Mat Brinkman – Queen City Sounds and Art

Best Shows in Denver and Beyond December 2024

**Xeno & Oaklander perform at Hi-Dive on December 12, 2024, photo by Liz Wendelbo**

Sunday | 12.01
What: Machete Mouth, Joseph Lamar, S.T3V
When: 7
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: An evening of the best local, left-field/experimental R&B. Go and witness the soulful downtempo ambient style of Machete Mouth, the IDM psychedelic soul performance art leanings of Joseph Lamar and indie rock/shoegaze/abstract folk sounds of S.T3V.

Wednesday | 12.04
What: Anthony Raneri w/Brother Bird
When: 7
Where: The Marquis Theater
Why: Anthony Raneri is perhaps better known for being the singer and songwriter in punk/emo band Bayside. But his solo work is more countrified yet atmospheric and his latest record Everyday Royalty is an introspective reckoning with how one’s life suddenly feels like your mistakes or at least the areas you’ve been neglecting more than you realize catch up to you emotionally, psychologically and even physically. Whereas Raneri’s brash and cathartic songwriting has its own psychological cleansing on stage, Brother Bird’s songs are more delicate and in the realm of folk but her production is around the edges gives the songwriter’s music a cinematic yet intimate quality that unfolds across a song like her own kind of confessional and self-examination that too feels relatable on a very human level of navigating life with an imperfect set of tools and capacities to do so.

Thursday | 12.05
What: Machine Girl w/Lightning Bolt and Kill Alters
When: 7
Where: Summit Music Hall
Why: For over a decade Machine Girl has been developing its own brand of breakcore/digital hardcore/glitch industrial sound. Famously the duo performed a show at a house in Denver and caved in the floor because of the intensity of the dancing. And the group does go hard but its electronic soundscapes are very in the vein of drum and bass and jungle with the relentless beats and tranquil/chill passages. Lightning Bolt is the legendary noise rock band that got started in Providence, Rhode Island in 1994. Along with other local music weirdos like artist and former member of Mindflayer and Forcefield Matt Brinkman Brian Chippendale and Brian Gibson of Lightning Bolt formed the iconic and influential DIY space Fort Thunder. In its 30 years together Lightning Bolt has been known for preferring to perform at unconventional spaces if appropriate and available and if not, turning a more conventional venue into something of a performance art event with its frenetic and borderline chaotic live shows that often feel like the noise rock equivalent of free jazz or conceptual as much as musical use of noise incorporating the energy of everyone that shows up.

Friday | 12.06
What: Greet Death w/Cherished and Prize Horse
When: 8
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Greet Death made its reputation as a band that fused heaviness with ethereal shoegaze tonality. But since then its music has drifted in even more melodic and melancholic. More slowcore in its arrangements and thus hazily psychedelic but not bereft of a sonic freakout when the moment calls for it. Opening the show is Denver’s post-punk-turned-shoegaze band Cherished whose lyrics give a glimpse into a side of America all of us probably recognize but with a perspective that’s very real and non-judgmental. Prize Horse from Minneapolis has a sound that sits at the crux of shoegaze, post-rock and the more interesting 90s emo.

Friday | 12.06
What: A Place For Owls, Corsicana and INNS
When: 7:30
Where: The Skylark Lounge
Why: A Place For Owls is refreshingly a raw and heart on sleeve emo band of the current wave variety meaning its influences span beyond the influx of math rock and vulnerability and occasional forays into atonality. APFO’s guitar work is elegant and inviting and its whole vibe is one inviting listeners to share in these previously private moments that might help to illuminate one’s own feelings about complicated situations. Corsicana is the dream pop band from Denver.

Maria Bamford, photo from mariabamford.com

Friday | 12.06
What: Maria Bamford
When: 6:30
Where: The Paramount Theatre
Why: Maria Bamford is one of the great, living stand-up comedians whose surreal yet sharply observed humor has shed a light on American folly and the darkly absurd side of capitalism and wellness culture. Part of Bamford’s appeal is how open and vulnerable she is regarding her own struggles with mental health and trying to fit in with a warped and demented culture and presents it with her inimitable style.

King Cardinal, photo from kingcardinal.com

Saturday | 12.07
What: King Cardinal
When: 10 am
Where: Swallow Hill
Why: It is a free show but it’ll be one of Denver’s better Americana/roots rock bands, King Cardinal. 2024, though, saw the release of he band’s most recent album Land Lines which waxes well into the realm of cosmic country at times but otherwise is full of the band’s well crafted story songs and uplifting presentation.

