Midwife – Page 2 – Queen City Sounds and Art

Best Shows in Denver and Beyond January 2025

**Oryx performs at Hi-Dive on January 10, 2025, photo courtesy the artists**

Friday | 01.03
What: RAREBYRD$ album release w/Machu Linea and Shocker Mom
When: 9pm
Where: Roxy on Broadway
Why: RAREBYRD$ is an experimental hip-hop group from Denver whose mix of sensuous soundscapes, earthy romanticism and radical compassion and sensitivity has produced a powerful and playful body of work that hits deep. This show ushers in the release of its first album on vinyl with Pa$$-A-FiSt. On hand for this show is electronic pop producer and DJ extraordinaire Machu Linea and his creatively imaginative R&B-inflected songwriting as well as ambient indie pop genius Shocker Mom.

Brian Posehn, photo from brianposehn.com

Thursday-Saturday | 01.09-01.11
What: Brian Posehn
When: Varies by date
Where: Comedy Works Denver
Why: Brian Posehn is an active and prolific whose career spans decades including doing some writing and performing on the beloved comedy show Mr. Show. He’s had parts in The Big Bang Theory, The Mandalorian, Lady Dynamite, New Girl and he’s been in films like Devil’s Rejects and Uncle Nick. But his comedy that is partly surreal and confessional spanning subjects from personal issues, nerddom and his status as a lifelong metalhead. There’s something charming and immediately relatable to Posehn’s delivery that makes even his more playfully transgressive material accessible.

Oryx in 2021, photo courtesy the artists

Friday | 01.10
What: Oryx, Midwife, Many Blessings and Aridus
When: 8
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Oryx is the doom/sludge band from Denver that recently released its latest album 2024’s Primordial Sky (available through the group’s Bandcamp digitally and on cassette and through Translation Loss on limited, colored vinyl editions). Starting out as a the duo of guitarist, vocalist, synth player Thomas Davis and drummer Abigail Davis, Oryx recently added bassist Joshua Kauffman who contributed to the writing of the new record. The sounds of the new release are more open and cavernous than the previous Oryx offerings which were inspired forays into brutal yet epic and cathartic compositions blurring the line between grind, doom and Oryx’s own style that incorporated unconventional rhythms and a heaviness that was dense yet dynamic. The new album is a commentary on the hubris of our civilization seem built on a bedrock of endless consumption at the expense of all. Also on this bill is “heaven metal” artist Midwife whose immersive soundscapes of processed guitar and vocals are like if folk music was being transmitted from a future existing in the consequences of current human hubris but expressed from deep emotional places processing despair and loss. Many Blessings is the solo harsh noise project of Primitive Man guitarist and vocalist Ethan McCarthy. Aridus is a moody black metal band from Santa Fe that includes Galen Baudhuin who contributes to the live lineup of influential “Cascadian black metal” legends Wolves in the Throne Room.

Saturday | 01.11
What: Celebrate the Life of David Dinsmore featuring Judge Roughneck and Lost Dog Ensemble (vinyl release party) as well as Tivoli Club Brass Band and guests.
When: 6:30
Where: The Oriental Theater
Why: The late David Dinsmore passed away in 2024 suddenly due to health complications when he was on the verge of doing more music of a wide spectrum of expression. He was of course the long time trombone player in the great jazz ska funk band Judge Roughneck, he was a singer and musician in Tom Waits tribute band Lost Dog Ensemble, he performed experimental music in various projects including Bowshock. He was a friend to many in the local scene and certainly a fan of supporter. What isn’t obvious is his broad taste in music and his willingness to get out and see new music regularly, weekly. He was someone who isn’t often celebrated but is one of the true linchpins in the music scene, some of the social connective tissue in one person and he is already greatly missed. This show is a celebration of his life with performances from a couple of his old bands.

Saturday | 01.11
What: Boot Gun, Ipecac and Radio Fluke
When: 8
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Boot Gun isn’t just some classic rock revival band though that’s certainly one of the flavors of its music. Its members have absorbed modern psychedelic garage rock and a touch of prog. But its vocals are at least as strong as the musicianship and it seems obvious someone in the band has spent some time listening to a lot of soul records and southern blues rock. Ipecac similarly is hard to pigeonhole as purveyors of fuzzy hard rock with fiery musicianship and a charismatic, soulful vocalist but all of that is what makes the group noteworthy in the realm of music taking inspiration from another era.

Thursday | 01.16
What: Pink Lady Monster, Ray Diess, Part Weapon and Babybaby
When: 7
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Pink Lady Monster is like the reincarnation of both a No Wave band and an avant-garde glam rock band with the performance art aspect very part of the delivery of the music. Ray Diess likewise incorporates performance art into his experimental, hyperpop strangeness. Part Weapon actually fuses psych rock, shoegaze and post-rock into a cohesive whole that isn’t a boring mish mash of elements or a derivative manifestation of any of them. BabyBaby is what happens when someone who has spent time making more conventional music with others lets loose and crafts gorgeously entrancing experimental electronic pop like something from the memory of blissful dreams.

Teacup Gorilla, photo courtesy the artists

Friday-Saturday | 01.17-02.01
What: JANE/EYRE with live music from Teacup Gorilla
When: See link for dates and times.
Where: Buntport Theater 717 Lipan St.
Why: Denver-based theater production troupe Grapefruit Lab is putting on an encore run of its debut full-length show JANE/EYRE, a queer exploration of Charlotte Brontë’s 1847 novel of the same name. The show includes musical performances by art folk/indie pop group Teacup Gorilla with songs written by the band and former Bad Luck City, current The Gentlys frontman Dameon Merkl. The multimedia show in its first run was an inspired examination of issues of class, religion, gender identity and sexuality. This remount of the show also celebrates the release of Teacup Gorilla’s debut full-length album also titled JANE/EYRE now available on digital download, streaming and limited edition vinyl.

Saturday | 01.18
What: ABANDONS, Church Fire, Oyarsa
When: 8
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: With its new album Liminal Heart, Denver instrumental, ambient post-metal band ABANDONS has made a great stylistic leap forward. Its earlier work didn’t fit into a neat and easy category with songs that seemed as informed by Pelican and Isis as Slint and 90s slowcore, especially live. With the new record the music is more deeply atmospheric and meditative with even greater attention paid to soundscaping details in the composition and the recording. The band lets tones hang and drift organically, setting them in motion and playing into where the sounds carry the melody. Fans of Mogwai will appreciate how ABANDONS now seems to embrace even more a richly moody dynamic to the way the songs unfold.

Saturday | 01.18
What: ZEPHR Record Release w/Tuff Bluff and Black Dots
When: 9
Where: The Squire Lounge
Why: Heart on sleeve punk trip ZEPHR is releasing its latest album at this show sharing the stage with power pop/garage punk greats Tuff Bluff fronted by former Pin Downs and The Manxx guitarist and singer Sara Fischer and pop punk inflected quartet Black Dots. It’ll be an evening of music that reflects and represents an era of Denver punk that was a bit more diverse and cohesive.

Saturday | 01.18
What: Ashes Fallen, Redwing Blackbird, Hypersomnia
When: 8
Where: The Skylark Lounge Bobcat Club
Why: Ashes Fallen is a three piece post-punk band from California whose sound incorporates New Wave-esque keyboard work and slightly quavering Goth rock style vocals. But its guitar work and gift for moody, icy synth melodies set it apart from a cookie cutter modern darkwave band. Redwing Blackbird is a similarly-minded duo but Paul Baker’s guitar style is more in line with the vibrantly moody, melodicism of The Cure and a touch of shoegaze soundscaping. Hypersomnia is an electro darkwave dance project from Colorado Springs seemingly influenced by classic EBM but without waxing into future pop.

TopHouse, photo by Electric Peak Creative

Saturday | 01.18
What: TopHouse w/The Wildwoods
When: 7
Where: The Ogden Theatre
Why: TopHouse will release its new EP Promise on February 14, 2025 and this show will likely give you an early exposure to that music aside. The band started off in Missoula, Montana but relocated to Nashville where the prospects for developing its blend of bluegrass, Americana and chamber pop more fully among a wider range of peers and for larger audiences in a place where music the music industry is long established and robust. The band’s recorded output seems to reflect the sonic clarity and the intimacy of the live show with its lively and detailed instrumentation captured as perfectly as its uplifting vocals.

Lana Del Rabies, photo courtesy the artist

Monday | 01.20
What: God Is War, Lana Del Rabies, MPW, Maltreatment, Ethan Lee McCarthy and Ashen Glaze
When: 7
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: God Is War is a noise/power electronics artist from Los Angeles whose aggressive, industrial style is also menacing and more layered in its composition of atmospheric layers than a more straight ahead artist operating in similar spheres of music. Lana Del Rabies is an artist that is refreshingly challenging to genre tag. Her ritualistic drones, industrial noise atmospherics and intense and theatrical live performances are cathartic and mesmerizing. Fans of HIDE and Lingua Ignota should definitely check out her music and go to this show. Maltreatment is the solo harsh noise project of Brandon Artus from death/grind group Vermin Womb. MPW is an electro-harsh noise and tape manipulation artist from Denver. Ethan Lee McCarthy will be doing some noise of his own that doesn’t fall under the aegis of his Many Blessings or Spiritual Poison projects. Ashen Glaze’s own compositions fall under the umbrella of noise but with his clear vocals and pounding, disintegrating rhythms and overtly industrial beats his stuff is more akin to a Justin Broadrick project of Omaha’s CBN.

Thursday-Saturday | 01.23-01.25
What: Phil Hanley
When: Varies by date
Where: Comedy Works Denver
Why: Phil Hanley is a comedian from Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada who worked as model in New York and Europe before trying his hand at stand-up. Now Hanley tours regularly and his crowd work videos are among the best you can find online showcasing his gift for turning awkward moments and unpretentious human insight into great moments of shared humor and absurdity.

Ghosts of Glaciers, photo courtesy the artists

Friday | 01.24
What: Ghosts of Glaciers, Palehorse/Palerider and Clarion Void
When: 8
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Ghosts of Glaciers released its latest album Eternal in October 2024 and its searching, wandering, drifting aspects of its sounds give the music an enigmatic quality suggestive of the title of the album. But not to worry, the band soars off into the fiery post-rock flourishes that have been the hallmark of its music since it evolved out of its earlier doom metal inclinations. But the band has always been different from many of its peers in being inspired in part by experimental, progressive metal bands and being capable of shifting back from intense and forward charging riffs into almost ambient tranquility with a vulnerable grace. Also on the bill is the current incarnation of heavy desert shoegaze band Palehorse/Palerider who also buck expectations with songs that sure fit what you might expect but the imagination behind the songwriting makes a difference as evidenced by previous shows in which the band had an almost tribal musical configuration in its rhythms and the execution of its instrumentation. Clarion Void’s death sludge sound seems to have been tempered by the sludgy waters of a time in heavy music when stoner metal seemed overly abundant and these guys just took that foundation and gave it some edge without losing the melody.

Alan Sparhawk, photo by Sophia Photo Co.

Saturday | 01.25
What: Alan Sparkhawk’s The White Roses Tour w/Circuit des Yeux
When: 8
Where: The Bluebird Theater
Why: Alan Sparhawk’s 2024 album White Roses, My God is to most people familiar with his legendary slowcore band Low a drastic departure. But Low’s last two albums were part of a series of departures from expectation and the most experimental of the band’s career and for some the group’s best and most daring releases to date. For this second solo album Sparhawk couldn’t simply do what was expected of him. He seems to have took a deep dive into the realm of hyper pop, psychedelic IDM, trap and whatever amalgamation of all of that is manifest in the music of 100 gecs and SOPHIE. But true to form Sparhawk has created a unique piece of work that may not be fully appreciated by fans of Low or anyone with narrow expectations of what Sparhawk “should” be doing. There is a playful and alien beauty to the songs that exults in irreverent humor and a self-aware vulnerability that challenges listeners to set aside presumptions and indulge in experiencing something new and unexpected from a familiar artist who has done a ton of soul searching and the processing of grief and seems to have concluded that to indulge divergent creative instincts that feel like a renewed self and the freedom to reinvent is the best and most fulfilling path forward after some of the worst pain of one’s life has crashed into your psyche.

Ted Leo and the Pharmacists, phot by Kyle Cassidy, from the band’s Wikipedia page

Saturday | 01.25
What: Ted Leo and the Pharmacists – Shake the Sheets 20th Anniversary
When: 7
Where: The Oriental Theater
Why: Ted Leo and the Pharmacists have been touring for the 20 year anniversary of the 2004 release of their Shake the Sheets album. That record came out right before things started completely collapsing for the Lookout! Records imprint and for the band marked a sound that was a complete unification of its punk and indie rock impulses. Its exuberant, melodic punk was not the pop punk that was the bread and butter of the label and arguably the band’s creative peak to date with songs that are political and non-didactic.

Extra Kool and Time, photo by Tom Murphy

Wednesday | 01.29
What: Extra Kool and Time vinyl release party for The Grimies w/Box State University, Helga Pataki and Preacher vs. Choir
When: 8
Where: The Crypt
Why: Extra Kool and Time are two of the most gifted lyricists and rappers in Denver of recent years but whose work has not often been championed in local much less national press and culture. Years ago they worked on tracks together in a project they called The Grimies with singles appearing on obscure compilations now challenging to track down. But separately and contributing to each other’s work they have written poignantly personal and vulnerable, insightful and emotional songs about life and society that are vibrant and heartbreaking. Time has frequently released music with the brilliant producer AwareNess as the experimental hip-hop duo Calm. and along with Extra Kool and artists under the label umbrella of The Dirty Laboratory they were a force in alternative hip-hop in the 2000s. That world imploded or faded away in “commercial relevance” if not in impact in influence around the 2010s but the legacy of that time has continued in the more interesting hip-hop of today and certainly Time and Extra Kool didn’t stop creating powerful work just because the crumbling music culture wasn’t shining as much of a spotlight on alternative hip-hop for a long time. In September 2024 Extra Kool and Time finally released their fully collaborative album titled The Grimies. It’s full of vivid and emotionally resonant bars traded by both artists with tales of Denver and existential exploration of what endures in the mind and heart long term, the ghosts that haunt us, our communities and our various cultures. It’s a deep record with richly realized production from the likes of Fumes the Threat, AwareNess, Satyr and Preacher vs. Choir with contributions from Illogic. In typical operating fashion from Time and Extra Kool the openers are up and coming artists from a variety of musical styles including punk band Helga Pataki, young hip hop crew Box State University and aforementioned San Diego based production collective Preacher vs. Choir.

Thursday | 01.30
What: Head Slug, When The Sun Explodes and Plastik Mystik
When: 7
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Head Slug is a weirdo ambient slowcore project with haunted soundscapes and vulnerable guitar work, melancholic moods. When the Sun Explodes is also a noisy shoegaze band apparently that has its roots among students at D.U.. Plastik Mystik (aka Plastic Mystic) is a band that splits the difference and mix and matches elements of post-hardcore, noise rock and deconstructed Dischordism.

Michael Blaustein, photo from neonentertainment.com

Thursday-Saturday | 01.30-02.01
What: Michael Blaustein
When: Showtime varies by date
Where: Comedy Works Denver
Why: Michael Blaustein co-hosts the Stiff Socks Podcast, has been on MTV’s Battleclips, On Campus Tour and the reboot of Punk’d. But watch his clips and shorts and you see a brilliant comedian with gift for surreal humor and turning any situation into art with his masterful crowdwork.

Friday | 01.31
What: Cursive w/Pile
When: 8
Where: Gothic Theatre
Why: Cursive is one of the most important and influential bands out of 90s post-hardcore/emo and helped to put its hometown of Omaha, Nebraska on the map as one of the flagship bands of the Saddle Creek Records imprint. Cursive could also never be pigeonholed as post-hardcore or emo beyond convenient touchstones for the style of music from which it emerged and which impacted its development. Cursive has always been more experimental and deft at pop songcraft than might seem obvious and its breakthrough records Domestica (2000) and The Ugly Organ (2003) offered insight into the American psyche of that era with a poignancy and poetry to match the band’s exuberant energy as a live band. Its new record Devourer (2024) is the recognition of and embracing of being a consumer and integrator of creative work and culture as part of the process of interpreting and passing forward the legacy of the world in which one finds oneself but also the dark side of that process and how that process can have a negative aspect that affects not just others but oneself and the physical and psychological ecosystem. Heady concepts aside it’s vintage Cursive with the memorable hooks and willingness to go off predictable sonic habits. But hey the great slowcore/post-punk/post-hardcore noise rock band Pile is opening so get there early and see two of the most consistently interesting rock bands of the past 30 years at one show.

Best Shows in Denver and Beyond September 2024

**Future Islands perform at Mission Ballroom on September 24, photo by Frank Hamilton**

Dust City Opera, photo courtesy the artists

Saturday | 09.07
What: Dust City Opera’s Haunted Costume Ball w/The Constant Tourists
When: 7
Where: Swallow Hill
Why: Dust City Opera is a rock band from Albuquerque, New Mexico whose sound interweaves orchestral Americana, dark psychedelia and art pop into cinematic and literary songs filled with evocative tales of “sadness, madness and mayhem.” But within the group’s rich body of work there is a surreal sense of humor and humanity that reveals an empathy for the human condition and the characters and situations depicted in which listeners can identify aspects of their own experiences navigating our often physically and emotionally perilous world. Since it’s 2018 foundation, pick any of Dust City Opera’s albums from its 2019 debut album Heaven to 2022’s horror and science fiction themed Alien Summer record to the 2024 EP Cold Hands (released March 8 via Rexius Records) and you’ll hear imaginatively eclectic arrangements and vivid narratives from a band that seems fully realized even as it’s still relatively early in its career. There is a theatrical sensibility to the music that translates to the band’s live performances that fans of the likes of DeVotchKa and Beirut will appreciate. For this rescheduled show in Denver the band is encouraging attendees to come dressed up for their Haunted Costume Ball to help launch spooky season.

Sunday | 09.08
What: Midwife w/DBUK and Polly Urethane
When: 7
Where: Bluebird Theater
Why: Midwife just released a new album called No Depression in Heaven, which is a heavy enough title on its own, but for the new album the mood isn’t quite as downcast as the previous album but the tenderness and vulnerability is still there with the sensitivity tuned more sharply into examining and evoking where memory and dreams intersect and the role that plays in how we live our lives and our psychological orientation of identity and aspiration. The records are all great but Madeleine Johnston is even more powerful live though this will be a bigger stage than usual for the songwriter at least in Denver and you’ll have to go to see how the music translates. Denver Broncos UK is a more post-punk offshoot of Slim Cessna’s Auto Club but still plenty of the element of Gothic Americana in its music. Polly Urethane always does a different kind of show and you don’t really know what you’re in for except that it’ll be interesting, it’ll incorporate aspects of performance art and ambitious composition and often breaking the barrier between performer and audience.

Monday | 09.09
What: Keane w/Everything Everything
When: 6:30
Where: Temple Hoyne Buell Theater
Why: Keane technically existed in an earlier form for nearly a decade before its 2004 album Hopes and Fears was released on major label Island Records. But that album reflected years of development and refinement of songwriting craft and even though the band received criticism for being derivative the record went on to multi-Platinum status in sales. The piano-driven songwriting and singer Tim Rice-Oxley’s vocal melodies though polished convey earnest sentiments that have connected with an international audience. With this tour the group celebrates the record that launched its career coinciding with support behind the remastered 20 year anniversary edition of the album.

Wednesday | 09.11
What: Osees w/Timmy’s Organism
When: 7
Where: The Ogden Theatre
Why: Osees is the ever evolving band led by John Dwyer and really you can check in anywhere in the band’s catalog and under any of its names and find records that are often radically different from the release that preceded it. The new record Sorcs 80 sounds like Butthole Surfers at its most manic mixed with Trans Am but delivered with the mutant stylings we’ve come to expect from the band. Motorik, psychedelic garage rock doesn’t quite cover the raw power and attitude of the album but it gives you an idea. Check out the live video of the performance of the album on YouTube. But best experienced in person as no YouTube video is an adequate surrogate for the vital, real thing unless you can’t be there.

Thursday | 09.12
What: Alphabeat Soup #75: Acidbat, DEBR4H, Melodies Never Lie, Yung Lurch, Furbie Cakes and Skyfloor
When: 9
Where: The Black Box
Why: The long-running showcase of some of Denver’s most daring and forward thinking experimental electronic music composers and performers this month features, among others, IDM/techno wizard Acidbat, Fort Collins-based synthwave/synthpop artist DEBR4H, the latest project from former Mehko and the Ocean Birds member Isaac Javier River as Melodies Never Lie and its fusion of dream pop and ethereal indie folk and ambient hip-hop producer Skyfloor aka Grant Blakeslee who some may know more as MYTHirst or in his collaborations with experimental pop genius Felix Fast4ward.

Thursday | 09.12
What: Kikuo
When: 7
Where: Ogden Theatre
Why: Kikuo is an acclaimed Vocaloid artist from Kanagawa Prefecture in Japan (basically suburban Tokyo but it’s a big urban sprawl in that part of the country). The artist is known for his highly detailed sound-design oriented dance pop songs that explore themes of trauma and suffering and the habits of self soothing that provide catharsis from both. For the uninitiated Kuko’s music sounds like music that reflects the moods and kinetic energy of anime and Japanese popular culture but expressed in a way that does honor to the underlying emotions that inform a lot of the best creative endeavors that have manifested out of Japan. And yet Kikuo’s music most often seems joyous and the live show like a high energy, live DJ set with samples and beats with vocals manipulated and processed into something that could only happen with technology, like the voices of a particularly upbeat, even kawaii, anime or video game characters but delivering heartfelt emotional content that contrasts with a conventional interpretation of that style of art.

Saturday | 09.14
What: Mortiis w/Brighter Death Now, Sombre Arcane, Malfet and Fogweaver
When: 6
Where: The Oriental Theater
Why: Probably the biggest dungeon synth show in Denver in maybe ever. Headlined by one of the genre’s pioneers, Mortiis who since 1993 has been crafting fantastical soundscapes that have exerted an influence on other practitioners of the music since. Brighter Death Now isn’t really a dungeon synth band but its industrial ambient noise seems to have been one of the foundations of what would become music in that style and its own industrial/power electronics style music evokes of the mysterious and otherworldly even as it can often be unsettling and confrontational. Colorado’s Fogweaver isn’t short on the fantasy elements of the music but its own synth compositions are well within the realm of ambient.

Saturday | 09.14
What: Deth Rali album release w/Hex Cassette, Church Fire and DJ Reed Fox
When: 8
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Denver-based darkwave synth pop band Deth Rali is releasing its first album in three years with Ruby Castle Island. It’s a transporting and psychedelically inflected set of songs if early singles are any indication. Sharing the bill is one man industrial music death cult Hex Cassette. Okay, the death part is only a joke but part of the project’s aesthetic is going to the limit for one’s art and bringing the audience along for the ride to the darkwave industrial dance party or else. Church Fire has expanded its stage show with an even more robust light show to accompany its revolution darkwave and emotionally charged synth pop dance songs aimed at making resistance to the capitalist patriarchy fun.

Sunday | 09.15
What: Zheani w/The Buttress and ZAND
When: 7
Where: The Summit Music Hall
Why: Zheani is an electronic pop artist from Australia some of whose fans have dubbed her style of music “Fairy Trap.” What does this mean? Check out any of her music videos or live footage if you can find it and you’ll find music that mixes the ethereal and playful with hyper pop, trap beats and occult imagery and industrial-adjacent sonic intensity. Fans of Alice Glass both with Crystal Castles but especially solo will appreciate Zheani’s fantastical hybrid pop and visual aesthetic.

Tuesday | 09.17
What: Fabio Frizzi “Zombie” movie screening with live soundtrack performance
When: 7
Where: The Oriental Theater
Why: Italian composer Fabio Frizzi will perform his iconic score as a live soundtrack to a screening of Lucio Fulci’s classic 1979 film Zombi 2 (aka Zombie), which was to have been a sequel to George A. Romer’s Dawn of the Dead (1978).

Tuesday | 09.17
What: Johnny Marr & James
When: 6:30
Where: Paramount Theatre
Why: Johnny Marr, the legendary guitarist of The Smiths and later of Modest Mouse, shares a bill with fellow Mancunians James. The Smiths and James started the same year (1982) and likely crossed paths during the course of their careers. James had hits in college and alternative rock radio throughout the 80s and 90s maintaining a cult following for its exuberant and inventive, idiosyncratic songwriting with hits that include “Laid,” “Born of Frustration” and “Come Home.” Marr’s solo albums of recent years revealed the guitarist as an artist in his own right capable of writing compelling songs and live being able to deliver favorites by The Smiths. So this show will be a celebration of the band’s catalogs and continued ability to deliver it with a sense of joy and catharsis.

Wednesday | 09.18
What: Public Memory w/Voight and DJ Niq V
When: 7
Where: HQ
Why: Public Memory is the solo project of Robert Toher who has been releasing albums of entrancing darkwave techno for around a decade. With layers of dub rhythm and texture and an otherworldy cast like the most haunted music that came out of 90s IDM, Public Memory pushes boundaries of modern electronic music and often has a quality like even moodier trip hop. Voight is more like a true fusion of techno, noisy shoegaze, post-punk and an emotional intensity that nearly tips the music over and all the better for not playing it safe.

Wednesday | 09.18
What: Ulrika Spacek w/Bluebook and Pale Sun
When: 7
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Ulrika Spacek is a psychedelic post-punk shoegaze band from the UK whose intricate guitar work seems to weave layers of mood rather than come across as an unusual form of math rock. Its 2023 album Compact Trauma had the melodic and rhythmic complexity of something you’d expect from Women or Black Midi but with more melancholic sounds like an English cognate of something more like Deeper and its proclivity for conveying emotional rawness. Bluebook is an art rock and dream pop band from Denver but don’t be fooled by the delicacy of expression on some of the recorded music you can find because there is a dark yet inviting and intense energy to the live show that has made the group a favorite among fans and critics. Pale Sun has some of the most imaginative and deeply evocative guitar work of any band from Colorado or elsewhere. It’s like experiencing a weather anomaly in real time with ethereal melodies and a resonant emotional colorings in its arrangements of voice and instrumentation.

Friday | 09.20
What: Marc Ribot Quartet (Hilliard Green, Chad Taylor, Mary Halvorson)
When: 7
Where: Mercury Cafe
Why: Marc Ribot is one of the true guitar geniuses of the past few decades. His style and skill means he has fit in with some of the most demanding jazz groups and experimental musicians and pop and rock mavericks around including the likes of Tom Waits, John Zorn, Foetus, Marianne Faithfull, Allen Ginsberg, Arto Lindsay, Ikue Mori, Cibo Matto, David Sylvian and Elvis Costello. His style seems to be boundary-less yet distinctive. This quartet is like if a way out free jazz band teamed up with a bunch of weirdos from the 20th century classical avant-garde.

Friday | 09.20
What: Charly Bliss w/Raffaela
When: 7
Where: The Marquis Theater
Why: Charly Bliss has been described as a mix of 90s alternative rock and pop of various kinds. But the salient aspect of the group’s music since its 2017 debut album Guppy has been a a pairing of vulnerability and joy. That combination along with the band’s playful exuberance gives an uplifting quality to even its more melancholic songs. On its new record Forever (released August 16, 2024) the quartet embraces even more thoroughly the influence of modern pop music with the electronic production thoroughly threaded into the songwriting. Still very much in place is a likability and a knack for tasty indie pop hooks.

