Queen City Sounds and Art

Best Shows in Denver 9/20/18 – 9/26/18

FRIGS_-Chelsee_Ivan — Frigs perform 9/25/18 with Natural Violence, American Culture and Law of the Night at Hi-Dive

Thursday | September 20, 2018

VOIDZ_photoCourtesy_TheVoidz — The Voidz, photo courtesy the artist

Who: Propagandhi w/Iron Chic and Cheap Perfume
When: Thursday, 09.20, 7 p.m.
Where: The Oriental Theater
Why: Propagandhi made leftist politics and veganism into some great pop punk songs even as its sound evolved in heavier directions later in its career. From 1993’s humorous yet pointedly political How To Clean Everything to 2001’s opus of politically pointed yet irreverent and fun Today’s Empires, Tomorrow’s Ashes, Propagandhi were one of the few relatively high profile modern punk bands that didn’t get stuck in pure entertainment and only songs about heartache and everyday life mode. Thankfully the band still hasn’t cynically cashed in with essentially content-free records. Long Island’s Iron Chic seems cut from a similar cloth writing genuinely clever songs pairing meaningful and insightful lyrics with infectiously catchy melodic punk. Colorado Springs’ own Cheap Perfume opens the show with plenty of searing social commentary for an entire evening of music packed into its set.

Who: The Voidz w/Promiseland and The Velveteers
When: Thursday, 09.20, 7 p.m.
Where: The Gothic Theatre
Why: The Voidz released its sophomore record Virtue in March and for those uninitiated its video for “QYURRYUS” suggested some sort of futuristic weirdo psychedelic band but one that took older trash technology and made something new and interesting with it. That Strokes frontman Julian Casablancas was involved in that song and video, a seeming mutant send-up of 80s VHS mashup and modern post-punk and trap, shouldn’t have come as a surprise and yet it did. The rest of the album isn’t all quite as engagingly strange but nevertheless a sprawl of concentrated musical imagination, welcome in a time when such things aren’t in as abundant as one would hope. The previous album, 2014’s Tyranny, had some promising moments but Virtue is where Casablancas and company really want to be in creating music not just a departure from other projects but in making something that is of the moment even when it mines the past for compositional elements recontextualized.

MurderByDeath_Tall_James_Photography_2018 — Murder By Death, photo by Tall James Photography

Who: Murder By Death and William Elliott Whitmore
When: Thursday, 09.20, 7 p.m.
Where: The Ogden Theatre
Why: Murder By Death’s latest album The Other Shore sounds like a band that has taken a decisive step to musically reinventing itself while preserving the core of what has made it one of the most interesting bands of the past two decades. Before chamber pop and indie Americana was really much of a thing, Murder By Death had been making that music with a high level of artistry with lyrics that skirted a fine line between the conceptual, the personal, narrative elements and the poetic without coming off as pretentious. The Other Shore, as the album title suggests, showcases a band that has been on a journey since it’s inception to explore its musical interests as an Americana band in a place and a time when post-hardcore and emo was the prevailing form of music around them, and one that wrote music about an imaginary American West with a greater accuracy and resonance than many bands actually from that part of the country. For this tour Murder By Death is joined by its friend and early compatriot in making music out of step with then trends in music. His warm, textured songwriting and singing has the ability to draw you in with the clarity and vivid imagery of his own storytelling. His new record Kilonova on Bloodshot Records is a collection of songs that truly find the great stories in everyday life better than almost anything out this year as yet.

Friday | September 21, 2018

MBM_2017 — Meat Beat Manifesto, photo courtesy the artist

Who: Meat Beat Manifesto w/C-Tec, Mondo Obscura and DJ Dave Vendetta
When: Friday, 09.21, 7 p.m.
Where: The Oriental Theater
Why: Nine Inch Nails and huge swath of 90s and 2000s electronic music acts cite Meat Beat Manifesto as a primary influence. Jack Dangers’ production fingerprints have been all over the musical landscape from the 90s onward. Part of the reason for this is Dangers’ wide-ranging curiosity about various musical styles and technology and techniques involved in making those sounds. He didn’t just dabble in all sorts of techno, EDM, IDM, dub and more, he produced innovative work in all of those sonic realms. MBM’s 1990 album 99% was a landmark in electronic music production and composition perhaps only surpassed immediately afterward by 1992’s Satyricon. But in recent years MBM has released some of its most interesting music to date including the two 2018 albums in an especially fruitfully prolific era of the project with Impossible Star out this past January and a new full-length due out in November. Both records reveal a band that has consistently moved into new realms of sound while maintaining its unique voice in music.

Also on the bill is C-Tec, a dark EBM-esque project of some of that music scene’s luminaries including Jean-Luc DeMeyer of Front 242, Marc Heal of Cubanate, Ged Dention of Crisis NTI and Julian Beeston of Nitzer Ebb. Denver ambient/industrial duo Mondo Obscura opens the show with probably a harder edged of their more hypnotic chill out vibe. If their 2018 album Focus On Black is any indication that shouldn’t be a problem.

Who: Tribulation and Pallbearer
When: Friday, 09.21, 7 p.m.
Where: The Bluebird Theater
Why: Arvika, Sweden’s Tribulation probably could have become stuck mining the melodic/Gothenburg death metal territory or hybriding that with neo-thrash or Goth-ed out black metal. But its sound is much more interesting and not trying to be all things to all fans of heavy music. Rather, it’s eclectic sound is one that has roots but uses those sonic elements to write layered music with imaginative dynamics that allow for writing songs about occult themes in 2018 without seeming corny. The group’s 2018 album Down Below is sort of to death metal what T.S.O.L.’s 1982 to album Beneath the Shadows was to hardcore.

Who: 7C 6-Year Night #1: Only Echos (album release), Only Souls Die Young and more
When: Friday, 09.21, 7 p.m.
Where: Seventh Circle Music Collective
Why: This Denver DIY space is one of the few places you can go and see something new and good you’ve never heard of on a bill of very different other music every single time. It’s also the main place where younger musicians are going to play for their peers as they develop as artists. What that means is that you can see bands grow from the ground up, which is the most exciting time to see them. Congratulations no Seventh Circle Music Collective in keeping things going for 6 years thus far.

Who: El Ten Eleven w/Tennis System and Picture the Waves
When: Friday, 09.21, 8 p.m.
Where: Summit Music Hall
Why: El Ten Eleven is the Los Angeles based post-rock band whose music you’ve heard in television and film. Its texture and rhythm driven compositions give El Ten Eleven a bit more presence than some of its peers in the realm of instrumental rock. Also on the bill this night is another L.A.-based ethereal rock project with Tennis System. That trio takes the kind of bright, breezy melodies that Depreciation Guild had discovered in melding pure 8-bit electronic composition with dream pop. Tennis System, though, weds the sound with a sort of melancholic, disillusioned yet hopeful tone suggestive of being in a place where all aspirations can supposedly be met but the reality is much less glamorous.

Saturday | September 22, 2018

KatEllinger_Sleepers_Sep10_2005_TomMurphy — Kat Ellinger circa 2005 in Sleepers, photo by Tom Murphy

Who: Kat Ellinger tribute/benefit featuring: I’m A Boy, Toddy Walters, The Red Tack, Stereoshifter, New Ben Franklins, Doug and Liz from Sympathy F and Shindei Shashin
When: Saturday, 09.22, 7 p.m.
Where: Mutiny Information Café
Why: Kat Ellinger was a respected songwriter and singer/musician in Denver from the early 90s until her untimely passing in June 2018. Her bands Worm Trouble and Sleepers should have propelled her into at least the tier of touring bands that plays mid-sized clubs as her knack for writing meaningful, well-crafted rock and pop songs with a strong individual vision was on par with anyone anyone could name from that same time period. Her songs were eclectic, emotionally powerful, honest and accessible. Ellinger herself was an engaging and strong live performer and this show, a benefit for her family, features Denver underground luminaries such as Ted Thacker formerly of Baldo Rex (a band often cited by DeVotchKa as an influence) as The Red Tack, New Ben Franklins playing a rock rather than country set and Doug Seaman and Liz Rose of Sympathy F performing a stripped down set.

Stonefield_photoCourtesyStonefield — Stonefield, photo courtesy the artist

Who: Frankie And the Witch Fingers w/Stonefield, King Eddie and DJ Ross Taylor
When: Saturday, 09.22, 8 p.m.
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Kind of a psychedelic party rock show with Frankie And the Witch Fingers from Los Angeles and their Colorado kin with King Eddie. Stonefield, though, is an all female heavy psych band from Australia. The group released its most recent full length Far From Earth in 2018 with a sound somewhere betwixt early solo Dio and Acid Witch and 70s hard rock bands like Uriah Heep.

Who: 7 C 6-Year Night #2: David Liebe Hart, Chip the Black Boy, Whatever Your Heart Desires, Unit-Y, Shwarma, Actobog and more
When: Saturday, 09.22, 4 p.m.
Where: Seventh Circle Music Collective
Why: Night two of Seventh Circle Music Collective’s 6-year anniversary show with an appearance by eccentric outsider pop artist David Liebe Hart who is responsible for some of the most surreal segments of the already quite strange Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! Some have speculated that it’s all an act but what you see is what you get and there is an unmistakable appeal to Hart’s utter sincerity and conviction and faith in his music and art to reach people.

ironandwine-2018-promo-01-kimblack-1500x2248-300 — Iron and Wine, photo by Kim Black

Who: Iron & Wine w/Erin Rae
When: Saturday, 09.22, 7 p.m.
Where: The Paramount Theatre
Why: Sam Beam’s songs, no matter the format and line-up performing them, always come off like campfire sessions in which everyone shares stories and ideas and autobiographical musings that taking into flights of personal philosophy. That warmth and intimacy sets Bream’s work apart from many of his peers and there is a timelessness to his music akin to that of Cat Stevens or Harry Chapin. His new offering, 2018’s Weed Garden EP, follows on the heels of 2017’s Beast Epic and what many consider to be a return to the stripped down, simple style that made 2004’s Our Endless Numbered Days a classic.

DeVotchKa_2_by_Jen_Rosenstein — DeVotchKa, photo by Jen Rosenstein

What: On Tap With KBCO featuring DeVotchKa, Cake and Calexico
When: Saturday, 09.22, 12:30
Where: Breckenridge Brewery
Why: This is a show benefitting Take Note Colorado, an organization dedicated to getting musical instruments and lessons to Colorado students K-12. Cake is the alternative rock band that had wry 90s hits like “The Distance” and “Rock and Roll Lifestyle.” Calexico is the excellent Americana/dream pop band with a bit of Southwest flavor. DeVotchKa, the hometown heroes, released its latest album This Night Falls Forever in August. That it’s the group’s first release of an entire album of new material since 2011’s 100 Lovers suggests a period of deep self-doubt, assessing oneself as an artist and as a person and a reinvention without discarding everything. The new record has all the hallmarks of DeVotchKa’s best material—depth of sound space, intricate sonic details that never seem cluttered and excessive and a haunted quality that hints at accepting one’s regrets if not gladly, of loss and calm and grace in the face of an uncertain future. Frankly, it’s music for the current era and comfort in a time of trouble and chaos as DeVotchKa has a gift for tapping into one’s sense of nostalgia and triggering a gentle catharsis.

Monday | September 24, 2018

Who: The Charlatans UK w/Reyna
When: Monday, 09.24, 7 p.m.
Where: The Bluebird Theater
Why: The Charlatans UK were one of the bands whose mix of soul, acid house and psychedelic rock was early associated with the Madchester aesthetic of the late 80s and early 90s. And, thus, what became known as Britpop. The Charlatans were a step removed from Madchester coming from the relatively nearby Western Midlands but were clearly musically kindred spirits. The group’s 1990 debut full-length Some Friendly was recorded when the band had been together for around a year and can be a bit uneven but it yielded an iconic hit with “The Only One I Know.” Throughout the 90s The Charlatans evolved in interesting ways as its members stayed engaged with new sounds and ideas and in growing as artists themselves rather than rest on past laurels. The result has been a string of albums with a familiar element to the songwriting because of Tim Burgess’ strong yet emotionally chameleonic voice, Martin Blunt’s subtle yet fluid bass style perfectly accenting the song dynamics, the late Rob Collins’ (and now Tony Rogers’) ebullient but tasteful keyboard work and Mark Collins’ gift for playing to the song and taking on a broad variety of roles as a guitarist—lead, rhythm, texture, accents.

The Charlatans released a 2017 album called Different Days which is both a reminder that maybe the more recent world of rock and pop has caught up to what The Charlatans have done all along quite well in threading psychedelic rock, classic songwriting about perennial themes and listening to the new music for ideas to not get stuck in one’s own rut and inspiration for the future. In 2018 the Totally Eclipsing EP, comprised of material recorded during the time of Different Days, was released on limited edition 12” green vinyl as well as for download and as a second CD with a deluxe edition of the full-length.

Who: Dr. Montgomery Maxwell, Joohs Uhp, $addy and Shamwow
When: Monday, 09.24, 7 p.m.
Where: Mutiny Information Café
Why: A good slice of some of Denver’s weirdo/experimental/industrial hip-hop. Dr. Montgomery Maxwell is more on the industrial side of that spectrum though maybe for this show he might not break as much stuff on stage as usual. But you never know. Joohs Uhp sounds like a guy who is way into nü metal and hip-hop and unabashedly all about what some might think is the trashier more ephemeral end of that but has found a way to turn that affection for other people’s supposed trash and turned it into something interesting. Shamwow sounds like, for lack of a better term “slacker trap.” Meaning, to some, it’ll sound like lazily made weird, lo-fit who-knows-what but really it’s well produced, intentional stuff that some fans of “real” hip-hop won’t recognize its quality. But, supposedly, Trev Rich is a fan so there’s that. $addy’s sound is as the name suggest—sort of a melancholic vibe but using beats that sound like they’re right out of a surreal game about being a gamer hacker destroying the horrific international economic system and unlocking achievements by dropping sick 8-bit beats rife with noise and undoubted sonic reference samples from realms of the gaming world most of us have never heard about. Or something like that.

Who: Beck w/Jenny Lewis
When: Monday, 09.24, 6:30 p.m.
Where: Red Rocks
Why: Beck made being an utterly eccentric songwriter a commercially viable thing in the 1990s. Maybe he was tapping into the zeitgeist in a way that the alternative rock explosion of the early 90s made possible by speaking to the inner weirdo of a broad audience. There is no reason a song like “Loser,” “Where It’s At,” “Devil’s Haircut” and “The New Pollution” should have been hits to anyone but hipster oddballs except that Beck also employed elements of soul, hip-hop, R&B and interesting but odd cultural references that was a far cooler predecessor to the awkward comedy kick that got more popular in the 2000s. But Beck evolved and his genre splicing became more refined and fascinating with every album from Midnight Vultures onward reflecting perhaps a particularly focused set of ideas and sounds. Beck simply wouldn’t allow himself to be limited by the expectations of others and trusted his imagination and instincts to be his guide.

Jenny Lewis was an actress in various television shows and films before people knew of her as an actress. But her band with Blake Sennett, another child actor, Rilo Kiley introduced the world to one of the most genuinely clever, incisive and insightful commenters on personal psychology and American culture in Lewis as a lyricist. It didn’t hurt that her emotionally rich and powerful voice put conviction behind those words. Whether in Rilo Kiley, her solo albums, Jenny & Johnny or her recent work in Nice As Fuck, Lewis has consistently been an artist with something to say, singing with a poignant honesty but one informed by a sense reality and kindness.

Who: Boulder Guitar Society: Janet Feder
When: Monday, 09.24, 7 p.m.
Where: First United Methodist Church of Boulder
Why: Janet Feder is an educator and master guitarist whose experimental compositions both extend the range and possibilities of the instrument but whose songs have an accessibility and emotional resonance that one doesn’t often associate with a musician that is both an academic and long-standing figure in the musical avant-garde. But just like the human that is Janet Feder, the music is immediately engaging and inviting into an unpretentious creativity that anyone can access.

Tuesday | September 25, 2018

JennyLewis_Tumbler — Jenny Lewis, photo from Jenny Lewis Tumblr

Who: Beck w/Jenny Lewis
When: Tuesday, 09.25, 6:30 p.m.
Where: Red Rocks
Why: For Beck and Jenny Lewis see above for Monday, 09.24.

