The Whimbrels released their eponymous debut album on June 27, 2025 via Dromedary Records. The band has in its membership luminaries of the experimental, avant-garde, post-punk and No Wave scene of New York City with credits including playing with The Glenn Branca Ensemble, The Swans and J. Mascis. Between racks of guitars in alternate tunings and unconventional arrangements the band’s new record is somehow both accessible and challenging, filled with gorgeous, left field melodies, discordant atmospheres and dissonant soundscapes. It’s like noise rock abstract jazz with real attention to songcraft. Arad Evans is the primary songwriter as well as vocalist and one of the group’s guitarists and he’s been in more than a few of the great improvisational and experimental guitar bands in NYC since 1980. Norman Westberg many may know as one of the main guitar wizards in Swans for over 35 years but his fascinating ambient solo albums are worth visiting. Guitarist Luke Schwartz is a composer who also played with Glenn Branca but also with ambient legend John Hassell. Matt Hunter on bass and vocals is a co-founder of New Radiant Storm King but has performed with J. Mascis & the Fog, King Missile, Silver Jews and SAVAK. Steve DiBenedetto is mostly known as a painter but his work as a solo musician and with Airport Seven among other projects are highlights of American experimental music. Drummer Libby Fab is a member of Paranoid Critical Revolution and was the technical director of Glenn Branca’s Symphony 13: Hallucination City. Produced by Jim Santo, the record will resonate deeply with fans of its members various musical endeavors but also the textural tonalities of Mission of Burma, the enigmatic soundscapes of Nicholas Jaar and the exotic tonal exercises of Savage Republic. The album is now available as 12” LP, digital download and on streaming platforms.
Listen to our interview with Arad Evans and Norman Westberg on Bandcamp and follow The Whimbrels at the links below.
Luna Honey from Philadelphia recently issued its latest work of musical alchemy with the November 22, 2024 release of the album Bound. Since its 2017 inception the group has been impossible to tag with a narrow genre designation not for lack of creative coherence but because it draws on disparate roots of influence and experiments with sound sources and organic and electronic production. But fans of the likes of late-80s and beyond Swans, Dead Can Dance and Live Skull will find a similar resonance in Luna Honey’s facility with channeling personal darkness into beautifully transcendent and cathartic pieces of music. The band’s sound is not limited to notions of post-punk, noise rock, tribal industrial, its albums span a range of tones and moods to serve a creative vision and impulse to make music that goes beyond mere entertainment and diversion from everyday life to get at something deeper. Luna Honey singer/guitarist Maura Pond collaborated long distance with former Swans guitarist Norman Westberg on the 2023 Luna Honey album Aftermath which was a meditation on and expression of loss and grief. Bound despite, or perhaps because of, its title feels like a reckoning, a coming to terms with, a struggling against arbitrary and artificial limitations and definitions that circumscribe and limit our lives. Pond’s expressive, ritualistic and at times operatic vocals and the controlled maelstrom of sounds like standard music forms stretched and twisted against standard tonality and structure make for a memorable listening experience.
Listen to our interview with Maura Pond of Luna Honey on Bandcamp and follow the band at the links below.
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.
Swans is currently on tour in support of The Beggar for its first full North American tour since 2019 (band member Kristof Hahn Is the opening act) with a stop at the Gothic Theatre in Englewood, Colorado on Tuesday November 7, 2024 (7pm doors/8pm show). We recently had a chance to interview Gira via email about the music, his interactions with the public and the works of other artists and the new album.
Tom Murphy: In your social media presence you frequently share films, other works of visual art, music and literature that you’ve been taking in that has had an impact on you. Do you find yourself drawn to particular works that you encountered earlier in your life that resonate especially strong with you now and why so?
Michael Gira: I share as little as possible about Swans and myself on our social media accounts. I only post about Swans when it’s pertinent to a new release or a tour etc. I find the medium appalling and disgusting, but I recognize it’s one of the few ways we have of letting people who are interested know when there’s something happening with the music they might like to know about. In the meantime, I post about visual artists or writers or music that I find compelling. More specifically to your question, on a personal level I often find myself returning the art of Francis Bacon, the writing of Jorge Luis Borges, and the music of Nico.
