Fred Frith and Janet Feder, photo courtesy the artists
Janet Feder is considered one of the world’s most inventive and innovative guitarists and she has been a fixture of Denver’s local avant-garde/experimental music scene for decades as a musician, songwriter and educator. Her prepared guitar technique has yielded a sound like a miniature orchestra of sounds, textures and rhythms. Feder grew up playing music in a more traditional style as a guitarist including folk and rock styles but discovered a new world of technique and creative outlet upon witnessing a Thinking Plague show and seeing Mike Johnson and the band going beyond mere progressive rock to something that challenged even what that could sound like. From there Feder became part of the Denver avant-garde as a respected artist in her own right. The guitarist has several albums to her name going back to the mid-90s including collaborative albums with the likes of Mighty Fine Productions head and sound engineer/multi-instrumentalist Colin Bricker, composer Paul Fowler and the legendary Fred Frith. The latter was a founding member of Henry Cow, one of the leading lights of the “Rock in opposition” movement turning convention on its head. His list of collaborations are lengthy and include working with and/or contributing to the works of The Residents, Jad Fair, John Zorn, Brian Eno, Bill Laswell, Robert Wyatt and Mike Patton. In 2006 Feder and Frith released an album called Ironic universe that showcased their chemistry as high level practitioners of improvisation and imaginative musicianship.
In 2017 Frith and Feder performed at show at the studio space for Mighty Fine Productions and recreated the magic of that collaborative album while hinting at further refinements in their technique developed during the intervening years. On September 16, 2025 the two guitarists perform live again at The Bug Theater in Denver for another display of left field musical creativity and practice courtesy Creative Music Works.
Listen to our interview with Janet Feder on Bandcamp and follow her and Creative Music Works (where you can purchase tickets for the show and future events of interest in the realm of avant-garde music) at the link below.
Wednesday | 09.03 What: Young Widows w/Moon Pussy and Almanac Man When: 7 Where: Hi-Dive Why: Young Widows is a noise rock/post-hardcore trio from Louisville, Kentucky that emerged from the the remains of influential mathcore group Breather Resist. The new band was more overtly melodic but retained the energy and intensity of the earlier group. In March 2025 Young Widows released its new album Power Sucker, its first record in 11 years. It dives headlong into existential crises and meeting the challenge of finding meaning when so many things in modern life seem to undermine finding a secure footing in a rapidly changing social and economic landscape. Almanac Man is the angular noise rock threesome from Denver that includes Ghost Canyon Fest founders Brian Dooley and Sean Dove. Though clearly influenced by DC post-hardcore its core sound is rooted in the heavier end of noise rock. Moon Pussy is almost less a band than a glorious and awe-inducing sonic science experiment gone off the rails but so right and always an entertaining and riveting live act.
Lydia Lunch, photo from Bandcamp
Thursday | 09.04 What: An Evening with Lydia Lunch (film, spoken word, Q&A) w/Redwing Blackbird and DJ Christina Graves When: 7 Where: Hi-Dive Why: Lydia Lunch is the legendary and foundational artist that first came to wider circles of awareness via her connection with the No Wave scene of New York City with her bands Teenage Jesus and the Jerks and 8 Eyed Spy. But throughout the 80s and 90s she made major waves as a spoken word performer, actress, writer and maker of avant-garde music. Since the 90s Lunch has built on her reputation for challenging social commentary delivered with her creative and confrontational style. For this show Lunch will screen her film with Jasmine Hurst called Artists, Depression, Anxiety & Rage.
She’s Green, photo by Rhianna Hajduch
Thursday | 09.04 What: Slow Pulp w/She’s Green When: 7 Where: The Bluebird Theater Why: Madison, Wisconsin’s Slow Pulp headlines this show with its charming blend of pastoral Americana and shoegaze. Its 2020 album Moveys (which got a major re-issue this year with live tracks) is brimming with hazy melodies and introspective lyrics that pair with a sound that might also be described as psychedelic slowcore. She’s Green from Minneapolis is a fitting opener for this show with its tranquil dream pop and slowly-unfurling dynamics. Its own soundscape is more gossamer in tone and texture with sparkling streams of tone that take on a vibrant warmth through a touch of fuzz tone. The band’s new EP Chrysalis sounds like a missing link between Slowdive and Letting Up Despite Great Faults.
Church Fire, photo by Tom Murphy
Friday and Saturday | 09.05-09.06 What:Colorado Goth Fest When: 6 pm Where: The Pearl Why: In its tenth iteration Colorado Goth Fest is split between two nights at The Pearl fka The Mercury Cafe. The first night kicks off with sets from dance-industrial revolutionaries Church Fire, electro-industrial project Clockwork Echo, synth pop band Cruel Mourning, darkwave/prog adjacent group Future Club from Albuquerque and synthwave outfit Tetrakroma Saturday night is headlined by influential U.K. post-punk/death rockers Ausgang after performances from premier deathrock/post-punk/New Wave hometown heroes Plague Garden, horror punkers America’s Most Haunted, Seattle-based Goth rock band Eve’s Black Heart and Xmal Deutschland-esque, dark post-punk band Funeral Process hailing from Albuquerque.
Plague Garden in 2023, photo by Tom MurphyJapanese Breakfast, photo by Pak Bae
Saturday | 09.06 What: Japanese Breakfast w/Ginger Root When: 7 Where: Mission Ballroom Why: The fourth Japanese Breakfast album For Melancholy Brunettes (& Sad Women) was, according to a piece in Stereogum, inspired in part by Michelle Zauner’s reading of a John Cheever short story collection and thus the title and its almost archaic literary pretensions, tongue firmly in cheek. The sounds are a little softer in some of the vocal inflections but the songwriting is just as finely crafted with the sounds balancing the organic, the atmospheric and the textural perfectly with the usual expansion of the sound palette. Elegant piano figures grace the songs like something out of a late 80s Talk Talk record and on songs like “Honey Water” you can hear Zauner stretching as an artist into ambitious sonic territory with the instrumentation soaring as high as it did on Soft Sounds From Another Planet (2017). And yet this set of songs seems very grounded and personal as well.
The Milk Blossoms, photo by Tom Murphy
Saturday | 09.06 What: Slow Teeth w/The Milk Blossoms and Nina de Freitas When: 7 Where: Better Barnum Animal Center Why: Slow Teeth is a shoegaze-adjacent indie folk band from Durham, North Carolina whose 2025 album I simmers with soaring vocals and cinematic soundscapes in a post-rock mode. Nina de Freitas’ husky and soulful vocals lend her delicate guitar work and psychologically insightful lyrics an emotional power that hits you unexpectedly as her songs progress. In her music you hear a touch of blues, jazz and R&B but all channeled through a more sonically expansive creative lens. The Milk Blossoms have been crafting their most heart-searing and experimental music thus far with its new songs not yet on a record. The stories speak to the exploration of the ghosts that haunt our waking memories from which we can’t escape into a flight of imagination except to use our creativity to alleviate some of the worst emotional pain of our lives. The music is masterfully arranged and orchestrated to really express that shadow work in real time making the songs both unforgettable and deeply affecting.
W-Th | 09.10–09.11 What: Ani DiFranco w/Tune-Yards When: 6 Where: Chautauqua Auditorium Why: Ani DiFranco is the popular and influential alternative folk artist whose early DIY ethic was rooted in the same values as punk and her spirited performances garnered her a cult following long before any labels came sniffing around. Selling albums out of the trunk of her car after shows and the like. DiFranco’s own Righteous Babe Records imprint she launched in 1989 at age 19, showing more initiative than a lot of young artists. 20 albums and thirty-some years later DiFranco is still playing high energy, charismatic shows with wit and thoughtfulness. Opening the show is art pop duo Tune-Yards. The latter first made waves for its innovative use of loops and transforming the use of vocals and ukulele into almost a samples-based songwriting approach so that a Tune-Yards song with Merrill Garbus’ soulful and layered vocals lending an R&B flavor with a touch of psychedelia. In 2025 Tune-Yards released its first record in four years with Better Dreaming. The record is an attempt to dive into deep focus in an age of distractions in the face of fascism and to deliver uniqueness and joy when a lot of what is being fostered is perilous conformity and destruction. The unconventional rhythms and melodies going into the album and its emotional honesty make a solid case for an effort in at least turning the internal tides against despair which is where it needs to start.
Bellhoss at Sarahfest 2024, photo by Tom Murphy
Saturday | 09.13 What:Sarah Fest: Sunstoney, Machetè Mouth, Soy Celesté, Bellhoss, Fair Elle, DJ sets by Mis/s Flowers and clexstial 10 When: 10AM into the evening Where: Manos Sagrados Why: The femme-forward DIY music festival Sarah Fest is taking place for its second year but moving operations to Manos Sagrados in downtown Aurora. The lineup is no less noteworthy. The whole affair begins with workshops during the day and food trucks, vendors, tattoos, yoga, tarot and a size-inclusive clothing swap will be part of the event. Sunstoney’s bedroom/dream pop sound is soul-inflected and like the kind of music that would be perfect for modern, late night, roller skating. Machetè Mouth doesn’t fit into a genre box but Elise’s powerful and emotionally rich vocals imbue its hybrid of dream pop, blues, synth pop and R&B with a commanding energy that is vulnerable, vibrant and inviting. Soy Celesté is a punk artist whose lyrics are filled with a spirit of personal liberation that speak powerfully to the oppression of culture and toxic relationships of all varieties. Bellhoss writes the kind of indie rock that sounds like it came out of a youth spent listening to pop punk songs about heartbreak and the more poetic, Americana-tinged indie music like Rilo Kiley that sketches out the granular details of lingering melancholia but delivered with a defiant exuberance. Fair Elle is a singer-songwriter whose luminous R&B songs sound like anthems to overcoming soul searing heartsickness by discovering some forgotten lightness within oneself.
The Picture Tour in 2024, photo by Tom Murphy
Saturday | 09.13 What: Owosso and The Picture Tour When: 3 Where: Mutiny Information Cafe Why: Owosso includes former O’er the Ramparts and Magic Mice member Aaron Betcher who is curating some of these afternoon shows at Mutiny Information Cafe since March pairing bands that might not be much alike but should be playing together. Owosso is like a combination of Guided By Voices-inflected noise rock and DC post-punk. The Picture Tour is the project fronted by former Emerald Siam guitarist and The Bedsit Infamy songwriter/producer/multi-instrumentalist Billy Armijo. For this band he is able to unfurl the shoegaze and moody-post-punk fusion that has been at the root of his more rock-oriented sound but informed by his gift for hooks and pop songcraft.
Circling Girl, photo by Tom Murphy
Saturday | 09.13 What:Circling Girl album release w/Genevieve Libien and Look at Fiona When: 7 Where: Hi-Dive Why: Denver-based dream pop group Circling Girl is celebrating the release of its latest album this night. Its intertwining, melodious guitar work and ethereal tones are reminiscent of an unlikely fusion of Throwing Muses, Lush and The Sundays but with songwriting and structures more in line with more modern indie rock blending of aesthetics and the songs sound like they were worked out on acoustic instruments to lock in naturally complementary dynamics. Look at Fiona is one of the few Denver bands in the shoegaze realm that seems to have studied how classic bands like Slowdive and Pale Saints sculpted soundscapes into the shapes of songs to get lost within and swept away by and then injected it with their own idiosyncratic sensibilities.
OK Go, photo by Piper Ferguson
Saturday | 09.13 What: Indie 102.3’s Indieverse OK Go w/Dehd, Bartees Strange, Dead Pioneers, Pink Fuzz When: 4 Where: Levitt Pavilion Why: Denver’s indie music radio station Indie 102.3 is having this sort of capstone event at Levitt Pavilion to close out the summer. Headlining is the renowned, Chicago (now based out of L.A.) rock band OK Go. The group endeared itself to fans of early 2000s indie rock with its earnest and fresh melding of Kinks-esque Mod pop and high energy power pop. Its eccentric and elaborate music videos helped to popularize the band in an organic way that predated “going viral” in the way of social media marketing since the early 2010s. OK Go seems to embrace its eccentricity and its presentation and live shows invite the audience to do the same and have fun along with them. In April 2025 the group released its first album in eleven years with And the Adjacent Possible. Also on the bill is post-punk band Dehd (also from Chicago), soul-inflected, experimental indie pop genius Bartees Strange, politically-charged punk ragers Dead Pioneers and psychedelic stoner rock trio Pink Fuzz.
The Milk Blossoms, photo by Tom Murphy
Saturday | 09.13 What: The Milk Blossoms w/Holy Garden District and Babelshack When: 8:30 Where: The Broadway Roxy (free and all ages) Why: Holy Garden District is an instrumental rock band including producer and musician Ben Clary based out of Santa Fe, New Mexico. Think something like a post-rock late 70s Genesis but imbued with pastoral aesthetics and an undeniably haunted quality that courses though its often gentle, glimmering and moody compositions. Babelshack sounds like they listened to a lot of 90s grunge, the better stuff like Mudhoney and the more post-punk and garage rock end of that like Gas Huffer and Love Battery. The Milk Blossoms close out the night with its deeply affecting songs with vivid storytelling and memorable melodies that convey a rare emotional complexity that upon repeated listens opens up depths of feeling and poetic expression of the nuances of human experience that may not have been immediately obvious the first time or three hearing the music and experiencing it live.
IDLES, photo by Tom Ham
Saturday | 09.13 What:Deftones w/IDLES and The Barbarians of California When: 5:30 Where: Ball Arena Why: Deftones are one of the most popular bands in modern heavy music. But the group switched gears in a major way with its 2000 classic album White Pony when the music took on a more soundscape-y feel and was more like a heavy shoegaze sound before that fully became a thing a decade or so later. On subsequent albums the band continued experimenting and couldn’t safely be pigeonholed in terms of genre, a good place to be if you’re a band that doesn’t want to get bored as the years go on. One of the opening acts IDLES is indisputably the most popular post-punk band of the current wave of that thing out of the UK. The group’s songs are informed by a compassionate and working class ethos but the live show is a barn burner with Joe Talbot relating heartbreaking and life-affirming stories in the songs that hit with a vulnerable immediacy that has endeared the band to increasingly larger audience since the group began touring small clubs pre-pandemic. Embracing a critique of white privilege, the cruelty of traditional masculinity and an examination of class and support for immigrant communities, IDLES minces no words and does so with a spirited delivery.