Who: FRIGS w/Natural Violence, American Culture and Law of the Night
When: Tuesday, 09.25, 8 p.m.
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: FRIGS at first listen might remind you of 90s angular post-punk bands like Fugazi, 2000s’ Canadian art guitar groups like Women or the English, experimental rock band Electrelane. That use of layered simple yet intricate and entrancing guitar and rhythm. All intertwined with Bria Salmena’s soulful and expressive vocals. The band’s 2018 debut full-length Basic Behavior is a raw, menacing, atmospheric wail of wiry energy unleashing and transforming the angst and anxiety of this era. The band’s live shows bring some mystery and emotionally-charged physicality to the stage in a way not many bands these days do.

Who: Gringo Star w/Turvy Organ and Shuttles
When: Tuesday, 09.25, 7 p.m.
Where: Lost Lake
Why: Before it became too fashionable, Atlanta’s Gringo Star was perfecting its signature psych/soul garage rock sound. What seems lost in some of the assessments of the band, that is hinted at through its numerous music videos, is how the group’s music tells stories from the perspective of urban, Southern youth and its use of musical forms from other parts of the country (surf rock, California psych, Memphis soul/garage rock etc.) as the palette of its imaginative expression. The band’s 2018 album Back to the City finds it in a more wistful mood with a sense of nostalgia that is far more interesting, genuine, personal and poignant than has often been the case in a lot of music of late.

Wednesday | September 26, 2018

MsLaurynHill_Facebook — Ms. Lauryn Hill, photo from Ms. Lauryn Hill Facebook

Who: The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill 20th anniversary w/Talib Kweli and Shabazz Palaces
When: Wednesday, 09.26, 5:55 p.m.
Where: Red Rocks
Why: In 1998 Lauryn Hill announced herself as a solo artist of note with the release of The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill after having parted ways with her former band, the popular and influential R&B hip-hop group The Fugees. On the strength of promotional singles and name recognition alone, the record was probably destined to top the Billboard charts. But the record struck a chord with a strong yet nuanced evocation of the experience of women’s experiences as well as Hill’s sheer stylistic range. And Hill didn’t write the album with the commercial audience in mind. Yes, it’s well-produced and written, of course, but it’s also a raw and honest record that is accessible to a broad audience because of those qualities. The record has rightfully come to be seen as a classic of neo soul but it’s also one of the greatest albums of the 90s for the vitality of its creative vision. As a bonus you get to see Talib Kweli and Shabazz Palaces. Kweli is one of America’s most important social critics and one of its greatest hip-hop artists. Ishmael Butler of Shabazz Palaces could have merely been a legendary of alternative hip-hop as a member of Digable Planets. But in Shabazz Palaces with Tendai Maraire he is exploring experimental realms of sound, noise and rhythm that is pushing the boundaries of what hip-hop can sound like, look like and be.

Best Shows in Denver 9/13/18 – 9/19/18

Angel-Olsen_TaylorBoylston2 — **Angel Olsen performs at The Paramount Theatre on 9/17/18. Photo by Taylor Boylston**

Thursday | September 13, 2018

JoeyDosik_CurtisEssel1 — Joe Dosik, photo by Curtis Essel

Who: Joe Dosik w/Moonglade
When: Thursday, 09.13, 7 p.m.
Where: Larimer Lounge
Why: With funk band Vulfpeck, Joe Dosik is often a bit of a sideplayer on sax and keys but with his recently released solo debut full length Inside Voice, Dosik makes good on the promise of his 2018 EP Game Winner. The lush production and Dosik’s versatile, soulful vocals is like something out of the late 70s or early 80s. Like maybe Dosik sequestered himself away from most modern music and listened mostly to a lot of Billy Paul, Luther Vandross’s 1981 breakout Never Too Much and Joe Jackson’s 1982 album Night and Day. Dosik’s compositions tend to be produced with more space to let atmospherics hang and resolve in a way that great pop artists in the aforementioned era often indulged but which in modern pop seems a bit of an all too human anachronism. These days, that’s the kind of quaint touch we could use more of.

What: Turn It Around: The Story of East Bay Punk at Sie Film Center w/Aaron Cometbus and Anna Brown
When: Thursday, 09.13, 6 p.m.
Where: Sie Film Center
Why: Aaron Cometbus’ ‘zine Cometbus has inspired generations of artists from other ‘zinesters, comics creators and musicians. His depiction of life across his body of work captured the moment, low and exciting, in a way few have. He and Anna Brown, a writer, surfer, educator and significant figure in the California punk world since the 80s, will be part of a Q&A after the screening of Turn It Around: The Story of East Bay Punk, a documentary about the punk scene in the San Francisco Bay area that brought us not just Maximum Rock ‘N’ Roll but the rich punk subculture that it documented and continues to do so including, for better or worse, the wave of pop punk that was the next major musical movement from the underground to emerge as alternative rock was splintering and co-opted by mainstream moneyed music industry interests.

Who: Musical Mayhem: Marvel West, Mean Hand, Limber Wolf
When: Thursday, 09.13, 8:30 p.m.
Where: Lion’s Lair
Why: In case anyone missed it, Musical Mayhem, the more or less free format monthly hosted by Claudia Woodman is now at Lion’s Lair. While not mainly “weird” music, Woodman’s tastes tend to run that direction. But on this night American band Marvel West will make an appearance along with Mean Hand, a band led by long time Denver underground rock and punk legend Tom Mestnik. Rumor has it Denver’s luminous western slowcore-esque band Limber Wolf is low key releasing its album at this show as well.

Who: Rabbit Fighter, The Pretty Bones, Nighttimeschoolbus, Miss Owl & the Pull Apart
When: Thursday, 09.13, 8 p.m.
Where: Syntax Physic Opera
Why: Touted as “Girl Power Night at Syntax” this show includes the mighty Nighttimeschoolbus, the duo of Robin Walker and Toby Hendricks who combine experimental hip-hop beat making and deeply affecting vocals. Rabbit Fighter has as its Facebook image a scene from Heathers quoting Veronica Sawyer, played by Winona Ryder, saying, “DEAR DIARY, I WANT TO KILL.” And, once in a while, who hasn’t felt that? If it really is a pop band at least it’s probably one with some attitude.

Who: Lowfaith record release w/Ridgeway, No Gossip In Braille and Voight
When: Thursday, 09.13, 8 p.m.
Where: Seventh Circle Music Collective
Why: Dream pop/darkwave band Lowfaith is releasing its new album On Loss tonight at Seventh Circle playing with bands in a similar vein. No Gossip In Braille includes Echo Beds frontman Keith Curts and its lush, low key atmospheric rock is almost a polar opposite of his other project in tone and texture. Voight really combines the melancholy mood of a dark post-punk band with the furious energy of a noise punk project. While initially sounding a bit like a a great A Place to Bury Strangers tribute band, the duo has really brought in its more electronic side more fully, giving its already wiry yet brooding sound a calming quality in contrast to its often explosive live intensity.

Friday | September 14, 2018

Landgrabbers_Aug24_2018_TomMurphy — Landgrabbers, photo by Tom Murphy

Who: Cyanidols, Luna Sol, Flat Earth and Landgrabbers
When: Friday, 09.14, 8 p.m.
Where: 3 Kings Tavern
Why: For something on the harder edge of Denver’s punk world this would be the show to check out tonight. Cyanidols includes Sonya Decman (whose bass prowess and vocal power brought a good deal to Tarmints, The Symptoms and Brain Police) and Chris Kieft who has been a staple of Denver’s punk scene going back to the 80s along with Oscar Pop. Luna Sol is sort of a stoner rock band and includes Shanda Kohlberg formerly of The Swanks as well as former Supafuzz frontman Dave Angstrom. Landgrabbers is a little more countrified but it is a welcome throwback to that time in the Denver punk scene when a band could simply be good and not have to cater too much to some prevailing trend.

Who: Equine, Housekeys, Shawn Mlekush
When: Friday, 09.14, 9 p.m.
Where: Denver Distillery
Why: Even though most of the local music and culture press is sleeping hard on it, the local experimental music scene is pretty active and sizeable. This low key show at Denver Distillery includes avant-guitar and loop maestro Equine, ambient soundscaper Housekeys and Shawn Mlekush who may be playing some entrancing abstract guitar drones and/or using synth in conjunction. Brought to you by Thought//Forms, the gallery that has been home to some of this music since starting up earlier this year.
Who: UaZit, Goon, f-ether, Claudzilla
When: Friday, 09.14, 8 p.m.
Where: Lion’s Lair
Why: UaZit from Indiana is this sort of weirdo electronic downtempo project that is as much performance art as it is music. Akin to hip-hop with beats that could work for that but also reminiscent of MC 900 Ft. Jesus. This Goon is not the hardcore band, rather the alternative hip-hop/trap producer. F-ether is somewhere in the realm of dub techno and house. Claudzilla is also an artist that blurs the line between bizarro pop and performance art. She might even do some strange covers as worthy as the originals. But for sure if you think Denver only really produces stuff for the temporary techbro colony that has occupied the Mile High City, Claudzilla is an antidote to such cultural pathologies.

Saturday | September 15, 2018

NOTHING_2018_BenRayner — Nothing, photo by Ben Rayner

Who: Nothing w/Culture Abuse, Big Bite and Smut
When: Saturday, 09.15, 7 p.m.
Where: The Bluebird Theater
Why: Nothing has evolved its shoegaze-y sound since its inception having come out of hardcore and other heavier music but without losing some of the dark edge that informs the lyrics. Its new album On the Blacktop seems sonically the most fully-realized of its records with gritty pop washes and burning shines over melancholic vocals. Even though Domenic Palermo still struggles with health issues and the ensuing psychological maladies that predate and have come about because of those, he still manages to find a way to make it all seem like something you can cope with and not be completely subsumed by even if it seems impossible sometimes. Pop punk has long since made a comeback but Culture Abuse makes it seem like the genre isn’t out of ideas musically and thematically. It’s 2018 album Bay Dream looks like some kind of late 90s party record with the graffiti style visuals and it could be if that party involved some deep existential examinations rather than simply melodramatic songs about love lost forever. Smut from Cincinnati sounds like its members already went through that 90s grunge revival phase and discovered more expansive sounds even if right now it is sonically somewhere in the middle in a way that seems more interesting than throwback.

GeneLovesJezebel_CourtesyOfJayAstonsGeneLovesJezebel — Jay Aston’s Gene Loves Jezebel, photo Courtesy of Jay Aston’s Gene Loves Jezebel

Who: Jay Aston’s Gene Loves Jezebel w/Scifidelic and Radio Scarlet
When: Saturday, 09.15, 8 p.m.
Where: The Venue (1451 Cortez St., Denver)
Why: After a bit of a legal battle between Jay Aston and his brother Michael, Jay Aston’s Gene Loves Jezebel that the band Jay leads gets to use in America while the original band name in the UK and vice versa for Michael. Jay Aston’s band put out its first album in nearly a decade in 2017 with the surprisingly compelling beginning to end album Dance Underwater. The new record gives you a real appreciation for Jay’s talent as a songwriter and musician with a broad tonal and emotional range and great nuance of expression. His band includes members of Gene Loves Jezebel going back to the mid-80s and likely the closest one will get to see the classic line-up of one of post-punk’s underrated groups. In the 80s Gene Loves Jezebel had dance club hits and proved influential on the Goth scene of the time and Jay’s songwriting has been surprisingly durable with his current crop of songs seeming timeless rather than capitalizing on past glory.

Eyebeams_BlackLightPoster — Eyebeams, black light poster image courtesy Eyebeams

Who: Eyebeams EP & Blacklight Poster release w/Kissing Party and An Antiquated Bluff (Josie Cool solo)
When: Saturday, 09.15, 9 p.m.
Where: The Skylark Lounge
Why: Denver’s Eyebeams is releasing its latest EP and blacklight poster tonight at The Skylark. The four-piece makes music that out of having already done the indie pop and psychedelic pop thing and taking the skill set learned there to do something that’s the next step in that creative arc. Suzi Allegra and Nathan Brazil played in some of the best pop/rock bands of the 2000s and 2010s with Games For May, The Pseudo Dates and Fingers of the Sun and wrote literate, smart songs that will presumably someday be part of Denver underground rock canon. Fernando Guzman and Andrew Elkins made their own indelible mark with the experimental/weirdo art rock band Fissure Mystic, a group in which they spent their teen years and early twenties honing the use of raw sound experimentation in a pop song context even if no one would ever really confuse Fissure for being a pop band. Elkins very much brought that sensibility with his end of the songwriting. Allegra played in Fissure for a couple of years, Guzman played in Fingers of the Sun. So Eyebeams is a bit of a consolidation and progression of the musical ideas all four musicians contribute to this band. The new, self-titled, EP demonstrates Allegra’s genius for fully integrating melody with dynamics and for writing songs that have more depth and complexity than simply one emotional flavoring and color without self-indulgent clutter. There is a melancholic tone to all of the songs but also a yearning for knowledge and clarity of oneself yet an acceptance of the reality of ambiguity you come to live with as an adult that as a younger person maybe you churn into melodrama. As a bonus, the band is releasing a special edition blacklight poster of its album cover at the show as well.

Who: Cometbus: Live Reading and Q&A with Aaron Cometbus
When: Saturday, 09.15, 8 p.m.
Where: Mutiny Information Café
Why: For more on Cometbus see above on Thursday, September 13. For this night, Cometbus is doing a live reading from his body of work with a follow-up Q&A.

Sunday | September 16, 2018

LuxuryHearse_Sep7_2017_TomMurphy — Luxury Hearse, photo by Tom Murphy

What: 2 OUTS: An Electronic songwriter gathering: Pearls and Perils, Mirror Fears, And I, Keldari Station, Church Fire, Gold Trash, EVP, Panic Priest, Blackcell, Strange Powers, Lady of Sorrows, Juniordeer, $addy, eHpH, Nighttimeschoolbus, Luxury Hearse, Voight
When: Sunday, 09.16, 3 p.m.
Where: Lost Lake
Why: A veritable cornucopia of great Denver musicians writing songs using electronic instruments or, in the case of Voight, using a guitar but writing with electronic music sensibilities. If you go to one event the rest of the year and want a great and fairly broadly representative slice of Denver music that uses electronic instrumentation in a boundary-pushing, interesting way, there won’t be a better chance to see it all in one place because no one else is thinking of an event like this with the level of quality curation that went into it.

Who: WOE, WVRM, Noctambulist and Scepter of Eligos
When: Sunday, 09.16, 8 p.m.
Where: Lost Lake
Why: The heaviest show of the week, nay, the month happens tonight at the Hi-Dive. Brooklyn’s WOE may be black metal but its furious live performance feels more like seeing Neurosis combining dark, relentless grinding psychedelia with eruptive energy. WVRM from Greenville, South Carolina is on the surface more straight ahead grind but there’s something flowing underneath that suggests someone in the band is deeply into noise and industrial music. That sensibility gives the music an textural quality and vibe that brings even more an edge to the sound. Noctambulist conveys a similar unconventionality to its death metal onslaught. Like they’re crafting atmospheres to replicate those of a Lovecrafting other dimension hanging with Nodens while he sits back while the Great Old Ones bash it out amongst each other seeding the civilizations of mortal life forms with nightmarish it their darker corners. It seems as though doom is a genre that’s starting to get played out but Scepter of Eligos really challenges that notion because its own take on having roots in that music is to inject it with a healthy heaping of more interesting atmospheric and rhythmic qualities that give its songs an uncommon dimensionality in the genre.