Beabadoobee, photo by Jules Moskovtchenko with creative direction by Patricia Villirillo

Friday | 09.20
What: Beabadoobee w/Hovvdy and Keni Titus
When: 6
Where: The Fillmore Auditorium
Why: Beabadoobee has established herself as a singer and songwriter of note over the past seven years with a diverse body of work that incorporates a blend of styles without getting stuck in a definitive genre, a quality that is a testament to the likely durability of her career. But the songs and their delicately heartfelt style speak for themselves. From early bedroom recordings to her currently new album This Is How Tomorrow Moves (2024), Beabadoobee’s expressive vocals are often confessional but always distinctive in their ability to tap into poignant emotional resonances that augment the songwriter’s vivid lyrics. The new record in particular showcases a real gift for borrowing elements of classic and lo-fi modern pop in an eclectic style that seems orchestral and spare at once.
Hovvdy is an Austin-based duo that has offering contemplative and emotionally rich slowcore pop songs since its 2014 self-titled debut EP. Its, self-titled full-length finds Hovvdy delivering some of its most finely crafted soundscapes to date. At times the music seems like experiments in sound design and experimental songwriting. Like Charlie Martin and Will Taylor hopped back to making demos on cassette and trying to capture some of that room ambiance and the analog warmth of it and translating the intimacy of that sound to a more high fidelity environment without losing the essential charm. With the storytelling on the album one imagines a box of Polaroids as a starting point for turning cherished memories into accessible songs. Whatever the methodology or inspiration or techniques it’s a long record that seems to also come out of wanting to write an album that would sound good for a road trip.

Gregory T.S. Walker, photo courtesy the artist

Saturday | 09.21
What: Minstrels and Minimoogs performed by Gregory T.S. Walker, Elena Camerin Young and Todd Reid celebrating the reissue of the cosmic medieval masterpiece w/Pete Swanson & Entrancer and Luke Leavitt
When: 8
Where: Glob ($15)
Why: Gregory T.S. Walker released Minstrels & Minimoogs in 1988 as a music for an immersive, multimedia performance that took place at the Fiske Planetarium on the University of Colorado Boulder campus. It was originally released as a one-sided 12” and was really only ever available at performances at Fiske. But the Freedom To Spend label co-owned by Pete Swanson of experimental music legends Yellow Swans is reissuing the record with a special performance this night including collaborative sets with Swanson and modular synth genius Entrancer as well as Luke Leavitt. It’ll be a unique live music experience showcasing idiosyncratic synth composition the likes of which may never happen again.

Saturday | 09.21
What: Why? w/NNAMDI
When: 7
Where: Meow Wolf
Why: Yoni Wolf sounds particularly lost and yearning on the new Why? Record The Well I Fell Into (2024). The song’s have a more acoustic aspect in the instrumentation this time around and that lends it a different kind of sonic intimacy than some of the project’s previous music. It’s pastoral in its stories of growing older and feeling obsolete and unsure of what is left in life when those moments of existential crisis impact broad areas of your life and hit as so heartfelt it can sink your spirit. But Wolf offers no pat answers, just poignant expressions of the part of one’s life when you’re not sure what it all means and what felt like the directions and focus points of your life have disappeared or gone adrift and you’re left trying to sort through that emotional wreckage that can collapse upon you suddenly and make sense of where your life needs to be next. Also on the bill is experimental pop and rock weirdo NNAMDI whose energetic and eclectic, surreal pop songs expand notions of what a pop song can sound like and what it’s rhythms and structures can be.

Saturday | 09.21
What: Willie Watson w/Tanasi and The Sullivan Sisters at Wildflower Fallgrass ‘24: A Pavilion Pickin’ Party Night 2
When: 5:30
Where: Planet Bluegrass (Lyons)
Why: Former Old Crow Medicine Show singer/guitarist/banjo player Willie Watson released his latest, self-titled, solo album on September 13. The early singles promised a set of spare and intimate folk songs featuring Watson’s expressive vibrato delivering earnest portraits of life with a broad range of subjects and moods. Watson’s lyrics seem refreshingly free of tropes and rich with poignant turns of phrase that give his spare songwriting a rare dimensionality that reward a deep listen.

Sunday | 09.22
What: FM Skyline, Auragraph and Modern Devotion
When: 8
Where: Glob
Why: FM Skyline is a vaporwave composer and artist from Richmond, Virginia who a month ago released his album Images which sounds like a mix of the music for corporate training videos, The Art of Noise and New Wave New Age seminar soundtracks. Auragraph released his latest album New Standard on Dais Records in 2023 and its sounds brilliantly reconciled the aesthetics of techno, EBM and vaporwave. Opening the show is Denver’s Modern Devotion, the solo, industrial techno side project of Adam Rojo of shoegaze-infused post-punk greats Voight.

Sunday | 09.22
What: Everclear w/Marcy’s Playground and Jimmie’s Chicken Shack
When: 6
Where: Gothic Theatre
Why: Everclear is one of the few bands associated with the late era of alternative rock (although its roots date back to the beginning of that wave of music) whose music has aged well in spite of ubiquitous airplay in the 90s and on nostalgia playlists. In no small part that’s due to singer/guitarist Art Alexakis’ thoughtful and vulnerable lyrics and obvious authenticity. Sure he found a way to write songs with wide appeal but never sacrificed putting meaningful words into what he would sing on stage. In 2024 the band’s 2000 album Songs from an American Movie Vol. One: Learning How to Smile was released on vinyl for the first time on September 13 and there’s a better than average change the set will include material from that record as well as the band’s beloved hits.

Monday | 09.23
What: Leprous w/Earthside and Fight the Fight
When: 6
Where: Gothic Theatre
Why: Norwegian progressive metal band Leprous released its new album Melodies of Atonement on August 30, 2024 and demonstrated once again that its technical prowess and precision is a vehicle for ambitious songwriting. Passionate vocals and evocative synth-infused soundscapes and orchestrated, sweeping guitar create a layered effect like the band is thinking more cinematically than merely musically. In that way the group’s new record maybe more than its predecessors seems to bear the marks of the influence of the likes of Failure and Marillion. And though the songs are epic in scope each feels like they touch on the personal and the emotional resonance of the melodic vocals are akin to something from the better emo records of the late 90s.

Tuesday | 09.24
What: Future Islands w/Oh, Rose
When: 7
Where: Mission Ballroom
Why: Since early in its existence Baltimore’s Future Islands has mastered the pairing of upbeat and gorgeously melodic synth pop with sad, melancholic lyrics delivered with a passionate soulfulness. The combination has made listening to its music feel like you’re sharing moments with people who won’t lie to you about how rough life can be but also encourage you to embrace what’s good and even great about it. Its 2024 record People Who Aren’t There Anymore was written and recorded during the early part of the pandemic and into the endemic era and has as its subject matter the slow breakdown of singer Samuel T. Herring’s long-distance relationship during the period of lockdowns. Sure it’s a deep exploration of loss, existential doubt, self-assessment and learning to let go. All of which can be challenging for anyone but these songs make it feel like it’s something that not only can you do but do so without linger rancor and the kind of emotional trauma that limits your future ability to connect with people. The shows are always cathartic and high energy and yet intimate and tender making Future Islands a special band that made the transition from DIY scene notables to indie rock stars without losing the core of their art.

Spectral Voice, photo from Encyclopedia Metallum

Thursday | 09.26
What: Spectral Voice, Polish, Nightshark and Mournful Ruin
When: 7
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Spectral Voice is the black metal band from Denver three fourths of whom are also in psychedelic death metal group Blood Incantation. It released the album Sparagmos in February 2024 and thus unleashing even more of its spooky, sepulchral heavy compositions. The music sounds like the kind of music that should have been playing at the entrance to hell in Baskin. But this bill isn’t just a bunch of other death/black/doom metal bands and the like. Nightshark and its noisy free jazz freakouts will be on hand as well to offer its impassioned skronk and No Wave bop.

Friday | 09.27
What: NightWraith, Necropanther, Upon a Field’s Whisper and Lacerated
When: 8
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Denver’-based melodic death metal heroes NightWraith just released their new record Divergence. This time around the synths lends an even more cinematic quality to the epic scale of the songwriting and personal struggles cast as those more eternal and the kinds of things heroes of myth and lore tangle with on the road to defeating the big bad. Also more than ever the band’s progressive rock leanings are present and in moments they sound like they’ve been listening to a lot of both Neurosis and early 80s Yes.

Peter Hook & The Light, photo courtesy the artist

Saturday | 09.28
What: Peter Hook & The Light w/DJ boyhollow
When: 7
Where: Ogden Theatre
Why: Peter Hook is a founding member of two of the most important post-punk bands of the early era as the bass player of both Joy Division and New Order. This tour the band will perform the Substance albums so you’ll get plenty of the early JD and vintage era New Order stuff including songs that never much appeared on anything but singles and those two compilations.

Mass of Fermenting Dregs, photo from Bandcamp

Saturday | 09.28
What: Mass of the Fermenting Dregs w/Cam Kahin and Blush
When: 6:30
Where: Meow Wolf Convergence Station
Why: Mass of the Fermenting Dregs is the Japanese dream pop band who seem to somehow have blended art rock leanings into the songwriting while sounding like they wouldn’t be out of place in the poppier end of the Austin, TX shoegaze scene. A fusion of the sublime and of the noisy.

Saturday | 09.28
What: Tassel w/Plague Garden and DJ Katastrophy
When: 8
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Tassel is a Phoenix, AZ-based post-punk trio who didn’t seem to feel the need to differentiate between the sound palette one would use for industrial punk, deathrock and darkwave. Currently on tour supporting its new album A SACRIFICE: UNTO IDOLS. Opening is one of the current great post-punk/New Wave bandsw of the moment with Denver’s Plague Garden. Its own electronic side is richly imagined and evocative with the guitar work both beautiful and gritty and expressive basslines that elevate the band’s music beyond the current wave of post-punk.

Saturday | 09.28
What: The National w/The War on Drugs and Lucious
When: 6:30
Where: Fiddler’s Green
Why: The National is already one of the most popular and critically acclaimed of indie rock bands of the past two decades. And yet the band continues to surprise with offering finely crafted albums that actually offer more than the usual tropes of adolescent struggles projected into adult life. 2023’s Laugh Track may not have garnered the critical acclaim of some of the band’s earlier records but its melancholic and pastoral songs sound like they’re about getting through a period of your life that feels like offers nothing new to spark your brain into action and like you don’t have much left to say to anyone that feels authentic and vital. It’s again the kind of record that shows a path to doing something creative and different even well into middle age without having to look back to that mythical time of youth when everything felt new. It’s an album about discovering something new or at least reinventing oneself and discovering the kinds of things that can inspire you all over again and find a reason to not feel like you’re treading water until the end. Middle age can feel like that for a lot of people and this album is aimed at show how that’s not an inevitability and that experience and perspective matter and can illuminate your existence for the rest of your life.

Jonathan RIchman, photo by Driely S from Bandcamp

Sunday | 09.29
What: Jonathan Richman w/Tommy Larkins on drums
When: 6
Where: The Bluebird Theater
Why: Jonathan Richman isn’t filling stadiums and never has but his charmingly idiosyncratic and oddly wise and no oddly creative songs have been influential on generations of musicians and non-musicians alike. The keyboard player for his old band Modern Lovers went on to be in Talking Heads and plenty of punkers and other musicians have covered “Roadrunner” because it is absolutely one of the spiritual ancestors of punk in its glorious simplicity and unforgettable energy. These days Richman with Tommy Larkin are a fantastic duo who deliver some of the finest American songs ever written with humor and charisma.

Sunday | 09.29
What: Chrissy Costanza w/Voilá
When: 7
Where: Lost Lake
Why: Chrissy Costanza is currently on her first solo tour separate from doing shows with the band for whom she is perhaps most well known, Against the Current. The powerhouse singer is set to release her debut solo EP VII on October 9 so this is a chance to catch the artist perform those songs live prior to the album being available worldwide. The solo stuff is a bit of a break from the pop punk and alternative rock fusion of ATC and allows Costanza to stretch out into realms of vocal expression that might otherwise be out of place with the band.

Sunday | 09.29
What: NIKI w/Allison Ponthier
When: 6
Where: Summit Music Hall
Why: Nicole Zefanya was born in and raised in Jakarta, Indonesia and started playing and writing music from a young age. Good thing because at 15 she won a contest to be the opening act for Taylor Swift for Jakarta stop of The Red Tour. At eighteen she moved to Nashville to study music and began releasing music as Niki and was on the roster of the 88rising record label which specializes in putting out music by Asian American artists. Niki’s latest album is Buzz, a collection of jazz-inflected, bedroom-pop style songs with Zefanya’s tender and introspective vocals center stage. But in that tenderness you’ll hear some raw truth and attitude that can be as startling as it is welcome in separating Niki from other artists operating in a similar lane of modern indie pop.

The Spirit of the Beehive, photo from Bandcamp

Monday | 09.30
What: Spirit of the Beehive w/Winter
When: 7
Where: Meow Wolf Convergence Station
Why: As usual, Philly’s The Spirit of the Beehive offer us a psychedelic pop and IDM album that sounds like they used a cut up method of songwriting with all members writing a different style of music and collaging it all together in ways that make their own strange kind of sense with 2024’s You’ll Have to Lose Something. And they’ll pull it off live and seem like a band that is changing radio stations throughout one song yet make it seem coherent and compelling in the way a psychotronic film can be. Like a kinder, gentler Butthole Surfers.

Best Shows in Denver and Beyond May 2024

**IDLES perform at Mission Ballroom on May 18, 2024, photo by Tom Ham**

Wednesday | 05.01
What: Slowdive w/Drab Majesty
When: 6
Where: Levitt Pavilion
Why: Slowdive was one of the original shoegaze bands of the late 80s and early 90s and it was more on the more sonically delicate and ambient end of the real of music. So much so that it’s then 1995 final album Pygmalion was not rock so much as avant-garde experiments in melodic atmospheres and abstract pop. It reflected its members immersion in electronic music and left field sounds in the world of dance music. Then the band split for nearly a decade while a few members went on to the more desert rock and Americana-esque Mojave 3. Another continued with Monster Movie and yet another played in Lowgold for a stretch. But 2014 brought the classic lineup of Slowdive back together and that reunion tour revealed a band that was surprisingly forceful in its gossamer webs of tone and melody and emotionally charged in its expansive atmospherics. But was the reunion a fluke? The 2017 self-titled album proved otherwise and was easily on par with its earlier catalog yet a clear demonstration of creative growth. The group’s complete embrace of electronic sounds and vulnerable guitar composition has meant its older music has aged well and its newer material clearly informed with an ear for the present and future. Opener Drab Majesty was one of the newer artists whose own fusion of electronics and melancholic guitar atmospherics seemed to look back at predecessors like Slowdive, Love and Rockets, Red Lorry Yellow Lorry and Cocteau Twins while establishing a sound very much its own imbued with dark moods and futuristic glam imagery.

Wednesday | 05.02
What: Brainstory
When: 7
Where: Larimer Lounge
Why: Brainstory just released its latest album Sounds Good. Its fusion of jazz, psychedelia and R&B has a sound resonant with some of what Todd Rundgren was doing in the 70s but rougher edged like these guys spent some time playing in garage rock bands that played covers to earn their keep and took that discipline to make music with tangibly lush moods, a touch of that deceptively soft Steely Dan thing including the strong musicianship and while sounding like musicians from another era are clearly informed by the modern lens of that reinterpretation because the production style has a modern sensibility of intentional high contrast sounds and a real depth of sonic field.

Thursday | 05.02
What: Sanguisugabogg and Jesus Piece w/Gag and Peeling Flesh https://www.gothictheatre.com/events/detail/?event_id=526035
When: 6
Where: Gothic Theatre
Why: This is the kind of heavy music show that will offer a lot of aggressive sounds but sensitive sensibilities cloaked in brutal sounds and subject matter. Sanguisugabogg is a death metal band from Columbus, Ohio with extreme song titles like “Face Ripped Off” but whose music video is like an inversion of being tough and hard edged. Gag is a hardcore band from Olympia, Washington whose contorted sounds reveal eclectic roots and a surreal, absurd and sometimes dark sense of humor. Jesus Piece is the renowned metalcore act from Philadelphia that set out to be a death metal band but evolved into something its own. Yes, the aggressive vocals and rapidly bludgeoning riffs but with a rhythmic structure that has meant Jesus Piece doesn’t hit as just another death metal or hardcore band as its music has passages where it breathes rather than pummels, and the defiant energy of the music challenges the audience to join in its raw vitality.

Drew Holcomb & The Neighbors, photo courtesy the artists

Friday | 05.03
What: Drew Holcomb & The Neighbors w/Donovan Woods
When: 7
Where: Summit Music Hall
Why: For a little over two decades Drew Holcomb has been developing his songwriting in the public eye first as a solo act and since 2005 as Drew Holcomb and the Neighbors. His contemplative and observant lyrics have an intimate quality suggest roots in folk while the pastoral atmospheric features of his sound hearken to more than a passing familiarity with the cosmic end of country. The band’s most recent album is 2023’s Strangers No More the title of which seems to be a calling card for the songwriter whose music connects on a direct human level as an attempt to build an informal community or at least encourage those impulses in particular the song “Find Your People.” Opening the evening is Donovan Woods who is touring ahead of the July 12 release of his new record Things Were Never Good If They’re Not Good Now. The Canadian singer-songwriter’s material is poetically vivid its imagery and lush yet minimal in the way the songs are arranged like cinematic, miniature orchestral pieces the frame Donovan’s delicate yet passionate vocals.

Friday | 05.03
What: Cherubs w/Moon Pussy, Quits and Cherry Spit
When: 7
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Austin’s Cherubs have been unleashing an unhinged noise rock that sounded like they were falling apart and clashing into each other constantly and there is a certain cathartic appeal to that sound. And from 1991-1994 the group would have been peers of other rock and roll weirdos like The Jesus Lizard and Butthole Surfers whose King Coffeey signed the band to his own Trance Syndicate imprint. Then the band went inactive only to suddenly reappear in 2014 seemingly undiminished in its ability to deliver relentlessly rhythm-driven sonic bursts of ruptured and noisy psychedelia. 2023 saw the remastered reissue of the band’s colossal 1992 debut Icing. Maybe Moon Pussy and Quits aren’t ripping off Cherubs but they are both surely direct descendants of the kind of sound Cherbus helped to pioneer. Moon Pussy this night is also releasing its beautifully disjointed and inspired new album Death is Coming.

Friday | 05.03
What: LEAF: Laraaji visuals by L’Astra Cosmo w/Lisa Bella Donna and visuals by Christopher Robin Short at The Arts HUB sold out
When: 6:30
Where: The Arts HUB
Why: LEAF concludes the live music performance segment of the festival with a performance by ambient and new age legend Laraaji on his birthday no less. The multi-instrumentalist began working on music in the 70s when he bought a zither and then converted it into an electronic instrument and later in the decade began busking in New York. This is where Brian Eno encountered him and the two collaborated on Laraaji’s brilliant 1980 album Ambient 3: Day of Radiance on which the composer used various acoustic instruments and a hammered dulcimer to craft unique soundscapes the likes of which haven’t been heard or seen much since. Since that time Laraaji has delved into various forms of music and performance as well as presenting his Laughter Meditation Workshops. 2023 saw the 4LP reissue of Segue To Infinity, a collection of Laraaji’s early works from his 1978 debut album Celestial Vibration and six longer pieces recorded around that same time.

Mannquin Pussy, photo by Millicent Hailes

Saturday | 05.04
What: Mannequin Pussy w/Soul Glo
When: 8
Where: The Bluebird Theater
Why: Mannequin Pussy has come a long way since beginning in Philadelphia in 201 when Marisa Dabice and Athanasios Paul formed the group as a duo inspired in part by experimental garage punk band Lust-Cats of the Gutters from Denver. One thing that has remained intact is Dabice’s ferocious and confrontational vocal delivery and incisive lyrics. Its most recent album I Got Heaven (2024) finds the group exploring themes of yearning but written in explorative fashion across styles and often threading punk boldness with emotional delicacy for a mixture that is undeniably compelling and refreshingly vital in its creativity and sonic nuance. For this tour Mannequin Pussy brings along Philly hardcore band Soul Glo whose sound of course in true tradition of music from its hometown strays widely from any formula. Its feral vocals often wax snotty but the music has so much momentum and the lyrics imbued with so much fire that you forget what it is you think you’re supposed to be hearing and get swept up in the moment. A perfect pairing.

Saturday | 05.04
What: Alana Mars EP release w/Tireshoe, The Salesmen and Sk8rade
When: 7
Where: Lost Lake
Why: Denver-based pop/rock artist Alana Mars celebrates the release of her latest EP The Prologue at this show. The six songs comprising the EP showcase the singer-songwriter’s gift for introspective and vulnerable lyrics and lushly atmospheric compositions. Live Mars isn’t short on personality, presence and humor. Also on the bill is the supercharged post-punk band The Salesmen and their unabashedly polemical yet creatively fun deconstruction and dismantling of social ills and injustices.

Saturday | 05.04
What: Jade Bird w/Emelise and Kayla Katz
When: 7
Where: Globe Hall
Why: Something must be said in favor of Jade Bird’s moxie in releasing the 2024 EP Burn the Hard Drive. It’s about her split from her fiancée and former guitarist Luke Prosser who has writing credits on 2/3 of the songs. The EP also demonstrates Bird’s growth as an artist and while there are aspects of her more Americana and indie folk sound the most interesting songs including the title track are more electronic and informed by funk and neo soul sounds and psychedelia. They also feel the most cathartic even as the more guitar-driven songs are imbued with the emotional vulnerability that has been the artist’s hallmark from the beginning. It’s a pivotal release for Bird, though, and this might be a good time to catch her as she breaks more out of expectations built around her past work.

Young Rising Sons, photo courtesy the artists

Sunday | 05.05
What: Young Rising Sons w/Diva Bleach
When: 6:30
Where: The Bluebird Theater
Why: Young Rising Sons are an alternative pop band that formed in Brooklyn in 2010. Bassist Julian Dimagiba and drummer Steve Patrick grew up in Red Bank, New Jersey playing music and caught singer Andy Tongren performing an acoustic set at a New York Cit bar and struck by his skills talked with him later about joining their fledgling band. The new group spent a few years with different names while writing songs and settling on the name Young Rising Sons. In 2013 the group signed with Dirty Canvas Music and their 2014 debut single “High” became a bit of a global viral hit leading to the band signing with Interscope that same year. For the following two years the quartet toured opening for the likes of Halsey, Weezer, The 1975 and The Neighbourhood. Although Young Rising Sons delivered three EPs with Interscope as with many other worthy artists that didn’t translate to the commercial performance expected by a major label. In 2017 the band parted ways with Interscope and a year later announced a hiatus that lasted a couple of years. Since reconvening the outfit has been regularly releasing singles and in 2022 it dropped its debut full length Still Point In a Turning World. Tongren’s soulful and passionate vocals and the tight pop songcraft of the band has remained intact. Its body of work including its new single “(Un)Happy Hour” reveals a sensitivity to the complexity and fragility of human life and the importance of accepting the high points and the low to experience to make it through an oftentimes challenging existence with dignity and a sense of fulfillment. Listen to our interview with Andy Tongren here.

Tuesday | 05.07
What: Swans w/Kristoff Hahn
When: 7
Where: The Gothic Theatre
Why: Swans are the influential, experimental rock band formed in New York City in 1982 as one of the standout acts of the no wave scene. Fronted by singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Michael Gira, the group’s ever-evolving lineup and sound has helped pioneer and in many ways define aspects of noise rock, industrial music, post-punk and in later eras of the band post-rock. Its earliest records were brutal affairs of a stark beauty and unsettling intensity. By the last half of the 80s singer and keyboardist Jarboe had joined the band and its music began to increasingly incorporate a musical intricacy, melodic ambiance and emotionally nuanced delicacy that became a regular feature of the songwriting. And for years the constant members of the band were Gira, Jarboe, and longtime guitarist Norman Westberg. Swans might have come to an end on a high note following the tour for the sprawling epic of the masterful 1996 album Soundtracks For the Blind. But in 2010 Swans reconvened and began another great arc of songwriting with songs that had an even more orchestral aesthetic than in the past and a series of albums that have delved into themes of existential terror, mortality, death and the search for meaning later in life in a world seemingly on the brink of unraveling. The latest Swans record, 2023’s The Beggar, finds Gira and his collaborators manifesting some of the songwriter’s most personal statements in songs that experiment even more deeply into modes of expression that disregard conventional notions of song structure and length in favor of experiential truth. Read our interview with Gira here.

Friday | 05.10
What: Water From Your Eyes w/Friko and Red Scare
When: 8
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Water From Your Eyes is the innovative and deeply imaginative art pop band from Brooklyn, New York. Its music is steeped in hip-hop style production with some free association sampling and live instrumentation mixed together for music that often seems reminiscent of an update of 90s IDM which itself had a leg in similar pools of inspiration. Live the duo is somehow both like an alternative hip-hop project and infused with punk spirit. Chicago’s Friko released its debut full-length Where we’ve been, Where we go from here on February 16, 2024 delivering on the promise of its early singles. Niko Kapetan’s captivating vocals have a rawness and vulnerability that is reminiscent of early Bright Eyes and the music is a thrilling fusion of post-punk angularity, orchestral arrangements and classic power pop with moments of noise rock fury.

Belle and Sebastian in 2015, photo by Tom Murphy

Friday | 05.10
What: Belle and Sebastian w/The Weather Station
When: 7
Where: Fillmore Auditorium
Why: Belle & Sebastian is the highly influential indie pop band from Glagow, Scotland. Its emotionally rich delicately crafted songs not short on literary quality are some of the foundations of modern indie rock and yet the band has continued to offer fine records including its 2023 record Late Developers for which the band is conducting a rare live tour. As a live band the group has a sprightly charm with shows that can feel a bit like you’ve been invited to someone’s living room to be in on something that is otherwise intimate and private but friendly.

Friday | 05.10
What: Panchiko w/Wisp and Weatherday
When: 7
Where: The Summit Music Hall
Why: Panchiko is a bit of a cult indie rock band that was originally around in the late 90s through 2001 when it split leaving behind few recordings but D>E>A>T>H>M>E>T>A>L its 2000 EP got a bit of a new life in the mid-2010s when a CD was found in an Oxfam charity shop and was very much an enigma. Fast forward to 2020 and the EP gets a deluxe reissue and in 2023 the group released its beautifully bizarre shoegaze/IDM/glitch pop record Failed at Math(s).

Friday | 05.10
What: Guided By Voices w/Undersale
When: 7
Where: The Marquis Theater
Why: Guided By Voices has been putting out a steady stream of unique garage rock albums of varying levels of inventiveness and quality since and yet it seems like band leader Bob Pollard has a seemingly endless supply of great riffs and something insightful to say about the human condition. Currently the group is touring in support of its 2024 album Strut of Kings.

Members of Teacup Gorilla from Grapefuit Lab’s Whiskey from Strangers

F-S | 05.10-06.01
What: Grapefruit Lab Presents Whiskey From Strangers
When: See Schedule Below
Where: Buntport Theater
Why: Queer theater group Grapefruit Lab launches its new show Whiskey from Strangers. The production weaves personal narrative and Denver mythology into a live concept album that runs weekends from Friday, May 10 through Saturday June 1. In collaboration with local indie rock band Teacup Gorilla the show will be part theater and part live musical performance. The show is imbued with a nostalgia for “Old Denver” in its mythic dimensions and adding new lore to the story. It is part album release as the live band draws stories from songwriter and musician Miriam Suzanne’s novel Riding SideSaddle for nine songs that explore themes of friendship, loss, identity and memory with the Mile High City as almost another character the way New York City and Los Angeles often are in movies set in those cities. The previous Grapefruit Lab shows have all been brilliant and poignant commentaries on American culture and how we all find ourselves navigating life with that legacy but through a queer lens that resonates beyond the specificity of identity. The final night of the run will include a performance by psychedelic indiepop phenoms The Green Typewriters. For tickets click on the link above and for the schedule of the run of the show see the dates and times below.

Friday, May 10th, 7:30PM
Saturday, May 11th, 7:30PM
Friday, May 17th, 7:30PM
Saturday, May 18th, 7:30PM
Sunday, May 19th, 2:00PM
Friday, May 24th, 7:30PM
Saturday, May 25th, 7:30PM
Sunday, May 26th, 2:00PM
Friday, May 31st, 7:30PM
Saturday, June 1st, 7:30PM

Saturday | 05.11
What: CSS
When: 7
Where: The Marquis Theater
Why: CSS is the renowned dance punk band from São Paulo, Brazil. The group made a name for itself in the US with the release of its 2006 album Cansei de Ser Sexy (“[Got] tired of being sexy”) and its first single “Let’s Make Love and Listen to Death From Above.” It’s playful and smooth sound was at times reminiscent of Tom Tom Club and a funkier version of its electroclash contemporaries like Ladytron with whom it toured the same year as the release of the album. In 2013 the group split but reunited in 2019 for what was planned to be a one-off show in their hometown but now currently touring in celebration of the 20 year anniversary of their coming together.