Fred Frith and Janet Feder, photo courtesy the artists
Tuesday | 09.16 What:Janet Feder and Fred Frith When: 6 Where: Bug Theater Why: Janet Feder is considered one of the world’s most inventive and innovative guitarists and she has been a fixture of Denver’s local avant-garde/experimental music scene for decades as a musician, songwriter and educator. Her prepared guitar technique has yielded a sound like a miniature orchestra of sounds, textures and rhythms. Feder grew up playing music in a more traditional style as a guitarist including folk and rock styles but discovered a new world of technique and creative outlet upon witnessing a Thinking Plague show and seeing Mike Johnson and the band going beyond mere progressive rock to something that challenged even what that could sound like. From there Feder became part of the Denver avant-garde as a respected artist in her own right. The guitarist has several albums to her name going back to the mid-90s including collaborative albums with the likes of Mighty Fine Productions head and sound engineer/multi-instrumentalist Colin Bricker, composer Paul Fowler and the legendary Fred Frith. The latter was a founding member of Henry Cow, one of the leading lights of the “Rock in opposition” movement turning convention on its head. His list of collaborations are lengthy and include working with and/or contributing to the works of The Residents, Jad Fair, John Zorn, Brian Eno, Bill Laswell, Robert Wyatt and Mike Patton. In 2006 Feder and Frith released an album called Ironic universe that showcased their chemistry as high level practitioners of improvisation and imaginative musicianship.
In 2017 Frith and Feder performed at show at the studio space for Mighty Fine Productions and recreated the magic of that collaborative album while hinting at further refinements in their technique developed during the intervening years. On September 16, 2025 the two guitarists perform live again at The Bug Theater in Denver for another display of left field musical creativity and practice courtesy Creative Music Works.
Listen to our interview with Janet Feder on Bandcamp.
Sextile, photo from Bandcamp
Wednesday | 09.17 What:Sextile w/Automatic and Mick Jeets When: 7 Where: Meow Wolf Convergence Station Perplexiplex Why: Early on, Los Angeles-based band Sextile had more of a shoegaze-adjacent post-punk sound that swung more moody and dark by the end of the 2010s. But by the time of its 2023 album Push the influences on the group’s sound were clearly 90s Big Beat, 2000s deep house and dance-infused ambient music of the 2010s and 2020s. The 2025 album yes, please delves further into the kinds of aesthetic that would have been entirely welcome in underground raves of the past decade and a half as well with expertly crafted, kinetic beats like a more psychedelic form of gabber.
Thursday | 09.18 What:The Rapture When: 7 Where: Gothic Theatre Why: The Rapture were one of the early groups out of what was called then and retrospectively as the post-punk revival. But The Rapture’s core sound was something more experimental and while undeniably creating infectious dance grooves indulged in a gloriously disorienting noisiness. Like they took inspiration from the more wild edges of what The Gang of Four was doing on its first four records. Live the band also had an unhinged energy that delivered at what the records merely hinted at, securing The Rapture as one of the great live acts of the 2000s. Its singles like “House of Jealous Lovers” and the title track to the 2003 album Echoes are bonafide classics of post-punk. Not so long ago it was assumed The Rapture was completely defunct but in 2025 singer and guitarist Luke Jenner announced The Rapture would be doing a series of live dates even without longtime members Vito Roccoforte and Gabriel Andruzzi and this is your chance to see the new incarnation.
Everclear, photo by Brian Cox
Friday | 09.19 What:Everclear Sparkle and Fade 30th Anniversary Tour w/Local H and Sponge When: 6:30 Where: Gothic Theatre Why: Everclear’s second album Sparkle and Fade (1995) broke the band to the mainstream with the single “Santa Monica.” At a time when the alternative rock wave was breaking and fading into relative irrelevance, the spirited performances on the album, its undeniable hooks and lyrics that were passionate yet vulnerable meant the band would survive the then burgeoning backlash in mainstream culture to “alternative rock.” Singer and songwriter Art Alexakis during interviews came across as such a genuine and thoughtful person it added a dimension to the music the revealed that source of the pain, perseverance and sensitivity in the songwriting transcended obvious commercial appeal. As with tours in recent years Everclear is bringing along other noteworthy bands of the 90s and this time out peers like Local H and Sponge who came up around the same time as Everclear and who probably toured the same circuits in the early days and well into the 90s so the spirit of camaraderie will probably permeate the show.
Friday and Saturday | 09.19 and 09.20 What: The Federal Theater Grand Opening When: 7 Friday 6 Saturday Where: The Federal Theater Why: The Federal Theater re-opens with two free shows (with registration) this weekend with local heavy hitters in psychedelic rock and punk both Friday and Saturday. Izcalli and Los Mocochetes grace the stage on Friday night with hard rock and Chica-inflected psychedelia. Cobranoid’s hardcore and thrash infusion alongside the punk of Clusterfux, The Pitch Invasion and Vitrify bring the fire on Saturday.
Saturday | 09.20 What: Hooper and Dulled Arrows When: 3 Where: Mutiny Information Cafe Why: Hooper is the kind of band that formed over a decade ago before the emo and melodic hardcore fusion came back into vogue and so its sound is not fully grounded in either and has touches of Americana in the mix. Some nice shimmer in the rhythmic guitar leads like its own taste in emo was more in the realm of Hum and Sunny Day Real Estate. Dulled Arrows come out of a similar realm of local post-hardcore with a lineup that includes former Ghost Buffalo and Jagtown musician Tom Ventura.
Saturday | 09.20 What: B.E.E.F. LLC, Emmanuel Looney, Modern Devotion and Staggered Hook When: 7 Where: Pablo’s (East Colfax location) Why: All forward thinking, richly conceived experimental electronic projects in the realms of industrial techno and gabber.
Dildox, photo from Bandcamp
Saturday | 09.20 What: Dildox (Los Angeles), Deth Rali, Plague Garden and As In Heaven As in Hell When: 7 Where: The Crypt Why: Dildox is an industrial post-punk act from Los Angeles whose immersive darkwave dance sound is reminiscent of early, electroclash Ladytron and early ADULT. Deth Rali is a psychedelic, glam rock post-punk band from Denver with a flair for the performance art-adjacent on stage presence with costumes. Plague Garden is probably Denver’s best deathrock band with rich New Wave and industrial synth soundscapes and commanding vocals. As In Heaven As In Hell is the project of John Bueno who used to be in punk bands and was one of the great local comics artists but with this he straddles the line between noise, industrial post-punk and dark synthwave.
Hibou, photo from Bandcamp
Saturday | 09.20 What: Hibou w/Corsicana When: 7 Where: Better Barnum Animal Center Why: Hibou used to be based out of Seattle but now hails from the South of France and his new album It Seems To Me (2025) sounds like a complete fusion of his early bedroom pop material, chillwave and some kind of immersive ambient dream pop of the moment now. Corsicana is on the more delicate end of shoegaze with some roots in more indie folk sounds and sensibilities and chamber pop aesthetics.
Jill Sobule, photo by Shervin Lainez
Sunday | 09.21 What: Jillith Fair When: 6 Where: Elaine Wolf Theater 350 S. Dahlia Why: This showcase benefit Jill Sobule’s It Was a Good Life Foundation put together by Doug Gertner and Tim Campbell, hosted by Ron Bostwick from 105.5 The Colorado Sound, performances from Hal Aqua, Liz Barnez, Rabbit Joe Black, Mollie O’Brien & Rich Moore, Carla Sciaky and Tony Trischka possible Harry Tuft health permitting. Sobule was the beloved singer-songwriter whose heyday was adjacent to that of the alternative rock era and her social commentary, thoughtful lyrics and unique songwriting garnered her a much-deserved cult following. Sobule passed away on May 1, 2025.
Pulp, photo from Bandcamp
Monday | 09.22 What:Pulp When: 7 Where: Red Rocks Why: Pulp was a post-punk band from Sheffield influenced by that city’s experimental rock and pop scene of the 70s and 80s and outside of some perhaps local notoriety didn’t make many waves until its spectacular 1994 album His ‘n’ Hers and its great leap forward in songwriting and storytelling although the 1992 album Separations was plenty promising on its own. But from then on Pulp became a bit of a phenomenon in the Britpop world and its tales of working class British life struck a resonant chord beyond the band’s home country. 1995’s Different Class rendered Pulp legends of the time with heartbreaking portraits of class and love and yearning and striving for living a life with some meaning and inherent dignity and showing a way to have some of that for yourself against the odds. Then in 2002 and 2 later albums Pulp went on indefinite hiatus until 2025 with the release of its new album More. which hearkens back to the themes of its 90s records but updated for more adult, mature sensibilities but everyone that isn’t dead inside probably feels some of the same romantic yearnings, has the capacity to find a vital strand in their soul to cling onto when the world seems to horrible at times and Pulp’s music is now and always has been a bit about these eternal truths of the human spirit of wanting to feel the vitality of life and all the good things that come with that.
Oracle Sisters, photo by Ella Hermë
Wednesday | 09.24 What:Oracle Sisters w/Sabrina McCalla and Casey Jane When: 7 Where: The Marquis Theater Why: Oracle Sisters is a band based in Paris, France but its members are from elsewhere in Europe (Denmark, Northern Ireland and Finland) and its sound seems to tap into a sort of 1970s, hazy folk pop aesthetic with a dreamlike aspect to the backdrop of its expansive melodies. The songs on its new album Divinations are both introspective and outward looking. The music videos for the album are reminiscent of late 60s Godard films but more whimsical and as playful as the music. There is something inherently hopeful to the band’s songs that even when they wax melancholic it’s implied that the low times are as impermanent as anything else in life can be.
Sunday Mourners, photo from Bandcamp
Thursday | 09.25 What: Sunday Mourners, Tassles, Critter and Sonic Chick When: 7 Where: Squirm Gallery Why: Sunday Mourners from Los Angeles bridge the gap between upbeat power pop and moody post-punk with a sound like they could have come out of the late 60s but would have seemed like aliens from another era. Tassles is a bedroom synth pop/lo-fi shoegaze artist from Denver whose 2025 album net worth is one of the most refreshingly unvarnished pieces of psychedelia-adjacent indie rock to have come out since chillwave first burst onto the scene eighteen years ago.
The Haunt, photo by Ima Leupp
Thursday | 09.25 What: The Haunt w/Magic Whatever When: 7 Where: The Marquis Theater Why: Florida’s The Haunt recently released its new album New Addiction. The sounds somehow successfully blend glitchcore and grungy-punk so that it sounds simultaneously like an alt-pop band and something more in the realm of what might be called industrial garage rock. That the group is difficult to pin down to something we’ve heard done so often before is part of its appeal. Its ability to project vulnerability and ferocity simultaneously with lyrics about struggling with interpersonal adversity is a formula that has garnered the group a bit of a cult following.
Cherry Spit, photo by Tom Murphy
Friday | 09.26 What:Cherry Spit, Replica City and Scorplings When: 8 Where: Hi-Dive Why: If one were to make a short list of Denver’s best post-hardcore/post-punk/noise rock bands every one of these acts would be on it. Cherry Spit is a little more wild in its guitar gyrations and feverish energy and confrontation. Replica City a little more angular, a little more DC 90s, a little more Pacific Northwest 90s underground too. Scorplings dip into that mid-west, math-y, jangle-jagged guitar noise that waxes into left field psychedelia around the edges.
They Might Be Giants, photo by Jon Uleis
Friday and Saturday | 09.26 and 09.27 What: They Might Be Giants When: 7 Where: The Ogden Theatre Why: They Might Be Giants from Brooklyn, New York is one of the few acts to pre-date the alternative rock era of the early 90s and made it through the end of the decade and maintained some critical and commercial success through to the present. Its clever, catchy, eccentric and endlessly creative songwriting and approaches to songcraft have evolved over time and thus while there is a musical essence at the core of the band that comes from a spirit of playfulness and a capacity to write sensitively about difficult subjects and with an absurdist fervor when the occasion calls for it, you can expepct that every album will be an exploration of ideas that invite you along for the ride. And the live shows are a reflection of all of that and extravaganza of sights and sounds that is endearingly idiosyncratic.
Burning Sister, photo from Bandcamp
Saturday | 09.27 What: Almanac Man and Burning Sister When: 3 Where: Mutiny Information Cafe Why: Almanac Man is the Denver band whose angular take on post-hardcore noise rock is reminiscent of both Bay Area and DC post-punk. Burning Sister sounds like it listens to a whole lot of White Hills, Bardo Pond and Sleep. Its “Lethe//Oblivion” single was mastered by Tad Doyle of Tad which says a whole lot for the roots of the band. Also a little like if you slowed down a fast Butthole Surfers song in moments for a bit of the group’s output.
Swans, photo by Josef Puleo
Saturday | 09.27 What:Swans w/Little Annie & Paul Wallfisch When: 7 Where: The Bluebird Theater Why: Swans is the legendary New York City band that influenced generations of not just noise rock, post-punk, industrial and any band doing left field music that defies easy categorization and which challenges musical orthodoxy. Its early records were abrasive, punishing and inspired in their evocation of human spiritual agony and expression of resistance to the oppressive cultural environment of the 1980s. Later in the decade when the lineup had changed some and included former singer and multi-instrumentalist Jarboe. The latter brought an elegance of vocal expressiveness and a new realm of melodic transcendence that helped to broaden the appeal of the band’s instincts for experimenting in musical form and style. The band’s first run ended by the late 90s following the tour for its ambient/industrial masterpiece Soundtracks For the Blind (1996). But in 2010 Swans reconvened without Jarboe and has since released seven ambitious albums that expanded its avant-folk palette and rhythmic layers while maintaining lyrics of literary sophistication that have delved into mortality, spiritual struggles and commentary on the nature of human society and civilization. By the time of Leaving Meaning. (2019), Gira had changed the nature of the band with various members being part of future albums not unlike the members of a jazz band but for experimental rock. The latest record Birthing (2025) seems to take on themes of personal mythology in a simultaneously symbolic and vividly concrete and human terms. This is supposedly the group’s final full tour and along for this jaunt the opener if Little Annie & Paul Wallfisch. Little Annie is the musician that in the late 70s and early 80s was part of the NYC post-punk underground who has worked with the likes of Current 93, Coil and Nurse With Wound.
Slow Crush, photo by Stefaan Temmerman
Saturday | 09.27 What:Slow Crush w/Faetooth and NVM When: 6 Where: The Marquis Theater Why: On August 29, 2025 Belgian, heavy shoegaze band Slow Crush released its new album Thirst. Even more than its excellent previous releases the material for the new album showcases how the band perfectly balances dense atmospheres with engulfing melodies and weighty yet dynamic rhythms. Live the band’s sound is oceanic and uplifting with melodies that move through your body that only the type of shoegaze with a keen ear for low end can accomplish. Faetooth from Los Angeles also engages in the use of heaviness in its own “fairy doom” style that blurs lines between dream pop and gritty doom metal. Its album Labyrinthine (2025) is a record that seems to explore themes of beginnings, endings and the mysteries of transcending the usual experiences of mortal existence. Definitely for fans of SubRosa.