What newer artists and work have you found especially fascinating and even inspirational of late and why does it resonate with you so strongly?
The music of Maria W. Horn is fantastic and I recommend it highly, as well as her work with the singer Sara Parkman (as Funeral Folk).
As a writer of music and literature do you find encountering and absorbing the creative work of others an essential part of your process?
No. It’s enough of a struggle to make something that seems worthwhile without thinking about other people’s work.
Swans albums, especially those since reconvening, seem like quite a production. Do you approach writing and recording them in a method similar to a film director in assembling the talent and collaborators to realize them and then perform them live?
No matter how strongly I vow to keep things simple, each album inevitably burgeons into a cascade of chaos and conflicting forces and then ultimately the creative act is figuring out how to find order in the mess I’ve made for myself.
The Beggar feels like a bit of a different record for Swans. Its tensions, pastoral daydreamy sounds and spirit of unease in certain songs feels like its coming from a different place. Like a musical Ecce Homo. Were there personal insights that have come to you recently in your life that helped to shape the songs you wrote for the album?
The music and the words grow organically somewhere inside my experience and I shape them as dispassionately as I can into a form that seems compelling and irreducible. I don’t think about content much, per se, though I presume it’s there.
You have lived on both coasts of the USA and abroad but are now based out of New Mexico. Has living in The Land of Enchantment had an influence on your creative work?
Not at all, no. I’m never home anyway.
You have said that when you were finally able to work on The Beggar that it was like “he moment in The Wizard of Oz when the film changes from Black and White to Color” and now you’re feeling optimistic. What do you think accounts for what might seem like a shift in outlook for you?
I’ve realized that I feel most alive when I’m doing what I was put on earth to do, which is to make music as best I can. The period of isolation during the pandemic was a prolonged suffocation. I’m sure it was the same for many people.
The artwork for The Beggar includes images of a heart and lungs. What is the significance of that imagery for the record?
These are the internal organs that I have found to be most crucial, personally.
Perhaps you’ve discussed this elsewhere but the sleeves/CD covers for many of the current editions of Swans albums available seem to be printed on paper that looks unbleached. What about that look and texture do you think suits your music and its presentation?
I like for the work to be tactile, a palpable physical object.
Live you seem to perform longer pieces of music like “The Seer” and “Bring The Sun Toussaint L’Overture” (which is a choice historical reference). Might we see “The Beggar Love (Three)” on this tour? What is the appeal for you of performing these longer compositions on tour?
Live, the music grows and grows and grows over the course of a tour. The opening piece of our current set has now morphed into something like an hour and 20 minutes. Don’t ask me why this happens. We follow the music; it leads us. We’re inside it and it controls us, I guess would be the best way of putting it.
The Children… is a musical project from New York City comprising core trio Michael Wiener, Jim Coleman and Phil Puleo. In the most recent live shows, John Nowlin and Rock Savage have handled bass and drums respectively, and Kirsten McCord has provided somber phrasing on cello. The group has operated almost like an art rock jazz ensemble, with various other collaborators live and in recording sessions, including legendary avant-garde vocalist and performance artist Shelley Hirsch, former Swans guitarist Norman Westberg and clarinetist Johnny Gasper. Vocalist Michael Wiener is an actor, writer, curator and educator whose career in music, theater, film and beyond is richly diverse, and worth a deep exploration. Jim Coleman many may know from his time in influential industrial noise rock group Cop Shoot Cop, as well as the like-minded supergroup Human Impact. Phil Puleo is a composer and visual artist who also had an extended tenure in Cop Shoot Cop, and a long-running, still continuing stint in Swans. Quite the pedigree, which wouldn’t necessarily guarantee genuinely compelling and interesting music. But despite a name that resists discovery through a search engine online, once you’ve found the group’s music, you will be rewarded with some of the most densely orchestrated, ambitious and cinematic art rock being made in recent years.