Monday | September 17, 2018

AngelOlsen_Mar10_2014_TomMurphy — Angel Olsen circa 2014, photo by Tom Murphy

Who: Angel Olsen
When: Monday, 09.17, 7 p.m.
Where: The Paramount Theatre
Why: Angel Olsen is currently on her first solo tour in four years. The songwriter spent some time as a backing singer for Bonnie “Prince” Billy and Cairo Gang before striking out on her own and making a name for herself with her powerfully evocative voice and her ability to vividly articulate a complexity of emotion through lyrics and casting the perfect tone for the song. These qualities were there from early on but 2016’s My Woman revealed that Olsen wasn’t capable of just having a creative leap forward but transforming the sonic breadth of her music. The clever and wise songs of Burn Your Fire For No Witness was a brilliant indie rock album, My Woman was Olsen coming into her own and embracing possibilities for a record that seemed to convey that one can go forward in life without letting uncertainty be a stumbling block to your progress. For this tour Olsen will be performing stripped down versions of new material as well as some of her older songs yet playing fairly large rooms. Something about that hints at Olsen’s dry, absurdist sense of humor while acknowledging that she’s probably going to have to get used to those settings for the rest of her career.

Who: Gillian Welch and David Rawlings w/Punch Brothers
When: Monday, 09.17, 6 p.m.
Where: Red Rocks
Why: Since early in her career, Gillian Welch has performed with an ineffable gravitas and seemingly easy mastery of her voice and the voicings of her instruments. Maybe her being an orphan, albeit adopted into a musical family, put a haunting in her brain from a young age, a layer of melancholy that many musicians spend a good deal of their 20s and 30s trying to cultivate so that when they try to sing the blues or country or rock and roll it has genuine weight behind songwriting and performance. Welch had that on her 1996 record Revival and has simply evolved into being of the great artists of the modern era alongside her musical partner David Rawlings. At this Welch and Rawlings are no strangers to big format concerts but a late summer show at Red Rocks seems just about perfect for one of their shows.

Tuesday | September 18, 2018

NIneInchNails_CorinneSchiavone — Nine Inch Nails, photo by Corinne Schiavone

Who: Nine Inch Nails w/The Jesus and Mary Chain and Tobacco
When: Tuesday, 09.18, 6 p.m.
Where: Red Rocks
Why: Nine Inch Nails has apparently been breaking out some material it hasn’t performed live in quite some time like all of the 1992 EP Broken at its tour kickoff. But that aside, every Nine Inch Nails tour brings one of the best live shows that anyone is doing any given year since the band broke in the late 80s. On a recent tour the group had live set changes on stage in addition to an impressive light show. And as per usual, someone in the NIN camp has great and adventurous tastes in co-headliners and opening acts. In the past NIN has brought on tour underground weirdo rock/electronic bands like Deerhunter, HEALTH and Oneohtrix Point Never. This time out for the co-headlining tour with legendary proto-shoegaze/alternative rock band The Jesus and Mary Chain, there will be Tobacco. The enigmatic electronic/psych/noise artist is perhaps more well known for his otherworldly pop band Black Moth Super Rainbow, but Tobacco is a bit of a different animal and at times could be considered a kind of avant-garde hip-hop with truly unique and mind-altering beats.

Wednesday | September 19, 2018

Who: Nine Inch Nails w/The Jesus and Mary Chain and Tobacco
When: Wednesday, 09.19, 6 p.m.
Where: Red Rocks
Why: For Nine Inch Nails, The Jesus and Mary Chain and Tobacco see above for 09.18.

Who: Sinister Pig, Lion Slicer, Suspicious Activity
When: Wednesday, 09.19, 6:30 p.m.
Where: Chain Reaction Records
Why: Lion Slicer is a punk band from Green Bay, Wisconsin making a stop in Denver on its “Wooly Eggnog Tour Part 2.” Does that mean it’s a little moldy? Who can say but since the show is free you have little to lose seeing it Chain Reaction Records. The band recently released its new record Lion Slicer Part 2, which if you’re into street punk, is great reminder that stuff didn’t die off into complete and utter obsolescence. Also on the bill are two of Denver’s better political hardcore bands with Sinister Pig and Suspicious Activity.

Who: The Mattson 2 and Astronauts, Etc. w/Stop Motion
When: Wednesday, 09.19, 7 p.m.
Where: Lost Lake
Why: Anthony Ferraro of Astronauts Etc. has written a kind of downtempo masterpiece with his 2018 album Living in Symbol. Something akin to a hazy Laurel Canyon jazz record but one written on the American East Coast while spending the evenings prior to writing in a dimly lit and cozy bar hanging out with Justin Hayward and Joe Jackson. Then taking the recordings infused with all those mysterious, chilled out vibes to Jonathan Rado to put his own haunted psychedelic pop touches into the mixing and mastering. Mattson 2 is cut from a similar cloth albeit one more obviously drawing on jazz roots with real chops to augment its lounge fusion compositions.

Who: Miniature Tigers w/Jasper Bones
When: Wednesday, 09.19, 7 p.m.
Where: The Marquis Theater
Why: Miniature Tigers came out of the mid-2000s as one of the more promising of Brooklyn’s indie pop bands. Although the influence of The Kinks and Elephant 6 bands were there, Mini Tigers also embraced the use of electronic instruments in its mix of sounds as well but with a more modern rather than retro sensibility. For its 2010 album Fortress the group collaborated on a song with Neon Indian as chillwave was reaching toward the apex of its popularity. The record that broke the band to a national, albeit still fairly underground, audience with touring to promote the album was 2008’s Tell It To The Volcano. This tour commemorates the 10 year anniversary of the release of the album but for a band that has consistently released albums since its inception, it’s a good chance to catch up with what the group is doing now.

Who: Ohmme w/Down Time and Mr. Atomic
When: Wednesday, 09.19, 7 p.m.
Where: Larimer Lounge
Why: Chicago-based jazz pop duo Ohmme released their debut full-length album Parts in summer 2018 but the group comprised of vocalists/multi-instrumentalists Sima Cunningham and Macie Stewart had already established itself as a going concern melding technical prowess, avant-garde sensibilities and imaginative songwriting. The eclectic resume of both musicians including credits working with the likes of Richard Thompson of Fairport Convention and Chance the Rapper. The synergy of their live performances, though, prove that they’re a force to be reckoned with and not a recording project that is taking tentative steps into the live arena.

Best Shows in Denver 9/6/18 to 9/12/18

KILLINGJOKE_110313_810 — Killing Joke performs Friday, September 7, 2018, at The Oriental Theater. Photo courtesy artist

Thursday | September 6, 2018

MidgeUre_PhotoCourtesyArtist — Midge Ure, photo courtesy the artist

Who: Midge Ure and Paul Young w/Kayla Marque
When: Thursday, 09.6, 7 p.m.
Where: The Oriental Theater
Why: Midge Ure is perhaps know to most for his bright and ethereal vocals and guitar work for new wave/synth pop pioneers Ultravox. With hits like “Vienna” and “Dancing With Tears In My Eyes,” Ultravox was one of the defining bands of the era. But Ure’s career has been broad, varied, lengthy and distinguished as a participant in a particularly creative era of music with stints in Rich Kids with former Sex Pistol Glen Matlock and with influential but not oft-cited early synth pop band Visage. Ure was a touring guitarist and keyboard player with Thin Lizzy during its Black Rose era and his solo career has been quite respectable with collaborations with, among others, Kate Bush and Mick Ronson. For this tour, Ure is playing from across his discography including classic Ultravox cuts.

Friday | September 7, 2018

PIG_with_Sasha-Grey_credit_Allan-Amato_and_Lawrence-McCarthy — with Sasha Grey, photo by Allan Amato and Lawrence McCarthy

Who: Killing Joke and <PIG>
When: Friday, 09.7, 8 p.m.
Where: The Oriental Theater
Why: Killing Joke’s stark apocalyptic death disco was basically the template for industrial rock. Its fervid and unblinking depiction of an international industrialized economy destroying the planet and our humanity in the process had a great deal of appeal when the band started in 1978 and seems even more relevant forty years hence when the proof of the destructive nature of late capitalism on the entire planet, including human society, is manifest. Depending on the era of the band in which you checked in or will check in, its live act is a tribal experience with frontman Jaz Coleman a figure channeling the fears and anxieties of the moment and transforming them into inspiration through a shamanic performance. The last time Killing Joke came to Denver in November 2003, Coleman took stage dressed in an outfit that looked like he’d crafted it after ekeing out a living on a remote tundra hunting wild bison with wooden spears, two large pieces of leather sewn together with thick thread made from sinew. He carried a wooden staff like some Celtic mystic, face smeared with dark ash to emphasize the whites of his eyes. When the music started it was like primeval human experiences and those borne of industrial civilization came together. Most bands can’t pull that off. This tour is likely to be just as gloriously weird and inspired.

Also on the bill is <PIG>, the project fronted by Raymond Watts. The latter’s résumé reads like a who’s who of industrial music history. Sure, he’s been an essential member/collaborator of KMFDM since that band’s easliest days. For example, he also worked with Psychic TV in the 80s, he was a touring soundman for Einstürzende Neubauten in the 80s, and he’s worked with Foetus. Watrs’ own music has explored realms of industrial music that expands what it is and what it can sound like. Watts somehow makes music that contains elements of ambient, noise, industrial beats and guitar without sounding like he’s trying to fit in with a trend or “genre” industrial music of any kind. As an artist he’s consistently explored different avenues of sound including Japanese experimental rock band Schwein. In recent years, Watts composed music for the fashion world, perhaps most notably for Alexander McQueen. In 2018 <PIG> released the “That’s The Way (I Like It)” EP which is a small collection of remixes and the cover of the K.C. And the Sunshine Band classic in collaboration with Sasha Grey who has been making a bit of a name for herself as a maker of music and an actress beyond the adult film world. Because of the latter, the song’s video debuted on Pornhub, a first for Watts.

TheJuanMacLean177_byTonjeThilesen — The Juan Maclean, photo by Tonje Thielsen

Who: Option4 and Friends w/The Juan Maclean
When: Friday, 09.7, 9 p.m.
Where: Bar Standard
Why: Brennen Bryarly became one of the biggest independent promoters of electronic dance music in the country in the past decade. But when he’s had time to indulge making music of his own under the Option4 moniker it’s always been worth a listen. This night he shares the stage with associates as well as The Juan Maclean, the influential neo acid house/nü disco project started by John Maclean, the former guitarist for noise rock legends Six Finger Satellite. These days Maclean does his sets with collaborators Nancy Whang of LCD Soundsystem fame and Nicholas Millhiser of synth pop band Holy Ghost!

Who: Dead Kennedys w/T.S.O.L., The Dwarves, Runaway Kids and Reno Divorce
When: Friday, 09.7, 7 p.m.
Where: The Ogden Theatre
Why: Don’t go expecting Jello Biafra fronting Dead Kennedys. Ron “Skip” Greer, formerly of East Bay punk and Wynona Riders, has been in the frontman role since 2008. Do go expecting to hear plenty Dead Kennedys classics performed by the classic lineup minus Biafra. Also on the bill are other punk greats like T.S.O.L., the band that refused to just stick with punk musical and sartorial orthodoxy when it dropped the usual hardcore imagery and sound and adopted glam and drag and moody post-punk. And whatever T.S.O.L. wanted, which is pretty punk.

The Dwarves spent a lot of years on the intentionally offensive tip in the vein of G.G. Allin minus the more unsanitary performance stunts. In 1993 the band announced that its guitarist HeWhoCannotBeNamed had been stabbed to death with a hoax that went so far as to list the HWCBN as The Dwarves’ “late” guitarist on the 1993 release of Sugarfix. That stunt lost the band its label signing with Sub Pop. Four years later the group reconvened and proved it was always more than a campaign to alienate everyone with pushing the extreme stunts envelope and has produced a solid body of garage punk including its 2018 album Take Back The Night on Burger Records. Not for everyone but if you have a wicked and irreverent sense of humor you have to appreciate a band willing to call its 1999 compilation Free Cocaine.

Who: Venus Cruz & Friends
When: Friday, 09.7, 9:30 p.m.
Where: Lost Lake
Why: Venus Cruz is a multifaceted talent and multi-instrumentalist who on her own or in collaboration with other musicians or in an ensemble finds the sweet spot at the intersection of soulfulness, innovation and accessibility. As the host of Jazz Odyssey on KVUO on Wednesday nights 10 p.m. to 12 a.m., Cruz champions the most forward thinking artists under a broad umbrella of what jazz can be conceived of being.

Saturday | September 8, 2018

The-Verve-Pipe-by-Derek-Ketchum-9.16.17 — The Verve Pipe, photo by Derek Ketchum

Who: The Verve Pipe w/The Hollow and Citra
When: Saturday, 09.8, 6 p.m.
Where: Levitt Pavilion
Why: The Verve Pipe is most well-known for a handful of singles in the mid-90s with “Photograph” and “The Freshmen” and in 2001 with “Colorful,” which introduced them to an even wider audience on the soundtrack of Rock Star. Even though the band’s songs were uncommonly thoughtful and discussed topics like addiction, suicide, sexual abuse and issues of social justice in a sensitive way one might not expect from a rock band then with radio hits. But when The Verve Pipe didn’t score a big hit its excellent self-titled 1999 album and when its 2001 album Underneath, despite its having a hit song, didn’t move millions of units either the major label world lost interest. Fortunately, fan interest remained and when the possibility of crowdsourcing became an option for a band that had ably managed its own business affairs and marketing before ever signing to a big label, The Verve Pipe returned to having a viable music career again by simply picking up where it left off when the label was taking care of everything. The result has been a fruitful second, or even third, chapter for the band including its 2017 album Parachute, which is a fine example of how a band can reconcile the idealism of its early career with evolution into adulthood without getting boring.

Who: Wovenhand w/Echo Beds
When: Saturday, 09.8, 8 p.m.
Where: The Bluebird Theater
Why: Wovenhand was a reincarnation of David Eugene Edwards as a songwriter from 16 Horsepower into originally more familiar, Gothic folk territory but in increasingly divergent directions including the adoption of Middle Eastern musical ideas with 2008’s Ten Stones and more immersion in Eastern European and Balkan musical forms. With 2012’s The Laughing Stalk, though, Wovenhand sound was harder, darker and more in the realm of fiery post-punk. Was it his new bandmates including former Planes Mistaken For Stars and current Git Some guitarist/vocalist Charles French bringing in that sensibility or a natural evolution of Edwards’s songwriting? Likely a combination as Edwards even covered the likes of Joy Division and The Gun Club while in 16 Horsepower. Whatever the catalyst for the change in sound, Wovenhand remains a haunting and powerful live band.

Denver’s Echo Beds came together out of the local punk and experimental music scene with principals Keith Curts and Tom Nelsen having put in their time make more conventional music and crafting music on the outer edge of accessibility. As Echo Beds the duo has worked with other collaborators over the years but the core of the band has been one to explore the possibilities of unconventional percussion (organic and electronic), harrowing textural noises as compositional elements and a charged emotional delivery it metes out in small, incredibly intense doses. This past summer the group released the nightmarishly beautiful full-length Buried Language through The Flenser.

Who: 1476 w/Alterity, Oblivion Her Majesty, Feigning, No Roses
When: Saturday, 09.8, 7 p.m.
Where: Seventh Circle Music Collective
Why: 1476 from Salem, Massachusetts is fairly impossible to pin down to any narrow genre as its body of work encompasses neo-folk, post-punk and black metal without its music sounding like a song-to-song exercise in either. Fans of Neurosis, Coliseum and Wipers will find something to like about 1476, especially its 2017 album Our Season Draws Near.

Monday | September 10, 2018

Mac_Demarco_by_Coley_Brown_Jan_2017C — Mac Demarco, photo by Coley Brown

Who: Mac DeMarco w/Noname, Free Nationals, DJ Jonathan Toubin
When: Monday, 09.10, 6 p.m.
Where: Red Rocks Amphitheatre
Why: Mac DeMarco is a modern guitar hero to some, a retro indie punchline to others. What’s missed in the overblown fandom and uninspired dismissal of an artist one hasn’t taken the time to delve into is the fact that DeMarco has evolved significantly since his time in Makeout Videotape a decade ago. His songwriting has also been more than any easy genre designation, more sonically and emotionally rich than any movement with which he might be lumped. The songwriter has described his own music as “jizz jazz,” whatever that’s really supposed to men, but jazz is the underlying aesthetic and structure to his songwriting.

