’t obvious. Listen to “Leonard Nimoy” on Soundcloud and follow CHAD at the links provided.
Dutch pop songwriter Molina’s first Spanish language track “Parásito” uses the metaphor of a parasite for the type of love so consuming and, frankly, co-dependent that it is not unlike the consuming relationship between a parasite and its host, unable to live without the other and either or seeking to be perpetually connected for its nourishment. The cadence of Spanish lends itself well to the unconventional structure and rhythms of the song as well as its dramatic emotional and tonal flourishes. The guitar against the more menacing synth passages gives the song an airiness and a heft in equal measure at times reminiscent of Grimes or Zola Jesus and the ability of both artists to make experimental music that comes across as pop unless you break down what’s going on. In that way, Molina here is able to inject ideas into the song that expand your own expectations for what an accessible song might sound like. Listen to “Parásito” on Soundcloud and follow Molina at the links provided.
What:Sun Blood Stories, Space Jail, The Teeth of the Hydra and Prayer Hands When: Thursday, 10.17, 7:30 p.m. Where: Glitter City Studio Why: Sun Blood Stories 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, all informed by an attempt to create a mood and an experience as much as, or more so, than melody. The group is now touring in support of its 2019 album Haunt Yourself.
What:Temples w/Honey Harper When: Friday, 10.18, 8 p.m. Where: Gothic Theatre Why: Temples from Kettering, England made big waves with its debut album Sun Structures at the apex of the neo-psychedelic era. But one thing that has set Temples apart from its peers is its mastery of layered dynamics like an orchestration of oil projections. The Krautrock-like rhythms, the sheets of luminous ethereal sounds, the haunted and the soaring vocals, guitars carrying both melody and texture shimmering throughout, Temples didn’t get stuck playing in an indie folk band that discovered weird pedals one day and jammed out to “Anemone” by the Brian Jonestown Massacre endlessly. Temples perfectly weds pop songcraft with mind-altering sound experiments. Its 2019 album, Hot Motion, finds the band exploring new vistas of evocative soundscaping mixing a palette of classic psychedelic era rock sounds and strong songwriting with modern sensibilities.
What:Riceboy Sleeps (Jónsi & Alex Somers) w/Wordless Orchestra When: Friday, 10.18, 7 p.m. Where: Paramount Theatre Why: Most people probably know Jónsi as a member of Sigur Rós and thus no stranger to transcendent, orchestral music. With his partner Alex Somers he makes experimental ambient music and their latest album, their first with this project in a decade, is 2019’s Lost & Found. The show will be an evocative production with Wordless Orchestra conducted by Robert Ames with orchestra arrangements by David Handler. A mixture of classical, ambient and the avant-garde, the footage from this tour so far has shown a moving performance of uncommon grace and hushed intensity.
What:Aldous Harding w/Hand Habits (solo) When: Saturday, 10.19, 8 p.m. Where: Larimer Lounge Why: Aldous Harding’s weirdo folk songs and compellingly eccentric performances is definitely for fans of Kate Bush and Joanna Newsom. Her 2019 album Designer is a showcase for her storytelling genius.
What:Guerilla Toss w/cindygod and Corner Girls When: Saturday, 10.19, 8 p.m. Where: Hi-Dive Why: A brilliant collision of dub, post-punk and psych-synth imbued disco, Guerilla Toss brings an upbeat yet surreal sensibility to its shows. It’s new record, What Would The Odd Do?released October 18 and this is more or less the band’s tour kickoff show.
What:Get Your Ears Swoll 11: The Vagrant Sea, Landgrabbers When: Saturday, 10.19, 8:30 p.m. Where: The People’s Building Why: The Vagrant Sea is a punk-inflected noise rock band or a noisy punk band. Either way its members are veterans of Denver’s underground rock scene including former members of The Symptoms, Dirty Lookers, Tarmints and many others. Landgrabbers is a honky tonk punk band with emphasis on the latter. At a time when most punks are aiming for a niche subgenre, Landgrabbers refreshingly focus on writing solid songs and leave the fashion show, sonically and otherwise, to those more inclined.