Saturday | 05.11
What: Dustin Kensrue w/The Brevet and brother bird
When: 7
Where: The Bluebird Theater
Why: Dustin Kensrue is perhaps better known for being the lead singer and guitarist with influential post-hardcore band Thrice. His solo songwriting is decidedly different in style and mood and really more a solid Americana and country flavor. The Brevet is a rock band in the more gritty end of pop Americana with anthemic choruses and earnest and uplifting melodies. Now brother bird, the project of one Caroline Glaser, may have similar roots as the other two bands on the bill in country, folk and Americana. But her 2024 album another year has an delicacy of feeling and emotional strength at the core of the songwriting that is immediately accessible. The songs hit like songs from direct, actual experiences channeled through a creative interpretive lens without losing the essential truths of the real life stories. Glaser’s arrangements are simultaneously intimate and orchestral and in moments may be reminiscent for some of the early Rilo Kiley records.

Saturday | 05.11
What: Pond w/26FIX
When: 8
Where: Ogden Theatre
Why: Pond from Perth, Australia has been developing its sound since forming in 2008 and though it shares membership with Tame Impala, Pond’s music has charted a musically divergent course. Its latest album Stung! (due out June 21, 2024) makes more obvious the influence of R&B and neo soul on its songwriting. Which is a contrasting departure from the more krautrock and electro-soul sounds of the 2021 album 9. But whatever flavor Pond is swimming in at the moment its live shows have a lushly transporting quality like the modern equivalent of a 1970s psychedelic space rock band circa late 70s Hawkwind with the mystical space vagabond trappings discarded in favor of glam rock.

Tuesday | 05.14
What: X Ambassarors w/New West and Rowan Drake
When: 6:30
Where: Ogden Theatre
Why: X Ambassadors released its latest album Townies in April 2024 and the record feels like particularly vivid portraits of life in the kind of town that exists all across America where there’s a nearby college and an industrial town that partly caters to the needs of the school while having a social world not dependent on the academic institution while its native residents are often looked down upon by students as yokels. The songs are a warm depiction of life in these towns and the inherent dignity of people whose dreams and aspirations are, frankly, no less worthwhile or hopeful than those of their more well-heeled peers and whose stories have a unique poetic resonance. The songs for the band this time out are a little moodier, more atmospheric and introspective and with lyrics that shine a light on everyday life in all its vibrant and recognizable detail whether the details of which are harrowing, heartwarming or heartbreaking.

Wednesday | 05.15
What: Amenra w/Primitive Man and Slow Crush
When: 7
Where: Gothic Theatre
Why: Amenra is a Belgian post-metal band whose deeply atmospheric heavy compositions wed a cinematic aesthetic with a seemingly orchestral approach to its performances and arrangements. The names of its albums are reminiscent of classical suites but the music though steeped in exquisitely performed feats of technical prowess are cathartic and emotionally charged. Primitive Man is the by now legendary doom trio form Denver whose songs are an exorcism of the destructive nihilism of modern human civilization and its negative effects on all our lives as not prosperity but repression and internalized violence trickles down from the power elite. Slow Crush is one of the heaviest shoegaze bands on earth but whose music nevertheless has an ethereal grace that elevates its crushing songs into otherworldly realms of transcendent melodicism.

Friday | 05.17
What: Moon Pussy, Church Fire, The Kronk Men and CNTS
When: 7
Where: Squirm Gallery
Why: CNTS are a band from L.A. whose sound seems to draw from hardcore and noise rock in equal measure with a caustic irreverence and hostility toward faux feel-good sentiments and empty gesture sloganeering. Clear roots in The Jesus Lizard and maybe Unsane. The Kronk Men from Bend, Oregon are somehow a post-hardcore surf rock band with a touch of dark psychedelia. Church Fire is of course the industrial dance trio from Denver who turn a maelstrom of pain, sadness, outrage and righteous anger into incredibly heartfelt music. Moon Pussy obliterates the line between great noise rock band, inspired awkward comedy and electrifying live performance art.

Friday and Saturday | 05.17 and 05.18
What: Medium Build w/Rosie Rush
When: 7
Where: The Bluebird Theater
Why: Nicholas Carpenter played music for a handful of years in Little Moses while an intern at Disney Publishing. But moved to Alaska after that internship was over and started his current project Medium Build. Maybe getting away from his upbringing and roots and the American South was what Carpenter needed to spark his current prolific arc of songwriting but his lyrics are informed by working class sensibilities and cultural references that tell vivid tales of life’s all too at hand and intense struggles and joys. His new album, Country, released April 5, 2024 and its raw and vulnerable compositions are poignantly introspective like Carpenter took a deep dive into the fractured places in his own psyche in search of a personal reconciliation and finding that healing the bruised and broken places in your mind require more patience and grace than many of us are afforded. He’ll be haring his emotional discoveries across two nights a The Bluebird and throughout the tour.

Saturday | 05.18
What: IDLES w/Ganser
When: 7
Where: Mission Ballroom
Why: IDLES took a decidedly different musical turn with the release of its fifth album Tangk in February 2024. Singer and frontman Joe Talbot has said in interviews and press releases that the songs are about love and an attempt to get people hearing the music to dance and not overthink but to feel genuinely. It probably shocked and maybe even disappointed people who got into the band for its early, angular and ferocious post-punk. But the spirited energy is still there, it’s just swimming in moody atmospheric layers at times and others the aggression that has made earlier music from the band so engaging and exciting is delivered with more sonic creativity. The first half of the album almost sounds like a different band with experimental soundscapes and tonal textures worthy of early Liars. And in the lyrics the vulnerable sentiments are preserved and curiously and refreshingly exposed. How this will translate to the live show will have to be witnessed and certainly IDLES won’t disappoint. Also on the bill is the great darkwave post-punk art rock band Ganser from Chicago.

Red Rum Club, photo courtesy the artists

Saturday | 05.18
What: Red Rum Club w/High Street Joggers Club and Card Catalog
When: 7
Where: Globe Hall
Why: Liverpool’s Red Rum Club released its latest album Western Approaches in February 2024. The album is just under 32 minutes at eleven songs and is a fine example song by song of economical songwriting without sound like the band is skimping on rich melodies and storytelling. The group’s eclectic style straddles power pop and blue eyed soul with a standout brass section and infuses it with an infectious energy.

Sunday | 05.19
What: BleakHeart w/Palehorse/Palerider and George Cessna
When: 7
Where: The Bluebird Theater
Why: Denver-based, dark shoegaze band BleakHeart celebrates the release of its second album Silver Pulse with a performance this night sharing the stage with friends the likeminded post-rock/tribal shoegaze act Palehorse/Palerider and singer-songwriter George Cessna whose work traverses realms of moody and existential Americana. The new BleakHeart album leans into the group’s more orchestral impulses with vocalists Kiki GaNun and Kelly Schilling interweaving their vocal talents further to create moving choruses, perfectly accenting each other’s voices.

Judah & The Lion, photo courtesy the artists

Sunday | 05.19
What: NEEDTOBREATHE w/Judah & The Lion
When: 6
Where: Red Rocks
Why: NEEDTOBREATHE is the Southern rock/Americana band from Seneca, South Carolina that has been building its audience since its 2001 inception. In 2023 it released its latest album Caves. On the track “Dreams” the group brought in Nashville-based electro folk and pop duo Judah & The Lion to bring in its own delicate and intricate touches to the song. Judah & The Lion released its new album The Process on May 10, 2024 establishing the band as masters of pastoral soundscapes and fusing the aesthetics of electronic pop and more traditional songwriting and musicianship. The album’s songs are simultaneously otherworldly and warm with an emotional immediacy.

Tuesday | 05.21
What: Sculpture Club w/Lesser Care, Baby Baby and Kill You Club DJs
When: 7
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Sculpture Club is a synthpop-inflected post-punk band from Dallas that is touring ahead of the release of its self-titled album due out June 14 and sharing the stage tonight with the great shoegaze/post-punk trio Lesser Care from El Paso which released its latest record HEEL TURN in March 2024. Also on the bill is avant-pop group Baby Baby from Denver.

Tuesday | 05.21
What: Mount Kimbie w/Chanel Beads
When: 8
Where: Meow Wolf Convergence Station
Why: Mount Kimbie has been charting a left field musical path since its 2008 inception. It began by innovating in the UK dubstep scene and has generally traveled in the circles of innovative and avant-garde electronic music and rightfully so. Utilizing field recordings, live instrumentation, programming and samples Mount Kimbie has blurred the boundaries between musique concrète, abstract hip-hop, IDM, ambient, dubstep and indie rock. Its latest record The Sunset Violent in particular pushes those boundaries with songs that are as accessible as they are challenging with a tranquil yet expansive mood that runs throughout the album’s runtime. Opening act Chanel Beads is a producer and expert soundscaper in his own right from New York. His debut album Your Day Will Come dropped on April 19, 2024 and its heavily-percussion and bass driven music is imbued with reflective, melancholic moods reminiscent of Safe in the Hands of Love-period Yves Tumor but more informed by hypnogogic pop and chillwave.

Wednesday | 05.22
What: Guitar Wolf w/Hans Condor
When: 7
Where: The Bluebird Theater
Why: Tokyo’s Guitar Wolf is the kind of mutant garage punk/noise rock that is easy to understand and difficult to explain. It’s raw exuberance as a live band is incredibly infectious and makes the madness and malestrom of its sound and live performance something to get swept up within. Listen to any of its records and it can be a blunt, fractured, hyperkinetic rock and roll that sounds like it’s deconstructing and imploding while you’re listening to it yet there is a primal charm to what this bands does on recordings and at its shows. It must simply be experienced at least once by anyone even pretending to be into rock music.

Thursday | 05.23
What: Optic Sink w/Voight and Pill Joy
When: 7
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Optic Sink is a project of Natalie Hoffman of art punk outfit NOTS from Memphis, Tennessee. She spent some time as the bassist of Ex Cult as well. This band is synth driven, minimalist post-punk seemingly inspired in part by early synth bands like The Normal and Fad Gadget. But on the band’s 2023 album Glass Blocks it also covered Liliput’s “A Silver Key Can Open An Iron Lock, Somewhere” for an effect not unlike Young Marble Giants with synths or extra stripped down Suburban Lawns or Roxy Music. Opening is shoegaze-post-punk duo Voight from Denver whose music is informed by and includes synth composition and aesthetics. But all undergirded by an emotional intensity that warps its purely musical aspects into interesting sonic shapes.

Thursday | 05.23
What: Waxahatchee w/Good Morning
When: 7
Where: Mission Ballroom
Why: Waxahatchee is touring in support of its new record Tigers Blood. The previous record Saint Cloud felt like a shift in a new direction in singer Katie Crutchfield’s songwriting and this new record feels even more like Crutchfield has stripped the elements to the essentials. Part of that sound suits well the desire the songwriter has expressed in rediscovering the appealing essence of an already existing relationship, relationships and life situations. A re-orienting, a grounding and coming back from a vital place with which to imbue the performances and sentiments with fresh conviction. It’s not a radically different sound from the commanding indie folk and Americana flavor that has established Waxahatchee as a band to watch but after four years and the prolonged period of the early pandemic it sounds like Crutchfield reconnected with something in heart mind and heart that might have fallen out of sync as it did with everyone the past handful of years.

Friday | 05.24
What: Trauma Ray w/Downward, World’s Worst and Cherished
When: 8
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Trauma Ray is the shoegaze doom band from Fort Worth, Texas whose sound and energy comes off like the people in the band came out of the that city’s local punk scene. Presumably Downward is the emo-inflected post-rock band from Tulsa, Oklahoma. World’s Worst from Salt Lake City blurs that emo and shoegaze line perfectly with delicate melodies and raw emotions as manifested most accessibly on its 2023 self-titled album. Cherish is of course the dream pop turned shoegaze band from Denver whose roots come from various places including the local hardcore scene. When the band started out it was called Lowfaith and had more of a death rock sound but over time its music evolved into emotionally charged shoegaze with a real ear for vulnerable moods and intricate yet evocative melodies.

Wicca Phase Springs Eternal, photo from Bandcamp

Saturday | 05.25
What: Wicca Phase Springs Eternal w/Midwife
When: 7
Where: Meow Wolf Convergence Station
Why: Wicca Phase Springs Eternal released its self-titled album in 2023 and showcased how one can tap into darkwave moodiness and hip-hop production methods to create something uniquely compelling that doesn’t seem too beholden to the aforementioned styles of music. Opening is Midwife whose heartbreaking, ambient indie folk which she self-styles as “heaven metal” and whose songwriting engages deeply with its radical vulnerability with all pretense of performative toughness that is very much baked into the American psyche dispensed with. The result is instantly relatable music that shows how it’s possible to experience personal loss and feel that so deeply and still find a way to survive without the baggage of needing to “getting over” it.

Saturday | 05.25
What: Allison Lorenzen w/Oldest Sea and Calamity
When: 7
Where: Squirm Gallery
Why: All solo sets from cosmic indie folk artists from Colorado and elsewhere. Allison Lorenzen fuses ambient compositional elements with experimental folk forms for warmly ethereal songs. Lorenzen is undertaking a short tour through the American southwest with Oldest Sea, an artist from New Jersey whose music some might call “funeral doom” because it is heavy, it has grittiness and exudes a densely atmospheric sound that fans of Lingua Ignota and SubRosa might fully appreciate. Calamity for this show will be a solo set from Kate Hannington so the core of her economic songwriting will shine on its own separate from the context of the full band and its more full-fledged shoegaze-adjacent style.

Sunday | 05.26
What: Mind’s Eye w/Friko
When: 7
Where: Lost Lake
Why: Mind’s Eye is a psychedelic, indie garage rock band from Los Angeles whose 2023 album Long Nights and Wasted Affairs that sounds like a blend of early 2010’s post-punk and current shoegaze-y indie rock. Opening the show is Friko from Chicago’s who have been on tour with Water From Your Eyes and whose debut full-length Where we’ve been, Where we go from here dropped in February. The songwriting has the emotional rawness and vulnerability that fans of Bright Eyes and Microphones will appreciate for its orchestral arrangements and noisy power pop sensibilities.

Monday | 05.27
What: Facet, Church Fire and Probes
When: 7
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Facet is an angular noise-rock/post-hardcore band from Oakland whose 2023 self-titled album is filled with urgent, caustic, cathartic sounds and sentiments. Think the modern equivalent of a Gravity Records band and if you enjoy that flavor of thrillingly abrasive music and/or Unwound Facet is for you. Church Fire will match the intensity and energy but with beginning to end industrial dance pop. On its Bandcamp page Probes from Denver says it’s “Bleak as fuck.” And it’s doomy sludge rock is heavy and stark like if guys who maybe got started in stoner rock bands discovered Shellac and Unsane.

Monday | 05.27
What: Melt Banana w/babybaby_explores and Tomato Flower
When: 6:30
Where: Meow Wolf Convergence Station
Why: Melt Banana is the legendary noise rock/grindcore/electro pop duo from Tokyo whose 32 year career has revealed a knack for making sounds that get under your skin and electrify in the live setting. Witnessing a Melt Banana show is like being grabbed in the embrace of hyperkinetic energy and riding out a barrage of sounds that shift constantly with rapidly evolving rhythms in a train of jump cuts. Absolutely one of a kind and kind of an odd show to have happen at Meow Wolf rather than one of the dive bars the group usually plays in Denver. Melt Banana will soon release its new album 3 + 5.

Monday and Tuesday | 05.27 and 05.28
What: Maggie Rogers w/The Japanese House
When: 6:30 (both nights)
Where: Red Rocks
Why: Maggie Rogers apparently transcribed hundreds of hours of interviews for Lizzy Goodman that the latter put into her 2017 epochal book about 2000s New York rock music Meet Me in the Bathroom when she started at NYU thinking about a career in music journalism. But she she caught the songwriting bug and worked her way through an early band and experiments in style when in 2016 she wrote her breakout single “Alaska” Since then the singer-songwriter-producer has established herself as one of the more well known pop artists in the indie realm who is now touring in support of her 2024 album Don’t Forget Me. Opening the show is an artist who has been on the rise as well the past handful of years. Amber Mary Bain is a year younger than Maggie Rogers but has garnered a bit of critical acclaim and built an increasingly wider audience beyond her home country of the UK. Her own brand of indie pop weaves together electronic aesthetics and production so that even her more folk-inflected material has an otherworldly yet warm aspect that lends her songs a unique sense of intimacy.

Tuesday | 05.28
What: Wednesday w/Draag
When: 7
Where: Gothic Theatre
Why: Wednesday is a a band from Asheville, North Carolina whose sound seems to effortlessly shift from noisy shoegaze to alt-country with a curiously coherent ease across an album and sometimes within the same song. Its 2023 album Rat Saw God made that range clear and touring in support of the album the group performed that music with a joyful exuberance that turned the heartbreaking songs into catharsis. Opening the show is Los Angeles-based experimental shoegaze group Draag. Its sound brings together beat-making expertise with ambient soundscaping and abstract dream pop melodies. Its hazy layers of hypnotic sound make a listen to its 2024 album Actually, the quiet is nice like walking into a luminous fog that stimulates your mind and senses in unexpected ways. In moments its reminiscent of Loveless in its tonal drift and creative use of iterative repetition and live it promises an engulfing and transporting effect.

Thursday | 05.30
What: Ladytron w/boyhollow
When: 7
Where: Reelworks
Why: Ladytron is an electronic pop band from Liverpool, England that started in 1999 in a more minimalistic mode that got the group lumped in with the then nascent electroclash movement but its own sound wasn’t too in line with the aesthetics of other artists associated with that style. And almost immediately Ladytron moved on to other production styles, methods and sounds so that by the time of the mid-2000s some people were calling them a shoegaze band but there is nothing guitar-driven in the band’s music though its rich tones and saturated melodies seemed to have a resonance with the way many shoegaze bands reflected the influence of electronic sounds on their own musical expression. In much of the Ladytron sound one hears the influence of the likes of Giorgio Moroder and ABBA. After what seemed like a lengthy hiatus in studio output Ladytron in the last handful of years has released new albums including 2023’s Time’s Arrow. Boyhollow is Michael Trundle the legendary DJ who currently helms the long-running now monthly DJ night Lipgloss at Ophelia’s.

Slim Cessna’s Auto Club, photo by Tom Murphy

Friday | 05.31
What: Slim Cessna’s Auto Club album release w/Little Fyodor & Babushka Band, Mr. Pacman and MC’d by John Rumley
When: 7
Where: The Oriental Theater
Why: Slim Cessna’s Auto Club is a Denver institution of the Mile High City’s branch of Gothic Americana. But in recent years the group’s albums have showcased the exuberant joy of its live performances as well as the literary underpinnings of the band’s songwriting which has been an often underrated aspect of its music from the beginning. This show occasion’s the release of its latest album Kinnery of Lupercalia; Buell Legion which has some of the most attentive production to the placement of sound in the mix of its albums to date. Opening the show are art punk legends Little Fyodor & Babushka Band and weirdo new wave synth punk giants Mr. Pacman. John Rumley has also been a fixture in Denver music including stints in bands like Urban Leash and The Buckingham Squares. An entire show of bands that have helped make Denver a place where unique music has been emerging for decades.

Friday | 05.31
What: Whores w/Native Daughters and Suicide Cages
When: 7
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Fresh off its performance at the Caterwaul festival in Minneapolis, Atlanta-based noise rock juggernauts are making a stop in Denver. The group recently released its caustic and driving new album WAR. and its tales of inner turmoil and struggles with self-loathing and transcendence from personal darkness. Local support comes from doomy instrumental post-rock band Native Daughters and brutally noisy post-hardcore quartet Suicide Cages.

Friday | 05.31
What: Alexander Stewart w/Emmy Meli
When: 7
Where: The Marquis Theater
Why: Alexander Stewart is a pop artist originally from Toronto but now based out of Los Angeles who has enjoyed a bit of viral success with over a billion streams of his music to date. His emotive vocal style suits well his heart-on-sleeve lyrics and fusion of auto-tune inflected hip-hop, reggaeton and indie pop. Opening artist Emmy Meli recently released her Hello Stranger EP but made waves with early single “I Am Woman” which she initially posted to TikTok in 2021 where it became a sensation for her soulful and commanding vocals and the song became the theme song to Megan Markle’s podcast Archetypes. Meli is clearly steeped in the tradition of soul and R&B in a fashion that has garnered her some comparisons to Amy Winehouse. Her EP demonstrates that such accolades are very much deserved.

Best Shows in Denver and Beyond March 2024

**The Dandy Warhols perform at The Gothic Theatre on March 18, 2024**

Saturday | 03.02
What: Thor w/Joecephus and the George Jonestown Massacre, Chamber Mage, DJ Eagle Wing
When: 8
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: THOR is the legendary, early heavy metal band from Vancouver, British Columbia. Founded and fronted by Jon Mikl Thor, a body building champion who among other titles won the designations of being Mr. USA and Mr. World Canada. When forming the band in 1973 Thor brought together his status as a body builder with music with his physical appearance and presence lending itself well to incorporating an early Viking warrior and gladiator image. In the mid-70s the band toured throughout the Eastern USA and Canada before gaining the attention of Merv Griffin who had the group perform on the Merv Griffin Show when it was broadcasting from Caesars Palace. That appearance garnered the group a record deal with RCA. With a new band lineup in 1977 and regular touring along with some releases under its belt, THOR made it over to England following a distribution deal where it signed with Motörhead manager Douglas Smith and relocated to London in 1984. Two records and three years later, the band called it quits in 1987 with Jon Mikl trying his hand at further his acting career. But that wasn’t the end of the road for THOR and a cult following lead to enough renewed interest that the group re-formed in 1997. The band has since become more active and musically prolific than it ever was in its first run and THOR continues to tour and evolve its performance concept, these days with THOR as a cowboy more in that heroic Roy Rogers and maybe even The Lone Ranger vein. In 2024 THOR will release its latest album Ride of the Iron Horse on March 15, 2024 and this may be an opportunity to catch those songs live. Give a listen to our interview with Jon Mikl Thor here.

Sunday | 03.03
What: Voivod and Prong w/Cobranoid
When: 6
Where: The Oriental Theater
Why: Voivod is the visionary early thrash band from Canada whose sound embraced elements beyond heavy metal and as the years have progressed Voivod could sometimes sound like a strange post-punk or industrial band and its own progressive metal/thrash roots have always been more imaginative than many of its peers. Its latest album Morgöth Tales (2023) is vintage Voivod with the spiraling twists and turns in its guitar leads and both gritty and haunted vocals with science fiction themed lyrics that clearly comment with great clarity and poignancy about the state of the world and with some nice Easter Eggs in the music and lyrics referencing earlier Voivod albums like Dimension Hatröss (1988). Live be prepared for a band that performs more like a hardcore band than one might expect from its art rock leanings. Prong also early on from its 1986 inception more than flirted with electronic sounds, industrial beats and what might be described as thrash psychedelia in its songwriting. And now the veteran band is touring in support of its 2023 album State of Emergency. An ideal double bill in classic heavy music.

Monday | 03.04
What: Cat Power Sings Dylan: The 1966 Royal Albert Hall Concert
When: 7
Where: Paramount Theatre
Why: In 2023 Cat Power released the ambitious live cover album Cat Power Sings Dylan: The 1966 Royal Albert Hall Concert (she knows it was at Manchester Free Free Trade Hall, but the legend differs). It’s a faithful recreation of the concert wherein Dylan switches halfway through from acoustic to electric instrumentation and someone in the audience yelled “Judas!” because how dare one of the darlings of folk music betray the tradition so callously and publicly. Quainter times but Cat Power’s performance, now recreated live on stage, is powerful and brilliantly rendered in exquisite detail in a way that is both ironic and sincere as an act of cultural and creative time travel and trying on a classic outfit for size in a musical sense in the way only Chan Marshall can. Why did she do this? Marshall has long made other people’s music her own as a tribute to their influence and impact and this was just the next level and taking on an absolute classic performance traded as bootlegs for years, a move that perhaps Dylan would have approved and who knows, maybe did behind the scenes. Whatever the origins of this effort Cat Power is a commanding live performer with undeniable mystique and emotional range and this will probably be the only time she tours this show.

Otoboke Beaver, photo courtesy the artists

Tuesday | 03.05
What: Otoboke Beaver w/Drinking Boys and Girls Choir
When: 7
Where: Gothic Theatre
Why: Otoboke Beaver is the hyperkinetic hardcore/post-punk/garage rock band from Kyoto that seemed to leap from very underground status in America before 2022 to a bit of a cult phenomenon following the release of that year’s ferocious, culturally and politically incisive and sharply humorous album Super Champon. The group toured extensively behind the record including a stop at Globe Hall in Denver where it sold out the show and with relentless energy and raw charisma more than earned its growing popularity followed by a return show at The Bluebird and now The Gothic. The group deftly uses media and cultural references in deconstructing consumerism and misogyny in almost a parody of Japanese television and its phantasmagorical reality TV shows and advertising. There is a nuanced awareness in what the band is doing while also making it all fun and exciting and to any extent that it’s kitschy it is a knowing employment of tropes that also embraces the uniqueness of Japanese popular culture and its widely varied manifestations.

Wednesday | 03.06
What: Real Estate w/Florry
When: 7
Where: Gothic Theatre
Why: Real Estate is a veteran band of 2000s and 2010s indie rock that survived changing tastes and the whole period when blogs and online music journalism made and sometimes unmade bands. And the pandemic which has been rough on the world of music generally. Its early sound may have been more shaped by jangle pop and surf rock with a drift toward dream pop in the 2010s. But with the release of its 2024 album Daniel it seems that Real Estate is firmly comfortable in embracing the entirety of its musical development with a soft melodicism that lends itself well to observational songs of adult introspection and assessment of what makes living meaningful and resonant after the rush of youth has long burned out but one’s desire to do more than just go along with being a cog in society’s machine. The record speaks to how none of us really wants to just plug in and go along with being a passive consumer when there’s so much of life left to live yet and so much of it is more than just going to work, doing some menial thing for 8-10 hours and commuting home and watching TV and maybe on the weekend do some shopping or engage in some light local tourism or super premeditated and marketed “adulting” amusement. The songs on Daniel are more reflective and speak to more going on than what we’ve been lead to believe means what it looks like to “grow up.”

Wednesday | 03.06
What: Cherry Glazerr w/Wombo
When: 7
Where: Bluebird Theater
Why: Clementine Creevy has been doing Cherry Glazerr since she was a teenager in 2013 and the project has evolved in always sonically interesting and ambitious directions. Early on the music might have been described as dream pop and shoegaze and that has been a consistent sound that runs through the band’s music through to today. But the 2023 album I Don’t Want You Anymore seems more gritty and raw and with more distorted, jagged edges and orchestrated moments of poignant dramatic flourishes alongside the masterful fusion of electronic composition and moody guitar rock. It sounds like the kind of album that serves as a way to write out coming to terms with the downbeats of one’s own life with daring honesty and arguably the trio’s finest record. Opening the show is the arty post-punk band Wombo from Louisville, Kentucky who for many is one of the great underground bands of the last several years. Its records are all inventive exercises in threading together psychedelic rock and whatever it was Pere Ubu was doing in its early days yet making it oddly immediately accessible with a startlingly commanding live performance.

Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, photo by Olivia Oyama

Thursday | 03.07
What: Sleepytime Gorilla Museum w/Dreadnought, Surplus 1980
When: 7
Where: Bluebird Theater
Why: Sleepytime Gorilla Museum established itself as one of the great cult bands out of the 90s and 2000s with its utterly unique melange of theater, heavy art rock and psychedelia. Safe to say it would be challenging to compare the band’s music to that of any of its contemporaries except maybe something Mike Patton might be doing around the same time and in fact Matthias Bossi and Patton worked together for a live score for the 1924 film Waxworks. Its records are all fascinating pieces that at times seem industrial, others the kind of industrial noise rock one might expect from Cop Shoot Cop with the cathartic flourishes heard more often in the music of Swans—Frank Zappa gone fully jazz punk. When SGM split in 2011 probably no one was expecting a reunion but that’s what happened in 2023 and now the legendary experimental band is touring behind the release of its new album of the Last Human Being and yes it’s as wonderfully weird and as challenging and rewarding as one might hope to hear. Opening are Denver psychedelic doom band Dreadnought and Surplus 1980, a group headed by SGM’s Moe Staiano and in a what might be described as an avant-garde post-punk dub vein.