The group’s forthcoming album, A Sudden Craving (due out on or around March 8, 2024 via Erototox Decodings), is like an industrial jazz, nightmarish exploration of generational trauma, and the ambient flow of those energies underlying the fractured and convulsed psyche of modern American culture. The imaginative arrangements and sonic intensity of the music are reminiscent of early 70s English art folk like Robert Wyatt and Soft Machine or John Martyn, but in a sort of jazz fusion manifestation more akin to the likes of Can and Japanese psychedelic rock of that same decade. It’s just difficult to know where it’s coming from, and yet there is an emotional immediacy that draws you into the music. It has a cinematic aspect in its storytelling that seems to tap into collective mythology, the way the more daring filmmakers of the 1970s mixed not just styles and themes with art concepts, but with music, in a fusion of aesthetics. One hears echoes of Eno’s 70s post-Roxy Music rock albums, and how alien yet accessible they were, or 80s Tom Waits, and his mutant blues and jazz pop storytelling that aims at more than then current popular styles of music. More contemporaneously, it should appeal to fans of the current spate of harrowing but transcendent Swans records, or those of Los Angeles-based post-punk art phenoms Sprain. It is a music that is out of time and timeless. The band calls its music “gothic blues ambient,” which is a succinct summary of what you’re in for when you listen to the album, and, one would hope, if you are fortunate enough to catch a manifestation of the songs live.
Listen to our interview with Michael Wiener and Jim Coleman on Bandcamp and follow the members of the band at the links below. Also linked is the Erototox Decodings label and the Bandcamp link to the album.
Ritual Tension (Ivan Nahem center), photo from Bandcamp
Ivan Nahem’s career in music reads like a who’s who of early New York post-punk and No Wave. He was in a band called Carnival Crash with Norman Westberg before the latter joined Swans. Nahem himself performed on the Swans albums Greed and Holy Money while he was a member of industrial post-punk outfit Ritual Tension from 1983 until its dissolution in 1990. The group’s confrontational energy, tribal percussion style and noisy, caustic guitar sound and deranged-sounding vocals was akin to the likes of, naturally, Swans but also Scratch Acid and Flipper. Once Ritual Noise parted company Nahem stopped being as actively involved in making music. But In 2016 Nahem and his brother Andrew started working on remixing their early song “All Wound Up.” A year later Nahem was asked by Gregg Bielski to put spoken word vocals to his tracks and the project came to be called ex->tension. But in the end Ritual Tension reunited in 2017 and continues to this day. 2022 finds Nahem releasing a new solo album Crawling Through Grass with collaborations from Bielski, his brother Andrew, Westberg, Mark C (of Live Skull), Jon Friend (Campfire Flies), Jadwiga Taba (Nac/Hut Report) and Nahem’s wife Helen. The new album is a true fusion of post-punk, musique concrète, ambient, folk, tape collage and what might be described as New Age meditation music all born out of Nahem’s yoga practice and interest in Eastern philosophy and sounds like music made in a remote monastery dedicated to universal tranquility. For Nahem it probably seems natural and intuitive to go in that musical direction but for those more familiar with his 1980s output it’s a fascinating contrast of styles and yet both seem aimed at a catharsis and transcendent experience and attaining a deep interconnectedness with others and within oneself.
Listen to our interview with Ivan Nahem below, give a listen to Crawling Through Grass and connect with Nahem at the links provided.