Demarco’s new album This Old Dog sounds like he spent some years brushing up on his Steely Dan-isms without ripping off the band. There is an introspective lushness to several of the songs not to mention the chutzpah of a twenty-six-year old (at the time of the songwriting anyway) writing a record filled with songs written from the perspective of looking back on what feels like a long life. And to be fair, with as much touring, songwriting, life experience and hustling that DeMarco had to have packed into his life thus far it probably does feel warranted to take stock through one’s art. This Old Dog bears that out and it’s often languid pace feels like he’s felt that in a way that only someone who is a bit world weary would know. Not that DeMarco’s been beaten up by the hammer blows that life deals you as you get toward double his age now but he’s managed to articulate the feelings of wondering what this is all signifies, the self-doubt, the realization of mortality and trying to cope with the loss of key people in your life as well as someone with a decade or more hence on him. Will this translate to a large format performance? One can hope and that Red Rocks is a place where people can take in some of this material with the thoughtfulness that went into its making.

Tuesday | September 11, 2018

JulietMission_Oct29_2009_TomMurphy — Juliet Mission circa 2009, photo by Tom Murphy

Who: Dark Tuesdays: Juliet Mission with DJs St. Evil and Fernando
When: Tuesday, 09.11, 9 p.m.
Where: Blue Ice
Why: Juliet Mission was born out of the early days of Denver post-punk/alternative rock band Sympathy F when Andre Lucero, Anthony Morales and Doug Seaman were weaving threads of inspiration from the pall of gloom over Denver’s sprawl of urban decay and post oil industry bust decades into darkly beautiful melodies. In the 2000s the band finally released a collection of songs but has more or less remained dormant, playing occasional shows, for the past decade. Now on the cusp of releasing its latest albums, Juliet Mission has been playing live including this rare appearance at Blue Ice for the Dark Tuesdays event that brings together some of Denver’s better darkwave, industrial, Goth and post-punk DJs.

Who: Acid King w/Love Gang and Keef Duster
When: Tuesday, 09.11, 8 p.m.
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Acid King emerged from San Francisco in the early 90s when its amalgam of heavy metal and psychedelic rock wasn’t exactly in vogue. That just meant the band could develop its sound and aesthetic without that being co-opted by any mainstream movement or corporate record labels looking to cash in on a then potentially commercial trend. The group, still fronted by guitarist Lori S., took its moniker from the nickname of a serial killer and its songs are not short on themes of the occult, and evil after the manner of a horror writer, of course, resulting in a body of work that would be a great companion to the comic art of Richard Corben and Erol Otus or a movie based on the story by Laird Barron. Long before “stoner rock” became a thing, Acid King was in there doing their own pioneering work in that realm alongside the likes of Sleep, Kyuss and St. Vitus. Yeah, all the creative descendents of Black Sabbath but also some of the best.

Wednesday | September 12, 2018

Who: Mike Krol (Merge) w/Shiii Whaaa and Super Bummer
When: Wednesday, 09.12, 8 p.m.
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Mike Krol’s new seven inch “An Ambulance” / “Never Know” out on Merge Records is an immediate no-brainer-love-it for fans of late 2000s lo-fi noise punk/pop stars like Times New Viking, The Reatards, No Age, Psychedelic Horseshit, Eat Skull and Pink Reason. The shitgazers, the bands that celebrated exuberance and coloring outside established lines even for punk and more consciously experimental rock with garbage distortion and pegging the needles on the recording console, the bands that found homes on forward thinking labels like, yes, Merge, and Siltbreeze. Mike Krol is from that lineage of sonics but charting his own flavor. More contemporaneously, if you’re a fan of Clarke & The Himselfs don’t sleep on Mike Krol.

Who: Warm Thoughts, Obtuse, Candy Apple, Old Haunts, Incontinuity
When: Wednesday, 09.12, 7 p.m.
Where: Seventh Circle Music Collective
Why: Warm Thoughts from Los Angeles used to be called Dad Punchers and who doesn’t love a name like that? But Warm Thoughts is probably a better long term name for a band you want to take places where “Dad Punchers” might not read too well. Or, you know, you find yourself being a dad and you’re in the band. At any rate, the emo-inflected pop punk band recently released its latest album I Went Swimming Alone and is making a stop in Denver playing with like-minded bands including Obtuse whose anthemic lo-fi pop punk might be described as defiantly self-loathing underlined with a spirit of accepting that for many of us life isn’t exactly overflowing with glamour and validation.

Myrkur Channels the Ancestors at Decibel Tour

03Myrkur_Feb26_2018 — Myrkur at The Gothic Theatre, February 26, 2018. Photo by Tom Murphy.

This edition of the Decibel Tour seemed to focus on bands whose aesthetic and roots are linked with a re-embrace of native cultures and a pre-Christian, even pre-Neolithic, spirituality.

07Enslaved_Feb26_2018 — Enslaved at The Gothic Theatre, February 26, 2018. Photo by Tom Murphy.

Headliner Enslaved may have been making melodic death metal for going on three decades but its songs have often taken an approach to its lyrics that attempt to reconcile oneself with the culture of its Nordic ancestry, harmony with the natural world and ethical treatment of other humans. Its music sounds like the stuff of Norse sagas.

05WITTR_Feb26_2018 — Wolves in the Throne Room at The Gothic Theatre, February 26, 2018. Photo by Tom Murphy.

Wolves in the Throne Room’s own music and presentation as a fireside ritual aims to put the musicians and those at the show into a state of mind of a culture and spirituality in which we all recognize the interconnectedness of things and to embrace that vitality collectively. Not from any part of Scandinavia, Wolves in the Throne Room’s connection to an environment is the Pacific Northwest inspired perhaps by Native American traditions but in a way that doesn’t try to co-opt those ideas so much as envision a parallel but resonant relationship between human culture and the natural world.

02Myrkur_Feb26_2018 — Myrkur at The Gothic Theatre, February 26, 2018. Photo by Tom Murphy.

Myrkur’s own majestic soundscapes and air of ancient mystery ritual fit in well with the bill. And like the other artists the sense of otherworldly energy didn’t prevent a relatable human dimension to her performance. Strumming heavy-yet-ethereal guitar riffs and vocalizing with a uplifting, powerful, enveloping melodies, Myrkur came across like a legendary warrior poet of old. At the end of her set, though, Amalie Bruun, aka Myrkur, brought forth a hand drum that she used to accompany some traditional Danish folk music from centuries past and accompanied by nothing else but the drum and her voice, she was able to project the same kind of energy as she had with her band as if she was channeling the ancestors. It could have come across as a gimmick but Bruun’s natural gravitas carried the moment and made for an exceptional moment that night.

04Myrkur_Feb26_2018 — Myrkur at The Gothic Theatre, February 26, 2018. Photo by Tom Murphy.

Best Shows in Denver and Beyond 8/30/18 – 9/5/18

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA — CJ Boyd performs at various venues in Colorado this weekend. Photo circa 2008 by Tom Murphy

Thursday | August 30, 2018

Who: A.M. Pleasure Assassins and CJ Boyd
When: Thursday, 08.30, 7 p.m.
Where: Downtown Artery, Fort Collins
Why: Fort Collins’ great lo-fi post-punkers A.M. Pleasure Assassins share the stage with internationally renowned avant-garde punk/folk/ambient/one-man pastoral classical artist C.J. Boyd. The latter is one of the few artists in general that has played in all fifty of the United States. For a decade, Boyd has traversed the country and collaborated with artists from every state and written some of the most accessible and evocative experimental music that defies any absolute categorization. Pick up at any point in his extensive catalog and you’re in for something interesting that will stretch your musical horizons in some fashion. Boyd is playing other shows in Colorado on this leg of his tour and if you’re not able to make this Fort Collins gig it would be worth seeking out where those other shows are happening whether in a house or a DIY space in Colorado Springs like the new Flux Capacitor.

Smokescreens_Gina-Clyne — Smokescreens, photo by Gina Clyne

Who: Smokescreens, The Molochs and American Culture
When: Thursday, 08.30, 8 p.m.
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Chris Rosi and Corey Cunningham were once members of Plateaus and Terry Malts having toured together during the ascent of the garage/psych revival. But by mid-decade both moved to Los Angeles where they formed Smokescreens out of a mutual love for the off-standard melodic strategy of American pop and more in the vein of New Zealand weirdo, jangle-y punk bands of the 80s on the Flying Nun imprint as well as noisier American music like The Velvet Underground and The Aislers Set. One might make a good case for some influence of The Feelies and a touch of Jay Reatard and No Age in there. All of those influences would mean nothing if the songwriters weren’t capable of doing anything interesting or original out of their own skill set. The band’s 2018 album Used to Yesterday is proof that Smokescreens is making some of the more sonically interesting, guitar-driven pop music today. Combining a tenderness and delicacy of tone and texture with great momentum and energy, Smokescreens is a band that is as idiosyncratic as its influences, which is no mean feat given Flying Nun’s catalog of unique greatness alone.

MagpieSalute_DavidMcLister — The Magpie Salute, photo by David McLister

Who: The Magpie Salute w/Brent Cowles
When: Thursday, 08.30, 7 p.m.
Where: Boulder Theater
Why: Formed in 2016 by former members of Black Crowes including Rich Robinson, Marc Ford and Sven Pipien, The Magpie Salute is perhaps less beholden to the blues rock that was the bedrock of Black Crowes. At least if the band’s new album, 2018’s High Water 1 is any indication. Sure, some of the structure and tones are there but the sonic palette is broader with the band at this point. The title track suggests psych Americana but the album refreshingly doesn’t get stuck in a single mode, mood or dynamic. There’s a 70s feel to the record but one that gives you a greater appreciation for the details that make that songwriting style compelling even today even if you’re heard enough of that sort of thing. Robinson and his bandmates grew up with and within those musical traditions and with this band they’re giving those influences a renewed vitality that is oft-imitated and rarely manifested with this degree of credibility because it doesn’t feel forced and the highly developed songcraft born out of years playing in other bands speaks for itself.

Who: Equine, Tunica Externa, biostatic
When: Thursday, 08.30, 8 p.m.
Where: Mutiny Information Café
Why: Depth of sound field throughout this show with the guitar drones and tone sculpting of Equine, Tunica Externa’s super minimal soundscapes with guitar and loops and biostatic’s synth, live sampled trumpet and processed sounds. None of the artists is much alike, uses very different methods of making their sounds but all have grounded in a way of making music that isn’t rooted in any particular, pre-established style, which should be recommendation enough for going to this show if you’re looking for something well outside the mainstream.

Friday | August 31, 2018

BrotherhoodOfMachins_May21_2016_TomMurphy — Brotherhood of Machines, photo by Tom Murphy

Who: Under the Floorboards Celebration: Midwife, Bigawatt, Brotherhood of Machines, Curta and Multicast
When: Friday, 08.31, 8:30 p.m.
Where: Syntax Physic Opera
Why: KGNU’s Under the Floorboards program showcases music that is decidedly left field. So this show will include the minimalist, ambient folk/lo fi production of Midwife, Bigawatt’s operatic avant-post-punk paired with experimental drummer Death Pose, Brotherhood of Machines’ Popol Vuh/dub techno-esque ambient in collaboration with Jake Danna of hip-hop duo Curta. And Multicast, which has been doing ambient music in Colorado for longer than most of the people in Colorado’s quite large ambient scene. With biostatic hosting and serving as a DJ for the night.

Who: Sympathy F
When: Friday, 08.31, 8 p.m.
Where: Goosetown Tavern
Why: Sympathy F came on to Denver stages during the early days of the alternative rock era. Early members of the band included current guitarists Doug Seaman and Tony Morales (who has also been a vocalist in the band from the beginning) and both lived in a building in the Capitol Hill neighborhood called The Blenheim, notable for its gateway looking like something from a medieval urban house, where they lived across the hall from future and current vocalist Elizabeth Rose who became fast friends with the two musicians who one day heard her singing along to the music they were writing. The band became a bit of a fixture in the local scene throughout the 90s, releasing one, self-titled album and a handful of cassette and compilation releases before the focus of the musicians went to other projects even though Sympathy F never disbanded. Over the past decade or so, the group has been more active and in 2016 releases its first album in over twenty years with its second self-titled album. It was a compilation of new and older recordings and demos that the members of the band rendered for a more modern release augmented by overdubs and a proper mixing and mastering treatment. At that time the band had intended to release a double album to get its backlog of material out into the world but that didn’t make sense and now the group is releasing what would have been the second half of the double album with a couple of new tracks that reflect new musical ideas that hint at where the group may go in the future with electronics a part of its lushly atmospheric, moody hard rock.The new album, available tonight, is The Blenheim, a nod to the band’s roots and the creative frisson that launched its fruitful and prolific, if not widely available on a recording until recently, career. See our upcoming interview with Seaman on the history of the band and its recent painstaking recording of at least one of its new songs.

Who: EVP w/Pearls and Perils and Gold Trash
When: Friday, 08.31, 9 p.m.
Where: BarFly
Why: Glasss Records occupies BarFly for the night. EVP’s pointed personal/political commentary informing its impassioned industrial noise pop will bring some edge to the laid back environs. Gold Trash’s noise-scape-y, beats collage electroclash will demonstrate how you can keep it weird and confrontational yet fun. Pearls and Perils makes downtempo R&B with a rich emotional quality and theatrical stage presence that is impossible to ignore.

Saturday | September 1, 2018

ChurchFire_Aug10_2018_TomMurphy1 — Church Fire, photo by Tom Murphy

What: Temple Tantrum Day 1
When: Saturday, 09.1, 12 p.m., music starts 1 p.m. runs to 10 p.m.
Where: The Temple Studios
Why: Temple Tantrium is a two day festival that encourages attendees to arrive in costume and join in the festivities with twenty musical acts, fourteen art installations, comedy and performance art. For list of artists featured see below.
Music: Council of Word, Porcelain, F-ether, Halo Halo, Ginger Perry, JL Kane, R A R E B Y R D $, Princess Dewclaw, Church Fire, Plantrae

Visual/installation Artists: Ancient.Future, Charles Russel, Alex Anderson, Kat Nechleba, Kristina Rolander, Ryan Wurst, Izzy Jarvis, Regan Rosberg, Queen City Harlequinade, Kelly ShortNQueer, Tara Worley, Suchitra Mattai, Katine Lowe, Marsha Mack, Sandra Fettingus, Naomi Scheck, Joanne Shminke, Lori Owicz, Brendan Macleod.

Performance art and comedy: No Gods No Masters, Punketry, Gallagher Fest, Jessica L’Whor, Jaguar Morning Show

Who: Big Business w/Simulators and Quits
When: Saturday, 09.1, 8:30 p.m.
Where: Larimer Lounge
Why: Big Business is the sludge metal/noise rock band from Seattle comprised of former KARP and Murder City Devils members Jared Warren and Coady Willis. The duo spent a handful of years playing in Melvins where its bombastic, playful and joyous sound fit in with Melvins’ sense of the absurd. For this show the duo will be joined by sharp-edged post-punk band Simulators and eruptive noise rock supergroup Quits which includes former members of Denver-based noise rock outfits Sparkles and Hot White.

Who: Pink Fuzz LP release w/Love Gang and Boot Gun
When: Saturday, 09.1, 8 p.m.
Where: Lost Lake
Why: BANDITS from Boulder honed its hard blues rock sound for a few years under that name before adopting its new moniker, Pink Fuzz. The group releases what may be it’s first full-length record tonight. Though not a stoner rock band, fans of bands like Fu Manchu and Nebula will probably find a lot to like here.

Sunday | September 2, 2018

TheSpeedholes_Jan19_2001_RebeccaBauer — The Speedholes circa 2001, photo by Rebecca Bauer

What: Temple Tantrum Day 2
When: Saturday, 09.1, 12 p.m., music starts 1 p.m. runs to 10 p.m.
Where: The Temple Studios
Why: See the entry for this event above on September 1, 2018. The list of visual/installation artists and performance art and comedy is the same. But musical guests for this day include: Machu Linea, MEEK, Entrancer, ETERNAL, Baby Tony & The Teenies, L.A. Zwicky, Oxeye Daisy, Vic N’ The Narwhals, NEEFF, Nasty Nachos and Pictureplane.