Big Wild, photo by Kelly Nguyen
Saturday | 09.27 What: Big Wild w/Shallou When: 8 Where: Mission Ballroom Why: Big Wild is the stage name of Jackson Stell who cut his teeth making hip-hop beats as J Beatz in his early teens. But by the time he graduated from college and moved to Los Angeles he had cultivated an interest in electronic music, which of course these days is a natural progression from hip-hop beats in the modern era and a transition that seems to have suited his eclectic style. In August 2025 the new Big Wild album Wild Child dropped and revealed even more of the artist’s gift for updating a fusion of downtempo and the kind of dance music people like Fatboy Slim and Moby were bringing to wide audiences in the late 90s and early 2000s. But Wild Child adds a kind of smooth psychedelic mood to the music that gives it unique twist.
Samia, photo by Graham Tolbert
Saturday | 09.27 What:Samia w/Renny Conti When: 7 Where: The Gothic Theatre Why: Samia’s new album Bloodless (2025) has the hallmarks of her previous records with the exquisitely crafted guitar shimmer and texture and her warm melodic vocals delivering emotionally vivid lyrics and creative storytelling. But if you see any of the music videos and artwork you come to appreciate that the artist is going for something darker like she’s leaning into the edges of personal darkness and how that can haunt you like an “elevated horror” film. But the music doesn’t sound like that sort of thing and the contrast is what lends the new material a creative dimension that perhaps Samia hasn’t explored as a songwriter as much in the past.
Bonnie “Prince” Billy, photo by David Kasnic
Saturday and Sunday | 09.27 and 09.28 What: Bonnie “Prince” Billy w/Tim O’Brien and Jan Fabricius When: 7 Where: Swallow Hill Why: Will Oldham is one of America’s most acclaimed songwriters and performers whose musical curiosity spans decades and styles though he is perhaps most best known for his work in the realms of folk and country whether with his old project Palace (and its various monikers) or under his adopted name Bonnie “Prince” Billy. His catalog is prolific and you could start anywhere and find something worthwhile and fascinating. But his latest, The Purple Bird, though expressed in the language of bluegrass and a kind of left field Americana has some of the most poignant and pointed social commentary to be put on a record in 2025 or in recent years and that alone in the form of immediately accessible music is no mean feat.
Rico Nasty, photo by Devin Desouza
Sunday | 09.28 What:Rico Nasty w/SadBoi When: 7 Where: The Ogden Theatre Why: Rico Nasty was shifting away from her signature sugar trap sound with her 2022 album Las Ruinas with forays into post-punk and industrial in the mix. Her new album Lethal (2025) consolidates her creative impulses as an artist while incorporating noisier glitch pop sounds so that her trap beats don’t sound stuck in the late 2010s and early 2020s when that music was sounding stale. Rico Nasty and her producers have instead crafted an entrancing set of soundscapes perfectly suiting the rapper’s swagger-laden stories of self-affirmation and catharsis.
CJ Boyd in 2015, photo by Tom Murphy
Monday | 09.29 What: CJ Boyd, Church Fire, Luke Leavitt and Quinn Boudeleaux When: 8 Where: Glob Why: Composer, bassist and ambient artist CJ Boyd spent roughly a decade on what he called the “InfiniTour” from 2008 playing DIY spaces, art galleries and other DIY situations with his experimental soundscapes and pastoral avant-folk songs as well as deep forays into non-Western music and abstract jazz. He is now on tour again (but not on a permanent basis) with a stop in Denver with old friends the industrial dance trio Church Fire, avant-garde funk/ambient composer Luke Leavitt and multi-media electronic soundtrack artist Quinn Boudeleaux.
múm, photo courtesy the artists
Tuesday | 09.30 What: múm w/Mr. Silla When: 7 Where: Meow Wolf Why: Icelandic dream pop experimentalists múm released its first album in 12 years, History of Silence on September 19, 2025. The album has a minimalist yet orchestrated feel like something that might be offered by an avant-garde chamber pop band. But the songs feel like the snapshots of dream-like meditations on love, yearning and affection. Its organic elements are perfectly melded with the more transcendently electronic harmonics that have been one of the band’s charms since its early days as well as unconventional sound sources and a sense of being welcome into emotionally intimate and tender psychological spaces. The live show is sure to reflect this and the group hasn’t been to the Denver area since playing the Gothic Theatre in 2007 so here’s your chance if you’re in town.
Mannequin Pussy, photo by Millicent Hailes
Tuesday | 09.30 What:Turnstile w/Mannequin Pussy, SPEED and Jane Remover When: 6 Where: Denver Coliseum Why: Turnstile is the Baltimore-based melodic hardcore band whose style has evolved so much from its early days that is new album Never Enough is practically a punk infused shoegaze albums with moments of ethereal dream pop. In that way it has been on a similar arc as bands like Nothing and Ceremony but with more extensive and obvious use of synth melodies to lend the music a touch of psychedelia. Mannequin Pussy from Philadelphia started the same year as Turnstile (2010) and more than likely crossed paths in the endless tracks of the underground American touring circuit. Its own raging punk rock and willingness to indulge atmospheric melodies inside indisputably cathartic songs against the trespasses of sexism, religious trauma and other forms of abuse one can be subjected to as a young woman. The group’s 2024 album I Got Heaven is a revelation of some of the most righteous invective recorded by a band of recent years paired with memorable hooks and melodies.
Monday | 07.03 What: Glare, Alien Boy, Roseville, Face Ghost, Broken Record When: 7 Where: Seventh Circle Music Collective Why: Glare is a heavy shoegaze band from Austin, Texas whose sound swings elegantly between dream pop, the moody delicacy of late 90s, atmospheric emo and slow burn distortion. Alien Boy from Portland, Oregon has long been evolving out of its early more pop-punk origins into a Cure-esque post-punk and emo powerhouse with emotionally rich vocals and heartfelt lyrics. Broken Record is a band from Denver whose own sound might have a touch of shoegaze tonal incandescence but its melodic songcraft hints and the influence of late 90s Midwestern emo and noise pop bands.
Destroy Boys, photo courtesy the artists
Monday | 07.03 What:Blink-182 w/Turnstile and Destroy Boys When: 6:30 Where: Ball Arena Why: Blink-182 is a popular band that helped push pop punk into the mainstream with a string of 90s and 2000s hits and it’s either your thing or not. But the openers for this one point to the fact that someone in the Blink camp isn’t divorced from what’s vital and cool in the realm of music that isn’t already stadium big from the neo-nü metal phenoms Turnstile and Destroy Boys. The latter has been evolving its thrillingly arch socially critical punk rock since forming in 2015. Its ferocious mix of hardcore and garage rock has given us songs like “Locker Room Bully” and its music video that pretty much spells out and dismantles a genre of misogyny in connecting historical parallels between the witch hunts of the middle ages to the early modern era (and depending on what part of the world you live in, even now) and the various linguistic tricks used to dismiss women in the current era. But Destroy Boys has really delivered on exciting songs with heady content all along. The group’s video for its new song “Beg For Torture” looks like a cross between a really wrong ARG mixed with recovered police footage from an abuser’s dungeon and paired with the lyrics that point to casting off the effects of gaslighting and reclaiming one’s power upon coming into full awareness of the situation infuses the song with welcome originality of concept.
Josephine Foster, photo from Bandcamp
Wednesday | 07.05 What:Josephine Foster w/Advance Base When: 7 Where: Hi-Dive Why: Josephine Foster is a singer-songwriter from Colorado whose musical path has been as varied as it has been inventive and imaginative. Her vocals recall those of folk singers from the first half of the Twentieth Century but with some background in opera there is always something different and otherworldly to her delivery. Her music is pretty much impossible to easily classify with elements of freak folk, Americana and ambient throughout her idiosyncratic career as an artist. Her latest album Domestic Sphere is like a musical chapterbook of haunted places and people, an homage and gentle celebration of the neglected and forgotten cast in pastoral moods and tones of fragile elegance. Sharing the bill is Owen Ashworth who for over a decade (1997-2010) wrote some of the most tenderly heartbreaking outsider pop recorded in recent years with his project Casiotone For the Painfully Alone. Since retiring that moniker and a bit of the ideas and aesthetics of that music, Ashworth has been building another respectable and affecting body of work under the name of Advance Base with its slowcore folk pop sound and emotionally resonant atmospherics.
Stinking Lizaveta, photo by Singletary John
Thursday | 07.06 What: Telekinetic Yeti w/Stinking Lizaveta, Somnuri and Hashtronaut When: 7 Where: Hi-Dive Why: Telekinetic Yeti is a psychedelic doom band from Dubuque, Iowa in that post-Sleep/Baroness mold but at least its 2022 album Primordial lives up to the title with a set of songs that humorously reference cannabis, supernatural entities, esoteric knowledge and a more liberated future. Stinking Lizaveta is a trio from Philadelphia that formed in 1994 creating instrumental rock with roots in prog, jazz and cinematic music. The style the group has developed from the beginning has been summed up with the descriptor “doom jazz” because its sound has often combined heaviness with a musical complexity and elegance. Stinking Lizaveta establishes a mood early in its songs and its compositions vividly express ideas and emotional nuance that engages the listener’s imagination. Read our interview with the group here.
REZN, photo courtesy the artists
Friday | 07.07 What: REZN w/Oryx https://hi-dive.com/event/rezn-grivo-oryx When: 8 Where: Hi-Dive Why: Oryx is the respected doom band from Denver whose majestic yet scrappy songs break out of the tropes of the genre by helping to redefine it with more inventive rhythms and creative crafting of colossal, atmospheric guitar riffs. REZN is a heavy psych band from Chicago whose forays into evocative and haunting music incorporate the aesthetics of doom, shoegaze and cinematic ambient to create dynamic soundscapes that capture a sense of the cosmic and of the deep mystery of nature. The group recently released its new album Solace. The record’s cover looks like something one might have expected on an old Rainbow or Hawkwind record of windswept mountains and the sunlight breaking through a raging storm. The music within is not unlike that expectation set of epic journeys and existential catharsis through finely sculpted and orchestrated volume and majestically accented rhythms. If Lovecraft and Michael Moorcock had somehow collaborated on a dark science fantasy trilogy in the modern era this is the music for that story—menace, spiritual contemplation and transcendence. Listen to our interview with bassist Phil Cangelosi below.
Friday | 07.07 What: FOANS album release w/Taylor Bratches, ALX-106 and Scarien When: 9 Where: Glob Why: Andrew Dahabrah meant to dump a hard drive of nearly six hours and 100 tracks of his diverse body of techno, house and ambient music in 2018 when he posted it to Bandcamp and then retire his long running project FOANS. Times change and now a carefully curated 11-track selection of those recordings is coming out as Selected Classics on digital and vinyl with a release show this night. Respected Denver and now international DJ and electronic music artist Taylor Bratches will perform as will downtempo techno artist ALX-106 and his nature inspired compositions and minimal techno/house artist Scarien.
The Beets at Rhinoceropolis in 2010, photo by Tom Murphy
Saturday | 07.08 What:Juan Wauters w/Los Narwhals, Flora De La Luna, Movete Chiquita Vinyl Club When: 8 Where: Hi-Dive Why: Juan Wauters was born in Montevideo, Uruguay but moved to New York City in 2002 and within the decade formed one of the better of the then nascent modern garage rock revival bands The Beets. The group toured regularly throughout America often at DIY spaces and dive bars and made an impact with its lively performances and its three records and a handful of singles and EPs. But the singer-songwriter set forth with a project under his own name and a sound that wasn’t so terribly separated from what he’d done in his previous band but often with more of a folk sensibility. This is particularly true of his deeply introspective 2023 album Wandering Rebel which was written like many recent albums partly or wholly during the extended period of the early pandemic when no one was performing many shows and a lot of people had to take stock and stew in their own frustrations and anxieties and reassess life at least a little. Too bad America as a nation didn’t seem to learn much from the experience and got right back to the business and business and crushing the working class under the weight of spiraling income inequality and unaffordable cities with little relief in sight while the harbinger of fascism looms across the world including the USA where the call has been coming from inside the house for years. But Wauters definitely took the experience to heart and dove deeper into the potential lessons of those aforementioned times and gleaned some personal and social insights that he casts forth in arguably the best set of songs of his solo career thus far.
Sparks on the FFS tour in 2015, photo by Tom Murphy
Sunday | 07.09 What: Sparks When: 7 Where: Boulder Theater Why: With the 2021 biographical documentary The Sparks Brothers following the 2015 collaborative supergroup FFS with Franz Ferdinand, Sparks has become more than a relatively obscure cult band once again and deservedly so. Forming as Urban Renewal Porject in 1966 in the greater Los Angeles area the core duo of brothers Ron and Russell Mael renamed themselves Sparks in 1972 and finding little support or interest in America relocated to the UK in 1973 for a few years. During that time Sparks hit its first creative peak as evidenced by its classic, weirdo art pop masterpiece Kimono My House (1974) and its highly underrated follow-up Propaganda (1974). Though the brothers eventually returned to America that time left an impression in the UK with Sparks exerting a bit of influence on the nascent punk scene with its irreverent attitudes and disdain for dull nonsense. Over the years the group’s unique creative vision has occasionally made waves in the mainstream but mostly among connoisseurs of visionary, idiosyncratic pop music. Its music influenced artists as diverse as Joy Division, Siouxsie and the Banshees (who covered “This Town Ain’t Big Enough for the Both of Us” on its 1987 covers album Through the Looking Glass), Sonic Youth and Björk. Sparks worked with Giorgio Moroder on its 1978 album Nº 1 in Heaven and secured its place as a direct influence on the direction of synth pop and its 1982 song “I Predict” cracked the Billboard Hot 100 as a “New Wave” hit. Whether you know it or not you’ve heard music by Sparks in multiple movies and television shows and its infectious melodies have become an underappreciated part of music culture. And now you can see the legends touring in support of their new album The Girl Is Crying in Her Latte, another respectable entry with forward thinking, innovative, creative music throughout. The live show is theatrical, informed by genuinely clever humor, self-aware cultural references and commentary and surprising moments from the brothers Mael who don’t skimp on bringing a sense of the spontaneous and often unpredictable to the proceedings.
Bring Me the Horizon, photo by Jonti Wild
Sunday | 07.09 What: Fall Out Boy w/Bring Me the Horizon and Royal & the Serpent When: 6:30 Where: Fiddler’s Green Why: Fall Out Boy has been for years the go to band for teen angst in the form of pop punk emo and if you’re of a certain age it’s definitely part of your cultural zeitgeist with its long string of hits going back to the early 2000s. Royal & the Serpent is the project of Ryan Santiago whose music is an unlikely but effective fusion of electronic pop and pop-punk with songs that are real, raw and vulnerable and delivered with an immediate accessibility. Maybe it’s because the band is from Sheffield, England where most of the bands have a leg in the experimental but Bring Me The Horizon though known for its explosive, emotionally vibrant and expansive metalcore sound also seems to be able to freely associate other styles of music into the mix as well as a wide array of artists brought in for collaborations that mutate its sound even more. The results may not be for everyone particularly if you’re not on board for the band’s current core aesthetic of scream-y post-hardcore and electronic/industrial rock fusion. But at least Bring Me the Horizon is trying not to get stuck in outdated notions of the good old days and other impulses that undercut creative growth.