Who:Earl Sweatshirt & Friends w/Bbymutha and Liv.e When: Thursday, 04.11, 8 p.m. Where: Cervantes’ Masterpiece Ballroom Why: Earl Sweatshirt released his first mixtape, Kitchen Cutlery, under the name Sly Tendencies in 2008 when he was just fourteen years old. Within a year he was contacted by Tyler, the Creator, who was a fan and changed his performance/musical moniker to what it is now. Born Thebe Neruda Kgositsile, the son of an American law professor and a South African poet and political activist, Sweatshirt has created some of the most sonically inventive and thought-provoking hip-hop of the past decade. He got a bump up early on due to his association and work with Odd Future but his solo albums from 2013’s Doris onward revealed an artist in touch with and non-judgmental toward the deeper regions of his psyche and whose imagination and musical instincts have never been narrowed down to how ideas and sounds fit into established channels of expression. The 2015 album I Don’t Like Shit, I Don’t Go Outside lives up to the suggestion of the title and probably won’t be played at many parties. But it’s a record that dives deep with an uncompromising search for something real and something that can cut through the haze of our world overstimulated by blandness broadcasted as exciting. 2018’s Some Rap Songs has brighter atmospheres but the words manage to plumb personal darkness further. The production, though, is reminiscent of Black Moth Super Rainbow in its sampling of sounds and music in a highly refined collage of feelings and imagery that fizz and fade out in perfect orchestration with the complimentary layers of rhythm and poetry.
Who:Life After Earth and Brother Saturn When: Thursday, 04.11, 6:30 p.m. Where: Hooked On Colfax Why: Guess this edition of the Speakeasy Series hosted by Glasss Records could be called An Evening With Drew Miller. Life After Earth is Miller’s darker electro ambient project while Brother Saturn’s gorgeously gauzy, guitar-driven, ambient post-rock is decidedly brighter and more uplifting.
What:Double-Ply Translucent Caterpillar #5 When: Friday, 04.12, 8 p.m. Where: Ophelia’s Electric Soapbox Why: The free jazz improv prog fusion all-star extravaganza is back (sans the late, great, Ikey Owens who was a regular back in the day) but rather than at DIY space Unit E, at Ophelia’s. Includes members of Rubedo, Holophrase, déCollage, Wheelchair Sports Camp, Kendrick Lamar’s band and The Other Black.
Who:Lusine w/Milky.wav and Snubluck When: Friday, 04.12, 8 p.m. Where: Larimer Lounge Why: Jeff McIlwain has produced a consistently interesting, evolving body of work as Lusine for twenty years. Combining samples that contain elements of physical sound (chains, chimes, bells, other objects truck for textural qualities) into his beats and soundscaping, McIlwain’s songs truly transport the listener to a place that is both unknown and yet ineffably tangible.
Who:Memorybell, Sine Mountain, Mosh When: Friday, 04.12, 9 p.m. Where: Tandem Bar Why: With Memorybell, Grant Outerbridge is able to use his mastery of piano beyond his classical training to craft evocative, minimalist compositions that suggest an intimate familiarity with doubt, unease and the overwhelming demands of modern life and how to untangle that with songs that transcend such contexts by subtly coaxing you lateral thinking and feeling.
Saturday | April 13
Jane Siberry, photo courtesy the artist
Who:DBUK and Norman Westberg w/George Cessna When: Saturday, 04.13, 8 p.m. Where: Hi-Dive Why: Denver Broncos UK is basically the alter ego of Slim Cessna’s Auto Club but one that is moodier, less upbeat and post-punk in the sense as, say, Shriekback, Crime and the City Solution and New Model Army, all of whom incorporated elements of folk, a sense of brooding introspection and a broad array of musical ideas to tell stories that many of their contemporaries weren’t. In 2019 DBUK released Songs Nine Through Sixteen, the follow up to its fantastic 2015 album titled, what else, Songs One Through Eight. For this show the band is joined by Slim’s talented son and experimental singer-songwriter George Cessna as well as Norman Westberg, the legendary SWANS guitarist whose solo output while not sprawling is always worth a listen and where he is able to demonstrate his interest in crafting unique atmospheres with guitar, banjo and drum machine. It might be described as ambient but the kind one might have to compare to the likes of Marisa Anderson or Helen Money.
Who:Get Your Ears Swoll 5: Meet the Giant, Gata Negra, The Jinjas When: Saturday, 04.13, 7:30 p.m. Where: People’s Building Why: Everyone should get to experience Meet the Giant’s powerfully evocative dream pop. Maybe “pop” isn’t the word for it as its music borders on hard rock but informed by the aesthetics of electronic music and post-punk. And the raw emotional honesty of Mic Naranjo’s vocals transcends genre. Gata Negra is probably an anomaly now in Denver in that its blues-tinged music would have been considered alternative rock in the early 90s because it’s using that musical vocabulary in offbeat ways that allow for nuanced and poetic expressions of inner space.