Thursday | 03.07
What: Ryan Beatty
When: 7
Where: Gothic Theatre
Why: Ryan Beatty got started in his musical career by posting videos on his YouTube channel beginning in 2011 and while still a teen embarked touring but with his image and thus to some extent his music and personal expression limited by adhering to a supposedly palatable media image for mainstream consumption. So he fired his management team leading to his not being able to actually put out his own music until he was around 20 years old. But Beatty’s warmly expressive vocals and ear for evocative arrangements meant he has been able to find success on his own terms. His 2023 album Calico with its wide open yet intimate sounds and production that lets the songs sound like they might be recorded at home minus the rich vocal sounds and orchestral touches that contrast well with sound design that capture background sounds to give the more pristine elements a human context.

Thursday | 03.07
What: Clayton Dexter’s Country Backwash w/Body and Ryan Wong Band
When: 7
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Clayton Dexter’s Country Backwash is sort of a psychedelic country band from Denver that includes of course Clayton Dexter and at least for the 2023 self-titled album Paul Dehaven (Paper Bird, Eye & the Arrow, Heavy Diamond Ring). But of course the music stylistically ranges far from that sometimes limiting format and at times the band sounds like some sort of glam rock-flavored synth pop band with guitar twang. Body is a synth pop band that includes former members of Ned Garthe Explosion and Hindershot that though a trio seems to produce a massive and immersive panoply of sound. Ryan Wong Band is refreshingly a fairly straight forward country band from Denver that seems to draw its roots from a time when country didn’t need to stay on some narrow brand for a sound palette and dips into the realm of cosmic country as well.

Replica City in June 2023, photo by Tom Murphy

Friday | 03.08
What: Replica City w/Quits and Supreme Joy
When: 6:30
Where: Mutiny Information Café
Why: Replica City is a post-punk band from Denver that is more informed by the likes of Dinosaur Jr than Joy Division and it will release its new EP Gift of Knives on March 5, 2024 for which this show is a celebration. Quits is the great Denver noise rock institution whose own album Feeling It released in September 2023 with a support tour in 2024. Supreme Joy is an angular post-punk band from Denver that has more than a leg in jangly psychedelic rock but think more in the vein of something like JOHN, Women or Swell Maps.

Black Flag, photo courtesy Artists World Wide

Saturday | 03.09
What: Black Flag – 40th Anniversary of My War
When: 7:30
Where: The Oriental Theater
Why: Black Flag’s 1984, second album My War introduced fans of the group’s ferocious and technically proficient hardcore to sludgier, heavy sounds and grinding tempos in a way that proved influential on the genre and crossover bands. Apparently, Black Flag had already done the accelerated punk thing for years and simply had to do something different. And for this show you’ll probably get to see the album in its entirety as well as other Black Flag classics. Greg Ginn is the only original member but getting to see Ginn unleash those crazy Black Flag riffs is still something impressive to behold.

Saturday | 03.09
What: Laetitia Sadier w/Susan James
When: 7
Where: Lost Lake
Why: Laetitia Sadier is the charismatic and soulful singer and songwriter who is perhaps best known for being a lead singer in experimental rock band Stereolab. But Sadier has long had projects outside the latter including a reliably fascinating solo career consisting of five albums since 2010 including Rooting for Love which dropped on February 23, 2024. In the album’s songs one years the lush, downtempo, jazz and Bossa Nova inflected art pop that has been Sadier’s signature musical flavor for decades. But there is a spaciousness in Sadier’s solo work that is inviting and soothing without being soporific. Her warm and expressive vocals sit solidly in the mix of drifting atmospheres as well as grounding the more energetic passages. The album sounds like a conversation about weighty subjects in French and English but in a manner that invites imagination and compassion to combine to look toward a world that is moving beyond the petty and incredibly destructive civilizational patterns, a death spiral really, in which our species now seems stuck. Sadier looks toward a time past that psychological gridlock honoring the complexities of human existence and habits that got us there. Susan James is a renowned singer-songwriter whose experimental, psychedelic folk also seems to draw bit from 60s French pop as well and whose 2015 album Sea Glass marked a shift in the artist’s songwriting to more incorporation of her influences among minimalist composers. It was also produced by Sean O’Hagan of High Llamas fame, an artist who in his own music fused psychedelic pop and the avant-garde.

Sunday | 03.10
What: Kendra Morris w/Rootbeer Richie & The Reveille and The Milk Blossoms
When: 7
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Kendra Morris is a singer-songwriter from NYC whose sound is clearly rooted in soul, R&B and the neo-soul end of hip-hop. And there’s a touch of psychedelia at the edges of her lush arrangements and a general sense that Morris is writing her music driven by imagining unusual short stories that themselves inspire creativity and giving her songs their own personality so that her records while having some consistency of quality and imbued with a style that is uniquely Morris’ own are refreshingly varied and mysterious because there are no hackneyed premises and if there are playful uses of common subject fodder for pop music it’s all surround by unusual, often moody and deeply evocative music and Morris’ commanding vocals. Opening the show are two Denver bands in the rock and soul theater of Rootbeer Richie & the Reveille and The Milk Blossoms. The latter is more in line with Morris in the eclectic and emotionally rich songwriting and soundscapes and some roots in hip-hop, R&B, left field psychedelia and indiepop.

Friday | 03.15
What: RAREBYRD$, Sell Farm, Baby Baby and Doll
When: 8
Where: The Skylark Lounge
Why: Witch Cat Records is a record label based in Colorado that has been a home to some of the more experimental and forward thinking electronic and psychedelic music out now. While its roster is small its releases include offerings from Edward Ka-Spel of The Legendary Pink Dots fame, LPD reissues, Thanatoloop, Church Fire, Mourning Cloaks, Acidbat and Orbit Service. This is a showcase for acts whose own aesthetics align with the Witch Cat aesthetic and a now infrequent appearance by hip-hop greats RAREBYRD$, industrial/EBM auteur Sell Farm, left field pop artist Baby Baby and Doll.

Friday | 03.15
What: Eyedress
When: 7
Where: Summit Music Hall
Why: Eyedress has been a notable figure in modern pop/indie rock/psychedelia and hybrid forms of each with some hip-hop production and glitchcore thrown into the mix. Originally from the Philippines Eyedress now calls Los Angeles home and his most recent releases read like a modern hip-hop joints with multiple collaborators that Eyedress has brought in to expand his own sound palette and range as an artist.

The Brook & The Bluff, photo by Noah Tidmore

Friday | 03.15
What: The Brook & The Bluff w/Teenage Dads
When: 7
Where: Boulder Theater
Why: The Brook & The Bluff formed in Birmingham, Alabama among two brothers and childhood friends around 2015 but has since relocated to Nashville. The group’s sound is in the realm of 1970s soft rock with a touch of psychedelia and Americana and its 2023 album Bluebeard highlighted the way the band can turn simple arrangements into intricate and lush soundscapes in which its stories take on an intimate quality that soothe as much as they take on subjects of everyday life and its usual struggles with a tender poignancy.

Sunday | 03.17
What: Deap Valley farewell tour w/Death Valley Girls
When: 7
Where: Marquis Theater
Why: Los Angeles-based blues-garage duo Deap Valley is taking one last run as a live band this spring through June before dissolving hopefully into other projects. Fans of Yeah Yeah Yeahs and The Kills will definitely appreciate the energy Deap Valley has been giving since its inception. Also on the bill is the great psychedelic shoegaze band Death Valley Girls. Also from Los Angeles. One hopes when the tour was being put together the two bands recognized the humor value of Deap Valley and Death Valley Girls touring together even though there’s nothing gimmicky about the music of each.

The Dandy Warhols, photo courtesy the artists

Monday | 03.18
What: The Dandy Warhols w/Sisters of Your Sunshine Vapor
When: 7
Where: Gothic Theatre
Why: The Dandy Warhols have been together since 1994 and from the beginning of their career the members of the group have pulled together an eclectic set of influences to synthesize into various styles of music yet not without a coherent sound. Early on its music seemed rooted in psychedelic garage rock, nascent Britpop and shoegaze soundscaping. As the group has evolved it has incorporated elements of electronic music and production to sculpt its songwriting into something compelling and unique even through times when perhaps some of its fans haven’t been as on board with the innovations and evolution of the Dandys’ songwriting experiments. But all along the quartet’s spirited and charismatic live show has remained worth witnessing. In 2024 the Dandys released the new album Rockmaker. In typical fashion the group has seemingly reinvented itself and indulged a kind of free association approach to its sonic elements so that the record is equally an electro rock and chill big beat affair and fuzzy, groovy psychedelia with a deep sense of play, an irreverent sense of humor and deft cultural and musical allusions. Hopefully the band plays liberally from the new album but it has always been good about giving fans a generous dose of its remarkable back catalog live.

Monday | 03.18
What: The Decibel Tour: Hulder, Devil Master, Worm and Necrofier
When: 6:30
Where: HQ
Why: Decibel Magazine is celebrating its twentieth anniversary with this tour featuring some of the more interesting bands in the broad realm of heavy music. Hulder is the transcendental black metal band from the Pacific Northwest, Devil Master is a Philadelphia-based, blackened crust/death rock group, Worm is the funeral doom project from Florida and Necrofier is the dark, death thrash outfit from Houston.

Monday | 03.18
What: The Schizophonics w/The Omens and Cleaner
When: 7
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: The Schizophonics is a garage rock band from San Diego who have more than a touch of psychedelia in their sound and its nervy energy and widely expansive sound is reminiscent of MC5 and a more feral 13th Floor Elevators. So yes Denver’s The Omens are coming out of semi-retirement with their own brand of unhinged garage rock power alongside heavy psych rock band Cleaner from Denver fronted by Kim Phat (Dirty Few, Keef Duster) with musicianship from members of other noteworthy Denver bands like Arj Narayan (Black Acid Devil etc.) and Justin Sanderson (Muscle Beach, Colfax Speed Queen, Night Fishing etc.).

Monday | 03.18
What: Slow Hollows w/P.H.F.
When: 7
Where: Globe Hall
Why: Slow Hollows split in 2020 but songwriter Austin Feinstein kept making music and relaunched the project himself in 2023. A year later the new Slow Hollows album Bullhead dropped on March 8, 2024 showcasing Feinstein’s gently intricate arrangements, evocatively thoughtful lyrics and eclectic style somewhere between indiepop and post-punk. Feinstein this time out sounds more confident and emotionally forward yet vulnerable and introspective. The drifts and bends in his melodies lend the song a disarming quality that makes you wonder if he’d been listening to a lot of My Bloody Valentine and Microphones for a few years but managed not to rip off their songwriting style while adopting some of their methods of crafting tone.

Monday | 03.18
What: The Kooks, The Vaccines and Daisy the Great
When: 6
Where: The Fillmore Auditorium
Why: Crazy to think The Kooks have been around for twenty years at this point but the group based out of Brighton, England has evolved beyond its early sound rooted in 60s mod and turn of the century post-punk and its most recent album, 2022’s 10 Tracks to Echo in the Dark, is almost like a Britpop revival sound but one that might have happened had The Verve embraced electro-funk and some hip-hop production and chillwave soundscaping. The Vaccines came along in the wake of The Kooks out of West London with its own brash stage show and fusion of surf rock and melodic punk. It’s 2024 album Pick-Up Full of Pink Carnations sounds like one of those triumphant New Wave power pop records of the 80s but without the cheese and just the soaring melodies and touch of nostalgia for one’s younger days as fuel for your present existence. Opening this leg of the tour is Daisy the Great. The indie pop duo of Kelley Dugan and Mina Walker started when the two were acting students at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts who were writing a musical about a fictional band and then made that band into a real life thing. The group’s 2017 debut composition “The Record Player Song” was hit with to date over a quarter billion streams. Two albums and three EPs later including 2023’s Tough Kid Daisy the Great has garnered a bit of a following for its folk and R&B-inflected pop songs informed by a wry self-awareness and sense of humor. It’s charmingly spare live performances will definitely be an interesting counterpoint to the headliners for the night in some ways but Daisy The Great is also known to put in a lively set of its own.

Tuesday | 03.19
What: Madi Diaz w/Daniel Nunnelee
When: 7
Where: The Bluebird Theater
Why: Madi Diaz is an acclaimed songwriter who got her start playing shows in NYC in 2007, the same year of the release of her debut album Skin And Bones. Her observant and emotionally refined lyrics and gift for building textures into her melodies and rhythms has helped set her songwriting apart from many of her peers. Her 2024 album Weird Faith centers Diaz’s vocals in music that is at once orchestral and minimalist with rich yet unobtrusive production that showcases the songwriter’s immediately relatable lyrics about relationships with self, others and the universe we all try to navigate as best we can.

Tuesday and Wednesday | 0 3 .19 and 03.20
What: K.Flay w/Cam Kahin
When: 7
Where: The Marquis Theater
Why: Kristine Flaherty aka K.Flay is a songwriter very much of the current vintage whose music isn’t bond by strict genres and whose music is eclectic yet coherently stylized. She began writing music in her late teens as a reaction against some of the popular music of the time writing a parody song only to realize she enjoyed the process of doing so and over twenty years later Flaherty has released multiple albums and collaborated with the likes FIDLAR, Tom Morello, Danny Brown, Matt and Kim, MC Lars and countless others, a testament to her gift for genre-bending. These two nights at The Marquis are part of of K.Flay’s MONO: Live in Stereo tour which are a series of intimate shows in just seven major cities in the USA.

Wednesday | 03.20
What: Torres w/Liza Anne
When: 7
Where: Larimer Lounge
Why: Torres pushed her songwriting envelope much further than her already unorthodox pop songwriting with the 2024 release of her new album What an Enormous Room. The album cover makes one wonder if the absurdity of the image as a concept made Torres both laugh and take as a challenge to reach beyond where she’d been before as an artist. The songwriter has of course been no stranger to crafting arty synth pop but the new record will probably alienate some people expecting her to give us more of what they’ve been expecting. Torres is embracing the strange and the experimental with this set of songs without sacrificing songcraft and thoughtful lyrics of an emotionally refined vintage. Could Torres take this impulse creative further? Of course but the new album is a welcome expansion of sounds and creative ideas one might compare to when Cat Power released her 2012 electronic pop/glam rock record Sun.

Wednesday and Thursday | 03.20 and 03.21
What: Night Cap w/Savanna Leigh
When: 7pm doors both nights
Where: The Coast (03.20) and Lost Lake (03.21)
Why: Night Cap is an indie rock band from Austin, Texas whose eclectic sound merges acoustic songwriting, rock and synth pop. Opener Savanna Leigh is a Nashville-based songwriter whose style synthesizes acoustic indie pop and electronic production. Her string of singles over the past year have revealed an artist whose vulnerability and sensitivity informs songs that are insightful examinations of the inner life and how when we take the time to listen to our often unspoken emotional turmoil and trauma we can attempt to unravel the control of past experience has over our present. Her evocative vocals and lush production combine a cinematic songwriting style with an intimate delivery of the music.

My Blue Heart, photo by AlyssaPerkins of Captivating Visions Photography

Th – S | 03.21-03.23
What: My Blue Heart Tour (3.21 with VALDEZ, 03.22 w/The Patient Zeros, SweetStreak and Rocky Burning and 3.23 w/Get the Axe and Gatehouse
When: 7 (3.21 and 03.23) and 8 (03.22)
Where: Magic Rat (03.21), Goosetown Tavern (03.22) and Vulture’s (03.23)
Why: Art pop My Blue Heart from Denver is celebrating the March 15, 2024 release of its new album Masquerade with a mini-tour along the front range. The album genre bends and seems to discard standard song structures and rhythm schemes. It’s musical roots seem to borrow heavily from blues and funk but mutated by the influence of art rock bands like Hamster Theater and Sleepytime Gorilla Museum and channeled into people songs that aren’t much like what anyone else in Denver is putting out at the moment unless you’re into weirdo music territory like TripLip and Bolonium.

Thursday | 03.21
What: Autoheart w/Pigeon Pit and RAEGAN
When: 6
Where: Meow Wolf
Why: Autoheart is a sophisti-pop band from the UK that has been perfecting its emotionally vibrant synth pop songs that don’t sit neatly in a stylistic box as the group draws on inspiration from disparate sources. In its sound you can hear a touch of R&B, soul and chillwave. The group recently dropped its Punch Demos compilation which includes eighteen demos including remasters of songs from the 2023 10th anniversary edition of the debut Autoheart album Punch. Fans of Erasure and Perfume Genius will definitely find a lot to like about Autoheart. Pigeon Pit is the well known folk punk band from Olympia, Washington. RAEGAN is a pop artist from NYC whose songs are sonically creative, insightful commentaries on popular culture, social dynamics and identity. She combines glitchcore beats, trap production, dub, strings and unconventional textures in rhythms that give her music a distinctive sound that cuts through the familiar trappings of modern alt-pop. Her forthcoming debut EP FUCK RAEGAN promises an expansion on the artist’s sound and the video for the lead single “Waltz” is a sort of queer re-telling of Romeo & Juliet with a music video with visuals like something out of Bram Stoker’s Dracula.

Vatican Vamps, photo courtesy the artists

Friday | 03.22
What: Vatican Vamps album release w/Knuckle Pups and Wildcat
When: 7
Where: The Black Buzzard
Why: Vatican Vamps is celebrating the release of its self-titled album for this show. The record is filled with urgent and gritty songs brimming with brooding atmospheres and a sense of menace. A lot of post-punk and darkwave bands seem to be following sonic trends lately but Vatican Vamps seems to have carved its own path with seeming influences from the post-punk revival of the turn of the century, Britpop and 1980s deathrock. The vinyl edition of the album can be pre-ordered on the Vatican Vamps’ Bandcamp and should be out in April. Also on the bill is one of the great, modern indiepop bands Knuckle Pups.

Cellista, photo by Yellow Bubbles Photography

Saturday | 03.23
What: Cellista and prologue by The Drood and Dustin Schultz (Skinny Puppy) and Hilary Whitmore
When: 7:30-9:30
Where: Dairy Center for the Arts
Why: Cellista is a Los Angeles-based performance artist with roots in the Bay Area and Colorado and over the past several years she has created what she calls stage poems which are narrative multimedia works after those of artist, filmmaker and writer Jean Coctea drawing together seemingly disparate thematic elements and modes of expression. In 2021 she performed at Lincoln Center and she has worked with Tanya Donelly, John Vanderslice, Troyboy, Don McLean, Casey Crescenzo of The Dear Hunter, Van Dyke Parks, Toni! Toni! Toné and Pam the Funkstress. Her work has been heard and scene on film and television and she has appeared as an extra on the TV shows Better Things and Will & Grace playing cello. In fall 2021 her stage poem Pariah explored themes of othering and exile within communities and it featured a companion book by philosopher Frank Seeburger. In 2024 Cellista is unveiling her latest stage poem Élégie. Directed and performed by the artist, Élégie is a one-woman show for cello, static trapeze and cinema. Choreographed by Cellista, Kennedy Kabasares and Joel Baker with film editing by Jennifer Gigantino and cinematography by Bryan Gibel, the one hour piece stars Cellista as the titular figure, a blackbird who shape shifts into human form and back. According to the press release for the stage poem, “Élégie awakens one day in her magical tree outside the walled off city of Cloture to find its entire population has disappeared. In their departure, the citizens have left behind a city of altars, decorated with unlit candles; each containing the memories and mementos of the banished citizens. Élégie shape shifts into human form to find out what happened to Cloture’s disappeared. In her journey she finds serenity.” As with Cellista’s previous stage poem the performance will be a uniquely evocative experience that brings those in attendance deeply into the story with visuals, music, spoken word, the choreography and the event’s baked in literary dimensions that blur the lines between all mediums involved. This Colorado date includes opening performances by ambient-industrial, psychedelic post-punk group The Drood which released its latest album The Book of Drood on March 1, 2024 and Dustin Schultz (Skinny Puppy) and Hilary Whitmore. Listen to our interview with Cellista here.

Monday | 03.25
What: Chew w/Moon Pussy and Church Fire
When: 7:30
Where: The Skylark Lounge
Why: Chew is a band from Atlanta, Georgia whose music defies simple categorization. Until late 2023 Chew had been a trio is now a duo comprised of Brett Reagan who plays sampler, synth bass and guitar while running strobe lights and Sarah Wilson who plays drums and bass lines with a drum sample pad. The project has toured the US and Canada extensively with three European tours under its belt. Because the outfit’s music is so unorthodox it’s music spans and often in the same song the realms of psychedelic and noise rock, ambient, noise, industrial and electronic dance music. Fans of the likes of fellow travelers of eclectic weirdness like Guerilla Toss, Black Moth Super Rainbow and The Spirit of the Beehive will find an immediate connection with the music Chew has been crafting since its inception. Its 2022 album Horses resonates with recent releases by Jockstrap and Sextile without the inspiration of either to feed into its stream of inspiration and influences. In addition to the music Chew’s surreal album covers and inspired song titles suggest more than a passing familiarity with esoteric knowledge and other obscure and niche realms of knowledge as well as a knack for clever wordplay. It all adds up to an uncommon depth of creative development that rewards anyone taking in the music and its presentation beyond the surface level. Also on the bill are local noise rock phenoms Moon Pussy and legendary industrial dance trio Church Fire.

Monday | 03.25
What: Midwife w/Vyva Melinkolya and Body Negative
When: 7
Where: Squirm Gallery
Why: Midwife brings her style of ambient folk soundscapes and vulnerable lyrics that she calls “heaven metal” back to Denver for a tour with artists operating in their own realms of music resonant with the vulnerable energies of Midwife’s textural soundscapes. Vyva Malinkolya and Midwife collaborated on an album recently with the 2023 release of Orbweaving and its fusion of gauzy shoegaze and emotional deep diving as a path to processing trauma and grief. Body Negative is an artist with whom Madeline Johnston aka Midwife has worked as a producer on the the newly released album everett that blurs the line between melancholic ambient and dream pop.

Monday | 03.25
What: HEALTH w/Pixelgrip and King Yosef
When: 7
Where: Gothic Theatre
Why: With the December release of RAT WARS, industrial noise/electronic punk band HEALTH has shown itself capable of reinvention on a deep level with a gritty, melancholic yet cathartic album that combines well with its glitchy and more experimental electronic impulses. And so bringing along the great industrial pop group Pixelgrip along for this tour will only make for a great evening of music with talented producer and recording engineer King Yosef opening the show with his industrial hardcore.

Sleater-Kinney, photo by Chris Hornbecker

Tuesday | 03.26
What: Sleater-Kinney w/Palehound
When: 7
Where: Mission Ballroom
Why: Sleater-Kinney released its eleventh and latest album Little Rope in Jaunary 2024. The record with its grit and bombast matched with an experimentation with the band’s core sound is a welcome reinvention that finds Carrie Brownstein and Corin Tucker infusing what might be described as a more cinematic form of songwriting with raw and earnest emotion and the sharply and poignantly observed personal reflection and thoughtful social commentary one would hope for with a set of songs from this band. In moments it feels more like a glam rock album fortified by punk spirit. No one needs a band whose members are over 25 years of age to sing from a place informed by lingering teen angst and tapping into that mindset with a lack of irony. Fortunately Sleater-Kinney has never been stunted that way and this new album is filled with songs written by people plugging into their own sources of personal vitality and offering perspectives that seem to have zeroed in on clear and present concerns and the feelings we all share in navigating the conflicted world in which we find ourselves living right now. And if all tours since the group reconvened in 2014 are any indication, Sleater-Kinney is still one of the great live rock bands everyone should get to see at least once.

Thursday | 03.28
What: Jenny Haniver, Ethan Lee McCarthy and Fainting Dreams
When: 7
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: A Jenny Haniver is the carcass of a ray or skate that has been modified and dried into a mummy made to resemble a fictional creature of folklore like a sort of a demon, angel or dragon and in various cultures is said to possess magical powers or otherwise used for ritualistic purposes. The Jenny Haniver in this case is an industrial noise post-hardcore duo from Portland, Oregon whose detailed soundscapes are imbued with a melancholic mood. Ethan Lee McCarthy under his own name will likely perform one of his noise sets but one more steeped in atmospheric compositions and gritty gloom. Fainting Dreams has migrated its sound from its early dream pop songwriting to something more like darkly tribal noise rock.

Friday | 03.29
What: Gothsta, Witch Baby, SORROWS, Ak’chamel, Hypnotic Turtle Radio
When: 8
Where: Goosetown Tavern
Why: Gothsta is making a rare live appearance with their style of witchy, experimental, glitchy electronic weirdo pop. Think something more akin to the likes of The Space Lady and Renaldo and the Loaf and you’ll be on the right track. Don’t bother looking online for too much of Gothsta’s music because most of it you’ll have to acquire at the show or at Wax Trax. SORROWS is a downtempo electronic dance duo that combines moody melancholic melodies with a robust low end, orchestrated rhythms with a spontaneous energy and emotionally vibrant and operatic vocals. Witch Baby is a spontaneous composition, avant-garde improvisational group with drums, saxophone, synth, drums, guitar and bass. Ak’chamel, or with the full name of Ak’chamel, The Crazed and Sunchalked Bones of the Vanished Herds, is one of the choice musical entities for appreciators of genre bursting/synthesizing artists who employ their aesthetic as a deconstruction of cultures and a commentary on the impact of industrialized societies on those not as technocratically embedded. Its subversive and surreal song titles are an inspired example of the latter. Fans of African psychedelic artists like Mdou Moctar and esotericist psych post-punkers Savage Republic will appreciate the music and fans of theatrical, ritualistic performances should definitely seek out this psychedelic surf rock pan-continental avant-folk duo.

The Egyptian Lover, photo from Stones Throw Bandcamp

Friday | 03.29
What: The Egyptian Lover
When: 8
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: This is an exceedingly rare chance to catch the influential hip-hop composer, producer and remixer live. His use of analog electronic gear in sculpting his sound made a major impact on hip-hop in the 80s in particular his 1984 single “Egypt, Egypt” from his On the Nile album. It bore the influence of Kraftwerk but stamped with his own masterful production and gift for layering rhythm, vocals and synth melodies that get stuck in your consciousness.

Pictureplane in 2015, photo by Tom Murphy

What: Pictureplane w/Street Fever, Polly Urethane, Dreams of Blights, Kill You Club DJs
When: 8
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Pictureplane returns to Denver, the city where he more fully developed the style of music and production for which he is now most well known. He helped to coin the genre term witch house to describe what he was doing in the late 2000s with a blend of noise, hip-hop production and synth pop that tapped into an emotional space that resonated with feelings of nostalgia and yearning for a better time and place that felt within reach. That sound with other artists manifested into chillswave but Pictureplane always had more of a leg in the experimental realm of the music and harder beats. His 2021 album Dopamine found him reconciling his previous creative impulses into music that hit like a return to form but also a step forward. Also on the bill is Boise, Idaho industrial dance legend Street Fever whose music is rooted in a dark kind of techno and house that has proven to influential on a certain stripe of underground electronic dance music world of a more avant vintage with a live show that is both entrancing, enveloping and enigmatic. Perhaps this includes fellow Boise crafters of pounding and pulsing, industrial noise freakouts Dreams of Blights. Another prime reason to go to this show is to witness a now not so common set from Polly Urethane whose often ritualistic performance art isn’t limited to a genre. It could be one of her sublime fusions of operatic classical and pop performances or combined with a confrontational, industrial noise pieces, a noise soundscape with a turntable, an alchemical mix of post-nü metal noise rock or pure performance art never to be repeated with a collage of classical music and her own tracks and unusual yet poetic visuals. You just never really know except that it will be worth your time and that’s part of the appeal.