Who: Merrick 25th Anniversary Party with debut of Rocket Dust, Vashion Seeds and Sam & Catherine from AKA Belle
When: Sunday, 09.2, 5 p.m.
Where: Globe Hall
Why: Kelly and Dan Merrick were members of noisy garage punk band The Speedholes in the 90s and early 2000s and were active participants in the vibrant Denver punk scene of that time. Both had roots in the Seattle underground scene of the 80s and 90s and were impacted by Denver musicians who made it to the Pacific Northwest regularly or even made it a home like maybe The Derelicts but certainly The Fluid and Spell. They’re celebrating their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary with the debut of their new band Rocket Dust with this show at Globe Hall.

Tuesday | September 5, 2018

MondoObscura_May3_2015_TomMurphy — Mondo Obscura, photo by Tom Murphy

Who: Mondo Obscura and The Counselor (DJ set)
When: Tuesday, 09.5, 7 p.m.
Where: Chiba Bar | Colorado Springs
Why: Denver futuristic new age/ambient band Mondo Obscura lands in Colorado Springs for a two hour live set followed by DJ set from local weirdo The Counselor at a Japanese themed bar. Fortunately it won’t be the “Chiba City Blues” but if some guy named Case shows up looking like he might be hyped on stims and babbles something about Molly Millions and the Panther Moderns just be glad for the distraction and ask him how Acacia Park is treating him.

Wednesday | September 5, 2018

RollingBlackoutsCoastalFever_Warwick-Baker — Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever, photo by Warwick Baker

Who: Rolling Blackouts Coast Fever w/Jo Passed
When: Wednesday, 09.5, 7 p.m.
Where: Larimer Lounge
Why: On the strength of the material on its first two EPs, 2016’s Talk Tight and 2017’s The French Press, Melbourne, Australia’s Rolling Blackouts Coast Fever drew favorable comparison by critics like Robert Christgau and Stephen Deusner to influential Australian jangle pop band The Go-Betweens. With the sparkling guitar tone and effluvient, often urgent, dynamics the comparison seems apt. But the band never really sounds like a throwback and especially not so on its 2018 full length Hope Downs wherein the guitar play weaves hanging chords into its bright melodies to convey more fully melancholic undertones and introspective moods. Like American indie rock band LVL UP, RBCF has a real knack for writing songs with a depth of composition using dissonance, textural rhythms and percussive melodies alongside more straightforward guitar work. Live the group performs with a nervy energy that gives what might otherwise be simply solid pop songs a palpable intensity.

Who: Weird Wednesday: KRBS (from Ludlow), Bonnie Weimer, Whimsically Macabre Music
When: Wednesday, 09.5, 9 p.m.
Where: 3 Kings Tavern
Why: This latest edition of Weird Wednesday features artists whose music doesn’t necessarily scream out “weird” but in the larger musical sense really is. Bonnie Weimer whose spare, banjo songs are reminiscent of Maureen Tucker solo or on her rare and excellent vocal performances in The Velvet Underground (particularly “After Hours”). Meaning it’s intimate, powerful and a bit mysterious. Presumably KRBS is Josh Kirby from the great Colorado folk/punk band Ludlow doing a solo performance. Kirby has an offbeat, often surreal sense of humor so that’s bound to be part of the set too. Whimsically Macabre Music is a solo piano project of Stacy Fahrion. The music doesn’t hit you over the head with its strangeness. In that sense it has more in common with how many Erik Satie pieces are haunting or various Shirley Jackson novels have an atmosphere just off enough to get under your skin without having to resort to cheap thrills.

Short Takes #2: August 2018

This is the latest installment of our periodical records review column with the featured album being Them Are Us Too’s posthumous swan song Amends out on Dais Records.

Them Are Us Too – Amends – Dais Records

Them Are Us Too’s gift to its listeners is a nearly unmatched ability to distill all the pain, disappointment and sadness of a lifetime of unrequited love and rejection by others, by society and ourselves into soaring melodies that sublimate those feelings into ethereal shadows that can no longer overwhelm us even if they can still haunt us. Amends may be the final record from the band due to the tragic death of guitarist Cash Askew in the 2016 Ghost Ship fire. But the music’s power to take gentle yet strong rhythms and couple them with intertwining melodies, luminescent and melancholy, as a vehicle for honoring genuine emotional expression is a testament to the duo’s enduring alchemical ability to soothe the spirit.

AZALiA_SNAiL_NEON_RESiSANCE — AZALiA_SNAiL, *NEON_RESiSTANCE*, Silber (US)/Thokei Tapes (Germany)

AZALiA SNAiL – NEON RESiSTANCE – Silber (US)/Thokei Tapes (Germany)

Pretty much impossible to say when this album was written and recorded post-1980. Its sensibility and aesthetic points to 80s and 90s synth pop. The guitar on “Celeste (Can You Feel It)” sounds like something out of a more ambitious New Wave band but set inside a song that could have come out in the past 10 years among artists tapping into 80s pop sounds to capture a sense of nostalgia. But NEON RESiSTANCE isn’t mining nostalgia. It is doing something more interesting and meta by using an older set of musical parameters and sounds with modern production to evoke a personal style of songwriting that looks forward as many bands of the 80s seemed to be doing but avoiding getting that all wrong by really giving the songs an unusual emotional dimensionality and nuance with nostalgia-tinged melodies as relatable self-reflection and not self-obsession. Sonically it’s difficult to compare this multi-faceted pop record to much of anything else but perhaps Nina Hagen’s 1982 experimental rock/New Wave masterpiece NunSexMonkRock. There was little like that then, there’s little like this now and every track is worth your time.

Biostatic_Vaccine — bios+a+ic – *Vaccine* – Symbolic Insight

bios+a+ic – Vaccine – Symbolic Insight

Wesley Davis seems to generate his albums around themes that express the essence of ideas that have taken up residence in his imagination. 2015’s cloudLanD has an airy, drifty feel suggesting a sense of space and peace. Vaccine’s claustrophobic drones and repeating circular phrases spawn others that intersect in ominous, dissonant patterns suggestive of one set of sounds mutually infecting another to produce a third sound that’s darker with descending tones. Not an anti-vax abstraction, but more a comment on not trusting corporations and moneyed interests to provide a cure. In that way, it’s a bit of a cyberpunk ambient album but one that doesn’t make the dystopia seem kinda cool.

CURTA – End of Future Park – self-released

Jake Danna minces no words in his critique of American culture in general and his local community in particular. From the self-appointed expertise on all things and the lives of other people due to the internet and social media (“Ghost Milk”) to the limitations of bravado to dignify one’s life and art (“Prop Comic”) and the poisonous, self-eroding qualities of unreigned-in/unexamined cynicism (“I’m Still Cool, Right? (feat. WC Tank), Danna’s observations are a cogent assessment of the root ills of modern America’s writhing cultural anomy beyond platitudes of left and right. 4Digit’s production as further brought into detail by ManMadeMadMan’s mastering is what shines just as brightly. The beats, the streaming details of sound to accent the mood, tone and texture, the vibrant atmospheres and the masterful flow of melodies to suit the moment are not subtle so much as fully integrated and you get a to take in 4Digit’s imaginative composition with the 26+ minute closing track, “The Life of 4Digit Vol. 1.”

LA-VIE-C'EST-MORT---ARTWORK — Daisy Mortem, *La vie c’est mort*, self-released

Daisy Mortem – La vie c’est mort – We Are Vicious

An always engaging listen akin to an unlikely and thus refreshing synthesis of B-52s, Lords of Acid and breakcore, La vie c’est mort from Bordeaux, France’s Daisy Mortem is a sort of decadent industrial dance pop. A lot of American industrial dance groups fall back too much on mediocre 90s EBM. On this EP, Daisy Mortem taps more into mid-80s New Wave’s melodramatic emotionalism but using the sound palette of modern electronic dance music to craft songs with a giant sonic imprint. Imagine the curiously compelling upbeat and alien quality of Classix Nouveaux minus the schlock and with a sprinkling of influence from Sparks and Fad Gadget. If Fellini had lived to make a movie about Bohemian New York City in the 80s, he would have done well to have tapped Daisy Mortem to score the soundtrack because this band is that exact vibe—bombastic, lush and brimming with vitality.

The-Damned---Evil-Spirits-Front-Cover-600dpi — The Damned, *Evil Spirits*, Search and Destroy/Spinefarm Records

The Damned – Evil Spirits – Search and Destroy/Spinefarm Records

Easily The Damned’s best record since Machine Gun Etiquette. But it would be more honest to say it’s the band’s best record since it’s debut. Most bands more than forty years into their career are creatively treading water. The Damned apparently found some juice in their collective imagination to write an album in the classic style of writing a cohesive record of quality material beginning to end. Most bands write a record this vibrant early in their careers. “We’re So Nice” rocks harder than but has a similarly deft orchestration of melody and harmony one might expect out of The Zombies. It should come as no surprise that Tony Visconti, one of the minds behind shaping the best Bowie records, was on board for Evil Spirits. But even the most brilliant production can’t make up for subpar songwriting. Even if you didn’t know this was The Damned, so many of these songs are striking and timeless. “Shadow Evocation” is like a long lost cousin to something The Moody Blues might have written in the 60s—a windswept, imagination stirring mini-epic. What makes Evil Spirits such a remarkable album is that The Damned prove track to track that they know that if they relied on only one trick, one tempo, one songwriting style they’d bore themselves as much as us and that should count for something in any band much less one that could easily skate along on the laurels of its older classic material. The Damned have create what should in time be considered new classics with this record.

FrogEyes_VioletPsalms — Frog Eyes, *Violent Psalms*, Paper Bag Records

Frog Eyes – Violent Psalms – Paper Bag Records

For its final record, Frog Eyes has refined its raw noir Americana sound to a place of great clarity that brings the conflicted emotions into sharp focus. Carey Mercer still sounds like he’s shaken by the force of emotion even as he delivers his words with the confidence and quaver of a Bryan Ferry. With this album, more than previous Frog Eyes releases, each song sounds like a room, an environment, a psychological space Mercer enters with immediate, cogent commentary. At times, as with “Idea Man,” the music feels like the modern equivalent of an early-to-mid-70s Genesis record with the elegance of sonic detail, mysteriousness and grandeur. Maybe Mercer wasn’t listening to a steady diet of The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway or Foxtrot but this Frog Eyes swan song resonates with the artistic ambition and exploring the possibilities of one’s own songwriting and reach as a musician.

Immersion – Sleepless – swim~

Somewhere in England there’s a high tech train station going to the places where it sounds like Boards of Canada songs take place and this is the gentle effervescent music to put you in the mood to be in a place of peace and disconnect from the rough and tumble everyday world. The cycling tones of “Off Grid” seem aimed to help you reprogram your brain to check out of the ambient anomy that comes with life in the twenty-first century and take a trip through a languidly melodic soundscape for nearly fifty minutes before being dropped off in a beautiful place out in the country.

The Milk Blossoms – Dry Heave the Heavenly – self-released

With heartbreaking imagery throughout, this second album from The Milk Blossoms quickly becomes impossible to resist in drawing you in to tender yet intense emotional experiences that might be off putting to those with an aversion to psychological intimacy at this deep a level. But The Milk Blossoms never seem off putting. The band bares its alchemy of words and sounds with a brave openness borne of knowing you’re speaking truth or at least your truth—a quality that never goes out of style and which can never but completely duplicated as something idiosyncratic to the artist in question. The Milk Blossoms make pop music the way some people make something special for a loved one—with great attention to detail and with a care and affection and without expectation of anything in return. Was this written in an old lighthouse? A treehouse? A cottage in the woods waiting for the winter to thaw? Probably not but it has the feel of taking time out in isolation to allow the nuances and strength of feeling to emerge and find their perfect expression.

Oryx – Stolen Absolution – Midnite Collective/Graven Earth

This is the sound of the world around us crumbling and eroding and our inability or unwillingness to reverse course. Like the manifestation of Derrick Jensen’s Endgame. Oryx could have pummeled us with some doom-y deathgrind but there is simply a greater diversity of musical ideas here than all of that. The dynamics, for one, while often insistent, leave enough space so that the crushing avalanche of sound hits harder. It also means that, unlike some bands in the realm of extreme metal, Oryx’s songs never truly feel same-y. Across this album the duo pushes the boundaries of what the music can be by fully integrating brutal sonics with atmosphere. Stolen Absolution’s long stretches feel like an intense journey but none that leave you worn out for having taken them.

Peach Kelli Pop – Gentle Leader – Mint Records

Featuring what might be the album cover of the year for richness of content alone, Gentle Leader is ten songs in the noise pop vein. Upbeat, irreverent, bordering-on-twee-but-confident, Peach Kelli Pop’s songs have great melodic vocal harmonies and wide ranging rhythms. Closing track “Skylight” reveals the band’s experimental guitar edge hinted at earlier in the record confirming that Peach Kelli Pop has more to offer than the exquisite pop gems that have been a large part of its recorded catalog to date.

Sugar Candy Mountain – Do Right – self-released

The retro-futurist sonic flourishes across this album are reminiscent of a sunny Laurel Canyon psych Broadcast in a pop moment. Or perhaps like Death & Vanilla in that the melodies are nostalgic but the undertones and rhythms suggest a grounding outside the English-speaking music world. As the songs on the album fuzz and incandesce one wonders if the band watched a whole lot of reruns of The Ed Sullivan Show and nailed the vibe and the aesthetic when old Ed had on the hippest guests that didn’t have to compromise and could just shine on a program where the evils of the modern music industry weren’t so firmly in place to insidiously influence and water down popular music into the lowest common denominator product, rather when taste makers had taste and a sense of adventure. Do Right may be retro and couched in a sense of nostalgia but the details on album closer “Do You Know The Place,” and throughout the record, those qualities sound surprisingly fresh at a time when looking back four or five decades and more for inspiration is so played out.

Synth_Drone collective – Tone Science – Symbolic Insight

The track names on this album from Denver based synth supergroup Synth-Drone collective suggest a collective telling of life in some far flung future akin to Larry Niven’s Tales of Known Space but with the dark cloak of a minimalist, existentialist Tarkovsky science fiction film like Stalker. The name of the album doesn’t spell out but hints at the scientists of the time depicted in this album searching in earnest for the real science equivalent of the mythical first sound, the teleological ground zero vibration, that launched the universe into dynamic life because it has been discovered that the universe is dying and the only thing that can reverse the process is to discover the appropriate wavelengths to stop the impending doom of all and everything. Except someone in the scientific community knows it’s all for naught and just another attempt by sentient beings to interfere with the natural order of things with the hubristic notion that mortals can fix anything if they set their minds to it when in fact by our temporal nature and perspective we can never known enough to impact everything. Which is a downer but in the case of this album, it’s a beautifully compelling, drone-driven soundscape of a time when humans and other intelligent creatures have to learn to accept the inevitable.

Wye Oak – The Louder I Call, the Faster It Runs – Merge Records

There’s always been a bit of a cinematic quality to Wye Oak’s music and one might perhaps clumsily say the new album is to If Children what Fargo is to Blood Simple—not massively better but more sophisticated, more intentionally stylized with its newfound skill set and sonic palette. The melding of acoustic instruments and electronic production is so complete that the band seems to effortlessly bring to bear tones, rhythms, textures, melodies and atmospheres to craft songs as experiences. Wye Oak hasn’t ditched classic songwriting methods and models, it’s just taken those structures and filled them out with rich content. But what does Wye Oak have to say this time around? Refreshingly the band asks more questions than providing a set perspective. At a time when too many bold-yet-curiously-vapid-and-trite statements are made in the public sphere, it’s asking thoughtful questions and pondering issues about life and the world without a sense of one’s own certainty as a nod to the fact that we can’t know everything while not discrediting our own thoughts and feelings that makes this record remarkable. The title suggests chasing after goals while those goals we are encouraged to think of as ends in themselves become elusive and we are forced to really think about what it is we’re all on about and if the chase is worth it in the end. Because of that, The Louder I Call, the Faster It Runs really is the kind of record that needs to be out in the world questioning the dominant paradigm not with firebrand skepticism but compassionate curiosity for ourselves and others.