Who:Jane Siberry w/Antonio Lopez When: Saturday, 04.13, 7 p.m. Where: Swallow Hill/Quinlan Cafe Why: Jane Siberry is a Toronto-based singer-songwriter whose prolific career should be more well-known in America outside college radio in the 80s and 90s. Her lilting and melodious vocals and use of space and dynamics give her sometimes minimal elements an unconventional versatility and inventiveness. She has worked with Michael Brook, Brian Eno and Peter Gabriel. Her song “It Can’t Rain All the Time” was featured prominently in the film The Crow and other songs have been part of the soundtracks of the Wim Wenders films Until the End of the World and Faraway, So Close. Though typically conceptual in nature, both musically and in terms of her subject matter, Siberry’s songs are accessible and relatable in a way music that is more obviously experimental isn’t.
Shana Cleveland, photo courtesy the artist
Who:Shana Cleveland (La Luz guitarist/singer) w/Down Time and Ryan Wong When: Saturday, 04.13, 8 p.m. Where: Lost Lake Why: Shana Cleveland’s sparkling and lush guitar work in La Luz is one of the reasons that band has never been stuck in some kind of throwback surf guitar thing. That and her introspective vocals that imbue her songs with an enviable mystique in modern music. Her debut solo album, 2019’s Worm Moon, is more ethereal than the music of La Luz but has the same entrancingly dusky quality that band exudes. Worm Moon may be more stripped down than what we’re used to hearing from Cleveland but it feels like we’re hearing her plumbing another layer of emotional depth in an already respectable musical career to date.
Who:Street Tombs (Santa Fe), Zygrot, Blood Loss and Secticide When: Saturday, 04.13, 6 p.m. Where: Chain Reaction Records Why: It’s record store day and Chain Reaction Records, in Lakewood, is worth the trip particularly to get to see some of the best local and regional hardcore bands.
Sunday | April 14
Swervedriver, photo by Steve Gullick
Who:Swervedriver and Failure w/No Win When: Sunday, 04.14, 6 p.m. Where: Oriental Theater Why: Before the word “alternative” was a clumsily and ubiquitously applied term for a broad swath of music that emerged out into mass public consciousness in the early 90s, a generation of bands inspired in part by underground music were already embodying music that seemed like a paradigm shift into something different from what was then most “commercially viable.” Swervedriver rumbled to life in Oxford, England in 1989 when sole original member and vocalist/guitarist Adam Franklin and some friends laid down the roots of the band based on songs Franklin had written after his former band Shake Appeal (a nod to the influence of the Stooges) disbanded. Perhaps the right place at the right time, the nascent Swervedriver knew Mark Gardner of Ride, also from Oxford, who gave their demo to Creation Records head Alan McGee who signed the group. Creation would become all but synonymous with “shoegaze.”
All the bands on Creation, pretty much, were sonically massive and shared similar influences but unlike brilliant, ethereal soundcapers Slowdive and My Bloody Valentine, Swervedriver had more traditionally hard rock underpinning to the songwriting and its sound seemed more gritty and distorted like some of its American counterparts in the USA who were already poised to turn the music industry on its head while cultural commentators and journalists struggled with an overarching term for that phenomenon. Swervedriver didn’t become a household name like Nirvana or Pearl Jam but its records have remained revered and influential. The group split in 1998 but reunited in 2008 and has since released two noteworthy records since in 2015 with I Wasn’t Born to Lose You and 2019’s Future Ruins. Like former labelmates Slowdive and My Bloody Valentine, Swervedriver wasn’t inclined to release a record that wasn’t worthy of its legacy.