The Elegantly Pastoral and Poetic “sleepy” is body / negative’s Delicate Testament to the Life of Their Parents

Descending, piano chords with a touch of reverb and a background reverse delay tone precede ethereal vocals in “sleepy” by body / negative. In the accompanying music video we see some old footage from a wedding, presumably that of songwriter Andy Schiaffino’s parents, and in the background there are hints of children laughing and an audio source that isn’t really connected to the visuals on hand. It’s like future and present exist in the song structured a little like a repeating loop. The song feels like experiencing a waking dream and Simon Scott’s (Slowdive) mastering of the track allows its various layers resonate and intermingle in a way that might happen if you got some old stock, used reel-to-reel tape and fed that found audio material as a sound source into a mix bringing together field recordings of a campfire and the elegantly delicate vocals and instrumentation. On the surface it’s a simple and spare composition but its layers and complexity of expression and emotional nuance convey a sense of melancholic loss and affection that eases in with a heaviness when in the end we learn that the wedded couple is no longer with us. The song, featuring contributions from Midwife, is a beautiful testament to the life of the couple without having to employ heavy-handed theatrics or melodrama to capture a depth of feeling that flows throughout the song. Watch the video for “sleepy” on YouTube and follow body / negative at the links below. The Everett LP was released digitially on December 8, 2023 via Track Number Records with vinyl available for pre-order and shipping in March, 2024.

body / negative on Instagram

body / negative on Bandcamp

body / negative’s “persimmon” is a Melodious Tapestry of Transcendent and Deeply Soothing Tones

Mastered by Slowdive’s Simon Scott, body / negative’s forthcoming album Everett (Track Number Records on December 8, 2023) includes contributions from Madeline Johnston aka Midwife and Randall Taylor aka Amulets. The album’s sixth track “persimmon” features Justin Maranga of Dune Altar Records and Lionel Williams (Vinyl Williams). The song begins with echoing, ethereal tones in the middle distance and the sound of a voice like all of it is coming to you from deep inside a cave or from across a canyon where the acoustics are just right enough to carry sound from a distance so that it’s discernible if not explicitly identifiable. The effect is like that feeling of half-remembering a dream on waking up and wanting to get back to it. In this case a more solid bit of percussion comes into the foreground surrounded by melodious, abstract voices and a floating echoing set of tones. One stream of sound seems to be going one direction and the other in the opposite but all circling and interweaving into a tapestry of textures and soothing music into which the anxious wrinkles in your psyche can unravel. It is a music that invites you to take it on on its own terms without needing to impose a genre as a tool of comprehension as in that mix are elements of ambient, slowcore, shoegaze, musique concrète and post-rock but combining to create something uniquely entrancing. Listen to “persimmon” on Spotify and follow Los Angeles-based artist body / negative at the links below.

body / negative on Instagram

Best Shows in Denver and Beyond October 2023

**Blonde Redhead performs at The Gothic Theatre on October 24, 23**

The Brook & The Bluffs, photo by Noah Tidmore

Sunday | 10.01
What: The Brook & The Bluff w/Bendigo Fletcher
When: 7
Where: Ogden Theatre
Why: The members of The Brook & The Bluff grew up in the same neighborhood in Birmingham, Alabama and after forming in 2016 built their songwriting on a foundation of folk rock’s observational lyrics and delicate melodies. But the band relocated to Nashville in 2018 and self-released its self-titled debut album that same year. Since then the group has garnered a wide national audience and in 2023 the band independently released its latest album, Bluebeard. If 2021’s Yard Sale was inspired by capturing the feel of 1970s Laurel Canyon folk rock the new record even more closely embraces modern production and sounds with touches of R&B and hip-hop in the mix including vocal processing akin to an unexpected influence on the group in Frank Ocean. So if you’re expecting a show of the indie folk sound that launched the band you will get to experience plenty of that but also an evolution of that aesthetic.

Nothing But Thieves, photo by Beatriz Oliveira

Sunday | 10.01
What: Nothing But Thieves w/Kid Kapichi
When: 6:30 doors/7:15 show
Where: Summit Music Hall
Why: English alternative rock band Nothing But Thieves released its fourth album Dead Club City in June 2023. Like its 2020 predecessor Moral Panic the album is step away from its hard rock sound of the early period of the band’s career. But this has only meant a broader emotional palette and songwriting range. Still intact is the group’s knack for anthemic epics and the thoughtful lyrics that have been there from the beginning and more than a bit of that early grit in the live shows.

Monday | 10.02
What: Igorrr w/Melt Banana and Otto Von Schirach
When: 6
Where: Gothic Theatre
Why: Igorrr is the stage name of Gautier Serre who combines classical music, black metal, breakcore structure and production and trip hop into strange yet compelling combination of all of those in a way that might appeal to fans of Mr. Bungle and Secret Chiefs 3 who genre splice plenty on their own. Since 2017 Igorrr has been a full band and its most recent album Spirituality and Distortion (2020) ruthlessly and rapidly jump cuts styles and rhythms so that at times it is reminiscent of Aphex Twin and at others like Naked City mashed up with 8-bit music. So opening this tour in addition to breakcore/industrial weirdo Otto Von Schirach you get to witness the genre smashing, Japanese experimental band Melt Banana who themselves fuse grindcore, industrial, breakcore, noise rock, pop and dance music into a furious and coherent whole that evolves over the course of a song. Sometimes the band has so much sonic momentum it can be genuinely and thrillingly overwhelming. Consistently one of the greatest live bands you’ll see all year.

Tuesday | 10.03
What: Avskum w/Resistant Culture and Poison Tribe
When: 7
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Avskum formed in Sweden in 1982 and has been one of the foundational bands of international D-beat and hardcore. Currently touring in support of its latest album En Annan Värld Är Möjlig. Opening are two of Denver’s own fine practitioners of the raw hardcore arts Resistant Culture and Poison Tribe.

Tuesday | 10.03
What: Tool w/Emily Wolfe https://www.treventscomplex.com/events/detail/tool
When: 6:30 doors/8 show
Where: Budweiser Events Center
Why: Tool occupies a unique place in rock music history as having emerged in Los Angeles at a time when glam metal was king and art rock bands like Tool were an anomaly that would come to benefit from the cultural tsunami that was alternative music. But Tool didn’t quite fit into that milieu either other than being different and having lyrics that were about subjects and from perspectives that were at an angle decided out of step with the mainstream. But its elaborate and ambitious songwriting and creative vision weathered the backlash against alternative music in the mid-90s precisely because it offered something unusual and forward thinking and wasn’t directly connected with a musical trend that was washing out and being replaced, for the most part, with a less vital version. The band has always operated on its own time and on its own terms supported by a cult following and it has used its status to help shine a light on other interesting artists of its time including bands that were a direct influence like King Crimson. In 2019 Tool released its first album in 13 years, Fear Inoculum. The sprawling release was vintage Tool with its intricate yet hypnotic song structures and themes of aging and reflecting on one’s experiences and whether or not one’s accumulated knowledge constitutes wisdom. Opening this tour is talented, hard blues rock guitarist/songwriter Emily Wolfe whose new album the political and gloriously brash The Blowback releases on October 20, 2023.

Wednesday | 10.04
What: Chris Farren
When: 7
Where: Globe Hall
Why: Chris Farren, gotta give it to him, to call his 2023 album Doom Singer (Polyvinyl Records) because look at the world. And partly because his often surreal and irreverent humor and sense of irony informs not just his lyrics but music videos like that for “Cosmic Leash” and his presentation of the music generally. But in that humor Farren isn’t hiding the heartfelt emotions and his songs are often emotionally vibrant epics that have a vulnerability built into the bluster which sets him very much apart from many artists. One might call it emo and it has that sing along vibe but tempered with a self-awareness one might expect of a musician who came out of the DIY underground.

Roselit Bone, photo from roselitbone.com

Thursday | 10.05
What: Roselit Bone w/Snakes and King Ropes
When: 7
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Roselit Bone released its new album Ofrenda in August 2023. The title refers to an offering placed in a home alter during the Mexican Dia de Los Muertos. The album itself is a blend of Americana, folk and rock and roll in the spirited and vulnerable style that has made the band one of the most interesting and creative groups in the larger realm of Americana of the past decade. Sure you can hear some of those rockabilly roots but more in the vein of how X and Gun Club did it than less colorful trad genre practitioners. Bozeman, Montana’s King Ropes offer a different flavor of Americana and one more steeped in glam rock and Lou Reed with some nods to more experimental soundscaping. Snakes from Denver is sort of a super group of Mile High City luminaries of folk, Americana and indie rock meaning its own music is decided not cookie cutter and the songwriting more informed by an actual vibe and individual aesthetic and thoughtful lyricism.

Thursday | 10.05
What: Jesse Jo Stark w/Rachel Bobbitt and Rachel Lynn
When: 6:30
Where: Meow Wolf Convergence Station
Why: Canadian singer-songwriter Rachel Bobbitt released her latest EP in August, The Half We Still Have, produced and mixed by Jorge Elbrecht who spends a good deal of time in Denver these days and who has worked with the likes of Sky Ferreira and Japanese Breakfast. Bobbitt’s tender and bright vocals and orchestral songwriting lends an uplift even to songs that are all too real in their melancholic content. “Two Bit”is a song about how overwhelming feelings, positive or what we think of as positive or not so much, in our youth can get us to bypass our instincts and the guilt and shame that can come over you in looking back at that time of life. And the rest of the EP offers similarly insightful, nuanced and layered songs of both emotional and sonic depth. Headlining the show is pop singer and fashion designer Jesse Jo Stark who is touring in support of her 2022 album DOOMED.

Friday | 10.06
What: Autumn Light: Victoria Lundy, Mark Mosher, Monoscenes
When: 8-10pm
Where: Lumonics Light & Sound Gallery (800 East 73rd Avenue Unit #11, Denver, CO 80229)
Why: Three of the great local electronic artists immersed in the world of synthesizing visuals and music are gathering at Lumonics Light & Sound Gallery for a special event in a space that is an immersive light and sculpture gallery currently showcasing the work of Dorothy and Mel Tanner. Lundy and Mosher can also be seen performing in Carbon Dioxide Ensemble with Thomas Lundy crafting inspired pieces of musique concrète.

Friday | 10.06
What: Slowdive w/Drab Majesty
When: 7
Where: Cervantes’ Masterpiece Ballroom
Why: Influential shoegaze band Slowdive is touring in support of its latest record Everything Is Alive. The group has long term proven itself to be one of the more experimental of the first wave of shoegaze artists by incorporating deep elements of ambient and electronic dance music into its sound beginning with its 1993 and second album Souvlaki and much more dramatically with its 1995 masterpiece Pygmalion. When the band reconvened in 2014 it demonstrated its live power as a group with performances that were as immersive and as lush as they were sonically commanding on par with any of its peers. When its 2017 self-titled album was released there might have been doubts that the band would repeat past glory but instead the record represented a new and worthy creative chapter for the band. Opening is modern darkwave phenom Drab Majesty which started as a solo project but has been a duo for several years now. Its music has been like a modern take on a blend of Red Lorry Yellow Lorry and Cocteau Twins but really with its own flavor that embraced electronic music early on with superb guitar work and evocative vocals. It too has a 2023 release An Object In Motion to which Slowdive’s Rachel Goswell contributed vocals.

Friday | 10.06
What: Calamity album release w/Allison Lorenzen and Soy Celesté
When: 8
Where: The Skylark Lounge
Why: CALAMITY began as the solo project of Kate Hannington whose journey to her current musical endeavors has been unorthodox, circuitous and in the end seemingly inevitable as a culmination of a life in creative work in various ends of that world. Hannington grew up in the Cleveland are and was involved in performing classical music as an oboe player who initially went to college to be in the sciences but found that deeply unsatisfying despite having a gift for engineering and she went on to New York City and ultimately earned a degree in music and got involved in the avant-garde music community in the city. But Hannington found herself at a life crossroads again and landed a job in Denver working on repairing musical instruments and then working in an engineering capacity for a major defense contractor near the Mile High City and discovered the local underground music world. Falling in with a circle of friends including Chris Adolf, Joe Sampson and Adam Baumeister Hannington found a group of people with whom to casually perform and exchange ideas in weekly get-togethers. Out of that milieu she started writing the songs that would form the core of the music for the early CALAMITY which she performed at the open mic at Syntax Physic Opera just in time for the COVID-19 pandemic to hit. It was around that time that Hannington had been working on her latest live film score in collaboration with a friend. The extended time off from even having performing live as an option allowed Hannington the time to refocus on her decision to make music a priority as it was the only thing over the course of a successful regular work life that felt like where she wanted to be. When shows started happening again, CALAMITY became an active project and most often during 2022. The musical style would be difficult to narrow down to something definitive except to say that it has elements of shoegaze, left field punk, Americana and all united by strong songwriting and Hannington’s powerful and expressive voice and strong stage presence. All of this can be heard strikingly on the debut CALAMITY full-length Chiromancy. From the gorgeously symbolic cover art to the vividly captured and produced recordings there is a unified intentionality that seems obvious in every detail. Hannington’s stories hit as deeply personal but also as a widely relatable set of narratives of letting go of relationships, the beliefs, the habits and associations that hold us back from a fulfilling and rewarding life and moving on toward it. Listen to our interview with Hannington on the Queen City Sounds Podcast.

Friday | 10.06
What: Mac Sabbath at The Oriental w/Cybertronic Spree and Playboy Manbaby
When: 7
Where: The Oriental Theater
Why: Mac Sabbath is the enigmatic Black Sabbath parody tribute band from Los Angeles that dresses up in costume as the characters from the McDonald’s franchise. The cover songs have name changes like “Sweet Beef” for “Sweet Leaf” and “Frying Pan” for “Iron Man.” Led by Ronald Osbourne and managed by Mike Odd, lead singer of hard rock outfit Rosemary’s Billygoat, who handles interviews and does other promotional activity to keep the group’s outlandish mythology in the public eye. It could be mere gimmick and kitsch, which it is, but with solid musicianship and a commitment to the bit that is rare in an entertainment milieu that so often rewards individual ego.

Saturday | 10.07
What: Cavalera: The Morbid Devastation Tour w/Exhumed, Incite and No Future
When: 6
Where: The Oriental Theater
Why: Cavalera is a heavy metal band that consists of brothers Max and Igor Cavalera who founded influential thrash and death metal band Sepultura in 1984. The brothers had a falling out and Max left Sepultura in 1996 followed by Igor in 2006. Within a year the brothers reconciled and formed a new project that would undergo various name changes including Cavalera Conspiracy. But now Cavalera is releasing re-recording versions of Sepultura classics. 2023 saw the release of new versionf of Bestial Devastation (1985) and Morbid Visions (1986) and thus the name of the tour with a full band that by watching some of the leaked live footage seems to point to the vitality of the source material and the Cavalera brothers’ reinvention of themselves.

Saturday | 10.07
What: Yeule w/SASAMI
When: 7
Where: The Marquis Theater

Saturday | 10.07
What: DROELOE w/NASAYA and Demotapes
When: 8
Where: Ogden Theatre

Saturday | 10.07
What: Meet the Giant w/The Picture Tour and …And The Black Feathers
When: 7
Where: Enigma Bazaar
Why: Meet the Giant recently released its new album We Are Revolting and didn’t exactly get a chance to do an album release show or other such typical rituals of celebration. But at this show you’ll get to hear a good deal of that material from a band that is steeped both in highly emotional hard rock and electronic production and sensibilities without fitting neatly into some already established and discredited hybrid like industrial rock though fans of that might appreciate MTG’s more atmospheric and vulnerable manifestation of similar creative impulses. …And The Black Feathers somehow makes blues rock, punk and glam rock work in a cohesive style with commanding performances. The Picture Show could devolve into The Cure worship but Billy Armijo’s knack for pop songcraft and bordeom with a rote, paint by numbers version of gloomy post-punk and shoegaze has ensured that former Emerald Siam lead guitarist continues to make deeply evocative and inventive guitar rock with his new bandmates.

Sunday | 10.08
What: Slow Pulp w/Babehoven
When: 7
Where: Globe Hall
Why: Slow Pulp from Madison, Wisconsin just released its sophomore album Yard on September 29, 2023. The band’s gift for fusing earnest bedroom pop and fuzzy 90s-esque indie rock in a way that gives off shoegaze adjacent vibes but channeled into succinct statements of modern malaise and yearning for more meaningful and life affirming connections and experiences rather than the drab and second-rate fair we’re expected to think is adequate and deserved. Fans of Bully and Liz Fair will appreciate what Slow Pulp has to offer.

Sunday | 10.08
What: Djunah w/Quits and Almanac Man
When: 7
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Djunah’s 2023 album Femina Furens is a ferocious and intense display of what might be called art noise rock. Hailing from Chicago the duo live hits like what a blues rock and jazz band with chops might sound like if they challenged themselves to do something radically different with their skill set. Emotionally distorted vocals and dynamics that from tense and quiet to unfurled rage and despair transformed into bursts of reclaiming one’s power make the new set of songs a riveting listen. Denver’s noise rock kings Quits are releasing their new album Feeling It for this show. Yes, these guys have been in the local scene for years and worth checking out for that etc. But if the raw power of the songs and the performance thereof wasn’t there the band would be like any other rock group today that was inspired by Amphetamine Reptile and Touch and Go and the like. Quits deliver surreal yet poetically observational lyrics that comment on the conflicted and challenging world and times we all navigate. Quits turns those frustrations into a fractured and seething catharsis on the album and definitely on stage where there’s no barrier between you and the pure expression thereof. Almanac Man is also one of Denver’s handful of fine noise rock bands who probably grew up listening to and seeing Gravity Records bands and catching the punk-adjacent but too weird bands of the 90s and 2000s while absorbing that inspiration for their own brand of sonically disruptive excitement.

Sunday | 10.08
What: The Chats and Cosmic Psychos
When: 7
Where: The Summit Music Hall
Why: The Chats from Sunshine Coast, Queensland, Australia make no bones about their irreverence with album titles like High Risk Behavior (2020) and Get Fucked (2022). But it’s not just the thrill of using swear words in the adolescent way that is the appeal of the band’s music because they take aim at collective anxieties and “racism in surf culture.” Musically imagine an even more nervous energy-driven Stiff Little Fingers and its punk sound a perfect splicing together of protopunk, anarcho punk and honest to goodness pop hooks. Like if Wire was really going for broke toward the most abrupt start and stop dynamics of Pink Flag. Opening this show are Aussie punk legends Cosmic Psychos who have been giving us a wonderful unvarnished noisy punk that at times is reminiscent of a more punk Motorhead and even more raw The Gordons with shout along choruses and a surprising bit of melodicism that tempers that edge just a little without blunting it.

Monday | 10.09
What: Lebanon Hanover w/Hex Cassette and DJ Katastrophy
When: 7
Where: The Oriental Theater
Why: Lebanon Hanover is a darkwave/post-punk band from Germany whose deeply atmospheric music doesn’t fit neatly into the aforementioned categories as elements of ambient and world music are in the mix. Particularly on its 2020 album Sci-Fi Sky. Guitar lopes along in a song or two in chord progressions one hears more often in music from the Arabic world and all drifting on the foundation of EBM beats and brooding vocals. Hex Cassette brings his blood cult and bombastic live stage presence to the show opening with his unique brand of industrial darkwave and rock theater.

Monday | 10.09
What: Boris and Melvins
When: 7pm doors, 7:30 pm show
Where: The Summit Music Hall
Why: Two titans of sludge rock on one bill with Japan’s Boris and The Melvins from the USA. Chances are Melvins were an influence on Boris in some capacity along the way as the trio originally from Washington State has been for a huge swath of alternative rock and heavier music. Boris may play a weird blend of heavy metal, psychedelia, noise and art rock but its own stage antics are unusual and theatrical like there’s a ritual component to it that is impossible to define but which is always striking. Melvins somehow keep playing one of the greatest shows you’ll see all year with its own mix of playfulness, precise power in the performance and an effusive spirit and energy.

Tuesday | 10.10
What: Dope Lemon w/Franklin Jonas
When: 7
Where: The Ogden Theatre
Why: Angus Stone has come a long way since performing at open mics with his sister Julia in their hometown of Sydney, Australia in 2005. Since 2016 he has performed under the moniker Dope Lemon and his idiosyncratic pop songs have dipped liberally into the realms of folk, psychedelia and soul. There is a left field sense of humor informing the presentation of his songs in music videos and a playful, even impish, spirit to his visual style as a live performer. But the music itself is a sensitive, thoughtful, gentle, acutely observational meditation on everyday human existence and with a keen ear for evolving melodies and the physicality of the rhythms. His new album Kimosabé dropped on September 29, 2023 and the videos so far a mix of Simon Hanselmann-esque animation and Zack Galifianakis gone 1980s spoiled rock star gangster vibe are truly some of the most entertaining offerings from any artist in the last few years.

Tuesday | 10.10
What: The Darkness w/The Comancheros
When: 6:30
Where: The Summit Music Hall
Why: The Darkness survived the hype many predicted would collapse in on the band when it garnered a good deal of it when its 2003 debut album Permission to Land basically presaged the unabashed classic rock and glam metal revival that would happen in full the following decade. Singer Justin Hawkins’ soaring vocals, the specific style of driving rhythms and the effusive guitar solos were basically banished to an earlier decade and yet The Darkness rocketed to stardom because even if you rolled your eyes at the throwback style, at least the band delivered a commanding live show with conviction. Most bands eager to do more than just settling for playing to friends and local fans have to believe in their own importance and even exult in it. The Darkness just had the songwriting and chops and stage presence to be more than a gimmick. But the pressure to sustain that momentum caught up with the band and it split in 2006 after seeming to have run out of some steam and person issues within its membership. But in 2011 the original group reconvened and over the next few years Rufus Taylor, son of Roger Taylor of Queen joined on drums. The Darkness’ most recent album Motorheart (2021) revealed more than just a hint of the influence of thrash around the edges so the version of the band you’ll get to see won’t skimp on the hearty, melodic hard rock that earned it the popularity it has enjoyed but it might have a little more edge in the guitar work.

Thursday | 10.12
What: Kneecap w/Time/Calm. and An Hobbes
When: 7
Where: Lost Lake
Why: Kneecap is an alternative hip hop trio from Belfast, Northern Ireland whose known for rapping in Irish and political activism for human rights at home and abroad. Fifteen years ago there was pretty much no rap in the Irish language and Kneecap has garnered a bit of notoriety for writing a song that was banned from Irish language radio for “drug references and cursing” which the group said was a satire of life for young people in Belfast. But Kneecap’s body of work has challenged conventional notions of masculinity and political power structures with beats that could come right out of a punk band if that band used samples. One of the opening acts Time (really Calm., the duo of Time and AwareNess) is no stranger to nuanced and sharp takes on politics and culture with creative beats that free associate musical ideas from experimental music and classic hip-hop sensibilities. Time aka Chris Steele is an internationally recognized author and activist whose writing on class and human rights include well received interviews with Noam Chomsky and mutual aid efforts.

Friday | 10.13
What: emme w/Astral Tomb, Polly Urethane, Coldglare, Hyasynth, Trenchfoot and Combat Sport
When: 8
Where: Glob
Why: emme might be described as a performance artist whose accompanying music fits within a loose realm of industrial noise with elements of pop accessibility like a deconstruction of dance music and a subversion of noisenik expectation of format for presentation and generally accepted aesthetics and methods. So of course Polly Urethane from Denver is an appropriate artist to share the bill whose shows can range from almost pure performance art to industrial pop and deconstructed scene nü metal to industrial noise, classical music sampling and operatic vocals and pop songcraft. The first half of the show will be live music and the second half running into the late night will be more DJ sets.

Friday | 10.13
What: Church Fire tour kickoff w/Voight, Weathered Statues and Bell Mine
When: 9 doors 9:30 show
Where: The Broadway Roxy
Why: Church Fire are set to go out for three weeks taking its playfully confrontational yet emotionally vulnerable and harrowing industrial dance music to places far and wide. A reformed Voight will treat you to industrialized shoegaze post-punk and maybe a bad joke or two. Weathered Statues is the most pure death rock/post-punk band out of Denver aside from maybe Plague Garden and definitely for fans of Xmal Deutschland and Siouxsie and the Banshees. Bell Mine is an electro-acoustic ambient synth pop band with lushly elegant production.

Friday | 10.13
What: Corsicana album release w/Joseph Lamar and Gazes
When: 7
Where: The Mercury Café
Why: Corsicana is celebrating the release of its new album Kept with this show sharing the stage with experimental R&B and psychedelic pop artist Joseph Lamar and avant-indie rock trio supergroup Gazes which includes former members of Tyto Alba and Male Blonding. Kept is another collection of keenly observed indie rock in that more soft tone shoegaze vein. The album is being released on digital and limited edition vinyl.

Saturday | 10.14
What: JOHN w/Tunic and Supreme Joy
When: 8
Where: The Skylark Lounge
Why: JOHN (TIMESTWO) is an acclaimed punk duo from London, UK that recently released its fourth album A Life Diagrammatic. With just guitar from Johnny Healey and John Newton on drums and vocals, the group’s driving and intense yet emotionally nuanced songs hit with the force of the conviction of the lyrics that often examine the pitfalls of modern life and the corrosive effects of capitalism as it has been crushing down on most of us all our lives. Within the band’s music you can hear warps and bends in the rhythm and tones to amplify a sense of liberated thrill and sense of freedom in the music as an act of resistance. Touring with JOHN this time out is Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada’s noise rock trio Tunic. In April Tunic released its own new record Wrong Dream which sounds like new territory for the group and some of its most emotionally devastating material to date. It has a similarly disciplined structure and rhythm one might expect from earlier releases but with great splashes of spiky noise and fragmented emotion reflecting not only personal turmoil but a deeply human reaction to the seemingly myriad barrage of challenges floating around the world like a caustic, psychic pollution.Opening is Denver’s Supreme Joy, a band that is an outlet for the more lo-fi garage-y post-punk songwriting of Ryan Wong who some may know for his membership in psychedelic pop rock band Easy Ease, having been in psych garage band Cool Ghouls and more recently for his fine country songcraft.

The Mountain Goats, photo by Jackie Lee Young

Friday and Saturday | 10.13 and 10.14
What: The Mountain Goats w/Mikaela Davis
When: 7
Where: Fox Theatre (10.13) and Gothic Theatre (10.14)
Why: The Mountain Goats are one of the most beloved indie rock bands going. Led by frontman, guitarist and primary songwriter John Darnielle since its foundation in 1991, The Mountain Goats have somehow managed to have some great consistency of style and sound without seeming to ever stuck in a rut. The earnest and scrappy energy of the songs and Darnielle’s literary yet not pretentious lyrics seem to tap into some element of the zeitgeist at the time of writing that brings a freshness of spirit to inform the performances and sound. Its 2023 album Jenny From Thebes sounds like it had to have been written by a newer band maybe two or three years into its career speaking to Darnielle’s ability to reinvent yet dip into the well of his legacy in creative ways.

Saturday | 10.14
What: The Happy Fits w/Windser and Hot Freaks
When: 7
Where: Fox Theatre
Why: The Happy Fits’ sound seems like it was influenced a bit by late 2000s indie rock when bands were trying to figure out how to be joyous and embrace their quirky sense of humor without having to lean too hard into being self-aware. Its own unabashedly upbeat songs have thus been able to be able to have some fun with what it’s like to be an imperfect human dealing with the multiple excessive demands of modern life but having fun with it in a way that is unmistakable but not dire. It’s a nice balancing trick and to do so with a free-spirited energy in the form of catchy pop songs is no mean feat. Windser released his debut EP Where The Redwoods Meet the Sea in 2022 with its handful of songs that aimed to capture his memories of earlier in life resulting in a dreamlike and nostalgic that felt like a reconciliation of the past with the present. His newer singles “Get Lost” and “Friends I Barely Know” take the concepts of the EP and expands upon them for an effect like a dream pop version of The War on Drugs.

Sunday | 10.15
What: Ulrika Spacek w/Holy Wave and Wave Decay
When: 7
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Ulrika Spacek from London, UK sounds like it absorbed a great deal of krautrock and 60s and 70s avant-garde music on its 2023 album Compact Trauma but channeled it into a kind of synthesis of art-y post-punk, math rock and psychedelia. Definitely for fans of FACs. Holy Wave from Austin, TX brings to this show its spectral, drifty, synth-driven psychedelic pop and currently supporting its new record Five of Cups. Wave Decay fuses motorik beats with heavy shoegaze guitar wizardry.