What:The Distillers w/Death Valley Girls When: Saturday, 10.19, 7 p.m. Where: Ogden Theatre Why: The Distillers’ brash punk rock burned bright and flamed out between starting in 1998 and breaking up in 2006 leaving behind a few records of songs about raging against feeling like being kicked to the bottom rung but making that kind of scrappy underdog status seem glorious. Singer Brody Dalle cut a commanding figure and after the band split she spent some time writing music in Spinnerette and under her own name. But as of 2018, The Distillers are back together at a time when maybe its ferocious performances with snotty yet tuneful songs will find a wider audience hungry for something that vital. Also on the bill is Death Valley Girls whose inspirationally bizarre blend of surf rock, post-punk and psychedelia is truly born of an individual collective imagination channeled into spirited performances.
What:Clay Rendering, Weathered Statues, French Kettle Station, Prison Glue When: Saturday, 10.19, 9 p.m. Where: Rhinoceropolis Why: Clay Rendering is often called a mix of dream pop and black metal and that’s fair enough but it might also be considered a rebirth of synth infused death rock. Its 2019 album California Black Vows sounds like what Iceage might have sounded like if it went more darkwave and less in the direction of The Bad Seeds.
What:Jonathan Richman w/Tommy Larkins When: Saturday, 10.19, 7 p.m. Where: Daniels Hall at Swallow Hill Why: Because Jonathan Richman is the godfather of twee pop and radical sincerity in vulnerability in rock music. And he hasn’t exactly toned down that approach as a performer in nearly fifty years. He’s a national treasure.
Sunday | October 21
Voight, photo by Tom Murphy
What:All Your Sisters, Weaken, Voight and Fatal Fantasy (DJ) When: Sunday, 10.20, 8 p.m. Where: The Zodiac (Colorado Springs) Why: All Your Sisters from Los Angeles and Denver’s Echo Beds (playing the Monday show in Denver at Rhinoceropolis) are headed out on a tour to the East Coast. The former released the album Trust Ruins in April 2019 and re-established itself as practitioners of harrowing, industrial death disco. Voight are a jagged machine of sound and sometimes convulsive, sometimes broodily intense sounds that erupt with a barrage of cathartic energy to purge the dulling effects of late capitalism.
What:All Your Sisters w/Echo Beds, Midwife and B|_ank When: Monday, 10.21, 9 p.m. Where: Rhinoceropolis Why: For All Your Sisters see above on October 20. Echo Beds is an alchemical combination of stark hardcore aesthetics and organic industrial post-punk.
What:Whitney w/Lala Lala When: Monday, 10.21, 7 p.m. Where: Ogden Theatre Why: Whitney’s debut album Light Upon the Lake (2016) benefited from both hitting a trend early of the sort of Laurel Canyon, countrified psychedelic pop embraced in the American underground and from its exquisite arrangements and ear for dynamics in a way that has been missing from far too much modern pop music. The follow-up album, 2019’s Forever Turned Around is a tender and sensitive meditation on the fear and confusion hanging in the collective psyche of late complicated by issues of addictions of various kinds, a heavier than expected set of subjects from music that sounds so spacious and heavenly.
What:Chelsea Wolfe w/Ioanna Gika When: Tuesday, 10.22, 8 p.m. Where: Stanley Hotel Why: What could be more perfect than the haunting intensity of Chelsea Wolfe’s songs, performed acoustically as is the style of at least one of her albums, at the haunted Stanley Hotel in advance of Halloween? Wolfe recently released her new album Birth of Violence which features some of her more acoustic songwriting than the heavy drones and atmospheric black metal of her last few offerings. It showcases a more intimate side of Wolfe’s deeply personal storytelling rather than the nightmarish visions with which you might be more familiar with the artist and a testament to her enduring talent.