Failure, photo by Priscilla C Scott
In Los Angeles, Failure formed a year after Swervedriver in 1990 at the peak of the popularity of glam metal. Drummer Kellii Scott had grown up a fan of Rush and Iron Maiden and had been an avid live music fan in Los Angeles’ diverse musical world including taking in the sorts of shows at Gazzari’s and The Troubadour as one might have seen in Penelope Spheeris’ 1988 documentary The Decline of Western Civilization Part II: The Metal Years. But Scott’s eclectic musical tastes meant he was open to whatever seemed interesting or exciting. He was once the drummer of alternative funk band Liquid Jesus whose cover of “Stand” by Sly & The Family Stone appeared on the soundtrack to the 1990 film Pump Up the Volume and through that band and other projects Scott established himself as a talented drummer in town. He was alerted to auditions for a little known group called Failure which was in the process of recording what would be its 1994 album Magnified. When he heard the demos future bandmates Ken Andrews and Greg Edwards had recorded and was immediately struck by the songwriting and how fresh and different its approach to making the music seemed that he wanted to be part of the band.
Failure’s 1992 debut Comfort as well as early Sunny Day Real Estate songs seem obvious influences on midwest emo and post-hardcore by mixing strong melodies with noisy, urgent songwriting and nuanced emotional colorings in the lyrics and Andrews’ vocal delivery. But Magnified put bass at the center of the the instrumentation allowing for guitar to gyre out out in plasmic bursts as the drums kept the dynamics corralled even as each song threatened to careen off into chaos. The new style gave the music a cinematic quality that the band expanded upon greatly with its 1996 then swan song Fantastic Planet. On the latter, Failure prominently introduced piano and acoustic guitar to give its urgent juggernaut of sound another layer of detail, giving the songs some space, no joke intended for a space rock record, to come down from the emotional heights and extremes present across the thrilling but sometimes harrowing record.
Even with a few critically acclaimed albums under its belt and having played on the 1997 Lollapalooza tour, Failure split in 1997 citing personal differences. Which is perhaps inevitable given the time, the pressure, knowing that you made some of the cooler records of the era but without that propelling one into the mainstream. After the break-up all the members of the band went on to different projects that helped each develop new musical skills and cultivate creative interests that would go on to help make Failure an even better band when it reunited in 2013. Edwards formed the fantastic, experimental post-punk band Autolux. Guitarist Troy Van Leeuwen (who had joined after Fantastic Planet was in the can) went on to play in A Perfect Circle and now plays in Queens of the Stone Age (and hasn’t returned to Failure). Scott played in various bands including Blinker the Star, Veruca Salt and Enemy but also did studio sessions for Linda Perry including performances on tracks by Christina Aguilera and Courtney Love. He also did work on a recent Dr. Dre album. Andrews has becoming an in-demand producer and engineer whose work can be heard on songs and albums by Paramore, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club and Chris Cornell.
After announcing a reunion with the classic lineup of Edwards, Andrews and Scott in late 2013, Failure played its first show in nearly 17 years in February 2014. Later that year Failure would tour the US including dates as part of Riot Fest. Fairly early on in that cycle of rehearsals and performances Failure wrote new material and released the Tree of Stars EP in May 2014 which included live tracks and the new song “Come Crashing.” But it wasn’t long before the band was preparing material for a new full-length, 2015’s sprawling The Heart is a Monster. The album demonstrated how far the band members had come individually as well as its chemistry as a collective. Arranged, produced and sequenced in an almost narrative fashion the albums songs work individually but taken as a whole like a collection of musical vignettes. While critical reception of the new Failure album was mixed it was obvious that there was still something there.
2018’s In the Future Your Body Will be The Furthest Thing From Your Mind was conceived and recorded in phases with three EPs released separately throughout that year and the complete album including the fourth EP released in November. Scott feels it’s the group’s best album and in terms of focus, utilizing the group’s complete skill set, sound palette and bringing to bear a mature, creative sensibility it’s hard to disagree unless one is burdened with the misguided, though often justified, conceit that a band does its best work on its first few albums. The new Failure album sounds like a band that has already been through the stage of discovering what it wants to be and rediscovered what it can be.