Monday | 10.16
What: Better Lovers w/Suicide Cages and Muscle Beach
When: 7
Where: Gothic Theatre
Why: Better Lovers started in 2023 bringing together Stephen Micciche, Clayton Holyoak and Jordan Buckley formerly of prominent metalcore band Everytime I Die with Will Putney of Fit For An Autopsy and Greg Pusciato who some may know as the frontman for influential metalcore group Dillinger Escape Plan, darkwave outfit The Black Queen and alt metal supergroup Killer Be Killed. The lead single from the band “30 Under 13” and the debut EP God Made Me an Animal are a bit of what you might expect which is to say the fusion of hardcore and extreme metal done right and with a furious energy that has translated well to its live shows thus far. Opening this Denver show are two heavy hitters from that world of where extreme metal and hardcore collide with Suicide Cages and Muscle Beach. If what Better Lovers is doing is your thing definitely catch the locals for this gig.

Madison Cunningham on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon in January 2023, photo by Todd Owyoung/NBC

Tuesday and Wednesday | 10.17 and 10.18
What: Hozier w/Madison Cunningham
When: 7
Where: Red Rocks
Why: Hozier is artist from Ireland whose blend of folk, blues and blue-eyed soul hit the big time with his 2013 single “Take Me To Church” and seemed to have come out of nowhere at age 23. But Andrew Hozier-Byrne was a member of choral group Anúna from 2007 to 2012. The song to those that didn’t delve deeper might have seemed like some call to go back to one’s roots in traditional culture but the song addressed homophobia and the bare bones music video went viral through Reddit. Since then Hozier has built upon his early boost for a career of earnest and impassioned songwriting and on point activism. Opening these shows is Madison Cunningham whose third album, 2022’s Revealer, won a Grammy for “Best Folk Album.” Often those awards don’t mean much and Cunningham’s record features unorthodox instrumentation for a folk album including electric guitar and keyboards but her spirited vocals and inventive musicianship is right out of the folk tradition and channeled into a pop format with guitar work that shifts effortlessly between the intricate and the spare to perfectly suit the mood of the moment. Fans of Neko Case and Jenny Lewis’ own more folk-oriented songs will appreciate what Cunningham has to offer.

Wednesday | 10.18
What: Holy Fawn w/Carcara and lowheaven
When: 6:30
Where: Meow Wolf Convergence Station
Why: Cosmic black metal band Holy Fawn returns to Denver with a show at Meow Wolf to demonstrate its arresting and moving fusion of black metal, ambient music and at times emo. Philadelphia-based post-hardcore group Caracara will offer the kind of music that sounds like punk kids that got into shoegaze through rediscovering the more atmospheric end of stuff like Mineral and Sunny Day Real Estate and injected tender and raw emotions into driving yet ethereal melodies. Toronto’s lowheaven is somehow screamo, dark post-punk and space rock in a way that might remind some of when Coalesce got a little weird.

Wednesday | 10.18
What: Laufey w/Adam Melchor
When: 7
Where: Gothic Theatre
Why: Laufey is an Icelandic singer-songwriter who describes her particular musical style as “modern jazz.” What that means when you listen is the kind of sensibility like something out of a jazz club in the 1960s maybe in a more Southern European or South American country with a touch of pop Bossa Nova. Laufey grew up around classical music with a grandfather who was a violin teacher in China at the Central Conservatory of Music and in her teens she was a cello solist with the Iceland Symphony Orchestra and later graduated from Berklee. Her debut EP Typical of Me garnered her critical acclaim and won a fan in Billie Eilish. In 2023 Laufey released her second full length Bewitched which has the kind of sonic touches and sophistication of composition one would expect from a Rodgers and Hammerstein production but applied to the relative short scale of lush and emotionally delicate jazz pop songs. Also on this bill is Adam Melchor who began making a name for himself writing lullabies. But he’s greatly expanded upon what he learned from operating in that modest format. Yet there is a hushed, delicate aspect to his songwriting paired with warm, earnest, thoughtful observations that at times might be considered lullabies for adults. His latest EP Fruitlands has a quality like short snapshots reflecting slices of life yearning for something more meaningful and reflecting on the small joys in life cast in vivid and instantly relatable details and hazy melodies.

Claudio Simonetti’s Goblin circa 2018, photo courtesy the artists

Wednesday | 10.18
What: Claudio Simonetti’s Goblin Live Screening of Dario Argento’s and Lamberto Bava’s Demons Goblin
When: 7
Where: Paramount Theatre
Why: Claudio Simonetti was one of the founding members of Italian progressive rock band Goblin who are perhaps best known for their soundtracks for some of the great horror films of the 1970s and 1980s including Dario Argento’s Profondo Rosso aka Deep Red (1975) and Suspiria (1977) as well as Argento’s cut of George Romer’s Dawn of the Dead (1978). But the group basically dissolved in 1982 and its members went on to other projects including Simonetti scoring Argento’s 1985 film with another horror legend Lamberto Bava and Demons. This is of course a live screening of the film with Claudio Simonetti’s version of Goblin.

Thursday | 10.19
What: Darlingside
When: 7
Where: Gothic Theatre
Why: Boston’s Darlingside released its latest album Everything Is Alive in 2023 and it sounds like something written to reflect a day of deep reflection and small journeys visiting friends and being reminded of the memories that anchor your psyche after a long period of feeling adrift without realizing it. Its orchestrated arrangements preserve an intimate feel with instrumental performances that sound like you are there playing the music yourself and joining in on not just the music but the psychological journey undertaken to reconnect with oneself. If this is indie folk it’s more in the vein of more existential artists like Iron & Wine and anyone else with a foot in psychedelic folk of the 70s and one in modern production methods that help to render the sonic details of the songwriting in vivid contrasts.

Friday | 10.20
What: Sextile and N8NOFACE
When: 8
Where: The Marquis Theater
Why: Sextile is a post-punk band from Los Angeles that has been releasing music for several years that focuses on lush and hazy soundscapes and ethereal melodies. Particularly on its 2023 album Push. The effect is more like a shoegaze band and one steeped in electronic soundscaping. The new record feels like a 90s downtempo band with a different sound palette and an ear for tonal melancholia. N8NOFACE is an electro punk artist whose aggressive and distorted electronic beats is reminiscent of something like Realicide with similarly pointed lyrical content.

Acid Mothers Temple, photo by Tom Murphy

Saturday | 10.21
What: Acid Mothers Temple w/The Stargazer Lilies and Night Fishing
When: 8
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Acid Mothers Temple has been together since 1995 under the leadership of guitarist Kawabata Makoto and its alchemical fusion of krautrock, Japanese folk, noise, space rock and cosmic glam has kept its sound fresh over the course of various incarnations and lineups with live shows that are as mind-altering and as intense as the name of the band suggests. The Stargazer Lilies sound like a thoroughly entrancing mix of some trippy 60s hip lounge film and futuristic, epic journey through a star rich sector of outer space. It has a transcendent, luminous quality and a sense of mystery that one would have to peel back decades of jaded and conditioned music listening to remember how it felt to first hear Slowdive’s album Pygmalion to recapture but you can just go ahead and see the band touring with its 2022 album Cosmic Tidal Wave living up to its name as well.

The Stargazer Lilies, photo courtesy the artists

Saturday | 10.21
What: Botch w/Primitive Man
When: 7
Where: Summit Music Hall
Why: Botch is the legendary and influential metalcore/mathcore band from Tacoma, Washington that formed in 1993 and for nearly a decade helped to define a sound and an attitude of a movement throughout that time that was not in line with the prevailing threads of alternative rock, metal or hardcore. But its abrasive and driving sound didn’t lack for mood and atmospherics and one could easily imagine the band sharing bills with the likes of Unwound and Heroin. The group reformed in 2022 and this is its first wide national tour. Opening is Primitive Man whose own brutally heavy version of metal has some roots in noise rock and hardcore as well with its own internationally respected gift for sculpting sounds and moods that feel like an indisputable truth of human existence given sonic form.

Saturday | 10.21
What: Midwife w/Fainting Dreams and Kelly Garlick
When: 7
Where: The Mercury Café
Why: Midwife brings her heartbreaking ambient folk heaviness to the Mercury for a night with dream pop legends in the making Fainting Dreams and avant-ambient and musique concrète producer Kelly Garlick whose own emotionally rich compositions hit heavily in the feels as well.

Sunday | 10.22
What: Deeper w/World’s Worst and Gazes
When: 8/8:30
Where: The Skylark Lounge
Why: Deeper from Chicago has long been a band for connoisseurs of post-punk with its live show hitting like an angular version of The Cure with its rich synth tones and the physicality of its rhythms. Its 2023 album Careful! doesn’t feel like as much of an exorcism of anguished emotions as its 2020 album Auto-Pain but the math-y changes are evocative and pull you into the momentum of the music and its unconventional melodies with vocals seeming to strike a certain tenor and the synths at a complimentary counter resonance. The songs have great forward momentum but the emotional range is wide and the soundscapes easy to get lost following. Gazes is a dream pop/post-punk band consisting of former members of the great dream pop group Tyto Alba and local post-punk greats Male Blonding. World’s Worst is an emo-informed post-punk band with shoegaze leanings from Salt Lake City.

Brian Jonestown Massacre circa 2012, photo by Tom Murphy

Monday | 10.23
What: The Brian Jonestown Massacre w/Asteroid No. 4
When: 7
Where: Ogden Theatre
Why: The Brian Jonestown Massacre is the long-running and influential psychedelic rock band originally from the Bay Area now based in Berlin where leader, lyricist, songwriter, vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Anton Newcombe lives and has his studio. The BJM’s latest album The Future Is Your Past (2023) has garnered great critical acclaim with some writers saying how it’s the group’s best record in years. And sure it has that signature finely crafted fusion of folk psychedelia and other musical styles infused so deeply into the songcraft it feels like Newcombe is operating on a conceptual as much as broadly emotional level as a songwriter with an ear for fine details. Sure you’ll hear classic BJM elements but within this new set of songs you’ll hear Newcombe’s gift for reinvention without the need to scrap what he’s done before unless it serves the art in moving forward and you’ll hear plenty of musical experimentation and for the discerning listener his latest passions in experimenting with musicianship and production. At the show you’ll likely see one of the classic lineups playing some of your favorite songs from the band’s back catalog but maybe even some of the excellent new material.

Tuesday | 10.24
What: Blonde Redhead w/Angelica Garcia
When: 7
Where: Gothic Theatre
Why: Blonde Redhead proved itself worthy of interest and its own creative evolution throughout the 90s and 2000s with going from a more noisy, No Wave-esque art-y post-punk of its early days to a shift toward more lush sounds and introspective dream pop around the turn of the century. All along the group’s songwriting ambition was clear if not overtly stated and the arc of albums from 2000’s Melody of Certain Damaged Lemons, 2004’s Misery Is a Butterfly and 23 from 2007 firmly established the group as a powerful live presence with thoughtful and thought-provoking albums that reached wider audiences. After 2014’s Barragán, Blonde Redhead didn’t release much new material though vocalist/keyboardist/guitarist Kazu Makino released her first solo album Adult Baby in 2019 with guest performances from Ryuichi Sakamoto, Ian Chang (Son Lux), Greg Saunier (Deerhoof) and Mauro Refosco. In 2023 Blonde Redhead dropped its new album Sit Down for Dinner, a record of what might be described as tranquil, pastoral soundscape pop sprinkled with field recordings and arranged like a minimalist, experimental jazz record but still brimming with the vibrant emotional nuance that has made its best material so entrancing.

Tuesday | 10.24
What: Fearing w/Sacred Skin
When: 7
Where: The Crypt
Why: Fearing made a name for itself in the heady days of 2010s darkwave and the then post-punk revival with its moody take on a death rock sound that would become de rigeur in certain circles of post-punk. That is to say somewhat lo-fi but using that aesthetic to create a tinge of mystery rather than simply chasing a style. What sets it apart from some cookie cutter post-punk is the elegantly gorgeous guitar work and ear for atmospherics over driving and present low end. The group is currently touring in support of its latest record Destroyer.

Wolves in the Throne Room, photo from Bandcamp

Tuesday | 10.24
What: Wolves in the Throne Room w/Blackbraid, Garea and Hoaxed
When: 6
Where: The Oriental Theater
Why: Wolves in the Throne Room released its new EP Crypt of Ancestral Knowledge on September 29, 2023 via Relapse Records. Across its long career WITTR have explored various expressions of its roots in black metal, folk and ambient music including an entire album of synthesizer music Celestite (2014) as a companion record to its 2011 album Celestial Lineage. Around the time of that album the group announced it would reduce its touring cycle of old and for a time seeing the band live wasn’t as common an occurrence and even now a chance to see its majestic and pastoral, deeply atmospheric, transcendental black metal is a rare treat. Not a band for black metal purists, the new EP sounds like a blend of all its creative impulses for a set of songs that are expansive, immersive and hypnotic.

Wednesday | 10.25
What: Addison Grace w/Madilyn Mei and Brye
When: 7
Where: The Bluebird Theater
Why: Non-binary singer-songwriter Addison Grace released their debut album Diving Lessons on September 29, 2023. Grace got a hold of a ukulele from their brother at 13 and seeing YouTubers use the instrument as a vehicle for songwriting and started making songs of their own and performed them at coffee shops while working various retail jobs. The early songs found an outlet on YouTube in 2017 and comprised bedroom cover songs that Grace took also to Instagram and TikTok. One of these performances in which Grace was wearing a Cavetown sweatshirt caught the attention of that band’s management. Through that connection Grace was signed to Warner’s Level Music and Grace got on a tour with popular indie pop artist Chloe Moriondo whose own bedroom compositions found a wide audience. The acoustic demo of “I Wanna Be a Boy” released in late 2020 went viral on YouTube. And yes TikTok has also been good for Grace’s career and reach as an artist. What makes Grace interesting and compelling, though, is none of these factoids but rather the songwriting itself. Yes, the vulnerable exploration of various aspects of identity that seem especially sensitive and thoughtful though rendered in vivid personal details that resonate beyond specific context. His new single “SLIME!” has a layered emotional impact with a joyous spirit but with a tinge of melancholic melody. Grace’s vocals are nuanced and expressive across a wide and complex spectrum of emotion which is the hallmark of any pop artist worth one’s attention.

Thursday | 10/26
What: Stuck w/Forty Feet Tall and Dry Ice
When: 7
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Stuck released its latest record Freak Frequency in May 2023 and treated the world to a set of eccentric, wiry and frantic art punk. The title says it all, really, and it captures an anxious desperation of the current era. The vocals border on hysteria while wandering among noisy, atonal sounds that warp and modulate and pulse with a sense of menace at times and in others the melodic calm of that time of life when you’re waiting for the other shoe to drop on a dire situation and there’s something thrilling about these emotional territories Stuck seems to traverse. For fans of Protomartyr, IDLES and Parquet Courts.

Friday | 10.27
What: Bison Bone album release w/The Patti Fiasco
When: 8
Where: The Skylark Lounge
Why: Bison Bone recently released its new EP 40 Grit. As the name suggests the stories across the EP’s five tracks are tales of everyday endurance and honing the rough edges of life to where it more suits your existence in the moment and to get through more trying patches. Its warm melodies and Courtney Whitehead’s introspective yet direct vocal style engages thetpo listener and the elegantly orchestrated music pulls you into an intimate and vividly observed moments the highlight moments that aren’t the stuff of striving and grinding and performative positivity of a lot of pop and rock music. But they are the stuff of real life that anchor your memories and stay with you for a lifetime. Whitehead seems skilled in putting together his own experiences in contexts that can resonate with people who recognize the psychological and emotional truth in a well crafted narrative enmeshed in music. Bison Bone formed in the mid-2010s after Whitehead moved to Denver from Oklahoma via Texas and found a community in which he could share his songwriting and find collaborators who got his creative vision and style of working class stories that didn’t glorify the lifestyle so much as highlight the inherent dignity of experiences most of us have and which translate well to the style of music Bison Bone offers which is to say Americana and at times a touch of psychedelia and country but informed by the humanistic psychological insights and poetry of Bruce Springsteen and Uncle Tupelo.

Julian St. Nightmare, photo by Tom Murphy

Friday | 10.27
What: Julian St. Nightmare, Hex Cassette, Team Nonexistent and Sell Farm
When: 8
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Julian St. Nightmare is a post-punk band from Denver that has never been penned in by adherence to expected genre style. Rather its fusion of darkwave, surf rock, art rock and post-punk is a vehicle for its impassioned and emotionally immersive songwriting and richly imagined songwriting. Hex Cassette brings his industrial dance death cult act to this show to challenge the audience to let loose and have some fun because life is a shadow of itself if you’re not having fun at least some of the time and not taking absurd artistic expressions too seriously. Team Nonexistent is a band that seems to be drawing some inspiration from original grunge and modern punk and infusing it with a raw energy and earnest emotions. Sell Farm is a solo act informed by electronic industrial music and big beat and dub sound sculpting.

Friday | 10.27
What: Sorcha Richardson w/PAPA
When: 6
Where: Larimer Lounge
Why: Sorcha Richardson is a Dublin-Ireland-based singer-songwriter whose soft and thoughtful pop songs blur the line between synth and indie pop with gently expressed introspective lyrics and a clear command of atmosphere and mood. In 2022 she released her latest album Smiling Like an Idiot and one has to applaud that level of self-deprecating awareness of one’s own shortcomings and charms. PAPA is Darren Weiss who took an extended break from the project after 2016 and spent some time as a session and touring drummer for people like Lana Del Rey, Albert Hammond Jr., Perfume Genius and Sky Ferreira. But he relaunched the band and released the new album Dig Yourself Or Dig A Hole on October 13, 2023. Recording with Devendra Banhart keyboard player Tyler Cash and violinist Daphne Chen, Weiss offers an album of pop music in a retro style and one that hints at the influence of people like Scott Walker and Bruce Springsteen or maybe more modern songwriters like Britt Daniels and Dan Boeckner. It’s an album that sounds like the current season when fall trickles toward winter and examining one’s regrets and sitting in one’s emotions and sorting them out with flares of the melodramatic in your heart.

Bambara at TV Eye in 2021, photo courtesy Bambara

Saturday | 10.28
What: Gilla Band w/Bambara
When: 8
Where: The Skylark Lounge
Why: Bambara has been slowly, because organically, building its reputation as one of the most original and compelling of post-punk bands in the current wave of that music. But the band began in 2001 in Athens, Georgia and released its earlier albums under the name 23jinx. At some point the group comprised of twin brothers Reid Bateh (lead vocals, guitar) and Blaze Bateh (drums) and William Brookshire (bass) changed their name to Bambara after a character in the animated series Æon Flux which many may remember from its broadcast on the Liquid Television segment of MTV. In 2018 Bambara got a big boost from Joe Talbot of IDLES declaring Shadow on Everything his favorite album of 2018 and the group was invited to open some dates on the IDLES tour of that year including a memorable performance at Larimer Lounge. There’s a dark, bluesy quality to the music reminiscent of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds but more punk and perhaps looking back to Nick Cave’s previous band The Birthday Party. Bambara is reissuing its early albums Dreamviolence and Swarm on double vinyl expected out November 1, 2023. Also sharing this bill is Irish, experimental post-punk outfit Gilla Band. Formerly known as Girl Band, the group’s fusion of more rock songwriting with raw noise and the aesthetics of bombastic electronic big beat artists and No Wave disregard for how songs have to sound or be structured. All to thrilling effect.

Sunday | 10.29
What: Bluphoria and Noah Vonne co-headlining w/The Disasters and Sunstoney
When: 7
Where: The Black Buzzard
Why: Bluphoria is a band now based in Nashville, Tennessee that originally formed in 2019 when lead singer and lead guitarist Reign LaFreniere moved to Eugene, Oregon to study film. LaFreniere grew up in the East Bay and South Bay in California loving horror shorts and went to an arts high school that allowed students to rent/borrow video equipment and production software. Raised in a musical family, LaFreniere didn’t really start playing music until high school in his sophomore year after getting a guitar. On a trip on the John Muir trail a friend only had Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and some Simon and Garfunkel songs on a player and being in a setting where music wasn’t as readily accessible for long stretches gave him a deeper appreciation of its importance listening to that music. When he returned from that hiking trip he got into Jimi Hendrix as someone who looked like him playing music of that caliber with Hendrix’s singing style an inspiration for LaFreniere’s fledgling attempts as a vocalist. But his focus was on film until he got to Eugene, Oregon when he met like-minded students like Dakota Landrum (rhythm guitarist, backing vocals) and Rex Wolf (bass).

At one of the band’s house shows an EDGEOUT Records intern was in attendance and signed the group to EDGEOUT/UME/UMG in January 2021 around the time when drummer Dani Janae joined the group. A year later Bluphoria drove to Tennessee to record their self-titled debut full length album which released on May 5, 2023. Even a casual listen to the songs and even the band’s 2020 debut EP Alone reveals a knack for entrancing melodic hooks in a power pop style mixed with touches of psychedelic rock and what might be described as soulful garage punk. With LaFreniere’s commanding vocals providing some of the grit and emotional resonance fans of The Replacements and The Plimsouls will find a lot to like about what Bluphoria has to offer.

Monday | 10.30
What: Allah-Lahs w/Sam Burton
When: 7
Where: The Bluebird Theater
Why: Allah-Las released their new album Zuma 85 on October 13, 2023 via their own imprint Calico Discos. When the group launched in 2008 it was an early adopter of a retro psychedelic pop and rock sound that a few years later would explode with surf rock and psych garage bands gaining an ascendancy in popular music. But Allah-Las had the benefit of actually crafting the songs more so than simply the style. Its roots in folk and left field pop as well as the aforementioned psychedelic bands like The Zombies, The Kinks and Love has resulted in a surprisingly consistent body of quality songwriting with a live show that preserves some of the inherent mystery of the milieu of its most obvious influences. The new record establishes a deep sense of space and time and with its rich use of field recordings has a subtly cinematic quality that conveys a continuity throughout the album like a experiences from an extended lucid dream.

Tuesday | 10.31
What: Flooding w/Church Fire, Allison Lorenzen and Fainting Dreams
When: 8
Where: Glob
Why: Flooding is an experimental rock band from Kansas City, Missouri whose elemental noise rock seethes with the force of expelled outrage and trauma in bursts of jagged noise and movingly emotive vocals whether cast in cathartic screams or ethereal introspection. Its new album Silhouette Machine sounds like what a stark and detailed sketch of a bleak future in the eroded world of diminishing expectation that we see before us but one flickering with a scrappy and agonized hope in the seeming absence of it. Also on the bill is industrial dance revolutionaries Church Fire fresh from its tour and likely in fine performance shape, Allison Lorenzen’s tender, mystical, luminous ambient folk and the vulnerable and emotionally charged dream pop of Fainting Dreams.

Tuesday | 10.31
What: Becca Mancari w/Bloomsday
When: 7
Where: Lost Lake
Why: Becca Mancari’s 2023 album Left Hand propels their folk-rooted songwriting into new territory. Lead single “Over and Over” is a queer joy anthem featuring Julien Baker and at the heart of the song is an expansive quality that makes each song on the record feel like being able to stretch out and feel free after prolonged periods of feeling trapped by circumstance, culture and one’s surroundings. Because of that the album’s music feels like something that settles in your brain with a gentle touch that eases ambient anxieties.

To Be Continued…

Queen City Sounds Podcast S3E01: Kyle Bates of Drowse

Kyle Bates is a composer and multi-instrumentalist whose work has most often been heard as his musical project Drowse. Founded in 2013 in Portland, Oregon, Drowse has released a few albums and numerous EPs and split releases. The music could be considered in part ambient, slowcore, shoegaze, drone, experimental folk and perhaps even transcendental black metal. But all categories aside, each Drowse recording is a journey into unique and nuanced emotional spaces exploring and living within a flow of emotions and thoughts that open the mind to new ideas and interpretations. And more so the moods, frequencies and textures on a Drowse recording, or really any of the releases in which Bates is involved, express a state of mind that one enters after having moved past a peak of anxiety or personal darkness and contain that tenderness and rawness one often needs to pull oneself out of a place of acute pain and psychological paralysis. The gentleness of the music is part of its power and appeal as Bates seems keenly aware of what it’s like to experience that period in life where you don’t feel like you can push or strive any further and you need an experience that is the opposite of that very modern and American internalized urge to keep at things to the extreme and prove yourself endlessly more and more. The core sound of Drowse is that of the musical equivalent of acceptance of one’s human limitations and of being open to what will nurture your well being and spark your imagination into nudging you toward fulfilling experiences.

Throughout his work as Drowse Bates has collaborated with Maya Stoner (Floating Room), Thom Wasluck (Planning for Burial), Madeline Johnston (Midwife), Taylor Malsey, Amulets, Daniel Schmidt and others. In 2023 Bates released an album as Kyle Bates and Lula Asplund called A Matinee that expands upon the format of his songwriting and production with two extended tracks that sound like an improv session one might have stumbled into in cutting room floor recordings of Alan Hankshaw and/or Brian Bennett had they been asked to provide music for a forgotten and mystical place. While it may sound like Bates’ work sets your mind into a different place than where it began upon listening to it, it does, but it is not escapist. Like the work of Grouper or Tim Hecker, Bates’ music has delicate immediacy that engages as it soothes and it stirs the emotions and the imagination.

Listen to our interview with Bates on Bandcamp and catch Drowse on tour now throughout the US and select dates in Europe through August including at the Hi-Dive in Denver on Monday, June 12, 2023 with Agriculture, Sprain and Palehorse/Palerider. For live dates and to hear A Matinee please visit the Drowse Bandcamp page linked below the interview and for more information on Bates’ projects and performances visit kylebates.net.

Best Shows in Denver and Beyond June 2023

Yeah Yeah Yeahs perform at Red Rocks on 6/5/23, photo by Jason Al Taan

Thursday | 06.01
What: Kiltro w/Nina De Freitas
When: 7
Where: Mercury Café
Why: Kiltro started as the solo acoustic project of Chris Bowers Castillo who as a Chilean-American, had moved to the port city of Valparaíso where he worked as a walking tour guide. And that job not only afforded him the time to learn the city and take in its richly diverse cultural influences but also the opportunity to write a body of work as a songwriter. After returning to Denver Kiltro formally came to life in 2017 and Bowers Castillo developed his acoustic songs with loops, pedals and percussion elements. But in 2018 the project expanded into a trio with Will Parkhill on bass and drummer Michael Devincenzi and later with Fez Garcia on board as a percussionist for live shows.

Kiltro’s 2019 debut album Creatures of Habit had been recorded after the material had been performed live and getting feedback from audiences and friends before being committed to an easily transmitted and shareable form. But the group’s new album, 2023’s Underbelly, is the product of crafting music in quarantine and working in the studio, following whatever creative paths sparked the most inspiration in the moment resulting in a more experimental set of songs which incorporates aspects of shoegaze, ambient, South American folk, psychedelia and a literary yet spontaneous form of storytelling that feels like a deeply personal experience in the listening. The record is a hypnotic and transcendent work of surprising immediacy that one might compare with the likes of Devendra Banhart, Hermanos Guitérrez and more locally to the work of artists like Midwife American Grandma. It fuses the aesthetics of electronic music with the intimacy of mythical folk music around the campfire for a truly unique record refreshing in its originality.

Kiltro is following up the release with a tour throughout the USA in June and July with other live dates in support of the album in August and September with an appearance at VORTEX festival at The JunkYard at Meow Wolf on August 25. Listen to our interview with Bowers Castillo on Bandcamp linked below.

Thursday | 06.01
What: Reptoid w/Quits and Endless, Nameless
When: 8
Where: The Skylark Lounge
Why: Reptoid is a one man, industrial noise rock freakout from Oakland. His most recent album WORSHIP FALSE GODS (2020) is a borderline, or not so borderline, nihilistic set of songs like a series of trainwrecks about how we’re all pretty much screwed in face of likely developments in the history of our species and its impact on the environment. If you’ve been into Buck Gooter or Author and Punisher this is your thing. Quits is a crushing noise rock juggernaut of a four piece from Denver whose incisive songs and eruptive energy can be startlingly scathing and heavy at once. Endless, Nameless erases the line between progressive metal, post-rock, post-hardcore, black metal and shoegaze with a forceful elegance. Its 2023 album Living Without should end up on the more discerning year end best lists.