The KVB, photo by George Katsanakis
What:The KVB w/Numb.er and Eventually It Will Kill You When: Tuesday, 10.22, 8 p.m. Where: Larimer Lounge Why: The KVB’s synth-driven post-punk is reminiscent of Fad Gadget’s dark avant-pop with its distorted, urgent soundscapes and brooding, introspective vocals. Currently touring in support of its 2019 album Submersion.
John Paul White, photo by Alysse Gafkjen
What:Shovels & Rope w/John Paul White (of The Civil Wars) When: Tuesday, 10.22, 7 p.m. Where: Ogden Theatre Why: John Paul White one half of bluesy Americana duo The Civil Wars with Joy Williams. In 2019 he released his third solo album The Hurting Kind. Its flavor is a little more introspective than some of his previous work with The Civil Wars. But the level of detail and warmth of tone is there. Apparently he was inspired by the almost orchestral production and songwriting of early 60s Nashville acts and he brings that sensibility to this new batch of songs by taking his gift for turning simple and spare elements into a lush sound that touches on fine emotional notes. Exquisitely crafted songs by one of America’s premier songwriters. Shovels & Rope is the alternative country band from Charleston, South Carolina comprised of Cary Ann Hearst and former Denverite, and former Tinker’s Punishment frontman, Michael Trent.
What:mxmtoon w/Alexander 23 When: Wednesday, 10.23, 7 p.m. Where: Larimer Lounge Why: mxmtoon went from bedroom pop musician to international renown from 2017 to 2019 initially releasing more humorous songs and moving on to more sincere expressions of feeling. Her 2018 debut EP plum blossom garnered her critical acclaim for her finely composed pop songs that feel spontaneous and insouciant. Through social media and other internet outlets like TikTok, Vine, Snapchat, Soundcloud, mxmtoon, or Maia, has made comedic videos and shared her work connecting with hundreds of thousands of fans. In 2019 she released her debut full-length, self-released, the masquerade. There’s something lighthearted but genuine about her songs and her intuitive knack for an earworm melody and wordplay is consistently impressive.
What:Free Music, Koto Robo, Cop Circles album release, French Kettle Station, J. Hamilton Isaacs When: Wednesday, 10.23, 9 p.m. Where: Rhinoceropolis Why: Cop Circles is the weirdo afrobeat/avant-garde jazz influenced project of one Luke Leavitt. He is releasing his latest album Penultimate Conclusions at this show. Also on the bill is eccentrically brilliant experimental pop project Free Music from Minneapolis, the relentless and inspired adult contemporary/glitch/synth pop hybrid of French Kettle Station, J. Hamilton Isaacs’ transporting modular synth compositions and Koto Robo’s synthesis of 80s video game sounds (though not 8-bit) and synth pop.
Somehow SigObrilllAndo mixed traditional Chilean folk music written with an electronic music structure and aesthetic in mind and IDM. Watch the music video, which seems to be liquids captured or emulated to provide an analog to the way the music flows into your mind, bubbles about and swirls and draws you into its textured beats and swirls of melody, vocal, electronic and organic. Low end drones blend in but remain separate from the effervescent melodic synth line which is distinct from the abstract vocals and the dynamic and loop of a gentle guitar arpeggio. Utterly entrancing, fans of Seefeel and Slowdive in its less rock moments will find this song’s slow moving, soothing wave a beautiful place to get lost for several minutes that feel like a single minute. The track comes from the project’s album Cosmic Zoo and you can listen to it now along with watch the rather colorful, in the literal sense, video on YouTube.
Calista Kazuko takes on the forces of darkness in the video treatment of her song “Lady Cherry.” The video, made by Philip Reinking and Thomas Linton casts Kazuko as a kind of benevolent trickster combination of Carmen Mirandam, Kate Bush and Carla Bozulich. Yeah, sure, the Satan in the video looks typically spooky and menacing in classic fashion but visually abstracted in an interesting way reminiscent of the way the horned one is depicted at the end of The Witch. The song is a brooding but uplifting song about the power women can have if they embrace the native combination of intelligence, intuition and moxy everyone can summon forth, especially when called to the occasion such as playing cards with The Devil and one’s eternal soul is on the line. In the end of course Lady Cherry is triumphant and she roasts Satan with her fiery breath, unrevealed until the fateful moment late in the game. The track is the third single from Calista Kazuko’s album Empress. Watch the video on YouTube and follow Calista Kazuko at the links below.