Plague Garden, photo by Tom Murphy
Monday | 07.10 What: Creux Lies w/Plague Garden and Redwing Blackbird When: 7 Where: HQ Why: Creux Lies is a post-punk band from Sacramento whose sound is completely fused with a more dream pop and shoegaze sound rather than the spindly post-punk noodling that has been popular in those circles in recent years. Plague Garden is a post-punk band from Denver whose pure fusion of electronic and rock blurs the line between deathrock, dream pop and neo-New Wave. Redwing Blackbird is a post-punk duo whose sounds are steeped not just in the gloom pop of The Cure but of psychedelic rock in the vein of The Legendary Pink Dots and Pink Floyd.
Bonnie “Prince” Billy, photo by Natasha Via
Tuesday-Friday | 07.11-07.14 What: Bonnie “Prince Billy” w/Faun Fables When: 7 (07.11 and 07.12), 6 (07.13), 7 (07.14) Where: Soiled Dove (07.11 and 07.12), The Armory (07.13) and Lulu’s Downstairs (07.14) Why: Ahead of the August 11, 2023 release of his new album Keeping Secrets Will Destroy You on Drag City, Bonnie “Prince” Billy aka Will Oldham is touring with a string of shows in Colorado in Denver, Colorado Springs and Fort Collins. Maybe you’ll get to hear more of the new material than has already been revealed online but either way, Oldham’s singular voice and creative vision as a songwriter and artist who pushes the boundaries of the kind of freak folk, country and and lo-fi rock that has been the hallmark in his career from the various Palace projects, the prolific releases under the Bonnie “Prince” Billy moniker to Superwolves and other collaborations. He has a knack for making the cosmic intimate and the profane profound both on the recorded format and as a live performer.
Final Gasp, photo by Tyler Hallett
Wednesday | 07.12 What: Final Gasp w/Weathered Statues, Victim of Fire, Merry and Maintainer When: 7 Where: Seventh Circle Music Collective Why: The members of Final Gasp came out of hardcore (Antagonize, Wound Man) but with its 2019 debut Baptism of Desire and its follow-up Haunting Whisper from 2021, that kind of energy and intensity is channeled into a moodier deathrock sound that incorporates that hardcore sensibility with metal and post-punk. The group is currently touring ahead of the September 22, 2023 release of its new record Mourning Moon. Joining them for this show are local bands across the spectrum of hardcore (Victim of Fire) and post-punk (Weathered Statues) and sounds outside of that direct spectrum of rock.
Wallice, photo by Le3ay Mar
Friday | 07.14 What: Wallice w/Nitefire and Card Catalog When: 7 Where: Globe Hall Why: Wallice was born and raised in and is now based out of the Los Angeles area. Since 2017 she has released a series of songs and EPs noteworthy for their self-aware wit and sharply articulated sociological observations and commentary on modern life and relationships. Though her output might be loosely described as bedroom pop there is a level of production and songcraft that elevates her songs into the realm of indie pop more often associated with the likes of Snail Mail and Soccer Mommy. Directly off a Australian dates with The 1975, Wallice is touring in support of her new EP Mr. Big Shot, her most fully realized and set of compositions to date.
Isadora Eden, photo by Tom Murphy
Saturday | 07.15 What:Isadora Eden album release w/Pink Lady Monster and Deth Rali When: 7 Where: The Marquis Theater Why: Isadora Eden started as a solo project in a more indie singer-songwriter vein but even the early releases were imbued with an imaginative flair and an ear for deeper emotional coloring. As Eden brought on board collaborators to help flesh out the sound in the newer songs she was writing the music evolved into a darker, more sonically rich sound that was a bit more like something one might expect to hear from a songwriter like PJ Harvey or Mary Timony but more darkwave, more flourishes of atmospheric sounds both guitar-rooted and electronic akin to the stranger end of shoegaze. This creative period has resulted in one of the more fascinating records of 2023 in forget what makes it glow, the debut full-length for the project. Eden’s deeply evocative voice guides you through an introspective set of songs that are melancholic, reflective and in the end cathartic. Like the kind of dream pop record with some grit and edge, willing to wax noisy in moments as if to embody the way life and our subsconscious experiences are analog and meaningful, intimate, in a way pristine digital and curated experiences rarely are. The album will be available on vinyl and digital and for more information on finding group’s releases, social media and upcoming shows please visit the band’s website.Pink Lady Monster is one of the most interesting bands out of Denver or anywhere now because it incorporates elements of experimental dream pop, experimental jazz and noise rock for a sound that is entrancing and challenging at once.
Volk in 2021, photo by Tom Murphy
Saturday | 07.15 What:The Goddamn Gallows w/IV and The Strange Band and Volk When: 8 Where: Globe Hall Why: The Goddamn Gallows are a band that has picked up musical ideas and styles in its meandering journey as a band since beginning in the early part of the 2000s. These days the group is a raucous and charming mish mash of punk Americana and metal with an wisacre sense of humor long on irony. Volk is a rambunctious, psychedelic honky tonk duo from Nashville that recently released its latest EP, Stand the Test which reveals its knack for pop songcraft as remixed and reinterpreted by friends into new territory for the band. Volk’s spirited and sometimes surreal live show is proof positive that plenty of weirdos exist in the realm of country music in Tennessee.
Chaepter, photo from Bandcamp
Sunday | 07.16 What: Chaepter w/Specific Ocean and Jeremy Mock When: 7 Where: Mutiny Information Café Why: Chaepter is an artist from Chicago whose music is the kind of bedroom pop that blurs the borders between slowcore, dreampop and indiefolk. Specific Ocean is an indie rock band with a strong undercurrent of jazz sensibilities. Jeremy Mock was the frontman and guitarist of the great and now defunct Denver post-punk band Antibroth. He is playing a rare solo show before moving to New York City and this will be the last chance to catch his idiosyncratic music styling for some time to come.
d4vd, photo by Aidan Cullen
Tuesday | 07.18 What:d4vd w/Scott James When: 7 Where: The Bluebird Theater Why: d4vd is the performance and songwriting moniker of David Anthony Burke who got his start making music composing pieces for his montage videos of Fortnite and he’s been a member of esports group Team Limit. But his July 2022 dark dreampop single “Romantic Homicide” was his breakthrough with its horror short-esque music video paired with the poignant lyrics of heartbreak and the intense feelings that can ensue following a romantic split. In March 2023, the debut d4vd album Petals to Thorns dropped collecting his singles and adding new music to the artist’s growing repertoire of melancholic and soulful bedroom pop songs articulating feelings of loneliness, love lost, romance gone wrong, self-doubt and yearning for redemption.
Pardoner, photo from Bandcamp
Wednesday | 07.19 What:Pardoner w/American Culture, Supreme Joy and Fishlegs When: 7 Where: Hi-Dive Why: Imagine the unlikely combination of Superchunk and a hardcore band and you’ll have some idea of what you’re in for with Pardoner. The band from San Francisco recently released its latest album Peace Loving People which sounds like the above if that band also dipped into the more angular and intense end of Circle Jerks/OFF. American Culture is what happens when an indie pop rooted band rediscovers its love of punk and The Cure in equal measure. Supreme Joy is like a garage rock band with chops and a taste for psychedelia.
Wednesday | 07.19 What:X w/James Intveld When: 7 Where: The Oriental Theater Why: X is the influential and well-known Americana punk band from Los Angeles whose body of work is among the most literate rock and roll ever written but without losing the punk rock and beat poetry spirit that inspired it from its inception. Live still a little off the cuff and occasionally unhinged.
Caamp, photo courtesy the artists
Wednesday and Thursday | 07.19 and 07.20 What: Caamp w/Carsie Blanton and Zach Nytomt (07.19) and Lady Wray and Tucker Gill (07.20) When: 6 Where: Red Rocks Why: Caamp is an indie folk band from Columbus, Ohio that has built a steady following over the past near decade and not so long ago you would have caught the group playing small clubs. But its 2019 album By & By garnered Caamp critical accolades and its first appearance on commericial charts. For the group’s latest album, Lavender Days, Caamp enlisted Nathaniel Rateliff and Katie Crutchfield (of Waxahatchee fame) on vocals and the resultant album is one that expands the core sound of elegantly pastoral pop with incandescent warmth and an introspection that is also forward looking.
Gorilla Biscuits, photo from Bandcamp
What:Gorilla Biscuits w/H2O Direct Threat and Time X Heist When: 7 Where: The Oriental Theater Why: Gorilla Biscuits were part of that final period of the first era of hardcore that emerged in the mid-to-late 80s in New York City before the movement all but imploded by the early 90s before many of those early bands re-formed in the 2000s as a new era of hardcore was beginning to gather steam and transform and redefine the sound. Gorilla Biscuits benefited from having formed in the wake of crossover and its sound was more in line with a more modern style. Also on the bill is H2O, a NYC melodic hardcore band that got going in 1994 and Direct Threat and Time X Heist from Denver who are carrying that torch of hardcore’s era of blunt, unvarnished sonic aggression.
Glass Spells, photo courtesy the artists
Friday | 07.21 What:Glass Spells w/Tepid and DJ Tower When: 8 Where: HQ Why: Glass Spells is a post-punk band whose sound is more in line with synthwave and minimal techno, like it took some inspiration from both early Ladytron and ADULT. Its 2021 album Shattered released during the late period when live shows weren’t happening and so the duo didn’t get a proper showing of its music until later and no more wide national tour until now. Tepid is the solo minimal techno project of Nick Salmon of industrial post-punk band Voight from Denver.
Julian St. Nightmare, photo by Tom Murphy
Friday | 07.21 What: Julian St. Nightmare, Sell Farm and Dream of Industry When: 9 Where: Glob Why: A showcase of some of the better post-punk adjacent bands out of Denver with the more darkwave Julian St. Nightmare whose commanding live shows are a well kept secret of the Mile High City for now. Sell Farm is more in the realm of dub-inflected Godflesh. Dream of Industry infuses its own dark, post-punk flavor with shoegaze highlights.
Mainland Break in 2019, photo by Tom Murphy
Saturday | 07.22 What:Mainland Break w/Kiwi Jr. and Candy Chic When: 8 Where: Hi-Dive Why: Mainland Break is a jangle pop/power pop band from Denver whose latest album One Way Ticket to Midnight is being celebrated at this show. It’s sparkling melodies and intricate guitar work recall the simple charm of early 2000s indiepop and that era of 80s underground rock best represented by the Paisley Underground, early Flying Nun acts and C86.
MF Ruckus in 2011, photo by Tom Murphy
Saturday | 07.22 What:MF Ruckus w/The Blind Staggers and Ipecac When: 7 Where: The Bluebird Theater Why: MF Ruckus is releasing its latest album The Front Line of Good Times Vol. I through Glory or Death Records. The long-running Denver hard rock band has a style that bridges any gaps between bluesy hard rock and melodic thrash with a high energy and entertaining live show.
Caterina Barbieri, photo from Bandcamp
Monday | 07.24 What:Caterina Barbieri — CANCELED When: 7 Where: Central Presbyterian Church Why: Caterina Barbieri is an Italian composer now based in Berlin whose fusion of analog synthesis and generative/algorithmic method of crafting her idiosyncratic electronic soundscapes has garnered her wide acclaim. Her 2017 breakthrough album Patterns of Consciousness on Important Records introduced her efforts at breaking down the barriers between dance music, pop and the avant-garde to the larger world of fans of experimental electronic music. On both sides of the pandemic lockdowns of 2020 Barbieri has released two, remarkable sister albums with 2019’s Ecstatic Computation and the 2023 opus Myuthafoo both now on digital and vinyl through her own light-years imprint. Think of her as a kind of creative and spiritual descendant of Suzanne Ciani, Laurie Spiegel and Jean-Michel Jarre in terms of innovative technique and accessibility.
The Mighty Missoula, photo from Bandcamp
Monday | 07.24 What: The Mighty Missoula w/Abandons and Only Echoes When: 7 Where: Seventh Circle Music Collective Why: The Mighty Missoula is an instrumental post-rock band from Portland, Oregon whose body of work waxes more into the realm of ambient. At least its most recent EP Virga named for the falling rain that evaporates before hitting the ground has a pastoral drift not unlike what it might be to meditate on a late afternoon and early evening in mid-spring in the Pacific Northwest observing the movements of clouds as they course toward forming days of drizzle punctuated by sunlight bursting through unexpectedly. Abandons and Only Echoes are also post-rock bands but from Denver. Abandons is somewhere between post-metal and the kind of experimental noise rock that has been blurred into more abstract structures whereas Only Echoes sculpts from a heavier sonic palette with more in common with the riff focus of acts like Pelican and Agalloch.
Braid, photo from Bandcamp
Tuesday | 07.25 What: Braid w/despAIR Jordan https://www.bluebirdtheater.net/events/detail/485237 When: 7 Where: The Bluebird Theater Why: Braid were (and are) one of the most influential bands out of Midwestern emo with its 1998 album Frame & Canvas one of the absolute classics of the genre. What perhaps separated Braid from some of its peers was its clear roots in the kind of angular post-hardcore of Discord bands and expanding on melodic hooks and raw emotionalism of the likes of Embrace and of course Fugazi. Denver’s despAIR Jordan is comprised of veterans of the punk and post-hardcore scene that emerged in the wake of the foundation laid by Braid, Mineral and Christie Front Drive with its own moody, melodic fusion of shoegaze and emo.
Middle Kids, photo by Michelle Grace Hunder
Tuesday | 07.25 What:Jimmy Eat World w/Manchester Orchestra and Middle Kids When: 5:30 Where: Red Rocks Why: Jimmy Eat World was one of the bands whose amalgam of pop punk and emo helped take those sounds into the mainstream following Green Day and NOFX paving that way earlier in the 90s. With the 2001 release of its album Bleed American and the ubiquitous and now classic single “The Middle” Jimmy Eat World with an album of undeniable hooks proved it could transcend preconceptions of its roots. At a time when a lot of generic pop punk was flooding airwaves and mediocre, trend hoppers were forming and playing festivals and occupying the same lane as cookie cutter grunge bands had less than a decade prior somehow Jimmy Eat World stood out because of the quality of the songwriting. Opening this night at Red Rocks is Middle Kids from Sydney, Australia who have been delivering poignant and introspective indie rock since its 2016 inception. The group’s self-titled debut EP seemed to be filled with songs of unlikely sophistication and advanced songcraft so early in the trio’s career. Its sweeping and delicate mini epics on the EP were both delicacy of feleing and shot through with a exuberant and charismatic energy. The band is set to release its new album in the none-too-distant future and its lead single “Bootleg Firecracker” with its acoustic sounds and intimate mood hints at yet another shift in musical direction for talented pop group even further into turning a personal storytelling style into something with a wide appeal.