Thursday | 06.01
What: Sorted: Surgeon & John Templeton
When: 9
Where: Black Box
Why: Surgeon is a DJ and electronic music composer from England whose labels Counterbalance and Dynamic Tension has been issuing some fine techno records for over 20 years. John Templeton is based in Denver whose own techno music has made a bit of a splash in the Mile High City and his Great American Techno Festival brought some of the most innovative practioners of that style of music to town for several years.

Friday | 06.02
What: ACxDC w/No/Más and Berated
When: 8
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: ACxDC is the infamous powerviolence/grindcore band from Los Angeles whose 2020 album Satan Is King is a seethingly uncompromising run of anarchistic political sentiment set to blast beats and oddly anthemic antiestablishment shout along songs.

Saturday | 06.03
What: M. Sage Paradise Crick release show w/Zander Raymond
When: 3 p.m.
Where: TBA in Boulder
Why: M. Sage has been a prolific and evolving songwriter and composer going back to at least far back as when he was based out of Fort Collins and doing early indiepop groups. But when he started writing and releasing music as M. Sage and often through his now defunct label Patient Sounds (2009-2019) it became obvious that Sage was thinking beyond standard songwriting even in the more experimental folk vein. His latest release, and first for RVNG Intl., is Paradise Crick, a collection of meditations on communing with nature as a route to a sustainable relationship with the world we all share. The pure fusion of acoustic and electronic aesthetics resonates with some of the more avant releases on the ECM label and its intuitive rhythms and informal structures ease the mind out of the standard pathways of being within one’s own mindset. This show is at unique venue and one must purchase a ticket at the link provided to get the address.

Saturday | 06.03
What: Danceportation – Justin Jay and others
When: 9:30
Where: Meow Wolf Convergence Station
Why: Danceportation is an immersive dance party pulsing through the worlds of Convergence Station. Be immersed in the full exhibition while stunning live performances on several stages with psychedelic projections and sentient universes welcome you. Danceportation on June 3rd will feature a takeover from Justin Jay’s Fantastic Voyage, the Los Angeles-based electronic dance music imprint now celebrating its seventh year of exisence.

This lineup features multiple sets from Justin Jay, along with performances from Ardalan, DJ Swisha, Juliet Mendoza, Todd Edwards, Adrian More, B Goody, Blake, Coldsweat, Danny Goliger, DJ Parqués, Don Jamal, Ed Hoffman, Gusted, Keefe, Lipgloss, Massii, Mick Jeets, Mizzmegan, The Other Jon, Planet Bloop, and Taylor Bratches.

Sunday | 06.04
What: Korine w/CD Ghost, Voight and DJ Niq V
When: 7
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Philadelphia-based dream pop band Korine plays a headlining show in Denver for the first time in support of the release of its 2023 album Tear. The group’s sound is somewhere between 80s New Wave groups like, yes, Tears For Fears, late 90s emo’s earnest emotional release and punk attitude. Voight will bring the dark industrial intensity with its scorching shoegaze/techno concoctions CD Ghost from Los Angeles released a set of lush pop songs called Night Music in 2022 that sounds like a a more synth driven and more ethereal Black Marble.

Monday | 06.05
What: Yeah Yeah Yeahs w/Perfume Genius
When: 7
Where: Red Rocks
Why: Yeah Yeah Yeahs have been delivering scrappy, uplifting pop music with punk attitude since forming in 2000 and as first put into recorded form with its 2001 self-titled EP. But the band comprised of three art school kids from New York never rested on its laurels and immediately its creative ambitions drove the band to explore new sounds and expressions to match its emotional growth as well. Its spirited live shows turn even its more melancholic songs into epic anthems that sweep you up in its always deep mood. In 2022 the band released its first album in 9 years, Cool It Down, a record that showcases the group’s gift for richly evocative songwriting and ability to surprise with its willingness to explore new directions in sound and subverting the tropes of pop lyrics while offering new ways of thinking about and feeling timeless themes of human experience with a thrilling immediacy. You also get to see Perfume Genius whose own career in crafting meaningful and engrossing synth pop isn’t short on reinvention and re-envisioning core artistic impulses.

Clan of Xymox in 2018, photo by Tom Murphy

Monday | 06.05
What: Clan of Xymox w/Curse Mackey, A Cloud of Ravens and The Siren Project
When: 7
Where: The Oriental Theater
Why: Clan of Xymox is the pioneering dutch darkwave band whose early post-punk songs has been foundational to the modern version of that music with its icily melodic synths and deep, mysterious yet emotionally resonant vocals from Ronny Moorings. Curse Mackey has been involved in a variety of electronic industrial bands of the past few decades including My Life With The Thrill Kill Cult and Pigface and the music under his own name has been more in the vein of synth pop end of darkwave. The Siren Project is a Denver band that has persisted since the old local Goth scene of the 1990s but has never been a fashion victim group in sound or appearance. Its downtempo music and dream pop guitar sound with Malgorzata Wacht’s soaring vocals and emotional power has set it apart from most bands in the Denver Goth scene so its music has aged well and its excellent and so far only official album Denouement should appeal to fans of Dead Can Dance and Faith & The Muse.

The Cure at Riot Fest in Denver, September 20, 2014, photo by Tom Murphy

Tuesday | 06.06
What: The Cure w/The Twilight Sad
When: 5:30
Where: Fiddler’s Green
Why: The Cure is of course the foundational post-punk band whose gloomy, darkly melodic songs has exerted a lasting influence not just on what one might presume in the realms of Goth and darkwave but also shoegaze, pop music and even certain corners of hip-hop. Singer Robert Smith’s sensitively and sharply observed lyrics embody poetically a sensibility that takes in the possibilities and harsh realities of the world and casts dreams for the best against the odds. Though the band’s music has a reputation for melancholy sounds and sad songs its rich body of work is quite varied and not short on expressions of joy, amusement, romance and hope. Its music conveys the broad human experience like few popular bands get to with the level of power and nuance The Cure has brought to bear across decades and as a live band there is an uplifting warmth and sense of human solidarity to the performances. Scottish post-punk band The Twilight Sad is cut from a similar artistic cloth with songs that are both vulnerable and ferocious.

King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard, photo by Jason Galea

Wednesday and Thursday | 06.07 and 06.08
What: King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard w/Kamikaze Palm Tree
When: 6 p.m (06.07) and 12 p.m. and 6:30 p.m. (06.08)
Where: Red Rocks
Why: With a name like King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard you might imagine some acid head RPG nerds making psychedelic metal with lyrics based on an epic fantasy story arc. And other than maybe the RPG part and maybe the doing LSD bit you wouldn’t be wrong in essence. The group from Melbourne, Victoria, Australia has steadily built a large cult following with a prolific career (in both 2017 and 2022 King Gizz released five albums each year with other years yielding at least one if not two records) with sounds from psychedelic pop to prog, to synth pop and groove metal, thrash and psych power metal. With album titles like Flying Microtonal Banana, Nonagon Infinity, Butterfly 3000, Fishing for Fishes and the 2023 album so far PetroDragonic Apocalyp; or Dawn of Eternal Night: An Annihilation of Planet Earth and the Beginning of Merciless Damnation you’d expect bizarre concept albums worthy of Emerson, Lake & Palmer’s Tarkus or Genesis’ The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway or at least unclassifiable songs like Pink Floyd’s “Several Species of Small Furry Animals Gathered Together in a Cave and Grooving with a Pict.” And King Gizz delivers just that. The kinds of albums and songs and shows that take you on a mind-bending, genre-bursting musical journey worthy of Hawkwind or Gong at their self-indulgent best.

Thursday | 06.08
What: Alphabet Soup #61: Machu Linea, Dub FX, Savage Bass Goat, Yung Lurch, Furbie Cakes and Skyfloor
When: 9
Where: Black Box
Why: This monthly showcase of some of the most forward thinking/experimental producers in Denver includes some of the usual suspects like Furbie Cakes and Skyfloor and their brand of glitch and melodic ambient but this time out also Machu Linea whose avant-pop R&B/techno fusion has long crossed over into the realm of the indie scene.

Friday | 06.09
What: Endless, Nameless and Antibroth tour kickoff w/Rose Variety and Polly Urethane
When: 7
Where: D3 Arts
Why: Antibroth and Endless, Nameless are embarking on a tour to the East Coast and back through the Midwest after which Antibroth and its weirdo, experimental, angular form of post-punk and confrontational surrealism will effectively come to an end though during the tour the trio will release its final EP, Satan and the Dying Baby. This is the band’s final show so don’t miss it. Endless, Nameless is a multi-genre band crossing the boundaries of post-hardcore, death metal, math rock and shoegaze. Rose Variety from Boulder came out of a time in local music that had recovered from that wave of really cookie cutter psychedelic and garage rock but took that raw material and made a pop band out of it with some real punk kick. Polly Urethane always reinvents her show with every performance so maybe you’ll get a gorgeously classical vocal show with some vinyl sampling or backing track or raw noise and signal processing or a pure performance art piece or all of it. Always worth coming to check out.

The Sisters of Mercy, photo by Lara Aimee

Friday | 06.09
What: The Sisters of Mercy w/A Primitive Evolution
When: 7
Where: Fillmore Auditorium
Why: The Sisters of Mercy will probably fill the venue with a thick fog and you’ll get some colored murk in which to experience its foundational political post-punk but maybe this time the fog won’t be so thick and you’ll get to see Andrew Eldtrich and his band clearly delivering the kind anthemic, dark rock that launched a thousand Goth bands without directly being that music itself.

Elizabeth Colour Wheel, photo from Bandcamp

Saturday | 06.10
What: Jerome’s Dream and Elizabeth Colour Wheel and Only Echoes
When: 8
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Jerome’s Dream is the influential screamo/powerviolence band from Sacramento that started out in the early heyday of that music in the late 90s and early 2000s and during its first run of 1997-2001 the trio made a major impact on the kind of music that would later be associated with modern hardcore and extreme metal and where those two fuse. The band has been reunited since 2018 and its latest album The Gray In Between is a fine example of the kind of cathartic extreme music that is has had a popular resurgence in the last handful of years. Elizabeth Colour Wheel is of similar sound but its fusion of noise rock and shoegaze but delivered like a hardcore band has made it a wonderful musical mutant of the past several years. Only Echoes is an instrumental post-metal band from Denver that has been honing its imaginative soundscapes on the road and around Denver whose 2022 album Sunsickness is both melancholic and fiery, reconciling both musical impulses.

Saturday | 06.10
What: Bayonne w/Mmeadows
When: 8
Where: Globe Hall
Why: Bayonne is the project of producer and composer Roger Sellers who started off releasing music under his given name but beginning with 2016’s Primitives he adopted his current moniker. The latest Bayonne record Temporary Time (2023) is an entrancing, orchestral electronic pop record of spacious melodies and melancholic yet summery moods. At another time some critic might have lumped Bayonne in with the “hypnogogic pop” of John Maus or even Dean Blunt but his style is more in the vein of downtempo ambient of Tycho but more grounded in texture and strong, organic rhythms.

Monday | 06.12
What: Drowse w/Agriculture, Sprain and Palehorse Palerider
When: 7
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Kyle Bates is a composer and multi-instrumentalist whose work has most often been heard as his musical project Drowse. Founded in 2013 in Portland, Oregon, Drowse has released a few albums and numerous EPs and split releases. The music could be considered in part ambient, slowcore, shoegaze, drone, experimental folk and perhaps even transcendental black metal. But all categories aside, each Drowse recording is a journey into unique and nuanced emotional spaces exploring and living within a flow of emotions and thoughts that open the mind to new ideas and interpretations. And more so the moods, frequencies and textures on a Drowse recording, or really any of the releases in which Bates is involved, express a state of mind that one enters after having moved past a peak of anxiety or personal darkness and contain that tenderness and rawness one often needs to pull oneself out of a place of acute pain and psychological paralysis. The gentleness of the music is part of its power and appeal as Bates seems keenly aware of what it’s like to experience that period in life where you don’t feel like you can push or strive any further and you need an experience that is the opposite of that very modern and American internalized urge to keep at things to the extreme and prove yourself endlessly more and more. The core sound of Drowse is that of the musical equivalent of acceptance of one’s human limitations and of being open to what will nurture your well being and spark your imagination into nudging you toward fulfilling experiences.

And you’ll get to see the great Los Angeles black metal band Agriculture which will release its feral self-titled album on The Flenser on July 21, the Unwound-esque noise rock/post-punk group Sprain on its first time in Denver and the Mile High City’s own Palehorse/Palerider whose desert drone and cosmic shoegaze will add more than a touch of the epic and mysterious to the evening.

Tuesday | 06.13
What: Earth w/Burning Sister
When: 7
Where: Globe Hall
Why: It is indeed the foundational doom and post-rock doom legends Earth bringing their extended mystical blues to Globe Hall which mostly gets more indie and Americana fare most nights. Its languorous psychedelia somehow manages to be dreamlike and weighty at once for a contrast that allows for a wide-ranging dynamic driven by a sense of wonder and self-discovery.

Wednesday | 06.14
What: Joan w/Harriette
When: 7
Where: Larimer Lounge
Why: Brooklyn based pop artist Harriette recently released her debut EP i heart the internet and a music video for the title track that features a bevy of older computer technology (including a flip phone of all things as well as old CRTs and is that an iMac in there?) as a celebration and send-up of internet culture for a song that takes a whimsical and self-aware approach to the phenomenon of people living perpetually online. The EP of upbeat and gentle melodies is a collection of songs as snapshots of modern life with free association of cultural signifiers and artifacts like mentioning listening to an “Folsom Prison Blues” on the appropriately titled “Johnny got it right.” Its genre-bending songwriting in the realm of indie pop and sharply and poetically observed descriptions of everyday life. Joan is a pop duo from Little Rock, Arkansas whose EPs over the past six years have established it as band that is gifted at crafting the heartfelt, expansive pop song as manifested most fully on its 2023 debut album superglue.

Thursday | 06.15
What: Garbage w/Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds and Metric
When: 5:30
Where: Levitt Pavilion
Why: Metric’s 2022 album Formentera has all the creative ambition, dream-like atmospherics and lush soulfulness that has has been the hallmark of the band from the beginning. But this time around Metric takes aim at some of the serious facing the human species as a collective and on the personal level. Also in 2022 the group headlined what it called the “Doomscroller Tour” after the song on the album about the habit of scrolling through social media and online taking in the news as a steady feed of the host of terrible things seeming to occurring every day and at a seemingly more rapid and dense pace than at any point in historical memory. And taking in this horror as a kind of act of soporific disassociation that Metric has sought to disrupt with its music and performance even if for just a little while and to get people to reconsider this habit and perhaps do something about these issues rather than be a passive actor in the human experiment. Metric is in good musical company with legendary alternative rock band Garbage whose own advocacy for social causes is obvious from its own social media presence and its way of discussing its work in the context of living as a human connected with the world. And Noel Gallagher is the former songwriter, singer and guitarist of Oasis and his new band High Flying Birds has been his musical outlet since 2010 following the 2009 final split of his old group. In 2023 the project released its latest album Council Skies perhaps as a reference to Gallagher’s having come up poor in Manchester and his own aspirational daydreaming as a youth, imbuing an album out in his mid-50s with some of that sense of wonder and looking forward.

Legs. The Band in 2022, photo by Tom Murphy

Thursday | 06.15
What: Legs. The Band EP release w/Hen & The Cocks, The Ephinjis and Gila Teen
When: 8
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Legs. The Band is releasing its new EP. The group that combines rockabilly blues with proto-punk sounds has been one of the more charismatic rock bands out of the Denver scene of the past couple of years and really sounds like no one else with a commanding and raw stage presence. The Ephinjis are a Boulder-based punk band whose own sound seems to borrow liberally across decades and manages to make a kind of pop-punk that manages not to sound stale because the band’s songwriting is steeped in a diverse sound with eclectic roots. Gila Teen is the Goth emo band everyone should get to experience at least once in their lives because their music is heartfelt and mysterious at the same time informed by a playful and surreal sense of humor but not one that distracts from the poignant emotional moments that clearly inspired so much of the songwriting.

Atmosphere, photo by Chris Fiq Colclasure

Friday | 06.16
What: Dirty Heads & Atmosphere & Stick Figure w/DENM, The Grouch and Mike Love
When: 4:20
Where: Fiddler’s Green Amphitheater
Why: Atmosphere is a hip-hop duo from Minneapolis, Minnesota comprised of rapper Slug aka Sean Daley and DJ/producer Ant aka Anthony Davis. Slug and Ant have been influential well beyond their own remarkable work as artists as co-founders of the respected Rhymesayers Entertainment imprint which has long been one of the torchbearers of underground and alternative hip-hop going back to the mid-90s and releasing not just the work of Atmosphere but that of Aesop Rock, Brother Ali, Eyedea & Abilities, Dilated Peoples, Grayskul and others. Including its debut album Overcast! (1997), Atmosphere has released thirteen full albums and ten EPs up through the new record So Many Other Realities Exist Simultaneously (2023) making the project one of the more prolific acts in hip-hop. In its various lineups and incarnations Atmosphere has consistently paired sensitive and thought-provoking lyrics with a sonically rich and diverse production ranging from some more classic hip-hop sounds to the clearly experimental and avant-garde all to deliver powerfully evocative music that engages the imagination and the heart. In the live setting Atmosphere create an intimate and inviting energy that creates an environment of the shared experience as Daley’s lyrics aim to not just tell relatable stories with roots in his own direct experiences but with resonances for common experiences and emotional spaces we’ve all known. On the new record the songs take us through a journey through un rest and hope, the latter the primary feeling Daley hopes to convey to everyone that shows up to an Atmosphere show because it is hope that lingers and can carry you through trying times into those that are better.

Allison Lorenzen in 2022, photo by Tom Murphy

Friday | 06.16
What: Allison Lorenzen, Openly Weep and Bell Mine
When: 7:30
Where: Leon Gallery
Why: Allison Lorenzen has for several years made the kind of transcendent indie folk that seems to combine a mystical sensibility with ambient soundscapes and tender yet emotionally powerful songwriting and performances. Openly Weep is the debut musical project of Ryan Hall who is one of the founders of the Whited Sepulchre imprint which releases some of the most fascinating experimental music out of the underground on physical and digital formats. His own music is the kind of ambient music that combines beats and the sensibilities of house music. One might call it IDM but it bridges various electronic musical worlds for a sound that feels tribal, primal and completely modern. Listen to his 2021 EP Overpass here. Bell Mine is a Denver-based avant-electronic pop artist whose entrancing and darkly downtempo music is reminiscent of the work of Laurel Halo and Jenny Hval.

Dirty Few at 2013 original album release show for *Get Loose Have Fun*, photo by Tom Murphy

Friday | 06.16
What: Dirty Few 10 Year Anniversary of Get Loose, Have Fun w/White Lightning Co., The Sickly Hecks and host Matt Cobos
When: 8
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Dirty Few were stars of the local garage punk scene in Denver in the early 2010s with a rightfully earned reputation for raucous shows that for better or for worse depending on your perspective and the show you caught embodied the so-called “Denver party rock” attitude. What was perhaps less obvious from the revelry is that Seth and Spencer Stone were talented songwriters whose music had real heart and undeniable hooks as perhaps best heard on the 2013 album Get Loose, Have Fun which the group is reuniting to celebrate with this show.

Friday | 06.16
What: Sour Magic album release of Forbidden Fruit w/The Crooked Rugs, Fly Amanita and Chaarm
When: 7
Where: Lost Lake
Why: Sour Magic is a psychedelic rock and pop band from Denver that’s releasing its debut album Forbidden Fruit. At first listen maybe you’ll think you’re in for the kind of post-Tame Impala and Temples music but Sour Magic takes that sound into different directions with inventive tempo changes perfectly synced in with the way the melodies flow and unfold. The shimmery sound alongside that more gritty and the way the music allows all elements to shine immediately sets the band apart from much of the psych rock that came out of Denver in the 2010s. Fans of Beach Fossils’ shoegaze pop will appreciate the way Sour Magic often lets the rhythm section lead the music and how that lends the songwriting a weight even as its midnight hued atmospheric elements indulge in blissing out into the moonset. Also, not since Sunboy has a Denver psych band seemed to have such a strong command of the aesthetics of electronic music and rock fused as a unified whole.

Saturday | 06.17
What: The Blue Stones w/Compass & Cavern and JACK
When: 7
Where: The Bluebird Theater
Why: Canadian blues rock band The Blue Stones has turned its musical roots into an expansion of the sound especially on its 2022 album Pretty Monster. Even a cursory listen through the album reveals a band that takes solid melodic lines and strong rhythms and employs modern production methods that give a tried and true formula and gave it some expansive mood in a psychedelic sheen and modern pop accessibility. It’s a shift in direction for The Blue Stones but Tarek Jafar and Justin Tessler seem to realize that taking chances and not being defined completely by one’s artistic past is more key to longevity than getting stuck doing the exact same thing for an entire career.

Sunday | 06.18
What: Child of Night w/Dream of Industry, Teller and Kill You Club DJs
When: 7
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Child of Night is a darkwave dance band from Columbus, Ohio whose ethereal duskiness is driven by strong rhythms and robust low end. Its 2021 album The Walls at Dawn has an alluring moodiness like the soundtrack to a near future, urban techno thriller that is the missing link between TR/ST and Actors.

Monday | 06.19
What: Temples w/Post Animal
When: 7
Where: The Bluebird Theater
Why: UK psychedelic rock band Temples has been one of the leading lights of the modern manifestation of that music. And its own sound informed by the aesthetics of synth pop has given its music a different trajectory and greater longevity than some of the bandwagon artists of the 2010s. Its music flows with layers of luminous melody and hits with a dream-like resonance that sounds like a quick trip to a sun dappled vacation destination in a beautiful and exotic place. Thus the title of its 2023 album Exotico seems entirely appropriate as each of its sixteen songs is like an immersive sampling of a place you’d like to visit long enough to soak in its uniquely affecting environment. Post Animal are like the younger creative cousin to Temples and its 2022 album Love Gibberish is nine transporting meditations on the glories and foibles of love and a myriad of perspectives on a perennial theme of rock music with the band moving a bit beyond its more hard rock early era into what is often lush 1970s pop-flavored, hazy psychedelia.

Tuesday | 06.20
What: Oliver Tree w/UPSAHL, Tai Verdes and Little Ricky ZR3
When: 6
Where: Red Rocks
Why: Oliver Tree got his break in the music industry proper making presentations for the likes of Skrillex and Zeds Dead though he’d long been a musician and songwriter who has pursued a variety of styles before finding his greatest success making the kind of pop music that is eclectic and informed by the kind of irony that serves to express the sincerity of feeling that is the core content of his songwriting. The eccentric stage performance style and drily and absurdly humorous music videos might give the impression of his music being a put on but songs aren’t. UPSAHL is an up-and-coming pop artist whose spirited and eclectic sound borrows liberally from various genres of music and fuses them into music that is somehow both deeply witty and amusing and thought-provoking. At least if her 2021 album Lady Jesus is any indication not to mention her 2022 EP Sagittarius (Taylor Upsahl being a Sagittarian herself). In 2023 the singer/songwriter announced the release of THE PHX (Phoenix) TAPES which will pair two songs as (SIDE A/SIDE B) to showcase her evolving interests as an artist and producer and so far singles like “GOOD GIRL ERA” (SIDE A) and “CONDOMS” (SIDE B) as well as “WET WHITE TEE SHIRT” (SIDE A) have demonstrated Upsahl’s range as a vocalist and gift for genre-morphing into whatever style suits her always sharp and sassy yet sensitive observations.

Tuesday | 06.20
What: Moon Walker w/Annabel Lee
When: 7
Where: Larimer Lounge
Why: Moon Walker is a duo from Denver comprised of Harry Springer and Sean McCarthy whose music is a mix of ’70s glam rock and power pop in a modern flavor. The project came out of the early pandemic when Springer’s and McCarthy’s band The Midnight Club couldn’t play out and Springer started writing music for song libraries until he wrote stuff he didn’t want to give away that way and the new band had its roots. It’s a little kitsch, it’s a lot boogie rock but at least the theatrical element is real and it’s not merely yet another couple of people re-re-re-re-discovering classic rock. Opening act Annabel Lee released her debut album Mother’s Hammer on March 8, 2023 and though housed in acoustic guitar, piano, minimal percussion and other traditionally more folk or pop elements, Lee’s vocals are commanding and intense in her expression and at times one is reminded of a peer like Grace Cummings or obvious touchstones like PJ Harvey in the orchestral arrangements and willingness to unmoor the emotional expression from the tethers of pop convention.

Wednesday | 06.21
What: Elf Power w/The Tammy Shine
When: 7
Where: Lost Lake
Why: Elf Power was one of the early Athens, GA bands affiliated with the Elephant 6 collective and thus one of the bands that helped to chart the musical direction of modern indie rock. The prolific group has reliably put out thoughtful and inventive psychedelic pop up through its most recent record, 2022’s Artificial Countrysides and its dreamlike, fuzzy melodies and transporting electronic shimmer. Sharing the bill is The Tammy Shine, the charismatic and powerful lead singer of Denver indie pop legends Dressy Bessy doing her no less lively and heartfelt solo material.

Wednesday and Thursday | 06.21 and 06.22
What: Bestial Mouths w/WitchHands and eHpH on 06.21 and w/Church Fire and DJ Shannon Von Kelly on 06.22
When: 7 (06.21) 8 (06.22)
Where: Vulture’s (06.21) and Hi-Dive (06.22)
Why: Bestial Mouths began in 2009 as a band that early on might be considered post-punk but even its debut EP, 2009’s Stabile Vices, had elements of noise and industrial set to ritualistic rhythms with tribal percussion. All along, vocalist Lynette Cerezo who has a background in fashion and design brought to performances a striking visual presentation that drew upon the imagery of mythology and dreams in a creative interplay with the music. Cerezo’s lyrics have always explored issues of gender, identity and personal liberation and whether combined with the performance or not, certainly enhanced by the live experience, meant as a conduit for mutual inspiration and uplift by challenging arbitrary societal notions of “proper” social roles and behavior and aesthetics. A Bestial Mouths show and the music embodies aspects of the subconscious and what has traditionally been relegated to artistic darkness and the feminine, the intuitive and the supernatural. Cerezo through the practice of her art reclaims all of that as a source of power and dignity by demonstrating how it isn’t negative, that it is a part of a complete human life and that such things can be harnessed to the benefit of the self and all.

More recent Bestial Mouths records starting with the new arc of music since the project has been mainly headed by Cerezo since 2018 has reconciled the early post-punk and Goth sound and noise completely with the more mystical and non-Western experimental sonic ideas and rhythms that have been a feature if not the focus of the music since the beginning. But in 2020’s RESURRECTEDINBLACK, the first Bestial Mouths record crafted with Cerezo at the creative helm it’s all there for a listening experience not unlike the psycho-mystical depths of a Dead Can Dance album but darker and more harrowing and cathartic. The new album R.O.T.T. (inmyskin), with the acronym standing for Road of Thousand Tears drops on August 11, 2023 and continues the path of its predecessor but with the songs seemingly emerging from the murk that seemed entirely appropriate for a set of songs from a time of great uncertainty and treading new musical paths. Those appreciate Diamanda Galás’ elemental catharsis, psychic fearlessness and avant-garde sensibilities might find a great deal to appreciate about Bestial Mouths as will those with a taste for the political industrial punk of ADULT. and Jarboe’s deeply emotional and unfettered vocal performances but while in Swans and since. Listen to our interview with Bestial Mouths on Bandcamp linked below.

Saturday | 06.24
What: FACS w/Wave Decay and Replica City
When: 8
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: FACS is a post-punk from Chicago that includes former 90 Day Men and Disappears singer/guitarist Brian Case. Its angular, menacing songs create a brooding soundscape of stark moods like the hollowed out facade of modern industrial culture. Its 2023 album Still Life In Decay is perhaps its most focused effort in articulating the telltale signs of a civilization in decay neglectful of itself and detrimental to all life within its sphere of influence.