“Magnetized” sounds like Lämmerfyr hung out with a bunch of A.I. technicians all summer and talked about the software architecture to give a generation of manufactured beings a dream life with all the intense math and meticulous yet intuitive programming discussed, generative memory algorithms utilizing storage techniques patterned after quantum mechanics concepts in a holographic matrix and DNA mapping. As the summer gave rapidly to cooler weather, in this scenario, Lämmerfyr composed the kind of chill progressive trance, pulsing yet drifting dance music these A.I.s might vibe to while coming together in their cybernetic version of dreamtime plotting a brighter future. While none of this is clearly true and spurious on the conceptual level, not to mention probably scientifically unsound, “Magnetized” conjures visions of a future where we all have plenty of time to be and to explore and enjoy life free of the angst and anomy of the dystopian present. Listen to “Magnetized” on Soundcloud and follow Lämmerfyr on Spotify.
The strings holding up the sandwich and the croissant falling in love in Harry Nathan’s video for his song “Alright” and the disco ball with the seemingly in camera visual effects could be a dealbreaker for some people like many relationships where superficiality is a main factor. But unless your sense of humor and the absurd is completely broken you have to have a chuckle at video writer and director Odeya Rush’s choice to pixellate the “naughty” bits after the sandwich and the croissant have done the deed and are laying together nakedly in post-coital bliss, the croissant smoking. Is the sandwich a Reuben or a Monte Cristo? Who can say. But the croissant seems solidly chocolate. Whatever the real details the video highlights the single, a wistful and simple synth pop song from Nathan’s latest release, the To the Limit EP. Though relatively short at two minutes forty, “Alright” conveys much about the hopefulness of a new relationship and a little bit of the absurdity of aspects of it as depicted perfectly by Rush. Listen to the single on Soundcloud, watch the video on YouTube and follow Nathan at the links provided.
On “Sucker” Dan Sadin sounds like he’s channeling one of those 80s power pop songs that sounds so earnest and tuneful but hides a depth of perspective that strikes you suddenly as you’re listening. This song is a combination of brashness and introspection. It’s about a deep yearning for something authentic to the point of maybe being vulnerable and maybe a little too open to it. But when you know something is real maybe you shouldn’t resist it and Sadin’s song captures that desire for real connection to something sincere and honest. Our culture has gotten a little too oriented toward performative behaviors and personae with how our lives are sculpted and presented, social media, online dating profiles etc., but everyone knows there’s a level of pretense that doesn’t work in the end because we all have to live in the real world and if everything’s basically bullshit how can we get through this life? Sadin goes a step further and declares how he’s needing something real so bad that he’s willing to be a fool, a sucker, for it. The song is a little bit Eddie Money, a little bit Springsteen, a little bit Plimsouls and gloriously not aiming for a distancing cool. Listen to “Sucker” on Soundcloud.
From the beginning of “Something Different” by RAHM it feels like we’re entering into a realm of music that free associates Scott Walker, Giorgio Moroder, downtempo, Flamenco and hymns. It gives the spare arrangements a subtle lushness that sounds like something that we would have heard on some European variety show in the 1970s that is unabashedly romantic and unself-aware even as the song expresses a keen sensitivity into moods and unexpressed pain of a loved one while poetically describing the moment. Perhaps the vibe is more like something out of a Sergio Leone movie that doesn’t take place in the mythical old west but instead a relationship drama in Italy. The orchestral arrangements border on the otherworldly informed by a sense of mystery like the theme song to a long lost classic film. Listen to “Something Different” on Soundcloud and follow RAHM there as well.
Queen City Sounds and Art 
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