Saturday | 12.07
What: Weird Al Qaida w/Pythian Whispers
When: 9:30
Where: Mutiny Information Cafe
Why: Experimental psychedelic noise band Weird Al Qaida makes a rare appearance in the basement of the new location of Mutiny Information Cafe. Expect multi-media performance elements, pitch shifted vocals and a fusion of psychedelic folk, art rock and outsider pop. Opening is psychedelic ambient and noise project Pythian Whispers which includes Tom Murphy who is writing this.

Saturday | 12.07
What: Nova Fest: Church Fire, Night Fishing, The Photo Atlas, Post/War and Gifter 8 at Hi-Dive
When: 8
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Nova Fest returns with a stacked lineup including industrial dance revolutionaries Church Fire, psych doom band Night Fishing, the resurrected dance punk band The Photo Atlas back from Denver’s 2000s indie rock heyday and the shoegaze-y Post/War.

Thursday | 12.12
What: Franz Ferdinand w/almost monday and Losers Club
When: 6
Where: The Ogden Theatre
Why: The new Franz Ferdinand album The Human Fear doesn’t come out until January 10, 2025 but for this show there’s a better than half a chance you’ll get to see some of that material live. The Scottish post-punk band first made major waves with its 2004 self-titled album and breakout single “Take Me Out.” The then post-punk revival was well under way and the group got lumped in with “dance punk” perhaps not unjustifiably and its subsequent albums proved the band had more in their repertoire than a trendy style. Its funky power pop has had underpinnings of influence from literature and dub and has evolved in ways that have refreshingly not been so obvious. For example the 2015 album as FFS when the band merged with glam and art rock legends Sparks for a unique album for which they toured doing sets of their own and together as the supergroup. There’s something vital in what the band has had to offer from the beginning and its live shows have been proof positive.

Xeno & Oaklander in 2022, photo by Tom Murphy

Thursday | 12.12
What: Xeno & Oaklander w/Spiritual Poison and Terravault Network
When: 7
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Modern cold wave legends Xeno & Oaklander return to Denver for a show at Hi-Dive in support of its latest album Via Negativa (in the doorway light). The duo has innovated in its use of analog and digital synthesis to craft evocative soundscapes as conceptual pop songs since its 2004 inception and the new record is reminiscent of what might happen if Chris & Cosey and Giorgio Moroder collaborated on an album of gorgeously icy synthpop.

Thursday | 12.12
What: David Eugene Edwards w/Logan Farmer
When: 8: 30
Where: Ophelia’s Electric Soapbox
Why: David Eugene Edwards established his dark folk and post-punk bonafides as a member of influential Gothic Americana band 16 Horsepower and further with Wovenhand. His 2023 solo album Hyacinth is imbued with the kind of gravitas and grandeur one has come to expect from the songwriter and its lush arrangements don’t feel stripped down even if not expressed with the same level of sturm and drang as his other projects. The emotional intensity and vibrant poetic sensibility and insight is very much running through the songs. Opening the show is Fort Collins-based songwriter Logan Farmer whose luminously atmospheric variety of folk songcraft is transporting and soothing. His most recent album 2022’s A Mold For The Bell includes contributions from avant-garde harpist Mary Lattimore and saxophonist Joseph Shabason. It’s an album of great subtlety, nuance of expression and great depth of mood that rewards patient listening.

Limbwrecker in 2023, photo by Tom Murphy

Saturday | 12.14
What: Limbwrecker (final show) w/Sugar Skulls & Marigolds, Rico Predicate and Corpsewhale
When: 8
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Denver-based grind/powerviolence band Limbwrecker is taking the stage one final time for a set of furiously noisy and cathartic, metallic post-hardcore and confrontational antics. They will be joined by fellow perpetrators of sonic violence with crafters of epic, instrumental, post-metal journeys Sugar Skulls & Marigolds, death grind thrashers Rico Predicate and industrial noise artist Corpsewhale.