Saturday and Sunday | 06.24 and 06.25
What: Graham Nash
When: 6:30 (06.24) and 6 (06.25)
Where: Chautauqua Auditorium (06.24) and Washington’s (6.25)
Why: Graham Nash is a singer/songwriter who established for himself a rich and influential legacy in music and culture as a member of The Hollies in the 1960s and later that decade going forward with Crosby, Stills & Nash (and for a time CSN&Y with Neil Young). The socially conscious and poetically resonant rock proved a touchstone for a generation with an iconic body of work that’s still worth exploring and finding some of the classic rock era’s finest material. On May 19, 2023, Nash released his latest solo record Now and at 81 he is still crafting exquisite melodies and imaginative stories that have something to say and the forward looking perspective that has always been the hallmark of his art. He’s playing two shows in Colorado in celebration of the record.

Saturday | 06.24
What: Godflesh w/Sumerlands, Stormkeep, Spectral Voice and Street Tombs
When: 5
Where: Gothic Theatre
Why: Maybe the extreme metal even of the summer with headliners Godflesh, the influential and always unforgettable industrial grindcore pioneers whose grinding, scorching menace always hits hard and not without a sense of mystique. And Denver, thorny grindcore legends Spectral Voice make a very rare appearance these days.

Sunday | 06.25
What: JK Flesh w/Terravault, Corpsewhale, CXCXCX, Vox Mnemonic
When: 7
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: JK Flesh is the pseudonym of Justin K. Broadrick of Godflesh who fresh off performing at the Gothic the night before with the latter will treat an audience at the Hi-Dive to a set of some of his more experimental work in the realm of noise, power electronics, dub and industrial along with some local noise scene luminaries.

Tuesday | 06.27
What: Moon Pussy w/Porcelain, Quits and Messiahvore
When: 7
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: This is probably the noise rock show of the month with Denver-based greats Moon Pussy whose borderline unhinged and visceral live show is always a cathartic experience informed by a surreal sense of humor. Porcelain visits from Austin with its own fusion of atmospheric rock and its noisy cousin. Quits reconciles dissonant art rock with post-hardcore intensity. Messiahvore might otherwise be considered a metal band but a little too weird and disregarding of clear tonal sight lines to be that.

The Head and the Heart, photo by Shervin Lainez

Thursday | 06.29
What: The Head and the Heart w/Rayland Baxter and Sera Cahoone
When: 6:30
Where: Red Rocks
Why: The Head and the Heart has since its 2009 inception become one of the most popular and creatively vital bands under the umbrella of indie folk. The group came together organically through the open mic nights at Conor Byrne pub in Seattle and not long after its 2011 debut album on Sub Pop became a bit of an instant classic of modern folk rock with “Rivers and Roads” becoming a major hit with fans as a typical concert closer. In 2019 “Honeybee” was a bit ubiquitous and may have given the impression that the band was being marketed beyond its ability to deliver but fortunately the group’s earnest performances and orchestral and ambitious songwriting made it obvious that even that song was not just hype. In 2023 The Head and the Heart announced its inaugural festival Down In The Valley to take place at Oxbow Riverstage in Napa, CA on September 2 and 3 to feature not just its own performances but those of Waxahatchee, Faye Webster, Rayland Baxter, Miya Folick, Dawes, Madison Cunningham, Mitch & The Coal Miners, Shaina Shepherd and Josiah Johnson.

Friday | 06.30
What: Remember Sports w/Goon and Dry Ice
When: 8
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Remember Sports isn’t the typical pop punk band if it can truly be considered that at all. But it has that scrappy spirit and emotional openness that makes for the best of that genre. But the group uses a drum machine rather than a more traditional musician in the role. Its songs unabashedly incorporate left field sounds in the mix and its vocals sound like a childhood subjected to the likes of a now more obscure alternative pop artist like Jane Jensen and the much more famous Alanis Morissette by Gen X parents but the members of the band took a foundation like that and took it in a different direction. The band’s 2022 EP Leap Day is four tracks of lo-fi bedroom punk experiments of undeniable charm.

To Be Continued…

Best Shows in Denver and Beyond February 2023

**Chat Pile performs with Lingua Ignota at Stanley Hotel Feb 24 and 25, photo by Bayley Hanes**

Thursday | 02.02
What: Almira Gulch, Equine, Witch Baby and Fireball Rose
When: 8
Where: The Skylark Lounge
Why: The rare all avant-garde show at a club that normally hosts rock, pop and country including performances from musicians in the small free jazz scene in Denver as well as experimental guitar drone and jazz composer Equine.

Velvet Horns in 2023, photo by Tom Murphy

Friday | 02.03
What: Church Fire w/Elegant Everyone, Velvet Horns and An Antiquated Bluff
When: 8
Where: The Skylark Lounge
Why: Church Fire brings the weird and the emotionally charged electronic and industrial dance fire to the Skylark sharing the stage with the emo-folk-psychedelic Americana intensity of An Antiquated Bluff and the unabashedly queer emo of power punk trio Velvet Horns.

Friday | 02.03
What: BleakHeart w/Autumn Creatures and Fainting Dreams
When: 8
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: BleakHeart’s fusion of post-punk/dreampop and doom is not much like any other band in Denver now. Autumn Creatures from the Springs is a good fit on that bill since its own music bridges the worlds of electronic industrial, darkwave, post-metal, post-punk and shoegaze. And Fainting Dreams with its own roots in hardcore and progressive death metal finds a different musical outlet with its own emotionally rich take on dream pop.

Friday | 02.03
What: Voight w/Blackcell and DJ Eli
When: 8
Where: HQ
Why: Two giants of local post-punk and industrial music that doesn’t fit narrowly into either designation share the bill this night. Voight is more on the shoegaze end but has so thoroughly threaded techno into its mix that it has become its own fusion of styles. Blackcell has been around for around 30 years evolving its own eclectic sound borne out of noise, EBM and psychedelic industrial techno.

Totem Pocket, photo courtesy the artists

Saturday | 02.04
What: VCO, Totem Pocket and Business Cashmere
When: 8
Where: The Skylark Lounge
Why: Is VCO the band from Glasgow? Who can say. Seems unlikely but if it is, it’s a kind of synth heavy post-punk pop band. But either way opening the show are two of Denver’s more promising prospects in the local underground rocks scene. Totem Pocket is a psychedelic shoegaze band that apparently wasn’t bother to listen when someone said maybe you should mix influences like Dinosaur Jr, Animal Collective and Slowdive. The idea of indie rock has become a bit of a lifestyle marketing joke in recent years but when you hear Business Cashmere it’s like they took the challenge of doing something off center from the standard pop and experimental rock and disparate retro influences formula to craft music that seems to draw on genuine emotions and dream imagery.

Wednesday | 02.08
What: Blink 90210, Reckless Nights and SPELLS
When: 7
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Garage rock with a touch of soul and blues band Reckless Nights is reuniting at the request of their friend Thomas/Tom Packard who is fighting stage 4 colon cancer and wanted to see one more show. So it’ll be a bit of an extravaganza. Joaquin Liebert has been a fixture of the local music and acting scene as the frontman of The Risk/Hi-Fidelity and various other projects over the years so he’ll bring high entertainment value. And so will SPELLS with their unabashed aiming for the highly attainable and completely acceptable 80% performance level but with higher than 80% songwriting and energy punk pop.

Gabriel Albelo Band in 2022, photo by Tom Murphy

Friday | 02.10
What: Gabriel Albelo & The Midnight Temples, Los Toms, Galleries and DJ Eddie B
When: 8
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Gabriel Albelo & The Midnight Temples is releasing its new four song EP at this show. The group lead by former Silver Face guitarist and singer Gabriel Albelo is an amalgam of heavy psychedelia and what might be called progressive garage rock. It’s the kind of music that could only really come about from an intentional study of earlier psychedelic and art rock with an aim of wanting to do something with a similar impact but without coming off like a direct imitation. Also on the bill is the like-minded hard rock psych group Galleries.

Saturday | 02.11
What: The Red Scare w/Sunnnner, Legs. The Band, Cellar Smellar
When: 8
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: The Red Scare from Fort Collins sounds like it absorbed a great deal of Sonic Youth influence with its tonal and dynamic bends and favoring Lee Ranaldo’s offhand vocal style. But with a guitar palette like something born of the noisier end of The Swirlies and Lilys. Sunnnner is a little more challenging to suss out stylistically but other than a simple weirdo noise rock and scuzzy garage rock its exuberant live performances are simultaneously inviting and confrontational. Legs. The Band is another musical mutant also perfect for this bill with its unlikely and poweful combination of blues rock and punk fronted by the charismatic Marcus Macabre whose stage persona is equal parts Screamin’ Jay Hawkins and Bobby Hackney Sr. from Death.

Saturday | 02.11
What: ABANDONS, Only Echoes and Edith Pike
When: 8
Where: The Squire Lounge
Why: ABANDONS is a trio whose music has roots in post-rock, post-metal, art prog and noisy strangeness generally. Its imaginative soundscapes are arranged in cinematic fashion with figures and moods evolving and figures fading in and out as the music progresses and by the end of a show you feel like you’ve been through something more than just a rock show. Only Echoes is one of Denver’s premier instrumental post-metal bands whose relentless yet modulated flow of melodic sounds suggest epic journeys without crossing over into cheesy pretension. Edith Pike is a band that somehow brings together strands of emo and powerviolence with post-rock like a weird amalgamation of Siege and The For Carnation.

Rubblebucket, photo courtesy Grand Jury Music

Saturday | 02.11
What: Rubblebucket w/Spaceface
When: 8
Where: Gothic Theatre
Why: Brooklyn’s Rubblebucket returned in 2022 with its album Earth Worship, the follow up to the triumphantly soulful and heartbreaking 2018 record Sun Machine. This new set of songs find’s the art pop duo taking its mutant jazz, R&B synthpop into seemingly another vista of poetic examination of yearning, identity and saying goodbye to significant chapters and relationships in your life as they are and embracing the vitality of what is already forming and yet to come. Spaceface released one of the more lively retro psych pop records of 2022 with the self-aware Anemoia. When it toured in support of the album in clubs it was like getting to see a band making use of the space like they were both glam rock rock gods and a teenybopper pop band and made it work. It didn’t hurt the songs were also irresistible in their colorfully trippy melodies baked into solid dance rhythms.

Saturday | 02.11
What: The Charlatans and Ride
When: 8
Where: Ogden Theatre
Why: The Charlatans and Ride both formed in 1988 in time to be a part of exciting movements of music coming out of the UK and across the Atlantic. The Charlatans were creating emotionally rich psychedelic pop songs wedded to some of the aesthetics of acidhouse and got lumped in a bit with the whole Madchester thing but were in many ways an early example of what came to be called Britpop. But these clumsy designations aside, The Chalatans’ songs then and now have a freshness of spirit that has meant its older songs have aged well and its new music as exemplified by its 2017 album Different Days hits with a modern resonance informed by an older person’s sense of nuance and perspective minus the ossified self-congratulation. Ride was certainly one of the flagship bands of shoegaze and its debut album Nowhere (1990) helped to define the subgenre. Its 1992 follow-up Going Blank Again pushed the fidelity of its massive guitar sound further and pointed at where the group would travel further in its songwriting with hints of electronic elements and a more evolved psychedelic pop. Its own latest album 2018’s Tomorrow’s Shore proved the band wasn’t stuck in some phase of trying to recapture old glory and demonstrated a knack for inventive melodic turns of phrase and strong pop hooks. This tour is a perfect match of classic bands who still have something to say rather than merely resting on their laurels as “legendary” acts.

Chella and The Charm in 2022, photo by Tom Murphy

What: Chella and the Charm w/Team Nonexistent and Calamity
When: 8
Where: The Skylark Lounge
Why: Michelle Caponigro is rebooting her Sweethearts of the Rodeo Valentine’s show for this performance of Chella and the Charm. The band’s music is a beautiful fusion of passionate Americana and rock poetry with uncanny insights into the intricacies and glories and pitfalls of human relationships and one’s own relationship with oneself in a world that can often put challenges that can work to dissolve anything you build. Caponigro’s lyrics in their various ways highlight how navigating these dangerous waters can reveal to you the essence of what makes one’s struggles worthwhile. Team Nonexistent is a band still exploring its sound but its jagged and scrappy energy hits as punk but with a defiant vulnerability that makes its songwriting more interesting than a lot of bands in that vein. Calamity is the brainchild of Kate Hannington and depending on the show you see you might think it’s more noisy indie rock or lushly expansive indiepop. But either way, Hannington’s commanding and expressive vocals deliver literate and imaginative tales of getting through life in challenging times without succumbing to an understanding impulse to despair.

Saturday | 02.11
What: Allison Lorenzen and Midwife
When: 7:30/8
Where: Chautauqua Community House
Why: Allison Lorenzen and Madeline Johnston (Midwife) have both been putting out some of the most deeply moving music in the realm of indie folk of recent years. Really, both are experimental artists whose body of work is both unpretentiously conceptual and dig deep into places in the psyche that can be challenging to bring to light and articulate in ways that make them accessible. Both recently released a collaborative cover of Bush’s 1994 hit “Glycerine” (video below) but of course make it an affecting and transformative listening experience. This rare collaborative show in a place like Chautauqua Community House will bring something raw yet sophisticated and genuine to a place that usually hosts more commercially established artists.

Tuesday | 02.14
What: Midwife, H Lite, Polly Urethane and Debaser
When: 7
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Midwife follows up a show in Boulder with like-minded transcendent indie folk experimentalist Allison Lorenzen with this headlining date at the Hi-Dive. The show includes performances from glitch IDM abstract dance electronica artist H Lite, the always surprising and theatrical classical/industrial noise/musique concrète/songwriter Polly Urethane and her shows that seem to be different in fundamental ways from performance to performance and OG DIY Denver Godfather Josh Taylor (Friends Forever, Foot Village, Secret Girls, Monkey Mania, The Smell etc.) performing with his bass and drums (the instruments, not the electronic music style) etc. project Debaser.

Tuesday | 02.14
What: Matt Anderson and Mariel Buckley
When: 7
Where: Soiled Dove Underground
Why: For over twenty years Juno Award nominated songwriter Matt Andersen brings his tour in support of his 2022 album House to House to Denver. His warm and intimate performances are both passionate and informed by a gentleness of spirit that is immediately commanding and inviting with a musical style that taps into a blues and folk tradition influenced by a heaping of soul and R&B. Also on this tour is Mariel Buckley who released her own latest album in 2022 with Everywhere I Used to Be and its candid and incredibly relatable lyrics. Though known as something of a country artist the new record reveals Buckley to be a much more musically eclectic artist who weaves in sounds and styles in a way that complements well her expressive vocals and richly emotional musical delivery.

Wednesday | 02.15
What: Midwife w/Edith Pike, Viewfinder and Autumn Creatures
When: 6/7
Where: Vultures
Why: Midwife completes her journey through Colorado with a show in the Springs at Vultures just east of The Black Sheep with noise rock hardcore group Edith Pike and electro-shoegaze band Autumn Creatures.

Thursday and Friday | 02.16 and 02.17
What: Jerry Harrison & Adrian Belew: Remain In Light w/Cool Cool Cool
When: 7
Where: Ogden Theatre (02.16) and Boulder Theater (02.17)
Why: Jerry Harrison was a founding member of art punk weirdo quartet Talking Heads whose 1980 experimental pop masterpiece Remain in Light was unexpectedly its gateway into the mainstream with the broadcast of the quirky video for “Once in a Lifetime” in regular rotation when MTV launched in 1981. For the support tour of the album former Frank Zappa band guitarist and touring member of David Bowie’s band for the Isolar II Tour Adrian Belew (who went on to a long stint with King Crimson as well as Bowie again and a distinguished solo career) was brought on board for some of Talking Heads’ most memorable live performances as captured on film and live recordings. So the two musicians are performing the iconic album for these performances. While not including the other members of the Talking Heads it should be an interesting execution of the material given the musicians involved.

Weird Al Qaida in 2014, photo by Tom Murphy

Friday | 02.17
What: Weird Al Qaida album release
When: 8:30-10
Where: Mutiny Information Café
Why: Weird Al Qaida got off the ground in 2008/2009 when Eric Peterson and Ingvald Grunder formed the experimental project with the aim of being able to explore whatever musical ideas came to mind. Both had been in bands in and around the Denver music scene for years prior with Peterson having played in power pop/punk pop group The Barrys and Grunder having spent some time in Orbit Service. Weird Al Qaida doesn’t fit nicely into any Denver subscene not being quite noise enough for that world though elements of musique concrète, ambient and noise are elements of its songwriting and not quite psychedelic folk or jazz enough for a more mainstream version of that. But its fascinating body of recorded work including the 2011 seven inch Psychic Wizard, 2016’s Plastic Family and now the 2022 record The Dog & The Deer showcase imaginative soundscaping and arrangements that expand categories of what music can be while remaining essentially accessible.

Friday | 02.17
What: Plasma Canvas album release w/Cheap Perfume, SPELLS and WIFF
When: 7
Where: Seventh Circle Music Collective
Why: Plasma Canvas is celebrating the release of its new album DUSK with a series of shows along the front range in February and March beginning with this show at the long running DIY space Seventh Circle Music Collective. The punk/emo/hard rock band’s heartfelt and cathartic songs has earned it a cult following beyond Colorado with anthemic lyrics and exuberant live performances. The album recorded at The Blasting Room by Andrew Berlin and mixed by Jason Livermore, produced by Bill Stevenson, is the first release to include the four piece lineup of founding members Adrienne Rae Ash (vocals/guitar) and Evalyn Flowers (drums) along with second guitarist Frankie Harlin and bassist Jarod Ford. And if you’ve been able to catch the band in the past year you’ve witnessed the power of the new palette of sounds. For this show and the performance in the Springs there will be the searing and inspirational, unabashedly feminist punk of Cheap Perfume, SPELLS whose workmanlike punk pop songwriting delivered with raw energy is always surprisingly likeable and WIFF whose blend of power pop and punk has a fuzzy tinge of 90s alternative rock.

New Ben Franklins in 2021, photo by Tom Murphy

Friday | 02.17
What: New Ben Franklins w/Jimbo Darville & The Truckadours (15th Annual Waylon Jennings Tribute show)
When: 8
Where: Globe Hall
Why: Waylon Jennings is one of the most celebrated figures in country music. As a young man he was hired by Buddy Holly to play bass and as fate would have it he gave up his seat on the flight in 1959 that killed Holly, The Big Bopper and Ritchie Valens. Throughout the 60s he played in his own rockabilly band but transitioned into a more country sound by the end of the decade and in the 1970s he was one of the main pioneers of the outlaw country movement. But throughout his career Jennings innovated in his songwriting craft and musicianship and while one might look askance at some of his autobiographical details his influence on the genre is indisputable up to his death in 2002. So a couple of the heavy hitters of local country and the better end of rockabilly have been doing cover sets in a show around the time of the songwriter’s passing on February 13.

Cheap Perfume in 2019, photo by Tom Murphy

Saturday | 02.18
What: Plasma Canvas, Cheap Perfume, SPELLS and Bad Year
When: 6/7
Where: Vultures
Why: See above about Plasma Canvas, Cheap Perfume and SPELLS. Except this will be in the great dive bar off of downtown Colorado Springs.

Tianna Esparanza, photo by Shervin Lainez

Saturday and Sunday | 02.18 and 02.19
What: Tianna Esperanza (with Mick Flannery both dates)
When: 6 (2.18 and 02.19)
Where: eTown Hall (02.18) and Swallow Hill (02.19)
Why: Tianna Esperanza released her debut album Terror on February 17, 2023. The early singles revealed the singer/songwriter’s knack for fusing jazz, pop and hip-hop into a set of songs imbued with a confidence and soul one would expect from a songwriter a decade older than her 22 years. As the granddaughter of former Slits and Raincoats drummer Paloma “Palmolive” McLardy, Esperanza had a different kind of upbringing in affluent Cape Cod, Massachusetts where there aren’t a lot of people that look like her and how that plays out as you navigate that kind of environment. She lost her younger brother growing up and survived sexual assault and all of that tragedy and misfortune and struggle though not necessary to create valid art gives some context to the melancholic moods and exuberant yet tempered defiant spirit heard throughout the album. She is performing a short run of live shows including two in Colorado opening for acclaimed Irish singer/songwriter Mick Flannery.

Sunday | 02.19
What: nü-age outlaws, Fragrant Blossom, SiLT & Zər03n-A, Matt Robidoux and Kelly Garlick
When: 7
Where: D3
Why: This is a showcase for some of the more left field techno, experimental electronic and ambient artists out of Denver and elsewhere now. Includes former Pizza Time and still current Dubble Trouble musician David Castillo in nü-age outlaws, Charles Ballas of Dan’l Boone and Howling Hex and Petite Garçon’s Ben Donehower in Fragrant Blossom, Matt Robidoux from San Francisco with his finely textured soundscapes, SiLT and Zər03n-A’s chill, field recording infused prepared sound designs combined with choreographed movements and Kelly Garlick’s futuristic fusion of pop, glitch and found sound composition.

Harsh Symmetry, photo from artist Bandcamp

Sunday | 02.19
What: Harsh Symmetry w/Plague Garden and DJ Niq V
When: 7
Where: HQ
Why: Julian Sharwarko’s crafts moody and dark electronic post-punk as Harsh Symmetry like a more synth-driven and lo-fi Comsat Angels by way of Boy Harsher with guitar. Denver’s Plague Garden has long offered some of the local scene’s most imaginative and emotionally rich post-punk colored with deeply evocative, New Wave-era-esque electronics.

Kristine Leschper, photo by Tyler Borchardt

Monday | 02.20
What: Kristine Leschper w/Duck Turnstone and Alana Mars
When: 8
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Former Mothers singer Kristine Leschper released her debut solo effort in 2022 with The Opening, Or Closing Of A Door. The album hits like the manifestation of conceptualizing music as a physical presence in the sense of a prepared environment with sound sources occupying their own spaces in the mix with a subtle dynamism in sync with Leschper’s melodious vocals. Like an indie pop Laurie Anderson, Leschper offers a peek into a playfully mysterious storytelling that challenges the standard structures of social power and cognition. For the album the songwriter draws upon the familiarity of everyday objects and and expressions and deconstructs them and anchors them with new resonances.

Friday | 02.24
What: Dressy Bessy w/Waiting Room, Friends of Caesar Romero and Pink Lady Monster
When: 8
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Indie pop legends Dressy Bessy headline this night at the Hi-Dive with the dream pop-esque stylings of Waiting Room which consists of former members of The Corner Girls and TúLips, garage pop ragers Friends of Caesar Romero and the current iteration of Pink Lady Monster which has evolved from a more ethereal pop sound to one more experimental and jazz-noise-funk-art-damaged.

Friday and Saturday | 02.24 and 02.25
What: Lingua Ignota and Chat Pile
When: 6
Where: Stanley Hotel
Why: Kristin Hayter has announced she’s retiring the Lingua Ignota project and this is probably the last chance to see the ritualistic industrial noise and classical project. Across a handful of albums Lingua Ignota has subverted the musical idiom of religious music and that steeped in that tradition with the symbols and patriarchal framing of spirituality with a caustic and always thrilling commentary in sound and word and her confrontational yet cathartic live shows feel like the exorcism of collective abuse and oppression the likes of which must have taken a toll with embodying that energy for several years. However Hayter emerges as an artist after this run it will likely be informed by the high level of imagination and craft she has brought to bear with Lingua Ignota. Opening is Chat Pile whose 2022 album God’s Country immediately garnered a cult following and critical acclaim for its especially pointed and poignant noise rock that scorched the notion that modern capitalism has any effect on the environment, society and our lives other than one of erosion, destruction and corruption throughout politics and economy and how that descends into the culture and how people think of their very lives. It’s a deeply provocative and thought provoking record that seems to hit right where it needs to but with a personal note that gives it the force that one doesn’t hear often enough in modern music.

Sunday | 02.26
What: JD Clayton and Tanner Usrey
When: Oskar Blues
Where: 9
Why: JD Clayton is touring in support of his new record Long Way From Home which dropped on January 27, 2023. The record is a poignant and warm account of navigating becoming a new father and the deep impact the pandemic had on his career and the cascading effects of that on his life and that of so many people around him and his circle of friends. It’s a well crafted set of songs in a style rooted in country but with a strength of songwriting that transcends genre with performances that are rich on small details without detracting from the spare and clear songwriting that Clayton expertly brings to stories of working class life in a time when that seems so precarious yet Clayton finds a way to highlight the joys and dignity that are part of his experience as well.

Sunday | 02.26
What: Suicide Forest, Belltower and Insipidus
When: 7
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Tucson, Arizona-based Suicide Forest has created the kind of black metal that combines the transcendent with the feral in a way that seems nightmarish even it expresses a vulnerability in the face of a deeply uncertain future and the turmoil of trying to hold on to something of meaning when so many social and ecological forces seem on the verge of washing that all away. Or at least that’s the sound and sentiments heard on its 2021 album Reluctantly.

Monday | 02.27
What: Viagra Boys w/Spiritual Cramp
When: 7
Where: Ogden Theatre
Why: Over the past eight years Stockholm, Sweden’s Viagra Boys has established itself as one of the most exciting live rock bands with its surrealistic sense of humor and brash, charismatic live performance style. And its songs that take aim with humor and incisive rhetoric at right wing politics and the conspiracy theories that fuel them as well as the cult of masculinity that seems interwoven into alt-right culture and the ways that has poisoned mainstream framing of social issues. And Viagra Boys does all of that with a sense of fun while completely obliterating the lines between post-punk, garage rock and dance music. This reached a particularly high point with its 2022 album Cave World with its front to back art punk bangers including the single “Big Boy” featuring Jason Williamson with the like-minded weirdo punkers Sleaford Mods. Anyone fortunate enough to have caught the tour for Cave Weapons got to see a band in high form with attitude to burn but one that invited you along for the ride in celebrating the dismantling of toxic ideas with creativity and wit.

The Rural Alberta Advantage, photo by Colin Medley

Tuesday | 02.28
What: The Rural Alberta Advantage w/Georgia Harmer
When: 8
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Toronto, Ontario’s The Rural Alberta Advantage formed in 2005 during an era when modern indie rock was starting to form an identity in myriad forms but influenced by 90s indiepop, 60s rock and folk and a heart on sleeves approach to writing lyrics. The group’s 2008 debut album Hometowns was a warm fusion of lo-fi sonics and forward thinking nostalgia rooted in stories of life coming from places that maybe one didn’t full appreciate when coming up there but which one can look back on with the fondness you can only have once you’ve outgrown your roots some. The trio of Amy Cole, Nils Edenloff and Paul Banwatt returned in 2022 with EP The Rise, its first release since Cole rejoined the band in 2018 after a roughly two year hiatus. Intact are the lush chamber pop element and Edenloff’s earnest and gritty vocal melodies and a knack for taking an everyday story rendering it into an epic of relatable proportions.

Tuesday | 02.28
What: American Authors w/Billy Raffoul
When: 7
Where: Gothic Theatre
Why: American Authors has been carving a bit of a following for itself for its upbeat, sunny, posi folk pop songs since 2006 when it called itself The Blue Pages. It’s 2023 album Best Night of My Life is a bit like the brighter side of a modern update of Friday Night Lights without the football and after the weirdness of high school is left behind and you are on to building and achieving the life you want. It’s definitely the kind of thing that’ll probably find its way onto the Indie 102.3 play list if it hasn’t already. Billy Raffoul’s own brand of indie folk pop is more self-effacing and self-aware, vulnerable and delivered with his gently gritty voice that ranges widely between nearly whispered intimate moments and a paradoxically full throated introspection. His singles since the 2021 release of Olympus have revealed that Raffoul is capable of even broader vistas of vocal performance and finely nuanced songcraft.

Tuesday | 02.28
What: Cafuné w/Bathe
When: 7
Where: Globe Hall
Why: Indie pop duo Cafuné met in the early 2010s while attending the Clive Davis Institute of NYC and it began as a side project that over the course of a few years became a more full time concern. Throughout the 2020 phase of the COVID-19 pandemic Noah Yoo and Sedona Schat wrote the material for their album Running which was initially released on their own imprint Aurelians Club before being picked up by Elektra in 2022 after which their ebullient single “Tek It” became something of a viral hit with its fetching blend of more classic pop and hyperpop.