Janet Feder and Fred Frith in 2017, photo by Tom Murphy
Tuesday | 07.25 What: Janet Feder and Ian Argys When: 7-9 Where: Broadway Roxy Why: Denver based avant-garde composer and guitarist Janet Feder is performing a rare set this evening with solo and duo sets with accomplished jazz and experimental guitar player Ian Argys. Sounds like it could be a little too cerebral but Feder’s humor and warmth as a performer is always engaging and she is able to make heady, technical music accessible.
(L-R): Cavetown, Ricky Montgomery and mxmtoon, photo by Lauren Tepfer
Wednesday | 07.26 What: Bittersweet Daze: mxmtoon w/Cavetown, Ricky Montgomery and grentperez When: 4:30 Where: Levitt Pavilion Why: Bittersweet Daze is a tour featuring three stars of modern bedroom pop with mxmtoon, Cavetown and Ricky Montgomery. The three artists recently collaborated on and released the single “Nobody Loves Me,” a song about love and yearning and a vulnerable self-awareness seemingly written from a place of existential angst yet channeled into a tenderly earnest pop song. Individually mxmtoon and Cavetown got started writing music during their middle school years starting their own YouTube channels as an outlet for sharing their songs. But those fledgling efforts blossomed into an internet phenomenon through various social media platforms including TikTok. Cavetown produced mxmtoon’s 2019 single “Prom Dress” which went viral and has been used in tens of thousands of TikTok videos. Montgomery had pursued a more traditional indie rock band route with his group The Honeysticks but nearly quit music entirely by 2020. But during the early COVID-19 pandemic of 2020 he released singles that too went viral on TikTok with “Mr. Loverman” and “Line Without a Hook.” In 2021 he saw mxmtoon perform on Twitch and discovered she’d been a fan of his Vine clips before that platform took a dive in the mid-2010s. All three artists excel at blending intimate folk pop with modern electronic and hip-hop production to craft songs that speak to the aspirations and anxieties of a younger generation while navigating communicating with potential fans through savvy and creative use of online platforms that bypass traditional forms of music distribution.
Tedeschi Trucks Band, photo by David McClister
Friday and Saturday | 07.28 and 07.29 What: Tedeschi Trucks Band w/Vincent Neil Emerson When: 6 Where: Red Rocks Why: Susan Tedeschi was already hailed as one of the most gifted modern blues guitarists and songwriters of her generation before she married another such luminary in Derek Trucks who had been a part of The Allman Brothers Band, the group one of his uncles had helped to found. Their band together, Tedeschi Trucks Band, launched in 2010 when each put their solo efforts on indefinite hiatus and these days the twelve members of the band seem to have an intuitive connection that gives what might be considered an established blues Americana sound a vibrant energy. Tedeschi’s passionate and expressive vocals and both her and Trucks’ masterful guitar interplay syncing with a group of ace musicians on horns, bass, percussion and is orchestral in scope with layered vocal harmonies boosting the impact of the songs truly elevates this bands performances beyond where many other artists aiming at similar musical leanings are able to achieve. It’s not a jam band though there is plenty of off the cuff improvisation, it’s not simply blues or Americana or rock and roll but its own thing with those roots blended together.
Overcalc, photo from Bandcamp
Monday | 07.31 What:Overcalc (Nick Skrobisz of Multicult and The Wayward) w/Equine and Fungus Panel When: 8/9 Where: Bar Bar aka Carioca Café Why: Overcalc is the solo project of Nick Skrobisz of Multicult and The Wayward Fame. The music of Overcalc combines guitar experiments with layers of electronic elements to produce texural tones and rhythms akin to something one might have heard on an old Faust record. The latest album from Overcalc is 2022’s Fruits of the Decision Tree recently issued on Sleeping Giant Glossolalia. Opening the show is Equine, the solo guitar soundscaping project of former Motheater and Epileptinomicon member Kevin Richards whose experiments in rhythm and feedback sculpting with unique guitar chords and arrangements of amps bridges the gap between drone and the avant-garde.
Big Thief, photo by Noah Lenker
Monday | 07.31 What: Big Thief w/Lucinda Williams https://www.redrocksonline.com/events/big-thief-466494/ When: 6:30 Where: Red Rocks Why: Big Thief has been evolving its idiosyncratic brand of indie folk since its 2015 inception in Brooklyn. Its 2022 album Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You contained aspects of field recordings within its pastoral, deeply atmospheric, delicate pop songs grounding what could be ethereal faire especially given Adrianne Lenker’s introspective tones that seem to be a little like getting to hear what it’s like to sit inside a reflective, cinematic daydream. Lucinda Williams is opening this show but the country rock and folk singer is an influential and pioneering legend in her own right and the headlining status could have gone either way on a bill like this. Her latest album Stories From a Rock n Roll Heart dropped at the end of June and reflects her sharp ear for crafting not just strong personal stories but bluesy rock songs in a way that teems with life rather than a retread of a well worn musical path.
Eugene Chadbourne, photo courtesy the artistEugene Chadbourne
Who:Creative Music Works Fundraiser: Special guest Eugene Chadbourne When: Thursday, 03.28, 7-9 p.m. Where: Mighty Fine Productions Why: Creative Music Works is, according to the event page, a “nonprofit organizartion providing educational and performance opportunities for musical innovators.” Meaning the organization furthers the endeavors of artists whose work often falls outside the traditional commercial and popular music environment—the people pushing the boundaries with form, method and conceptualization. CMW members Janet Feder, Mark Harris, Scott Kinnamon, Elena Carmerin Young and Isaac Linder will contribute to a performance as well as avant-garde music legend Eugene Chadbourne.
Who:Starjammer w/Bianca Mikahn When: Thursday, 03.28, 4-7 p.m. Where: 3 Kings Tavern Why: Starjammer’s “avant-garde dub reggae”/performance art/home made instrument rig glory is paired tonight with one of Denver’s poetry greats and forward thinking hip-hop experimentalists, Bianca Mikahn.
Who:Rob Sonic w/The Maybe So’s, Brett Gretzky and Hakeem Furious When: Thursday, 03.28, 8 p.m. Where: Ophelia’s Electric Soapbox Why: Rob Sonic has had a fairly distinguished career for his innovative hip-hop projects Sonic Sum and Hail Mary Mallon (which included Aesop Rock and DJ Big Wiz). What has made his various efforts interesting is his use of a fairly different palette of sounds from many of his peers. His 2018 album Defriender lays out moods and textures that wouldn’t be out of place on a post-punk or deep house track or an industrial noise song. Denver’s The Maybe So’s is a duo that also weaves in unconventional electronic music and samples of organic percussion into its flow of beats and poetry.
Friday | March 29
American Culture, photo by Tom Murphy
Who:Dilly Dally w/Chastity and American Culture When: Friday, 03.29, 8 p.m. Where: Larimer Lounge Why: On Dilly Dally’s 2015 album Sore the group sounded like a bit like a weird mixture of Bully and Courtney Barnett. But to be fair, it was probably something in the universe/confluence of influences across a broad swath of the collective musical consciousness. But with the 2018 album Heaven, Dilly Dally has expanded its range as a band and there is more brooding, atmospheric darkness flowing through its fuzz-laden riffs. It’s song “Doom” is more doom in tone and emotional resonance than a lot of what passes for such in the doom genre. But its inherently introspective yet expansive melodies keep the music from wallowing in stagnation. Along for this date is fellow Canadian band Chastity who are definitely more well within the realm of doomy noise rock. American Culture lately has straddled the line between indie pop, post-punk and psych country jam rock minus the wacktitude.
Who:Hand Habits w/Tomberlin and Porlolo When: Saturday, 03.30, 8 p.m. Where: Larimer Lounge Why: Meg Duffy may be more well-known for being a touring member of Kevin Morby’s band. But with the release of her album placeholder under the moniker Hand Habits should garner her plenty of attention for her own creative efforts. Superficially its mid-tempo moody indie folk but her words go deep into thoughts and feelings we don’t want to entertain but must face honestly. Not necessarily obvious and brutal trauma but the subtler pains that can deeply haunt you every day and from which are more elusive in evading. Disappointment in self, reflecting on one’s suddenly seemingly damning mistakes and the cognitive dissonance of the complexity of conflicting feelings about people, situations, existential ponderings and life in general that are all valid. Her tonal choices are all interesting and the perfect companion to explicating and maybe untangling and processing the aforementioned.
Robyn Hitchcock, photo courtesy the artist
Who:Robyn Hitchcock When: Saturday, 03.30, 7 p.m. Where: Swallow Hill – Daniels Hall Why: One thing that isn’t so obvious about seeing Robyn Hitchcock playing solo or with collaborators is how his simple but richly detailed guitar work is creatively varied and incorporates percussive elements with an expressive delicacy that focuses the emotional impact of his songwriting. He seems to be an endless well of interesting and poetic stories that make even what some may consider his lesser records worth a listen. Pick a point in Hitchcock’s career and you’ll find some of the best songwriting of that period whether while he was a member of The Soft Boys, his work with The Egyptians or The Venus 3. Like a magical-realist (emphasis on realist) novelist, Hitchcock’s songs offer observational insight into the human psyche through an intensely personal window.
Who:Jeff Carey, Sigtrygur Sigmarsson, Diffuser, Flesh Buzzard, Joshua Westerman. Sunk Cost and Page 27 When: Saturday, 03.30, 8 p.m. Where: Thought//Forms Why: Noise shows are pretty infrequent in Denver these days but this one is a showcase for some of the best noise acts going and not in the vein of the cliché harsh noise/shakebox feedback sculpting mode. Much more craft, imagination and originality here with Denver noise legends Page 27, former Austin-based noise prankster Sunk Cost, Adam Rojo of Voight’s Diffuser noise-scaping pieces and raw noise punk Flesh Buzzard. Among others.
Who:Black Dots, SPELLS, Lawsuit Models, Girl Scout Heroine and Good Family When: Saturday, 03.30, 7 p.m. Where: Seventh Circle Music Collective Why: A fairly traditional punk show with less of the fashion victim thing than usual. SPELLS wears costumes and get a solid B for the music but hey, that’s better than you get a lot of the time. Girl Scout Heroine includes former members of The Geds and The Blast-Off Heads.
Who:King Buffalo w/Pale Sun and The Lycan When: Saturday, 03.30, 8:30 p.m. Where: Lost Lake Why: What King Buffalo is doing, to some extent, we’ve seen a lot of over the past decade—drone-y, blues-y, doom-y psychedelia. But to give the band its due, if 2018’s Longing To Be The Mountain is any indication, it didn’t just adopt some motorik beats, it takes that sonic vehicle to places of heightened emotional impact beyond just hypnotic drive with occasional flourishes. Also it’s songwriting is much more creative and not grinding away at the same vibe and pace for an entire record. King Buffalo often reaches moments of true sonic sublimity in a way that transcends any genre associations. Pale Sun will bring a different kind of atmospheric heavy as the trio’s finely honed space rock has similar roots as King Buffalo but whose music touches subconscious places in the mind with both tone, rhythm and emotional vibrancy. Vocalist/guitarist Jeff Suthers channels the visceral quality of the music well with his singing but he’s also tapping into something in the collective consciousness in the performance as well.
Monday | April 1
Olivia O’Brien, photo courtesy the artist
Who:Olivia O’Brien w/Kevin George When: Monday, 04.01, 7 p.m. Where: Larimer Lounge Why: Olivia O’Brien was about fifteen years old when she got a boost up as a singer and songwriter after garnering the attention of Australian pop artist gnash who discovered her through her posting of a cover of one of his songs on Soundcloud. Over the past four years, O’Brien has recorded with gnash and released a string of singles. “Trust Issues” from 2016 revealed a thoughtful sensibility and self-awareness that can be uncommon in general but definitely in a teenager. O’Brien’s R&B and soul inflected pop and commanding, emotionally nuanced, stage presence will probably find a wider audience after this current tour and the April 26 release of her debut full-length Was It Even Real? For now, you can see her at a small club like Larimer Lounge.
Tuesday | April 2
Ten Fé, photo by Eleanor Hardwick
Who:Ten Fé w/Ten Miles South and Paul Kimbiris & The Dark Side of Pearl When: Tuesday, 04.02, 7 p.m. Where: Globe Hall Why: Been Moorhouse and Leo Duncan got their start busking in London before recording their 2017 debut album Hit the Light. Before taking the music on the road, the duo brought on board a band to fill out the sonic details. The group’s 2019 album Future Perfect, Present Tense sounds remarkably sophisticated for a relatively new band. Its particular incorporation of synth into songwriting might remind some listeners of The Call or later-era The Sound, but without the punk edge. That’s no knock on the music because its softness doesn’t quite wax into the 70s Laurel Canyon worship that’s been en vogue of late. Rather its the sound of a band exploring and refining where it will go next while perfecting an exquisitely lush minimalism without sacrificing the textural details that have made its songwriting noteworthy up to now.
Who:Vanilla Milkshakes digital album release show When: Tuesday, 04.02, 7 p.m. Where: Mutiny Information Café Why: Its been four years since Vanilla Milkshakes released Tall People Have No Feelings. Line up changes and a release of a cover of “Breed” by Nirvana in 2018 later, the grunge-y pop-punk band (singer/guitarist David McGhee makes no bones about being influenced by The Offspring) has released its best record with Punching Cows. Recorded with Jack Endino and guitars tracked through one of Kurt Cobain’s old amps, on the record McGhee’s vocals are clearer and stronger, the songwriting more focused. But the idiosyncratic quality of the lyrics and McGhee’s vocals, which is one reason none of this comes off like a band that would be playing that final Warped Tour. The sense of melody and tight rhythms give even the most melancholy of the songs (“Mommy Said to Get a Job” and “Green And Sober” for instance) a buoyant quality that doesn’t seem to downplay the real feelings and experiences that likely inspired the song. There are enough rough edges to keep the record interesting throughout. The band performs infrequently these days so this is a good opportunity to see the Vanilla Milkshakes in a small venue with the jokes from stage inserted between songs. Besides, drummer Frank Registrato is a wizard at helping keep things on track with no heavy hand and the sheer finesse and power of his playing.
Hop Along, photo by Matt Allen, OctFest
Who:Hop Along w/Summer Cannibals When: Tuesday, 04.02, 7 p.m. Where: Bluebird Theater Why: Frances Quinlan performed in early versions of Hop Along as a solo acoustic act for the first four or five years until putting together a fledgling band around 2009. Even before signing to Saddle Creek Records in 2014, Quinlan’s songwriting was not short on imaginative storytelling like she was imagining the lives and situations she encountered in either her everyday life in Philadelphia or on the road and extrapolating it into colorful imagery and a keen sensitivity and insight into the subjects of her songs even when the inspiration is drawn directly from her own life. Any band that names its album Bark Your Head Off, Dog (2018) has a healthy sense of humor and the absurd without drifting into self-parody.