Sunday | 12.15
What: Church Car, Pink Lady Monster, The Trappings, Hippies Wearing Muzzles
When: 7:30
Where: The Skylark Lounge Bobcat Room
Why: Church Car might be the new manifestation of avant-garage soul artist Big Daddy Mugglestone but don’t bother trying to run the new name through a search engine. There are plenty of other reasons to go to this show like to see the spectacular No Wave free jazz dream psychedelia group Pink Lady Monster and blend of allure and menace. Hippies Wearing Muzzles is the solo analog synth composition project of Lee Evans who some may know from his long tenure as the bassist in indie pop group Kissing Party. The Trappings is a lo-fi experimental pop project of Adam Baumeister, the man behind the lathe cut imprint Meep Records and his own music is worth a deep dive in its own right for the sprawling and exploratory nuggets of imaginative music making therein.

Monday | 12.16
What: Emma Ruth Rundle w/Stonefront Church
When: 7
Where: The Bluebird Theater
Why: Emma Ruth Rundle has made a name for herself as a writer of richly emotional and introspective, darkly atmospheric songs that blur and break the edges of strict genre. In her more recent albums Rundle’s gift for weaving soundscape-y, even ambient folk expressions of how the inner life finds resonance with the mythical in a synergistic and transformative way. Her most recent album, 2022’s EG2: Dowsing Voice, seemed to draw upon deserty sounds and textures to delve into themes of ancient trauma and self-rediscovery.

Lanx Borealist in 2015, photo by Tom Murphy

Thursday | 12.19
What: Weirdo Music: Rooster Jake, Lanx Borealis, Brotherhood of Machines
When: 7
Where: Fort Greene
Why: This showcase of local experimental music will feature the left field hip-hop of Rooster Jake, the synth-driven and organic soundscapes of Lanx Borealis and Brotherhood of Machines’ deep house/abstract electronic dance oriented compositions.

Vatican Vamps, photo courtesy the artists

Saturday | 12.21
What: New Verbs w/Cactusheads and Vatican Vamps https://globehall.com/event/new-verbs-w-cactusheads-vatican-vamps/globe-hall/denver-colorado/
When: 7
Where: Globe Hall
Why: New Verbs are an indie rock band from Denver/Boulder who if you dissect their sound a bit you’ll hear hints of the influence of The Fall, Deerhunter and 2010’s psych rock. Maybe Cactusheads are literally operating out of a garage in preparing to take the stage, like many bands, its musical roots seem to have at least evolved beyond the ragged amateurishness of well-intentioned miscreants into writing solid melodic hooks to go along with the grit. Vatican Vamps are a post-punk band from Denver that released its self-titled debut full length in March 2024 showcasing its dusky, atmospheric and earnestly weighty post-punk.

Saturday | 12.21
What: Broken Record, Curious Things, Replica City and The Gentlys
When: 7
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Broken Record blurs the line between melodic post-hardcore and shoegaze with delicate emotional colorings. Curious Things is a trio of former members of The Gamits, The Dead Girls and Lawsuit Models whose songs are an appealing blend of power pop and emo. Replica City delivers a noisy, angular post-punk post-hardcore style with vocal performances both vulnerable and confrontational. The Gently’s is the latest band to include Dameon Merkl, the charismatic frontman of dark Americana legends Bad Luck City and Lost Walks.

Saturday | 12.28
What: Cheap Perfume, Arson Charge, Lost Relics and Brass Tags
When: 7
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: At the top of the bill is political/feminist punk band Cheap Perfume with its heartfelt and often refreshingly wickedly and pointedly humorous lyrics still incredibly relevant in light of the seeming slide of world society in the past few years steeply in the wrong direction. Arson Charge is a punk band including members of other acts from Denver including SPELLS singer Ben Roy. Brass Tags is a post-hardcore band in the vein of melodic practitioners of noisy punk like Jawbox. Lost Relics split the difference between sludge metal akin to Melvins and heavy noise rock reminiscent of Unsane.

Slim Cessna’s Auto Club in 2023, photo by Tom Murphy

Monday and Tuesday | 12.30 and 12.31
What: Slim Cessna’s Auto Club w/Rattlesnake Milk and DJ Ryan Wong
When: 8
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Denver pioneers of Gothic Americana Slim Cessna’s Auto Club play their two night run at the Hi-Dive. If you’ve seen the group in the past several years it’s become obvious the Gothic part is perhaps less accurate than comparing the live show and music to a kind of Western Vaudeville with music inspired by literature and theater infused with local cultural flavor and a flair for the dramatic and inventive, lively songwriting that is as life affirming as it draws upon any traditional sounds and style. Rattlesnake Milk from Texas is straight up cowboy western plains style country music.

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

SoftKill_JoannaStawnicka1_900 — Soft Kill, photo by Joanna Stawnicka

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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