Best Shows in Denver 08.23.18 – 08.29.18

Boss302_Jul21_2018_TomMurphy — Boss 302 performs at The Oriental Theater on Friday, August 24, 2018 with Landgrabbers and The Vanilla Milkshakes

Thursday | August 23, 2018

EsmePatterson_Dec17_2017_TomMurphy — Esmé Patterson circa 2017, photo by Tom Murphy

Who: Adam Faucett, Esmé Patterson, Bellhoss
When: Thursday, 08.23, 9 p.m.
Where: Syntax Physic Opera
Why: Arkansas-based folk/Americana artist Adam Faucett performs in Denver ahead of the August 24 release of his new record It Took The Shape of a Bird. Faucett’s creative use of vocal tones and dynamics along with his poetic imagery gives his music real character. The same could be said of Esmé Patterson whose creativity in storytelling and richness of emotional colorings in her songwriting makes her noteworthy artist in a realm of music that can sometimes seem same-y. Becky Hostetler’s Bellhoss is also a great fit for this bill since her own spare songwriting provides the skeleton of mood and atmospherics in a way that brings your imagination to bear to fill in the spaces.

Who: short[circuit]circus #1: Structures Beavers Make (ATX noise-ish), Mahou Odd Genie & Norm L. Princess, Housekeys, Rose Alley
When: Thursday, 08.23, 7:30 p.m.
Where: Seventh Circle Music Collective
Why: This is the beginning of what will hopefully be a series focused on more experimental music. Structures Beavers Make is an act based out of Atlanta, Georgia that doesn’t limit itself to just lo-fi moody guitar and voice over subtle, ambient beats, as the artist says (jokes) on her Bandcamp page that she might do bad Avenged Sevenfold covers. We can only hope. Mahou Odd Genie & Norm L. Princess fortunately also doesn’t fit comfortably in a single, discernible genre somewhere betwixt ambient, experimental electronic dance and samples manipulation. Housekeys is Tiffiny Costello’s ghostly guitar and vocals ambient project. The most obvious comparisons are Grouper and Juliana Barwick or the less noisy period of Flying Saucer Attack. Rose Alley is a “drag noise poet” in that it’s kind of a trippy spoken word performance with environmental sounds to enhance the words.

Friday | August 24, 2018

LadyOfSorrows_July19_2018_TomMurphy — Lady of Sorrows, photo by Tom Murphy

Who: Boss 302 w/The Landgrabbers and The Vanilla Milkshakes
When: Friday, 08.24, 7 p.m.
Where: The Oriental Theater
Why: Boss 302 started in the early days of 1993 on the cusp of the breakup of the band that inspired its existence: The Fluid. However, Boss 302 spent several years establishing its own reputation as a fun, rowdy garage punk band with a charismatic frontman in Rich Groskopf and a solid band that wrote songs good for a party in the classic sense rather than the self-parody of party rock in more recent years. Boss 302 had a handful of releases including 1997’s Whatever Happened To Fun, which included its only recordings with Matt Bischoff of The Fluid on bass. The group split in 1999 and reunited in 2008 around the same time The Fluid came unexpectedly out of retirement for a time to play Sub Pop’s 20 year anniversary show as well as a string of other performances, a reminder that it was and still was one of post-punk’s greatest bands. Ten years hence Boss 302 reunited once again in July 2018 for the Mile High Parley with a spirited performance at Gary Lee’s. Even if you’re not familiar with the band’s music, you’ll get to have some laughs and see one of Denver’s best punk bands of the 90s. Also on the bill are country punk band Landgrabbers and post-grunge pop outsider punk band Vanilla Milkshakes.

Who: Lady of Sorrows, Church Fire and Mirror Fears
When: Friday, 08.24, 7 p.m.
Where: Mercury Café
Why: Lady of Sorrows is the downtempo, brooding R&B solo project of Lady Justice of industrial/darkwave band Angel War. Church Fire is a band that should be everyone’s radar in Denver at this point but in case not the emotionally charged, noise-infused dance-darkwave band never disappoints with its cathartic live show. Mirror Fears too is in a similar vein but with a more ethereal vocal style and presence whose emotional power washes through you, cleansing the psychic detritus that seems to be stuck in everyone with a heart these days.

Saturday | August 25, 2018

Ohgr_Dec7_2011_TomMurphy — ohGr circa 2011, photo by Tom Murphy

Who: Archipelaghost at final Alligator Party
When: Saturday, 08.25, 9 p.m.
Where: Bowman’s Vinyl and Lounge
Why: Archipelaghost, an electronic/psychedelic rock band extraordinaire, is moving away as is Marie Litton of Pretty Mouth who will also DJ this show. Maybe they’ll be back through on a tour but for now this is your last if not only chance to catch them before they’ve relocated.

Who: Lead Into Gold, ohGr and Omniflux
When: Saturday, 08.25, 7 p.m.
Where: The Oriental Theater
Why: Paul Barker was the iconic bassist and co-producer of Seattle post-punk legends the Blackouts as well as EBM/industrial rock band Ministry during its most popular and productive era. Lead Into Gold was a side project Barker put together in the late 80s/early 90s. The project was basically put on the shelf until 2015 when Low & Slow was released, making available some tracks originally recorded in 1990. With 2017 performances including that at Chicago’s Cold Waves festival, Lead Into Gold became an active band again with a new album titled The Sun Behind the Sun appearing in 2018.

ohGr is the band formed by Nivek Ogre and Mark Walk of Skinny Puppy. Its music is not as dark or as heavy as Skinny Puppy can be, rather more a focus on the playful side of both musicians. Devils in My Details showcased a noisier side of ohGr and a more sound design approach to composing the music, a method Walk and Ogre also applied more to the then subsequent Skinny Puppy album 2011’s HanDover. As per Ogre’s performances with Skinny Puppy, from the early tours for ohGr in 2001 to now his stage appearance is theatrical and dramatic reflecting the flavor of the music. So for the 2018 album Tricks we can probably expect some heavy emphasis on animal imagery for the stage set and Ogre’s costuming.

Sunday | August 26, 2018

modern-leisure-promo-pic — Modern Leisure, photo courtesy Modern Leisure

What: Textures: Pythian Whispers, Finnocitta and lib.eriana
When: Sunday, 08.26, 7 p.m.
Where: Mutiny Information Café
Why: This is the latest edition of Textures the ambient showcase hosted by Wesley Davis of biostatic and his Symbolic Insight imprint. Included on this bill is experimental electronic/ambient duo Pythian Whispers and lib.eriana, the acoustic and production project of Alan Muñiz, former member of avant-garde jazz band Malamadre. Drone, loops and beats artist Finnocitta from Gainesville, Florida will also make an appearance.

Who: Straight White Teeth, Modern Leisure, Briffaut and Whole Milk
When: Sunday, 08.26, 7 p.m.
Where: Lost Lake
Why: Patrick McGuire was a member of one of the more promising Denver pop bands Flashbulb Fires before he moved away to Philadelphia in 2015. After sustaining a severe injury that damaged his right arm putting any notion of every playing guitar and piano again in jeopardy. Two surgeries later and McGuire had full use of his arm back only for, according to the Straight White Teeth bio on its bandcamp page for the track “Lifetime,” McGuire and his girlfriend/former bandmate Ella Trujillo had to leave their home due to violence in the neighborhood. Now rootless with no permanent residence McGuire and Small White Teeth has managed to tour with McGuire as a solo act with tracks and what bandmates he can pull together for a show or performance. For the past year, McGuire has been recording and releasing singles rather than a full-length album all at once, a gesture that may give potential bandmates in any given city he may play a frame of reference. That this show will include the great Colorado indie pop bands Modern Leisure and Briffaut, from Denver and Colorado Springs respectively, suggests that maybe someone in either band could join McGuire for this performance.

Monday | August 27, 2018

DavidByrne_DonnaLewis2 — David Byrne and band, photo by Donna Lewis

Who: David Byrne
When: Monday, 08.27, 6:30 p.m.
Where: Red Rocks
Why: David Byrne is rightfully known for his idiosyncratic and visionary music art and performances going back to his days with punk/pop band Talking Heads in the 70s and 80s. His solo material as well as his various collaborative albums including those with Brian Eno (in particular the 1981 non-western ambient/electronic drone/samples masterpiece My Life In The Bush of Ghosts) and St. Vincent (for 2012’s Love This Giant) have been products of a unique imagination and curiosity that illuminate American culture and the human condition in ways that are both eccentric and relatable. Byrne’s body of work is proof that he’s not been one to fully rest on his laurels. This includes his 2018 album, American Utopia, which has been hailed as a return to form by critics. In some senses that is the case with Byrne’s inimitable songwriting style incorporating traditional instruments used in both traditional and decidedly unconventional ways alongside production methods as compositional tools, both giving his deceptively simple songs a sonic and emotional depth to enhance the experience of listening both in the recorded and life form. American Utopia is also a component of the multimedia project Reasons to Be Cheerful which aims to give people a reason to have some joy and hope in a time of seemingly unremitting bleakness and destructive political impulses with their inevitable consequences for the planet including human civilization.

For this tour Byrne is bringing a sprawling lineup to manifest the music of American Utopia as well as material from across his long career. People who purchase a ticket for this current run of shows can also redeem a coupon for a free CD copy of the album with details on the ticket. But the real treat is to see a master of the artform of pop in full bloom well into an already lengthy career.

Tuesday | August 28, 2018

Equine_Nov22_2017_TomMurphy — Equine, photo by Tom Murphy

Who: David Byrne
When: Tuesday, 08.28, 6:30 p.m.
Where: Red Rocks
Why: For David Byrne see above for Monday, 8.27.

Who: The Binary Marketing Show, New Standards Men, Equine and Sporehive
When: Tuesday, 08.28, 8 p.m.
Where: Thought//Forms Gallery
Why: The Binary Marketing Show is from somewhere in the Pacific Northwest. Its layers of drones, simple percussion, minimalist guitar, lo-fi production and spare vocals have an intimate, warm quality that is reminiscent of bedroom recordists and the more imaginative indie pop weirdos of the 2000s like Microphones, Dntel and Casiotone For the Painfully Alone. Going out on a limb maybe you’ll hear a hint of cLOUDDEAD in the way the controlled distorted instrumentals vibe with the understated vocals. Also on this bill are Denver drone guitar experimentalists New Standards Men and Equine as well as avant-instrumental improvisational band Sporehive.

Wednesday | August 29, 2018

CopCircles_Jan29_2014_TomMurphy — Cop Circles circa 2014, photo by Tom Murphy

Who: Cop Circles, Staggered Hooks, Techno Allah, Goo Age
When: Wednesday, 08.29, 9 p.m.
Where: The Meadowlark Bar
Why: Cop Circles is an artist that subverts the tropes of No Wave jazz, indie pop and Afrobeat to make the kind of catchy songs that are fun and danceable on their own but which are often sharp and thoughtful critiques of culture and the way social policies and economic models erode human dignity and our collective quality of life in ways that aren’t obvious unless you take the time to pay attention. Cop Circles music has a way of helping to clarify your way of thinking about these things without hitting you over the head with didactic platitudes. Staggered Hooks is Dean Inman of Dream Hike’s more industrial and ambient project and this may be the last time you get to witness Inman’s gift for sound design live before he moves out of Denver. Techno Allah is sort of a glitchy IDM dance artist. Goo Age makes environmental soundscapes populated by the sonic, abstract equivalents of ambient creatures in 16 bit video games. Not the kind you can or have to overcome, they’re just there to give the scene some character and Goo Age’s IDM-esque beats some serious flavor. Think a way more playful early-yet-updated Future Sound of London circa Lifeforms.

Best Shows In Denver 8.16.18 to 8.22.18

SANDRA-COLLINS---PRESS-PHOTO---19 — Sandra Collins performs in Denver on Saturday night, August 18, at a venue to be announced

Thursday | August 16, 2018

ALightAmongMany_ReturningToAScorchedEarth_cover — The cover of Returning to a Scorched Earth by A Light Among Many

Who: A Light Among Many album release, Sonic Vomit, Green Druid and Vexing
When: Thursday, 08.16, 6:30 p.m.
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: A Light Among Many is the doom drone solo project of Franklin Binder. Using voice, guitar and loops, Binder articulates the spirit of the desolate stretches of Colorado’s high plains stitched with lonely highways and an unseen networks of ley lines. His music has a haunted and tortured yet transcendent menace like a violent storm hovering on the horizon, circling loci of civilization, touching down periodically as a reminder of the primacy of nature over humankind’s hubristic plans. ALAM’s new album Returning to a Scorched Earth drops tonight at the Hi-Dive. It is a beautifully despairing composition of rage at mankind’s abusive stewardship of the earth.

Who: Musical Mayhem: Equine, Space Jail, Full Bleed
When: Thursday, 08.16, 8:30 p.m.
Where: Lion’s Lair
Why: Musical Mayhem is now happening at the Lion’s Lair. The monthly event curated by Claudia Woodman is a good way to see some of the more unusual or experimental bands not necessarily seeing a lot of time at most clubs. Equine is the soundscaping/future jazz/avant-garde guitar solo project of former Motheater and Epileptinomicon guitarist Kevin Richards whose been having quite a prolific year recently in terms of releases and collaborations with each of his shows being fairly different from one another. Space Jail is what might be described as a psychedelic downtempo space rock band. Full Bleed fortunately doesn’t fit an easy formula either with elements of more tripped out stoner rock and soundsculpting use of distortion. What does that mean? They use distortion to give a drawn out sound texture and evolving qualities of sound that seem to impact your body and ears with modulating levels of volume and physicality. When one learns to control these qualities more it can be an interesting musical and experiential effect on its own despite not necessarily being a feature of most music that fits into a mainstream songwriting context.

Friday | August 17, 2018

OCMS3CreditDannyClinch — Old Crow Medicine Show, photo by Danny Clinch

Who: Esmé Patterson and The Still Tide
When: Friday, 08.17, 6 p.m.
Where: Levitt Pavilion
Why: Esmé Patterson will bring her thought-provoking and evocative art folk/pop to Levitt Pavilion tonight to share the stage with The Still Tide. The latter is sometimes referred to as dream pop or indie rock and as vague genre designations they both fit. But singer and guitarist Anna Morsett’s emotionally dynamic voice and stage presence elevates the already excellent songwriting.

Who: Old Crow Medicine Show with I’m With Her (featuring Sara Watkins, Sarah Jarosz and Aoife O’Donovan)
When: Friday, 08.17, 7 p.m.
Where: Red Rocks
Why: Old Crow Medicine Show’s existence predates the most recent wave of old timey/string band/folk Americana music and it could be argued it’s 2004 hit “Wagon Wheel” (co-written by Bob Dylan and OCMS’s Ketch Secor) helped to popularize that music with the mainstream and influenced a generation of like-minded musicians in its wake. Mumford and Sons covered the song several years later. Nevertheless, Old Crow Medicine Show sounds like it could have come up during the folk revival of the 60s and 70s. Its 2018 album Volunteer is a lively blend of bluegrass and classic country. I’m With Her is a trio of some of the best Americana artists in the land right now all of whom have highly respectable careers outside of the band.

Who: All Out Helter 10 year anniversary, day 1 w/Muscle Beach and Record Thieves
When: Friday, 08.17, 8 p.m.
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: All Out Helter is a band that has too much of a hard rock edge to be purely punk and with its progressive politics firmly in place and eloquently expressed, the band’s firebrand energy is very welcome in an era when too many bands shy away from having anything to say without blunting the impact a little for the infirm of heart and mind. To celebrate its first decade as a band, All Out Helter is playing two nights at the Hi-Dive. On this first night a similarly unpigeonholable heavier hardcore band Muscle Beach will share the stage with the veteran group as well as melodic hardcore outfit Record Thieves.

Who: Luke Vibert with Sortof Vague, Seied and Kanyon Walker
When: Friday, 08.17, 9 p.m.
Where: The Black Box
Why: Acid jazz/techno artist Luke Vibert, sometimes collaborator with Aphex Twin, will perform tonight at The Black Box. Vibert’s prolific and diverse career has included some time playing in punk band, a hip-hop crew and the electronic composition for which he’s most well known. His most recent record Smell The Urgency might be described as acid hip-hop as it has more in common with the likes of J. Dilla, Flying Lotus and Jonwayne with its favoring chill yet otherworldly beats.