Wednesday | April 3
Gort Vs. Goom circa 2014, photo by Tom Murphy
Who:Weird Wednesday: Gort Vs. Goom, The Far Stairs, The Pollution When: Wednesday, 04.03, 7 p.m. Where: 3 Kings Tavern Why: None more weird for Weird Wednesday. Gort Vs. Goom are like the post-Devo, prog punk version of The Fugs. The Far Stairs is a deconstructionist pop project that sounds like more well-crafted pop than most bands trying to fool us into thinking they’re not utter frauds. Plus sometimes there’s a Robyn Hitchcock cover involved which bespeaks of an unspoken artistic ambition far beyond the usual. The Pollution got back to punk through burning through on hardcore, psychedelic rock, krautrock and Kiwi rock and taking bits and pieces of each to put together a Frankenstein’s Monster of music where you can’t find the sutures.
Who:The Drood, Church Fire, blackcell, Mudwulf and dizypixl When: Thursday, 03.14, 8 p.m. Where: Ophelia’s Electric Soapbox Why: The Drood could be described as a horror ambient band with a penchant for subverting the dark music paradigm with wry humor and deeply imaginative reworking of tropes into new shapes. It’s what gives the band a kind of timeless and otherworldly quality even as it uses familiar sounds and moods to weave its unusual narratives. Church Fire similarly uses the vocabulary of dance and industrial music to enter mythic psychological spaces to comment on culture and political issues without boring us with didactic and topical platitudes. Blackcell is the longest running industrial/EBM band in Denver but one that has evolved so much since its early days as essentially and industrial noise act into one of the great the abstract/ambient dance/darkwave bands today. Mudwulf will bring an unpredictable collection of underground electronic music to DJ and Dizypixl, known for her work with Skinny Puppy, will provide brain-stirring visuals.
Who:Ian Svenonius’ Escape-ism with his “FoundSoundDreamDrama” When: Thursday, 03.14, 9 p.m. Where: Lane Meyer Products Why: Even though The Lost Record, the debut from Escape-ism, the latest project from Ian Svenonius, the frontman of The Nation of Ulysses, The Make-Up, Weird War and other noteworthy musical entities over the years. Musically it sounds like lo-fi electroclash (or an even more lo-fi take on that musical movement). But that jibes with what is obviously a concept with music videos that look like its borrowing the aesthetics of an un-cool era, particularly the Super-8 vibe of the video for “Nothing Personal,” to pull listeners, and presumably those attending the show, out of everyday consciousness. Across his career as a musician, Svenonius and his partners have attempted to make music to engage both body and mind whereas much of modern culture and entertainment seems aimed at atomizing us as people from each other but also within ourselves. That the show is booked at something outside the usual purview of a bar or conventional venue should be telling as well regarding the aims of the performance.
Friday | March 15
Josh Ott, photo courtesy the artist
Who:Adia Victoria wNina and the Hold Tight and Brother Sister Hex When: Friday, 03.15, 7:30 p.m. Where: Larimer Lounge Why: Adia Victoria’s 2016 album Beyond the Bloodhounds introduced the world to the songwriter’s brooding, expressive, bluesy songwriting. Her 2019 album Silences finds Victoria expanding her sound, now operating in a realm somewhere between Rubblebucket’s soulful pop and Nick Cave’s smoldering intensity.
What:LEAF Night 1: Performances When: Friday, 03.15, 7 p.m. Where: Colorado Music Festival & Center for Musical Arts Why: This year’s edition of the Lafayette Electronic Arts Festival kicks off with a bevy of visionary avant-garde electronic music. This year’s programme of performances will inclue: Derek Holzer – Vector Synthesis AV Performance, Janet Feder and Joshua Ott – Prepared Guitar & Electronic Image, L’Astra Cosmo – AudioVisual Vector Synthesis, Sean Winters & Angie Eng – Piano and Electronic Image. In the cozy yet spacious performance space that is the Colorado Music Festival & Center for Musical Arts, these performances showcase some of the new ways in which creative people are integrating technology in both the musical and visual realm with concepts driving their application. Curated by David Fodel, LEAF strives to bring unique experiences that connect cutting edge artists with audiences/participants open to experiencing something you’re not likely to at a conventional music venue of any kind or all that much in academia either. Heady stuff.
What: Meet the Giant, Dead Orchids and Altas facebook.com/events/326517057982697 When: Friday, 03.15, 8 p.m. Where: BarFly Why: A free show and a bill that includes some of the best bands in Denver. Meet the Giant is an emotionally charged dream pop/rock band who are playing music with atmosphere and delicacy and nuance but delivered like its three members spent a youth in punk. Dead Orchids is a beautifully gloomy, bluesy, experimental rock project. Altas may be collectively the funniest band in Denver but the electrifying grandeur of its visceral instrumental rock lacks not for serious explorations of inner space.
Saturday | March 16
Janet Feder, photo courtesy the artist
What:LEAF Night 2: artistTalks When: Saturday, 03.16, 7 p.m. Where: Colorado Music Festival & Center for Musical Arts Why: This second night of the Lafayette Electronic Arts Festival includes the presentations/artistTalks, rather than performance, component of the event with a programme as follows: Derek Holzer – A Media Archaeology Of Vector Graphics, Jason and Deborah Benagozzi – What IS Signal Culture? The Signal IN the Culture, libi rose striegl – Digging In: A hands-on Guide to Media Archaeology, Janet Feder – Trip Sitting: A guided journey along the timeline of psychedelia.
What:Lipgloss pressents: Alice Glass DJ set w/Boyhollow When: Saturday, 03.16, 9 p.m. Where: Ophelia’s Electric Soapbox Why: Alice Glass’s musical output since her departure from Crystal Castles in 2014 has been a showcase for a gift for poignant expressions of agonizing emotional turmoil and strength in the face of being torn up from the inside out.
What:Johnlukeirl fka DJ Clap, Techno Allah, Kid Mask, DJ JFK, Timelord SFX, Blank Human and Wayzout When: Saturday, 03.16, 8 p.m. Where: Thought//Forms Gallery Why: A night of music where ambient, experimental dance and noise meet. A bit more on the bright tones and compositions bordering on an updated version of chillwave on the beats with Johnlukeirl and downtempo ambient noise and glitchcore with Kid Mask along with analog-synth driven ambient with Blank Human so definitely not all of a piece.
Sunday | March 17
Motherhood, photo by Emulsion Lab/Kyle Cunjak
What:Sliver, Motherhood (CAN), Weep Wave (Seattle) and Thatcher When: Sunday, 03.17, 8:30 p.m. Where: Lion’s Lair Why: This’ll be an eclectic bill with Sliver’s post-grunge bursts of arresting emotional intensity, Weep Wave’s lo-fi psychedelia akin to the likes of Caustic Resin and some of the weirder bands on the Siltbreeze imprint, Motherhood’s math-y art punk rendering of high concept pop songs (see our interview with the band here) and Thatcher’s Velocity Girl-esque shimmery melodies.
Monday | March 18
JPEGMAFIA, photo courtesy the artist
What:Vince Staples w/JPEGMAFIA and Trill Sammy When: Monday, 03.18, 7 p.m. Where: Ogden Theatre Why: Vince Staples and JPEGMAFIA are two of the most incisive critics of modern culture and the music industry. With a massive knowledge of music far beyond hip-hop both artists have some of the most sonically interesting beats going.
What:Endless, Nameless, Balms, Wander, YUFI64, Old Soul Dies Young When: Monday, 03.18, 8 p.m. Where: Seventh Circle Music Collective Why: Denver-based, introspective math rock band Endless, Nameless celebrates its return from its most recent tour this night. Also on the bill is Balms from San Francisco whose fuzz-tinged shoegaze sounds like the melodic analog of waves crashing against jagged rocks. Fans of Ceremony’s most recent music or True Widow will find much to like about Balms. Its debut full-length Mirrors was released in February 2019. Wander is a post-rock band from the Bay Area (San Leandro) whose own dynamic buildups are reminiscent of the subtle yet irresistible flow of ocean tides and coastal breezes.
What:Blood Incantation, Of Feather and Bone, Black Curse, Prison Glue and Many Blessings When: Monday, 03.18, 7 p.m. Where: Syntax Physic Opera Why: Blood Incantation is a band that sounds like its members are having fun with the sonically absurd possibilities inherent to an over-the-top-yet-technically-challenging genre like death metal. The result is one of the most unusual and powerful live bands you’re likely to see in the realm of metal or anything else. But the band and everyone else on this bill is coming together for a fundraiser for James Trejo of Cadaver Dog and various other projects who was assaulted on tour resulting in a broken orbital floor in his face. Some people’s children.
Tuesday | March 19
The Black Queen, photo by Jen Whitaker
What:The Black Queen w/Uniform and SRSQ When: Tuesday, 03.19, 7 p.m.
Where: The Marquis Theater
Why: The Black Queen is a darkwave band from Los Angeles comprised of former members/associates of The Dillinger Escape Plan and Nine Inch Nails (including Joshua Eustis who also writes and performs music as Telefon Tel Aviv). Its sound combines ethereal dream pop guitar sounds with the sort of soulfulness found in a lot of 80s synth pop. But with a more modern take as though vocalist Greg Puciato wasn’t just familiar with Talk Talk and Heaven 17 but Perfume Genius and Big Black Delta. In 2018 the group released its second album Infinite Games the day it played the prestigious Cold Waves festival (the Los Angeles edition). But this bill isn’t short on noteworthy artists out of the new industrial and darkwave era. Uniform’s confrontational and political minimal synth and industrial assault is along for this show as well as SRSQ (pronounced seer-skew), the now project from Kennedy Ashlyn, the vocalist and keyboard player of Them Are Us Too. The new music is ethereal with emotionally arresting vocals as one might expect but also with more a downtempo, yet majestic, after-hours dance club vibe. The SRSQ album, Unreality, came out on Dais Records in 2018.
What:Mike Krol w/Vertical Scratchers and Slugger When: Tuesday, 03.19, 7 p.m. Where: Globe Hall Why: Mike Krol did it right. Emerged during the wave of the recent garage rock/psychedelic rock revival of the 2010s where his fuzz-drenched, wiry melodies fit in with the biggest movement in underground rock in years. Then came out the other end of the wave with his knack for snappy, wiry melodies and charmingly lo-fi production intact. Sure maybe you can hear the touches of Jay Reatard and the Oblivians in the music but Krol’s own spiky highlights and tonal gyrations are his own and his 2019 album out on Merge Records, Power Chords, showcases all of that as well as the songwriter’s keen psychological insight and gift for poetic turns of phrase. What:Remain and Sustain, Meth., Motherhood, Its Just Bugs and Non Systemaddict When: Tuesday, 03.19, 7 p.m. Where: Seventh Circle Music Collective Why: Seventh Circle gets plenty of experimental music through the door but this night is one that’ll be fairly mixed. Meth. is a Chicago-based noisecore band that mixes some genuine soundscaping into its set. Its Just Bugs is a confrontational hip-hop band from Colorado that often uses industrial beats and noise. Motherhood is a trio from Fredericton, New Brunswick that combines high concept songwriting with playfully intricate art rock. Remain and Sustain is a sort of deathgrind/hardcore band from Denver. To name a few.
Wednesday | March 20
Better Oblivion Community Center, photo by Nik Freitas
What:Metric & Zoé w/July Talk When: Wednesday, 03.20, 6:30 p.m. Where: The Fillmore Auditorium Why: Metric’s latest album, 2018’s Art of Doubt, crafts a complex narrative commentary on the factious times in which we live. Rather than something so heavy-handed and topical., the lyrics explore the psychological and existential gyrations that seem to have been reflected on the backdrop of a time of great peril, tension, hope and a desire for relief knowing that tough decisions can no longer be put off as we sit on the brink of climate disaster and extinction. That, in fact, an overwhelming sense of doubt blooms from everyone’s psyche inspiring extremes of feeling and the expression thereof. Across the album the band channels those feelings and rides out the eddies of the flow of feeling and the maddening peaks of heightened emotion. In the live setting Metric manifests its colorful and passionate songwriting in a cathartic and captivating manner so this might be a tour to catch.
What:Better Oblivion Community Center w/Lala Lala and Christian Lee Hutson When: Wednesday, 03.20, 7 p.m. Where: Gothic Theatre Why:Better Oblivion Community Center is the latest band from Phoebe Bridgers and Conor Oberst. So yes, literate, thoughtful, refreshingly rough around the edges and emotionally vibrant and warm.
Who: Mac Sabbath w/Franks & Deans bluebirdtheater.net/events/detail/359843 When: Thursday, 11.22, 8 p.m. Where: The Bluebird Theater Why: Mac Sabbath performs Black Sabbath covers, with fast food themed lyrics, in the guise of fast food characters from some chain gone dark. Are they really aliens from another dimension like Bizarro or escaped mental patients? Who can say, really. But when Black Sabbath gives you the nod of approval maybe your weirdo cover band has some legitimacy. The group has two official music videos released since its inception in 2014 and a flexi disc for the “Pair-a-Buns” single and nothing else yet since singer Ronald Osborne has declared a complete denial of the existence of technology after the 70s. Why not record or, even more quaint, an 8-track? We may yet see such releases from the mysterious band. But for now, and for purposes of the sheer spectacle of the thing, Mac Sabbath is best seen live.
Sunday | November 25, 2018
J. Hamilton Isaacs, photo by Tom Murphy
Who:Elvis Costello & The Imposters When: Sunday, 11.25, 7 p.m. Where: The Fillmore Auditorium Why: Elvis Costello is probably too famous for any introduction. What he contributed/contributes to music is a gift for perfectly capturing a mood, a moment, a frame of mind with detail and humanity. This doesn’t always mean he’s writing songs that fit in with what some people might think of as the “appropriate” way to think and feel about the subject of the song. You may even listen to one of his songs and think, to put it charitably,“What a jerk!” But that’s the point. Whether a character created for the song or a bit of an abstraction of his actual thoughts, Costello’s songs are compelling because whether or not you share the sentiments the songs are poetic and believable pulling up just shy of being sentimental even if he does often employ a sense of nostalgia. His character sketches are vivid and resonate with an emotive familiarity. Currently the songwriter is touring with his band The Imposters in support of Costello’s 2018 album Look Now.
Who:Centered: Steve Hauschildt, Reighnbeau and J. Hamilton Isaacs When: Sunday, 11.25, 7 p.m. Where: Savoy at Curtis Park Why: Steve Hauschildt probably became first known to a national audience during his 2006-2013 run with experimental electronic trio Emeralds. The group fused ambient music with pop and the minimalist end of Twentieth Century classical music. As a solo artist, Hauschildt has delved further into exploring the possibilities of minimalism in composition and creating an sound environment with depth and texture. His 2018 album Dissolvi is reminiscent of a Squarepusher record with the beautiful level of tonal detail but after any deep house influence. Not an ambient dance record, per se, but it could be considered one of the best. Reighnbeau from Santa Fe, NM is a band that includes Bryce Hample, Colleen Johnson and Madeleine Johnston. So for the uninitiated, heavy hitters in underground ambient and experimental pop. Its sound tends toward an organic tone while employing plenty of sonic material that could only come from a computer or other electronic device. The group has a layered sound suggesting a complex mixture of emotions. J. Hamilton Isaacs has been a fixture of Denver’s experimental music scene for over a decade whether he is often acknowledged for it or not. His own beat-driven electronic experiments blend together sequencing/sampling and modular synthesis. Always different, always interesting.