Who: King Buffalo w/Green Druid, Emerald Siam
When: Friday, 08.17, 8:30 p.m.
Where: Globe Hall
Why: King Buffalo from Rochester, New York makes the kind of vibey psychedelic music that has some connection to the hybrid of atmospheric doom and trippy pop. What sets the band apart from many of its peers, though, is partly the expansive, drifty melodies that have more in common with the early period of The Verve than some later era lazy shoegaze wannabe act. But its basslines are exceptional and set the pace and the mood with a fluid strength that channels the songwriting into interesting sonic spaces. That quality can also be found in Denver atmospheric rock band Emerald Siam. While the latter has some roots in psychedelic garage rock and the retrofuturist soundscaping of The Jesus and Mary Chain its more recent music has struck deep into musical darkness with an uncommon originality born of not wanting to sit comfortably in someone else’s shoegaze or psych subgenre.

Saturday | August 18, 2018

LambOfGod_TravisShinn — Lamb of God/Burn the Priest, photo by Travis Shinn

Who: Slayer, Avenged Sevenfold, Lamb of God, Anthrax, Behemoth and Testament
When: Saturday, 08.18, 3:30 p.m.
Where: Fiddler’s Green
Why: This is supposed to be Slayer’s final tour. We’ll see. Nevertheless, the legendary thrash band will share Fiddler’s Green with some of the greats of thrash in New York’s Anthrax and the Bay Area’s Testament. As well as newer bands that managed to come out of the 90s as metal but not nü metal. Poland’s Behemoth on the surface seems to be the most out of place with its occult-y black metal but its root is the same kind of death metal and thrash that Slayer helped to influence. Both Avenged Sevenfold’s and Lamb of God’s sound can also be traced to the first wave of thrash. LoG has recently hinted that it will perform as Burn the Priest with a release harkening back to the time when it performed under that name as a band that was experimenting with a hybrid of death metal and hardcore. In May 2018, as Burn the Priest, Lamb of God released Legion: XX, an album of covers of hardcore, thrash, sludge rock, industrial bands as well as a cover of Big Black’s “Kerosene,” whatever genre that might really be if any. Chances are you’ll get to see a bit of that with this tour.

Who: All Out Helter 10 year anniversary, day 1 w/The Windermeres and Black Dots
When: Saturday, 08.18, 8 p.m.
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: This second night of All Out Helter’s 10 year anniversary weekend at the Hi-Dive includes performances from two of Denver’s better punk bands The Windermeres and Black Dots.

Who: Sandra Collins
When: Saturday, 08.18, 10 p.m.
Where: Venue to be announced
Why: Sandra Collins made a name for herself as a talented trance artist in the world of 90s rave and electronica long before electronic dance music became synonymous with the acronym EDM. Really her roots in that music pre-date the widespread use of the aforementioned terminology. Whatever designations have been applied to Collins’ music her skills as a producer, remixer and DJ have long been widely respected and she was inarguably the first female DJ in electronic dance music to gain wide popularity. Her ear for solid, evolving rhythms intersected with rhythmic melodies and textures has made for a large body of work as a live DJ and on recordings like one of trance’s creative landmarks, 2000’s Tranceport.3. In 2013 Collins’ career was documented in Kandeyce Jorden’s 2013 film Girl (in 2018 the film started steaming on iTunes, Google Play and Amazon). Still traveling the world and doing sets, Collins remains one of the few superstar artists in an especially male-dominated realm of music but one that has become increasingly less so in part due to her encouragement and example.

Who: Bluebook w/Erica Ryann
When: Saturday, 08.18, 8 p.m.
Where: Aurora Fox
Why: There are pretty much never any shows in Aurora of this kind going on. Experimental folk/downtempo duo Bluebook at downtown Aurora’s classic theater on Colfax? Hopefully the harbinger of more interesting stuff to come to A-town.

Who: Amen Dunes w/Okay Kaya
When: Saturday, 08.18, 8:30 p.m.
Where: Globe Hall
Why: Amen Dunes is often presented as merely some of of psychedelic indie rock artist. But if his latest album, 2018’s Freedom, is any indication he’s been ahead of that curve for some time. If clumsy comparisons must be made his songwriting is as unique, as interesting and as unusual as that of Devendra Banhart or going back some decades, Roxy Music. There is an organic yet otherworldly and sultry quality to the songwriting. It’s also earnest in its emotional outpouring recalling a more mellow Soft Boys or solo Robyn Hitchcock.

Who: Fed Rez (album release) w/Los Mocochetes, R A R E B Y R D $, The Original Ills, DJ Bloodpreshah
When: Saturday, 08.18, 7 p.m.
Where: Lost Lake
Why: Fed Rez’s version of hip-hop is one that doesn’t get hung up over genre conventions. Its sample-based compositions don’t shy away from acerbic observations but always informed by a sense of humor that is clever rather than cruel. The quartet releases its latest album this night, On the Regs. To usher in the new record Fed Rez has brought together some of Denver’s finest, like-minded musical entities including Latin funk band Los Mocochetes and dream beat, future jazz, post-apocalypse world beat phenoms, R A R E B Y R D $.

Sunday | August 19, 2018

RopeTrickEffect_KitChalberg — Rope Trick Effect (pictured; Molly Zackary), photo by Kit Chalberg

Who: Rope Trick Effect and Halo Halo
When: Sunday, 08.18, 7 p.m.
Where: Mutiny Information Café
Why: Rope Trick Effect and Halo Halo could loosely be called jazz-fusion. If that fusion included R&B, torch song lounge, punk and the expected prog when one speaks of fusion. But don’t expect Mahavishnu Orchestra style musical gyrations so much as something you might expect to share a bill with Leonard Cohen in the early 80s. Rope Trick Effect vocalist Molly Zackary is billing the show as #jazznotjazz #sorrynotsorry because of the short shrift that the original jazz scene in Denver gets from most of the local media and, well, music fans too who may not know such a thing exists in the Mile High City. As with everything else Zackary has done in music in Denver, as a music instructor and musician, there is a great deal of musical prowess and emotional power involved in Rope Trick Effect. Its 2017 EP is so solid and refined it could have come out on Blue Note. But see for yourself at this free and children friendly/but not wack show at Denver’s underground/above ground culture hub, Mutiny Information Café.

Tuesday | August 21, 2018

WinterAndTriptides_GabeFernandez — Winter & Triptides, photo by Gabe Fernandez

Who: Winter with Vinyl Williams and Corsicana
When: Tuesday, 08.21, 7 p.m.
Where: Lost Lake
Why: Samira Winter grew up in Curitiba, Brazil, the daughter of an American father and a Brazilian mother, but went to college in Los Angeles. The mix of cultures has given her pop songs a decidedly different flavor beyond the bilingual lyrics. With her band, named Winter, Samira has crafted lushy atmospheric pop gems and the band’s 2018 album Ethereality is most suitably titled. It’s reminiscent of late 2000s dream pop and chillwave with a lo-fi aesthetic giving the songs hazy edges of nostalgic whimsy. Winter is also set for a late September release of a collaborative album as Winter & Triptides called Estrela Mágica that sounds like a long lost Latin psych/folk record of the 1970s.

Who: The WHEAL and Voight
When: Tuesday, 08.21, 9 p.m.
Where: Blue Ice
Why: The WHEAL came all the way from Paris, France to perform at Blue Ice. The project supposedly has roots and a lineage in 80s electronic music and post-punk.Whatever its origins, The WHEAL is a modern darkwave band that uses ambient tracks, drum machines and synth compositions to create a dense and deep soundscape. Paired with The WHEAL on the bill is Denver’s Voight, a band whose own fusion of electronic/minimal synth and searing post-punk guitar sounds is unique in the Mile High City.

Wednesday | August 22, 2018

BadBadHats_ZoePrinds-Flash — Bad Bad Hats, photo by Zoe Prinds-Flash

What: Centered Volume 3: Ian Sherlock, Mobdividual, Lepidoptera and J. Hamilton Isaacs
When: Wednesday, 08.22, 7 p.m.
Where: Bar Max
Why: This third edition of Jacob Isaacs’ Centered series, which features underground, experimental electronic artists from around the country as well as Colorado, will include local artists Mobdividual, Lepidoptera and Isaacs himself along with Syracuse, New York-based ambient/environmental sound artist Ian Sherlock. Taking place in the basement of Bar Max, the event will make it easy to escape the bustle of Colfax and take in some great, minimalist soundscapes.

Who: Bad Bad Hats w/Cumulus
When: Wednesday, 08.22, 7 p.m.
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Minneapolis-based indie rock band Bad Bad Hats recently released its new album, Lightning Round. Singer Kerry Alexander has long written music playing with and often subverting pop clichés. Lightning Round is no different with, according to an August 2018 interview with Rolling Stone, Alexander examining the love as drug metaphor as someone who hasn’t indulged in the song “Nothing Gets Me High.” Alexander imagines possibilities in cultural artifacts and their impacts on our lives and popular culture as with “1-800.” Across her career Alexander has commented insightfully on the emotionally/psychologically fraught moments in any relationship as it starts and develops but especially so on Lightning Round with “Absolute Worst” and “Girl.”

Best Shows in Denver 08/9/18 – 08/15/18

EchoBeds_Jan25_2018_TomMurphy — Echo Beds album release Sunday, August 12, 2018 at Mutiny Information Café

Thursday | August 9, 2018

Lady Gang, photo courtesy Jen Korte

Who: Lady Gang EP release w/Venus Cruz & Ginger Perry and R A R E B Y R D $
When: Thursday, 08.9, 9 p.m.
Where: Syntax Physic Opera
Why: Jen Korte has long been known as a respected and talented songwriter in Denver with her inventive songwriting and vivid lyrics. Known mostly for her Americana solo output and her brilliant collaborations with other artists including stints in Gin Doctors and as a guitarist in experimental rock band Teacup Gorilla. Lady Gang is Korte branching out as a songwriter and, this time around, as a producer. It’s a solo project in which Korte uses “a beat machine, a loop pedal, bass guitar, electric guitar and her signature voice.” That voice has some grit, character and confidence. The project’s new EP, released tonight, is Simple Truths, is truth in advertising with Korte finding direct ways of discussing the world in its incredible disarray. The songs resist simple classification. “How Do You Sound” has elements of bluesy psychedelia and hip-hop as interpreted through someone like MC 900 Foot Jesus. “Preface This” like a long lost Helium track with its electro-lounge and mysterious melodic strains. Sharing the stage for the occasion of this release is a collaborative set with two of Denver’s most noteworthy musical figures in jazz/soul/hip-hop phenom Venus Cruz, host of the Jazz Odyssey program on KUVO (one of the most forward thinking radio programs in Denver) and Ginger Perry, one of the Mile High City’s great DJs and not just the kind that shows up with a simple playlist. Oh, and R A R E B Y R D $, one of the most interesting hip-hop crews going that’s injecting a rich spectrum of quality imagination and emotional content into the genre.

Who: Lupe Fiasco w/Mickey Factz, Bill Blue, Dylan Montayne, Connor Ray
When: Thursday, 08.9, 7 p.m.
Where: The Ogden Theatre
Why: It’s for the best that Lupe Fiasco didn’t actually quit music as he had intended in 2016 after the controversy over “N.E.R.D.” and the infamously supposed anti-Semitic line. In a time when white supremacy has made a curious rise in American political life, it’s essential to have voices who are articulate and unabashed critics of such nonsense not to mention Fiasco’s sharp critique of the down side of America’s actions on the international stage. Initially shelved, 2017’s Drogas Light was described as a prequel to the 2011 album Lasers. Perhaps for this tour Lupe Fiasco will unveil a bit of his new direction as creatively moving forward certainly suits him.

Who: Angélique Kidjo’s Remain In Light and Femi Kuti & Positive Force
When: Thursday, 08.9, 6:30 p.m.
Where: Denver Botanic Gardens (York Street)
Why: Two giants of world music on one bill in a beautiful setting? Both Kidjo and Kuti have deep roots in the development of world music in general but Afrobeat in particular. Obviously Femi Kuti’s father Fela was the founder of Afrobeat and Femi played in Fela’s band starting in his teen years. Kidjo was “discovered” as a jazz musician in Paris but quickly made a name for herself internationally for her powerful voice and inimitable personal style. A rare opportunity in Denver.

Friday | August 10, 2018

MeetTheGiant3_Jun23_2018_TomMurphy — Meet The Giant, photo by Tom Murphy

Who: Meet the Giant vinyl release w/Church Fire and The Patient Zeros
When: Friday, 08.10, 9 p.m.
Where: Syntax Physic Opera
Why: Denver-based rock band Meet the Giant releases the vinyl edition of its self-titled debut album tonight with a show at Syntax. The record is a synthesis of moody, deeply atmospheric dream pop, downtempo and fuzzy hard rock. Live the band’s songs have a mysterious yet emotionally vibrant quality accented by a broad dynamic range between the trio’s players. For the occasion Meet the Giant is joined by two of Denver’s best bands. The Patient Zeros emerged from the glut of neo-classic rock, throwback 60s psych-nostalgia and garage rock that seemed to dominate the past several years with its own musical identity and more bluesy like Cream and not a cut-rate Brian Jonestown Massacre. Church Fire is the rare band that bridges electronic dance music, noise, industrial and synth pop and infuses it with a passionate intensity and shamanic stage presence.

Who: Melvins w/WE Are The Asteroid
When: Friday, 08.10, 7:30 p.m.
Where: Gothic Theatre
Why: Melvins have managed to spend its 35 years as a band not just developing its signature sludgy, heavy rock and influencing generations of musicians, it has taken the opportunity to collaborate with other artists in various realms of music. Whether that’s with experimental electronic artist Lustmord or Jello Biafra, Melvins seem to have long realized that you have to keep doing stuff you find interesting and following your curiosity and trying different things along the way. 2017’s A Walk With Love and Death was a double album with half of it being a noisy soundtrack to a forthcoming film in which the band is involved. Now, Melvins are touring its latest record, 2018’s Pinkus Abortion Technician. Reliably great live, do yourself a favor and see Melvins this weekend or if not this weekend sometime if you’ve not before.

Who: Witch Mountain w/False Cathedrals and Wild Call
When: Friday, 08.10, 8 p.m.
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Witch Mountain is a doom band from Portland, Oregon currently touring in support of its recently-released self-titled album. The quartet has technically been around since the late 90s but with an early 2000s hiatus giving band members some time to pursue other projects, the group reconvened this past decade with female lead singers who really help coalesce the drifty heavy riffs into mythical anthems. Also on board for the show is Denver doom band False Cathedrals and Wild Call who, while not doom, more psych or shoegaze, have an edge and heaviness to its atmospheric rock that will fit right in.

ParkerMillsap2018-JamesCoreas — Parker Millsap, photo by James Coreas

Who: Parker Millsap w/Plain Faraday
When: Friday, 08.10, 8 p.m.
Where: The Bluebird Theater
Why: Parker Millsap is definitely operating with a tradition of music that includes blues rock artists of his youth like Eric Clapton and Stevie Ray Vaughan who were doing their level best to tap into the original blues artists of the American South and Midwest. But instead of getting stuck there, it’s obvious Millsap took some time to explore traditional folk and country and more modern practitioners of that art who brought their own ghosts and haunted quality and soul to their own music. Like Townes Van Zandt and Jeff Buckley. Millsap’s own voice and playing has a an impressive subtlety and spectrum of detail, texture and emotional colorings and has established himself as a real talent in his realm of music. In May 2018 he released his latest record Other Arrangements.

Saturday | August 10, 2018

Itchy-O-ChristopherCleary2 — Itchy-O, photo by Christopher Cleary

Who: Itchy-O Record Release w/Codename: Carter
When: Saturday, 08.11, 8 p.m.
Where: Gothic Theatre
Why: The Itchy-O’s new full-length Mystic Spy | Psykho Dojo, like any recorded work, could never fully capture the exuberant mayhem and visceral impact of a thirty plus member band in elaborate costumes generating an orchestra of rhythms and tones designed to disorient and inspire. Nevertheless, the new album offers listeners a foray into deep sound design that conveys the sheer detail and atmospheric experience of the band in a different context. It’s the band’s most forward thinking set of songs to date and rendered in a way that is as easy to get lost in on its own terms as the band is live. Each of the band’s albums have been impressive works in their own right in terms of recording and execution as a separate experience from the live show but Mystic Spy | Psykho Dojo is much more than an addendum to an Itchy-O concert, it is the realization of the concept of an esoteric spy film soundtrack and sonic training rhythms for tribal psychics to manifest a more vital future. Joining Itchy-O for this occasion is spy rock/surf band extraordinaire Codename: Carter.