Who:Textures: Wonderlust, Chromadrift, Crimson Highways When: Sunday, 11.25, 7:30 p.m. Where: Mutiny Information Café Why: This months’ Textures Ambient Showcase features post-rock/ambient soundscape artist Chromadrift whose Drew Miller also composes soundtrack-y music in a more abstract shoegaze vein as Brother Saturn. Also, Daniel Mescher as Crimson Highways uses loops and electronics to compose impressions and textured emotional colorings to transport you away from the tonight’s cold.
Monday | November 26, 2018
Author & Punisher, photo courtesy Relapse Records
Who:Pale Waves w/Kailee Morgue and The Candescents When: Monday, 11.26, 7 p.m. Where: The Bluebird Theater Why: Manchester, UK band Pale Waves doesn’t overtly flout conventional song structure and what makes for solid pop melodies. But the band’s early material, upbeat in tone and pacing, hit some of the same emotional touchstones as artists like CHVRCHES and Lorde. But Pale Waves look like an updated version of a dark post-punk band from the 80s and many of its songs, particularly on the 2018 full-length debut My Mind Makes Noise., explore themes of loss, existential uncertainty and identity with an assurance and sensitivity one might not expect from a pop band with a strong visual aesthetic. About the title, singer Heather Baron-Gracie told us that it is an acknowledgment of how our minds are filled with ideas and emotions and it can sometimes be overwhelming but that we can, to some extent, also choose which noises we amplify and feed. In providing interesting contrasts that challenge assumptions (Goth-ish-presenting band making emotionally rich pop songs, pop songs with deeply melancholic themes), Pale Waves demonstrates to people who care to pay attention that one needn’t adhere to narrow expectations in music or in one’s own life.
Who:Echo & The Bunnymen w/Enation When: Monday, 11.26, 7 p.m. Where: The Paramount Theatre Why: Echo & The Bunnymen didn’t just write that song in Donnie Darko, what was it, “The Killing Moon”? Or for an earlier generation, didn’t just do that Doors cover for the soundtrack to The Lost Boys. “People Are Strange,” though. At any rate, Echo & The Bunnymen for post-punk connoisseurs was one of the most consistently interesting bands of the 80s because until it’s 1987 self-titled album, the one that broke the band to the mainstream, of course, with the hit “Lips Like Sugar,” the group had had a string of fascinating, critically acclaimed records. There was an elegance of sentiment, a poetic sensibility and a deeply imaginative quality to the band’s music. Like it was tapping into the unconscious and creating its own mythology cast in dreamlike detail—shrouded in indigo lights and fog, early morning sunlight and mist. The first four Echo & The Bunnymen records are post-punk canon and for the rest of its career there’s been plenty of strong material, even on 1990’s fan-reviled, Ian McCulloch-less album Reverberation. McCulloch remains an enigmatic, romantic weirdo mystic of rock and roll which some my find confounding at times but, really, don’t we all need someone out there maintaining their own mythology in that way that is not harmful but gives hope to anyone who dared to dream of a more interesting world and had the guts to see making it a reality as an iconic band.
Who:The Body, Author & Punisher and Many Blessings When: Monday, 11.26, 7 p.m. Where: Larimer Lounge Why: Two of the best bands that don’t fit too well into the world of metal or heavy music but don’t really fit into any other realm of music either except for maybe noise are sharing the stage tonight. And with Denver’s Many Blessings, a solo noise project of Primitive Man’s Ethan McCarthy. The Body from Providence, Rhode Island have long blurred any lines between doom, grindcore, hardcore, noise, industrial, electronic pop and ambient music. Just depends on the album. The group has been fairly prolific across its 19 years of existence but perhaps none more so than 2018 when the band produced a split industrial group Uniform as Mental Wounds Not Healing, an early 2018 record I Have Fought Against It, But I Can’t Any Longer (a grinding dirge that never seems to get boring) and the fall release O God who avenges, shine forth. Rise up, Judge of the Earth; pay back to the proud what they deserve. Live, the band unleashes intense energy while keeping it weird. No mean feat and The Body does so brilliantly. Author & Punisher is a one-man industrial band. Tristan Shone is an artist and a mechanical engineer who builds his unique instrumentation. One his early tours he definitely played DIY spaces in Denver but has made a bit of a name for himself outside noisenikdom and recognized for his innovative methods of composition. His latest album, 2018’s Beastland out on Relapse Records, is simultaneously possibly his most accessible and challenging record to date. As a frame of reference, imagine a late 80s Ministry and late 90s Neurosis collaboration album.
Tuesday | November 27, 2018
Street Sects, photo courtesy the artist
Who:Street Sects w/Ten Foot Beast When: Tuesday, 11.27, 8 p.m. Where: Streets of London Why: Street Sects fills the room with fog in order to disorient you already before its barrage of sounds, lights, rhythm and, on occasion, a bladeless chainsaw brought forth to make for a performance designed to take you out of your comfort zone. Is it noise? Industrial? Inspired by confrontational punk? Perhaps specifically by tales of Alan Vega swinging that bike chain at early Suicide shows in New York? Who can say. What is certain is that while its live shows are not short on visceral thrills, its records stand on their own as well. Its latest record, 2018’s The Kicking Mule is like a futuristic industrial noir with darkly amusing and hardboiled titles like “269 Soulmates,” “Suicide By Cop,” “Dial Down the Neon” and “Still Between Lovers.”
Who:Sharone (“I Love You, Goodbye” single release) w/Melody In Heart, Blake George, Sean Hennigan When: Tuesday, 11.27, 7:30 p.m. Where: Seventh Circle Music Collective Why: Sharone Borik debuted as a talented singer-songwriter before launching her dark, hard rock band Sharone & The Wind in 2016. For this night, Borik is releasing her new solo single “I Love You, Goodbye.” Given Borik’s gift for songwriting and performing with a theatrical flair it should be interesting to see how she presents her solo work this time around.
Who:Glenn Jones and Janet Feder When: Tuesday, 11.27, 7 p.m. Where: Baur’s Why: Two of guitar’s avant-garde greats on one bill. Glenn Jones has been a member of experimental rock band Cul de Sac since 1990 but he was also a collaborator and friend of John Fahey and he has written a film score for Roger Corman. His solo work is often very much in the folk vein but more elaborate and imaginative than too much of what passes as folk these days. Janet Feder was born in Boulder, raised in Denver, and has been pushing the guitar envelope in a variety of ways with form and composition for decades now. While her work might rightfully fall under the umbrellas of prog, the avant-garde, experimental folk and modern classical music, her actual songwriting is fairly organic and highly imaginative. This is a rare chance to see both artists on the same bill.
Wednesday | November 28, 2018
Cult Leader, photo by Bobby Cochran
Who:Blockhead w/Yppah, Arms and Sleepers, Mikey Thunder and Jordan Polvina When: Wednesday, 11.28, 8 p.m. Where: Cervantes’ Other Side Why: Tony Simon has been making some of the most interesting and transporting beats in hip-hop for nearly 20 years including his collaborations with Aesop Rock, Ilogic and Murs. His solo releases on the respected Ninja Tune imprint paint a tapestry of New York daydreams of the Big Apple of myth and journeys far beyond to places exotic to a city dweller. His compositions, part immersed in classic sampling tradition of taking bits of jazz and funk records and recontextualizing them, part weaving in experimental electronic music—his own and those possibly borrowed., are immediately captivating and mostly on the downtempo vibe. Live the music can be a bit like the DJ on a laptop sort of affair but on the sound system at Cervantes’ it’ll have a full sound.
Who:Cult Leader, God Mother, Call of the Void and Kenaima When: Wednesday, 11.28, 8 p.m. Where: Lost Lake Why: Salt Lake City’s sludge-grind band Cult Leader recently released its second album A Patient Man. While some of the material is what you might expect of a highly energized band out of its expected realm of music, the group took some hauntingly introspective turns on the record including the track “To: Achlys,” which sounds more like a dire, metallic, brooding post-punk song akin to a late 80s Swans song with a visually stunning music video depicting a man seeking solace in the arms of a stylized figure that resembles a Kali-esque death goddess. The group has been making waves lately and in December is taking Denver-based organo-industrial legends Echo Beds on a short tour. On the bill for this night is the great Denver death-grind outfit Call of the Void and adrenalized mathrcore band Kenaima.
Who:Screwtape EP release w/Noogy, World Movement, Dox and HYFY When: Wednesday, 11.28, 6 p.m. Where: The Oriental Theater Why: Screwtape, one of Denver’s greatest political hardcore bands, is finally releasing its second EP and celebrating the occasion at this show at The Oriental Theater with some of its like-minded peers. By hardcore don’t take that to mean a young band imitating some earlier era of the music but taking those roots as inspiration for making something vital and of the now.
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.
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
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
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, 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.
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, 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
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
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.
Who:Frankie Cosmos w/Lomelda and Ashley Koett When: Thursday, 04.05, 8:30 p.m. Where: The Fox Theatre Why: Frankie Cosmos released its third album Vessel on March 30, 2018. Like it’s predecessors there’s a tender sensibility to the songwriting that recalls the lo-fi introspection of Exile In Guyville period Liz Phair and the peek-into-a-strikingly-insightful diary quality of Casiotone for the Painfully Alone. Sure, Kline had famous parents (Kevin Kline and Phoebe Cates) and was once a member of Porches. But Frankie Cosmos doesn’t sound like it’s resting on any of those laurels. Kline uses everyday details as a vehicle for exploring feelings and thoughts long hidden. The results are a refreshing frankness and intimacy even in the context of a pop song without the overpolishing and overproduction that the musical form often gets.
Who:Glasss Presents the Speakeasy Series 2: Brother Saturn and Vahco When: Thursday, 04.05, 7 p.m. Where: Hooked On Colfax Why: This edition of the new season of the Speakeasy Series (all in the basement of Hooked on Colfax) includes some of the most mind-calming artists of the entire programme. Brother Saturn’s dreamlike soundscapes are an entrancing synthesis of ambient and dream pop. Vahco is the solo project of Vahco Before Horses from Demoncassettecult and Gold Trash. Whereas those other two are more in the realm of noise and experimental electronic music, Vahco is more in the realm of pop music with soulful vocals.
Who:Liza Anne w/Valley Queen and Down Time When: Thursday, 04.05, 7 p.m. Where: Globe Hall Why: Liza Anne’s 2018 album Fine But Dying may sound upbeat and bright and, well, like a conventionally commercial pop record I some ways. But not at all beneath the surface of the music is the fact that, according to a recent interview with Billboard, Anne just laid out her struggles with “panic disorder and depression,” articulating them in a way that could be relatable to almost anyone and hopefully at least putting to rest some of her own anxiety and shame regarding those issues. In putting the struggle in very specific personal terms without sensationalizing it or making it seem like a special taboo subject, Anne brilliantly makes it all seem like something anyone might experience without judgment. Joining Anne for this tour is Los Angeles’ Valley Queen who take a folk/acoustic music foundation to songwriting and make it warm and energetic. There’s plenty of post-neo-Laurel Canyon stuff around in the world today but Valley Queen frontwoman Natalie Carol doesn’t sound like she’s copping someone else’s vibe. Rather, her voice, sometimes quavering from the well of emotion, provides a compelling narrative and vivid imagery. One might compare her in that regard to Esmé Patterson’s own knack for creative storytelling that aims at bigger issues through the language of personal experience.
Who: Ty Segall w/Dirty Few ogdentheatre.com/events/detail/347251
When: Thursday, 04.05, 8 p.m.
Where: The Ogden Theatre
Why: Probably anyone that’s been paying attention to modern rock music knows who Ty Segall at this point. If not, pick up pretty much any of his records (they’re all worth listening to) and you’ll get an idea of what music Segall makes but keep in mind that he is clearly a songwriter who wants to explore a wide variety of tones, moods, dynamics and songwriting styles. On his 2018 album, Freedom’s Goblin, Segall explores a more lush songwriting style without waxing into the fake soul and ersatz R&B that is being peddled a little too much of late. Covering Hot Chocolate’s 1978 hit “Every 1’s a Winner” was an interesting choice for the record but it all fits in with an album that sounds like Segall is trying to create for himself an emotionally comfortable space in which to express feelings that are out of step with some of the more hard-edged rock and roll that some may have come to expect from Segall who is too much of a creative chameleon to ever fully embody, all the better for fans of musicians who evolve whether their fans are ready for the changes or not. People have been trying to pigeonhole Denver’s Dirty Few for any manner of reasons for years as just rock and roll hooligans. And they are that but bottom line, the band actually writes solid, surprisingly thoughtful, songs that fit in the context of a rowdy live show.
Who:Kitty Crimes album release w/GVgrace When: Thursday, 04.05, 8 p.m. Where: Hi-Dive Why: Maria Kohler has been performing as Kitty Crimes for several years now and it seems as though many of her fans never really knew her as a talented musician and singer in various past bands including Houses, Science Partner and Mercuria and the Gem Stars. Kitty Crimes sometimes seemed like a goof and a gimmick. The whole white-presenting woman doing “dirty” rap thing. But Kohler isn’t someone easily clowned and she turned an interesting project into something powerful and well-composed beyond the obvious appeal. Her new record, Crimes of the Kitty, Volume 2 has soul, the expected deft wordplay, personal insight and lush production. For fans of K’Valentine and Kari Faux.
Who:Entrancer, Cities of Earth, Staggered Hooks, Glissline When: Thursday, 04.05, 8 p.m. Where: Syntax Physic Opera Why: This fundraiser for Project Worthmore, an organization dedicated to aiding the refugee community, is also a great chance to catch some of Denver’s most interesting experimental electronic projects. Entrancer’s music is grounded in the production and sensibility of 90s hip-hop and Detroit techno as well as the full breadth and depth of synthesizer music as someone who has more than a passing experience with modular synths. Cities of Earth’s Tangerine Dream-esque IDM sounds like what should be on the soundtrack to a documentary about Warp Records. At least if his 2017 EP Tangra is any indication. Staggered Hooks is probably the latest project from Dean Inman whose up-to-now-most-recent project, Dream Hike, was responsible for some of the most beautifully hypnotic deep house/ambient going. Glissline is the name Tommy Metz (formerly under his given name as well as Iuengliss) is using for his music these days. Metz has a gift for melodies that soothe the mind and his beats seem to employ the interval that releases endorphins. But whatever his music really does, fans of Aphex Twin and Clark should make an effort to see Glissline sometime if not tonight.