PrincessDewclaw_Aug12_2017_TomMurphy — Princess Dewclaw, photo by Tom Murphy

What: Washout Fest at Globe Hall: Muscle Beach, Rotten Reputation, Sliver, Moon Pussy, Princess Dewclaw, Sonic Vomit, Morlox, Ultraviolet, Eraserhead Fuckers, Bert Olsen, Juice Up, Lepidoptera, Fever Dreams, Saddy, Freak//When//Scene, Monty O’Blivio, Clutch Plague, Television Generation, King Slug and Wayward Sun
When: Saturday, 08.11, 12 p.m.
Where: Globe Hall
Why: Hands down the most eclectic music festival to happen in Denver in 2018. While many try to encapsulate too many genres with not enough interesting artists, others focus on indie rock and NPR-friendly pop, yet others an uninspired and obvious selection of popular artists and token local artists who aren’t going to ruffle any feathers, the organizers of Washout Fest have dug a little deeper. But more than that, not just artists on the Glasss imprint. It includes notable local noise artist Morlox, ambient project Lepidoptera, noisy psych punk group Princess Dewclaw, the industrial noise rock of Moon Pussy, dream psych pop group Fever Dreams, experimental metal band Sonic Vomit, unconventional punk bands Rotten Reputation and Muscle Beach, fuzz rock bands Sliver and Television Generation, noise hip-hop weirdo Eraserhead Fuckers and much more. The more conventionally-minded festivals have their place, especially when they have a local focus like The UMS and Westword Music Showcase, but this is one where radio-friendly wasn’t the consideration, just quality and putting one’s reputation on the line for declaring the bands as such.

Valley-Queen_by-Pooneh-Ghana — Valley Queen, photo by Pooneh Ghana

Who: Valley Queen w/Tyto Alba
When: Saturday, 08.11, 8:30 p.m.
Where: Lost Lake
Why: Valley Queen has been honing its live show and songwriting for four years with numerous national tours under its belt to road test its music. Its gift for reinventing a type of rock music that isn’t part of a subgenre and isn’t necessarily trying to remanifest some older style of music is impressive. The band may have borrowed some from its retro peers and 2000s indie rock but with the release of its debut album, Supergiant (2018), the Los-Angeles based band demonstrated it’s perfectly capable of establishing a signature sound of layered melodies and Natalie Carol’s commanding vocals. Valley Queen is no stranger to Denver having made the Mile High City a regular stop on its tours and tonight the group will share the stage with one of America’s most promising rock bands, the warmly moody and emotionally stirring Tyto Alba from Denver.

Who: Great American House Fire and Sophisticated Boom Boom split release
When: Saturday, 08.11, 8 p.m.
Where: Bowman’s Vinyl and Lounge
Why: It wouldn’t be accurate to say that Great American House Fire and Sophisticated Boom Boom are punk but its roots lie in a similar Denver punk and emo scene of the past two decades. GAHF has a bit more soul and Americana in its sound while SBB is more in the vein of power pop. Both celebrate the release of their split seven inch tonight at Bowman’s.

Who: GhostPulse (single premiere) w/Plume Varia and Ramakhandra
When: Saturday, 08.11, 8 p.m.
Where: Syntax Physic Opera
Why: GhostPulse is premiering its new single “Dreaming In Hypersleep” tonight. The song is a leap forward for a band that was evolving out of its roots in excellent post-rock/instrumental rock band Lucida Tela. The more electronic, soundscape-y sound of its newer material is very welcome in a city where music rooted in mundane reality currently dominates. Plume Varia will compliment the evening well with its own downtempo dream pop and space jazz/Flying Lotus/Gil Scott-Heron-esque band Ramakhandra will keep things in the outer realms of the imagination as well.

Who: Melvins w/WE Are The Asteroid
When: Saturday, 08.11, 8 p.m.
Where: The Aggie Theatre
Why: See above for 8.10 on Melvins.

Sunday | August 12, 2018

Cannons_Jan22_2010_TomMurphy — Cannons circa 2010, photo by Tom Murphy

Who: Goon, faim, Soul Vice
When: Sunday, 08.12, 6 p.m.
Where: Mutiny Information Café
Why: This benefit for the Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition features some of the more interesting local hardcore acts including Goom and Faim from Denver and Soul Vice from Colorado Springs. Yes, the bands are doing a benefit for a political organization but their own songwriting is non-didactic and address social and interpersonal issues in a poignant and powerful way. For instance, faim’s great song “All Talk” takes to task the people in its own world and scene who talk a big game and make a major display of what they want people to think they’re about without doing anything concrete in the real world and in their own lives to address those issues in meaningful way.

Who: Cannons w/Echo Beds (album release), Limbwrecker, In The Company of Serpents
When: Sunday, 08.12, 9 p.m.
Where: Mutiny Information Café
Why: Over two years after the release of its debut full-length New Icons of a Vile Faith, Denver’s Echo Beds finds its starkly menacing clamor evolving in new directions with its 2018 album Buried Language (officially out on 8.17 through The Flenser). Still in place is the physicality of the music and its inventive and visceral use of percussion and rhythmic sound but added to the mix is a greater sense of the use of production in executing that aesthetic in a way that is an even more full spectrum stimulation of the senses. This show is a bit of a record release and tour kickoff for the band but also a chance to share the stage with like-minded acts. Cannons was an excellent noise rock/post-hardcore act that was most active nearly a decade ago in Denver. In the Company of Serpents is a doom band but its wall of sound is so colossal and caustic it’s almost more like death metal or grindcore slowed down to the pace of magma. Limbwrecker could be said to be a powerviolence band with a sense of humor.

Tuesday | August 14, 2018

TheChamanas_Perfiles_BrettMuñoz — The Chamanas, photo by Brett Muñoz

Who: The Chamanas w/Picture the Waves, Vic N’ The Narwhals, Los Mocochetes and Ghost Tapes
When: Tuesday, 08.14, 7 p.m.
Where: Globe Hall
Why: The Chamanas is an indie pop band if indie pop were born out of being influenced by not just the type of music that formed the DNA of C86 and American indie pop bands of the 90s (garage rock, psychedelia, folk, noise etc.) but if the folk underpinnings of that music included traditional Mexican music, the various pop traditions of Latin America and Cuban dance music. It’s that mixture that gives the band’s music not only a uniquely eclectic flavor but one that has an immediate connection for fans of earlier and more modern indie pop. Manuel Calderon and Hector Carreon met as sound engineers at Sonic Ranch near El Paso, Texas and after working on projects by other artists the two finally issued their own album as The Chamanas in 2015, Once Once. In 2017 the band released its second album, NEA, titled after the nickname of Carreon’s brother who had recently passed with songs that reflected that loss. With 2018’s NEA II, The Chamanas re-rendered several of NEA‘s songs with five new tracks. Also on this bill are some of the best bands in the Denver music scene whose own music is a brilliant synthesis of musical traditions in Vic N’ The Narwhals, Los Mocochetes and Ghost Tapes.

Who: Wino, Xasthur and Phallic Meditation
When: Tuesday, 08.14, 9 p.m.
Where: 3 Kings Tavern
Why: Robert “Wino” Weinrich will perform some of his starkly evocative solo material at this show. Better known, perhaps, for his tenure in doom legends Saint Vitus and The Obsessed, his solo acoustic material showcases his raw gift for songwriting. Xasthur’s spare black metal with acoustic instrumentation came to Denver in 2017 with a haunting performance capable of deep musical darkness without the usual instrumentation and sound one associates with a similar aesthetic. Denver’s Phallic Meditation is more a doomy psychedelic band but with some experimental noisiness that sets it apart from similarly-minded groups.

Who: Lil Ugly Mane, Kahlil Cezanne, Curta, Cadaver Dog, Many Blessings, Videodrome
When: Tuesday, 08.14, 8 p.m.
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: When Travis Miller released his debut album as Lil Ugly Mane, 2012’s Mista Thug Isolation, he had already garnered some praise from members of the Odd Future collective for his absurdist imagery and inventive production that really didn’t obey then mainstream hip-hop conventions with his use of noise and black metal soundscapes/samples in some of the beats. So it’s fitting that on this bill are experimental/noise hip-hop artist Curta, hardcore bands Cadaver Dog and Videodrome and noise soundscaper Many Blessings. If there’s a show demonstrating how all those worlds and their various aesthetics aren’t so far apart this whole year so far, this is it.

Wednesday | August 8, 2018

Aseethe-by-Karlee-Barr — Aseethe, photo by Karlee Barr

Who: Yakuza, Aseethe, Oryx, Terminator 2
When: Tuesday, 08.14, 8 p.m.
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Aseethe’s 2017 album Hopes of Failure is a great example of how one can create an immersive experience with heavy music if you’re willing to go beyond how that music has often been conceived in an earlier era. Not just doom or a subgenre of that subgenre, Aseethe’s music is now more like sound design in the form of songs to render an experience through sound and, live, through the visceral dynamics of how that sound is executed. It would be imprecise and wannabe inclusive to call it ambient. It’s not that. It’s not music that can be easily shuffled off into the background if you wish. Aseethe is in good company for this show with Chicago’s Yakuza, a band that has long been pushing the boundaries of heavy music and Denver’s Oryx and Terminator 2 who both don’t just make experimental metal but whose own songs expand what heavy music can be and the forms it can take when the dynamics aren’t essentially the same trying to fit into what doom or grind are “supposed” to sound like.

Who: Beach House w/Sound of Ceres
When: Tuesday, 08.14, 8 p.m.
Where: The Ogden Theatre
Why: It could be argued that Beach House has been in something of a creative rut since 2012’s Bloom, or, less charitably, sine 2008’s Devotion. While it’s albums have been enjoyable and yielding worthwhile songs, and the live shows have been reliably moving, the songwriting was starting to get a little stale. With 2018’s 7, it’s like the band reinvented itself. Maybe with the help of producer Sonic Boom, former member of Spacemen 3 and Spectrum, but this set of songs sounds like Victoria Legrand and Alex Scally recognized a need to break their own boundaries as the songs are far more experimental and adventurous than the duo has ever been. The band’s previous two albums were nice but Beach House is better than merely nice and has now proven it. Sound of Ceres is now based out of New York but the band is originally from Fort Collins, Colorado and its own dreamlike pop music shares the quality of intimate sound and mood and personal mythology that has made Beach House’s music so resonant for anyone with a rich inner life and imagination.

Who: Father John Misty with TV On the Radio
When: Tuesday, 08.14, 6:30 p.m.
Where: Red Rocks
Why: Love him, hate him or find him mundane, at least Father John Misty has some self-awareness of his own creative output. Joshua Tillman, Misty, recently released his new album God’s Favorite Customer and ditched the unifying concept approach to writing the album, which Tillman told Consequence of Sound in April 2018 was “pretentious.” You have to honor that level of frankness and honesty in an artist. Whatever intentionality went into God’s Favorite Customer, the record is a sonically and emotionally rich listen with collaborations with the likes of Haxan Cloak and Weyes Blood. That visionary art rock/downtempo/experimental R&B band TV On the Radio is on the bill too is more than just a bonus.

Buzz Osborne On Butthole Surfers

MelvinsphotocreditO1 — Melvins [L-R: Steven Shane McDonald, Dale Crover, Buzz Osborne, Jeff Pinkus], photo by O1

Depending on how you’re counting it, Melvins released its thirtieth album, Pinkus Abortion Technician in April 2018. The title of the record an obvious, and humorous, reference to the 1987 Butthole Surfers classic Locust Abortion Technician. It should be noted that Butthole Surfers’ longtime bassist Jeff Pinkus has been a member of Melvins since 2013. The record is bookended by two Surfers songs, “Stop Moving to Florida” and “Graveyard.” While a testament to the impact the Butthole Surfers had on Melvins, both bands proved influential on 80s underground rock and the musicians who would break that parallel vision of interesting and exciting music, likely considered largely uncommercial at the time, to the world in the early 90s when alternative rock bands took the foundation built by bands like Butthole Surfers and Melvins to a massive audience.

Though Butthole Surfers had two left field hits in the 90s with “Who Was In My Room Last Night” and “Pepper,” neither Butthole Surfers or the Melvins were aiming to appeal to any trends, their respective music too weird and idiosyncratic for most people with mainstream tastes and otherwise casual music fans. Because of that both bands have a body of work that has aged well and in the case of Melvins, work that continues to evolve organically, regularly yielding interesting records. This weekend, Melvins are playing a pair of shows in Colorado, the first on Friday, August 10 at The Gothic Theatre in Englewood and Saturday, August 11 at The Aggie Theatre in Fort Collins, both with WE Are The Asteroid. We spoke with Melvins guitarist Buzz Osborne ahead of the show and talked about Butthole Surfers and his pragmatic attitude toward the appeal of his own music.

Tom Murphy: When did you first hear about Butthole Surfers?

Buzz Osborne: ’82 or ’83. I think I saw them first in ’83. Seattle.

How did you hear about them?

Same way I heard about every other band. I listened to underground music, I heard the EP and I really wanted to see them. I heard about them long before I saw them, like the year before.

What is it about that music that appealed to you?

It was left of center, it didn’t sound like anything else. They had a nice way of expressing their melodies that I found to be quite exciting and refreshing. I thought they were extremely good players. It was weird to the point that I could get into it and not feel like I was listening to a fucking REO Speedwagon record. It was everything I enjoyed about underground music. But having said that, honestly, if REO Speedwagon put out a record I liked, I would buy it. I’m not going to hold my breath but I’m not being perverse, you know. I never have been. I feel things are good or bad and that’s the end of it.

When you saw them the first time was it more the stripped down thing or the multimedia thing they did later on?

It was stripped down. I’m not sure what you mean. To me it was super punk rock but it wasn’t 7 Seconds, you know? It wasn’t no jive bullshit like that. It was really good in every sense of the word. Not normal but I was okay with that. I embraced that.

Do you feel like they were influential to you then?

Of course! They always were. That’s why at this point now, when I think about what we’re doing and who we’re doing it with, I can’t even really believe it. The idea that I’m in a band now with two guys that I’ve been fans of for literally decades is really quite amazing to me. It’s second to none and I feel like the happiest boy on earth.

The album is bookended by two Butthole Surfers songs? Was there an inspiration for the choice of eras of the band?

I don’t know. It could have been any era. We have been touring around playing both of those songs live a long time prior to recording them. And when we got in the studio with Jeff it just seemed like the right thing to do. An obvious choice. There’s no more to it. There isn’t an era of the Butthole Surfers that I don’t like.

Did you tour with them way back when?

We did shows with them but never toured with them. Three or four shows.

Is there a specific era of the Butthole Surfers you favor?

Like I said, I like every era of the Butthole Surfers. But if I had to get particular, I guess I would pick Hairway to Steven, [Psychic…Powerless…] Another Man’s Sac and Brown Reason To Live.

How do you think they impacted the world of music?

I never thought about how they influenced music in general. Maybe their weirdness. They influenced me. They did have an album that sold a lot of copies but I can’t say how well-versed a lot of the people that bought that album were in what [Butthole Surfers] did before that. Or if they had explored the earlier records if they would have been as excited about it. Maybe they would have loved Another Man’s Sac as well, it remains to be seen. Yeah, these guys are going to love the Brown Reason to Live EP, they’re going to be super into it. But who knows? I have no idea why people like what they like. I only know what I like and I’ve always figured that I operate with the assumption that I have good taste and I will make music I think is good without thinking in terms of how it will be perceived by anyone else. Just figure that if I like it, other people will like it but it probably won’t be millions of people and I’m okay with that. It’ll be enough. I’m not concentrating on selling records or not selling records. I’m concentrating on making music that’s good.