Who:Built to Spill w/Rituals of Mine, Black Belt Eagle Scout When: Thursday, 04.05, 7 p.m. Where: Gothic Theatre Why: Coming out of post-punk/post-hardcore band Treepeople, Doug Martsch put together a band that could synthesize his musical interests and a path of sonic curiosity that wouldn’t fully congeal in underground culture in quite the same way until the late 90s/early 2000s. He cited Caustic Resin as an influence and brought that band’s brilliant guitar player into the new band, Built to Spill, on bass as well as Ralf Youtz on drums. The group’s 1993 debut album Ultimate Alternative Wavers was an oblique thumbing of the nose at how their music culture had been co-opted and marketed as product rather than a culture parallel to the mainstream. The music sounded like a blend of Neil Young, Dinosaur Jr (a band clearly influenced by Young) and underground Pacific Northwest rock. But inside all of that, Martsch had found a way to bring in extended guitar jams that were emotionally charged and expressive rather than purely self-indulgent and wanky. The development of that sound and dynamic perhaps reached its apex on Built To Spill’s 1997 masterpiece, Perfect From Now On and the 1999 follow-up, Keep It Like A Secret. Along with the visionary indie pop of the Elephant 6 collective, the bands on Merge Records, K and Kill Rock Stars, and unlikely “alternative rock” star bands post-alternative collapse like Pavement, Built To Spill helped to shape indie rock in the first decade of the 2000s by offering yet another alternative vision to what was being pumped by large commercial outlets for music.
Seeing Built To Spill in 2018 is a bit like a glimpse back to a time when it was more easily possible to have a viable career in music without having to get commercially huge or over compromise or have to fit in with a trendy subgenre of the moment and ride that wave. Sure, BTS has been on Warner Brothers since Perfect From Now On but if they’re being encouraged to get more commercial you sure can’t tell from even its most recent record, 2015’s Untethered Moon. If the group’s showing at Treefort Music Fest 2018 is any indication, the trio is still capable of weaving its gritty, hypnotic magic today. And its sonic DNA is in music of most modern indie rock bands whether those bands know it or not.
Friday | April 6, 2018
Palehorse/Palerider, photo by Tom Murphy
What:Immediate Music Festival When: Friday, 04.06, 7 p.m. Where: Metropolitan State University of Denver Why: The Immediate Music Festival celebrates collaborative improvisation. Throughout the day (for more information click here) there will be workshops on group improvisation, soundpainting, noteworthy avant-garde musician Pauline Oliveros’ presentation Deep Listening. That night, at the King Center, there will be a concert from the avant-garde-improv band Sone which includes some of the local luminaries of that world with Jane Rigler, Janet Feder, Evan Mazunik, Gil Selinger and Mark Harris as well as a performance from Grammy-nominated jazz drummer extraordinaire Matt Wilson.
Who:Dead Meadow w/Mad Alchemy Liquid Light Show, Grass and Palehorse/Palerider When: Friday, 04.06, 8:30 p.m. Where: Globe Hall Why: Dead Meadow is one of the pioneers of the recent psychedelic rock resurgence with its mixture of heavy rock, droning blues, freak folk and densely flowing psychedelia. Read our piece on/interview with Jason Simon of Dead Meadow here. Also on the bill is Palehorse/Palerider, Denver’s own masters of heavy, mind-altering rock that blurs lines between doom, heavy shoegaze and post-rock.
Who:Steve Gordon Art Show When: Friday, 04.06, 6-9 p.m. Where: Vertigo Gallery 960 Santa Fe Why: Master sculptor, painter and drawing artist Steve Gordon is having what may be one of his last art shows into the foreseeable future. Gordon is also a significant artist in Denver’s experimental music world mostly notably with improvisational composition band Animal / object, which often includes Violent Femmes frontman Gordon Gano.
Who:Doug Spencer: Cave Lovers When: Friday, 04.06, 6-11 p.m. Where: Dateline Gallery 3004 Larimer St. Why: This is the latest art show from painter Doug Spencer whose creative use of texture and lighting has made his work desired by connoisseurs of the artform wherein Spencer combines 2D design with 3D, sculptural/diorama elements to create truly unique works. Some may know Spencer as the imaginative guitarist in notable Denver and Fort Collins rock bands Snake Rattle Rattle Snake, Monofog and Sweet Tooth Meat Tooth.
Who:Nocturnal Presents: Exos w/Talien and Alex Whittier When: Friday, 04.06, 11 p.m. – 5 a.m. Where:TBA Why: Nocturnal is a long-running event that puts together deep house/experimental electronic dance events akin to a classic rave. So there will be long sets with the artists listed above going from late night until the early morning.
Who:Slugger, Henry and the Kissingers, Galleries, Pelvis Presley When: Friday, 04.06, 9 p.m. Where: Mutiny Information Cafe Why: After too many bands embraced the less interesting aspects of 60s and 70s rock a little too much a group of bands were bound to come along that embraced the more interesting aspects of that music including original songwriting that isn’t so obviously beholden to an earlier band. This is a show that includes a handful of those groups on the local level including Slugger, the band fronted by former Silver Tone songwriter/guitarist Gabriel Albelo.
Saturday | April 7, 2018
Cut Chemist, photo by Joseph Armario
Who:Cut Chemist w/El Dusty and Chris Karns (Pretty Lights Live Band) When: Saturday, 04.07, 8 p.m. Where: Cervantes’ Masterpiece Ballroom Why: Cut Chemist is perhaps best known for his long term stint as a DJ/turntablist in Jurassic 5 and his involvement in the early era of Ozomatli. His tasteful breaks and ear for unusual and evocative samples brought a an uncommon elegance and depth to Jurassic 5’s beats. But the call to do something outside the context of the influential hip-hop group drew Cut Chemist to a solo career in 2004. His 2006 debut album under his own name was an eclectic and borderline world music and downtempo record called The Audience’s Listening. Since then the turntablist has served as a producer on numerous records, performed live DJ sets including opening for Shakira on her 2007 tour, collaborated with DJ Shadow and, in 2017, started doing a bi-weekly radio show, A Stable Sound, on dublab / 99.1 FM KZUT. In March 2018, Cut Chemist released his second solo album, Die Cut. The record continues Cut Chemist’s masterful treatment of samples into songs with a Dilla-esque use of motes of white noise in the mix, samples processed to sound like you’re getting intermittent transmissions of old radio programs, vintage television shows and commercials and ambient IDM glitch-hop.
Who:Nina Storey w/Michael and Sarah Hornbuckle When: Saturday, 04.07, 7 p.m. Where: Soiled Dove Underground Why: Nina Storey spent years cultivating her sound, songwriting and live show in Denver before relocating to Los Angeles in the 2000s. If you caught Storey in the 90s you probably got to see a singer whose voice was perfectly suited to the bluesy rock music she was writing then. Also, that her powerful voice seemed unlikely coming from someone with such a relatively small frame. Since then (and likely even at that time), Storey has explored the range of her voice and where it fit in and discovered it was well-suited to jazz and R&B as well. On her most recent full-length album, 2013’s Think Twice, Storey blended all her musical impulses into well-crafted modern pop songs. These days Storey still comes through Denver and on this date she is joined by local luminaries in the Denver blues world, Michael and Sarah Hornbuckle.
Who:Suss Law, Rotstrotter, Sentry Dogs, Berated and Florida Man When: Saturday, 04.07, 8 p.m. Where: Bar Bar / Carioca Café Why: Portland, Oregon’s Suss Law could be where power violence, noise and grindcore meet. Its recently released seven inch is a chaotic and relentless assault on the senses with few concessions to accessibility. If you go to this show you can also catch local grind/hardcore luminaries like Rotstrotter and Sentry Dogs. And given the set times of most of these groups, who don’t waste our time by dragging things out, the show may be over by midnight even with five bands.
Monday | April 9, 2018
Acid Mothers Temple circa 2013, photo by Tom Murphy
Who:Acid Mothers Temple w/Yoo Doo Right and Emerald Siam When: Monday, 04.09, 7 p.m. Where: Larimer Lounge Why: Acid Mothers Temple in its Melting Paraiso U.F.O. incarnation is now on the Electric Dream Ecstasy Tour. The long-running Japanese psychedelic rock band manages to continuously bring a unique show every tour because its roots can be traced back mainly back to fairly experimental western music whether rock or avant-garde (i.e. Can, Karlheinz Stockhausen and King Crimson) but members of the band past and present have been instrumental, literally and figuratively, in comprising and shaping underground music and noise in Japan. The composition of the band’s songs is influenced more by concept than technique. It is bombastic and wild and simultaneously as gorgeous and as mysterious as an other-dimensional spirit incarnate. A list of the band members and their official role and their real title clues you into the fact that leader Kawabata Makoto has a sense of humor to match his imagination and technical prowess as a musician.
Kawabata Makoto : guitar, voice, synth, voice, speed guru
Higashi Hiroshi : synthesizer, harp, noodle god
Jyonson Tsu : vocal, guitar, bouzouki, electronics, midnight whistler
Satoshima Nani : drums, another dimension
Wolf : bass, space & time
Prepare to be taken to otherworldly emotional spaces during the show if you surrender to the music some. Also on the bill is Denver’s Emerald Siam which has become refreshingly difficult to pigeonhole. Ever since singer/guitarist Kurt Ottaway and the rest of the band has seemingly tapped deeper into a creative muse, the songs have gotten darker yet more open and spacious. Expect a full-length release in 2018.
Who: Primitive Man, Spectral Voice, Prison Glue and Cadaver Dog When: Monday, 04.09, 9 p.m. Where: Syntax Physic Opera Why: Primitive Man is celebrating its return from a long tour with this show at Syntax with like-minded death/doom/grind band Spectra Voice. Joining both bands will be hardcore band Cadaver Dog as well as noise/performance artist Prison Glue.
Tuesday | April 10, 2018
Luna, photo courtesy Grandstand Media
Who:Luna w/Flaural When: Tuesday, 04.10, 8 p.m. Where: Fox Theatre Why: Luna split for around ten years after its 2005 tour. The disappointment and despair and reality of the music industry at that time is documented in the 2006 film Tell Me Do You Miss Me. If you got to see Luna on that until now final tour, those feelings radiated from singer/guitarist Dean Wareham’s eyes when he looked out into the crowd. And not just because the late-night-hours lush pop that has been Luna’s hallmark ever since Wareham left influential dream pop band Galaxie 500 (which also never got its due during its time together or much since except by aficionados of deeply evocative, melancholy and ethereal gorgeous guitar rock). Wareham genuinely seemed like he was looking out on the last days of his career with plenty of life left to lead knowing he’d created some great music that would only be appreciated in the past tense. You couldn’t help but feel for him unless you’re one of those people for whom music is merely entertainment made not by humans but by functionaries of some kind of Distraction Industrial Complex.
But Wareham didn’t give up. He wrote music with then bandmate now wife Britta Phillips as well as noteworthy solo albums. He also wrote one of the best and most well-written and thoughtful rock autobiographies of all time with 2008’s Black Postcards. The book reads like all the music Wareham has been a part of making, warm and not detached but able to examine one’s feelings and intimate thoughts and express them in a way that is immediate relatable with a passionate yet gentle spirit even when the music is in moments of high feeling. Luna reconvened in 2015 and in 2017 released an album of interesting and not predictable covers called A Sentimental Education as well as an EP of originals, A Place of Greater Safety. That latter being some of the best music Luna has yet released so this would be a tour on which to catch one of the great rock bands of the last 27 years.
Who:Animal / object live on KGNU Radio Kabaret: Kurt Bauer, Steven Gordon, George Figgs and Karen Sheridan When: Tuesday, 04.10, 7-8 p.m. Where: Streaming on KGNU.org and broadcast on radio Why: Animal / object is Denver’s premiere avant-garde acoustic instrument band. For the last several years the group around the current core of Kurt Bauer, Steven Gordon has had a prolific and varied recorded output captured with various other noteworthy collaborators including the likes of Gordon Gano of the Violent Femmes, Gordon Pryor, Paul Mimlitsch and for this show, Karen Sheridan formerly of all-female deathrock band 1980s Denver band Your Funeral, experimental rock band Corpses as Bedmates and R.O.C., a kind of deconstructionist pop band that incorporates elements of electronic industrial music and sampling. Over the weekend Sheridan did vocals for an incantation at Steven Gordon’s art show at Vertigo Gallery. So tune in to KGNU for this special performance from one of Denver’s great experimental bands.
Who:Lo Moon w/Kraus When: Tuesday, 04.10, 8 p.m. Where: Hi-Dive Why: Lo Moon spent a great deal of time developing and percolating its sound and then waiting for the right opportunity and format to even let out its September 2016 single “Loveless.” A little under a year and a half later, the full-length self-titled album comes out on on Sony. The single came out at a time when many of the dream pop and neo-shoegaze bands were not drawing on the same inspirations as Lo Moon so it seemed especially sophisticated and sonically and emotionally deep by comparison. The full-length album including “Loveless” doesn’t capitalize on the promise of the single so much as showcase a sound the band had cultivated and perfected in this first stage of its development as a band. The record didn’t exactly blow the minds of critics but it was interesting to see a band not succumb to the pressure of putting out its music as quickly as possible, given the avenues in which to do so, before developing that music to the point it needed to be and without fully submitting to the de-mystifying tendency of the social media game most bands use to garner any excitement for its new material these days. Lo Moon distinguished itself playing larger venues when it toured with Ride in 2017 and getting to see a band with this large a sound on the small stage now would be a great time to see a group that may not be regularly playing such small clubs in the future.
Who:Timber Timbre w/Thor & Friends When: Tuesday, 04.10, 7 p.m. Where: Globe Hall Why: Timber Timbre has been described as psychedelic folk. But if that’s the case then its 2017 album, Sincerely, Future Pollution is more brooding and darker than that designation would suggest. More akin to Midlake’s artistically ambitious compositions or those of Six Organs of Admittance than Vetiver and early Animal Collective. Thor & Friends is a band lead by Thor Harris who some may know from his stints in Shearwater, Swans and Bill Callahan. Though largely known for his skills with a broad spectrum of percussion instruments, Harris is a multifaceted artist and multi-instrumentalist and this band displays that especially well with creative use of marimba prominent in the mix of percussion heavy, yet gently beautiful and atmospheric music.
Wednesday | April 11, 2018
Ethan McCarthy of Vermin Womb performing as Many Blessings in 2017, photo by Tom Murphy
Who:Wake, Vermin Womb, Call of the Void and Full Bore When: Wednesday, 04.11, 8 p.m. Where: Hi-Dive Why: Wake is a deathgrind band from Calgary, Canada. Currently on tour in support of its towering, brutal 2018 album Misery Rites, Wake is joined on this Denver date by like-minded locals. Vermin Womb is a band that includes Ethan McCarthy from Primitive Man as well as former Clinging to the Trees of a Forest Fire drummer J.P. Damron. Call of the Void took the blunt, abrupt, savage dynamic of deathgrind to another level of creative sonic violence.
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