What:Kalyn4Mayor Battle of the Bands: Pay2Play Politics: Venus Cruz, Felix Ayodele, Church Fire, R A R E B Y R D $, Tammy Shine, Bolonium, Josh Blue, Chris Fonseca and Christine Buchele When: Sunday, 04.14, 6 p.m. Where: Hi-Dive Why: Kalyn Heffernan is running to be mayor of Denver. As a producer and hip-hop MC with her band Wheelchair Sports Camp, Heffernan has demonstrated her imagination, talent and managerial skills. As an advocate for people with disabilities and queer youth, she has shown her ability to both reach out to and critique vested authority in a productive manner while not compromising her righteous mission. As mayor of Denver Heffernan will bring a much needed helping of good sense, pragmatism (you can’t navigate the world when you’re disabled without this quality), compassion, a knack for productive engagement, a knowledge of issues facing not just struggling populations and gentrification but the city as a whole as well as a love of the city and the people that make Denver a world class city. For this event Heffernan has brought together some friends to raise awareness of her candidacy and to raise funds for her campaign. All the bands are some of the most interesting acts in the Mile High City and the comedians among the town’s most talented.
Monday | April 15
Ex Hex, photo by Michael Lavine
Who:Ex Hex w/Moaning When: Monday, 04.15, 7 p.m. Where: Bluebird Theater Why: Ex Hex was probably not the kind of band anyone would have expected from Mary Timony. The wiry, noise post-punk of Autoclave, Helium’s evolving experiments in tone and concept, Timony’s widely different albums under her own name exposing different aspects of her talent as a musician and songwriter. Inventively angular, often utilizing lo-fi aesthetics to create a quality of mystery, Timony is one of the most interesting musicians of the past three decades. So with the second Ex Hex album, 2019’s It’s Real, Timony, Betsy Wright and Laura Harris have written songs that sound like they could have come out of a weird nexus of early 80s power pop, garage rock, new wave and hard rock. Huge, brash, riffs. Unabashedly bombastic hooks. Plenty of bands have drawn on that earlier era of rock for inspiration but too often it comes with embracing the regressive topics and sensibilities of that time as well. Not the case here. And none of the cheesy production. Just the unabashed joy but paired with a futuristic vision untethered from old school rock and roll cultural baggage. Also on the bill is Los Angeles-based noise rock band Moaning who sound, in the best way, like You’re Living All Over Me period Dinosaur Jr after immersing themselves in the Siltbreeze catalog. Meaning understated, emotionally demolished vocals and urgent, gritty melodies and an energetic live show.
Tuesday | April 16
Buke & Gase, self-portrait
Who:Yob w/Amenra and In the Company of Serpents When: Tuesday, 04.16, 7 p.m. Where: Marquis Theater Why: Amenra is a Belgian metal band that has in its twenty year history helped to redefine what metal can be and sound like and embody the concept of heavy not just sonically but emotionally. Its blend of doom and ambient post-rock is well suited the dark, majestic outbursts threaded together with ethereal introductions, builds and interludes. Its full-length albums are titled Mass followed by a Roman Numeral indicating its sequence in the band’s catalog but also serves as a nod to chapters in the canonical works of a mystical sect. In The Company of Serpents recently overhauled its sound and while still well within the realm of extreme metal and doom, the songwriting bears some comparisons to artists that tap into a dark, forbidding blues. Like maybe Grant Netzorg listens to a bit of Nick Cave or later era Swans. Yob is the influential psych doom band from Eugene, Oregon. Influenced by, of course, Black Sabbath and imaginative art rock bands like King Crimson and Pink Floyd, Yob’s music is incredibly heavy but there’s a fluidity and playfulness to its songwriting and presentation that ultimately transforms that heaviness into something uplifting, like a purge of the detritus that plagues the mind due to the build-up of the unreasonable demands of everyday life in late capitalism America.
Who:Buke & Gase w/Like A Villain and Holophrase When: Tuesday, 04.16, 7 p.m. Where: Larimer Lounge Why: Buke & Gase has always pushed boundaries in its exquisite use of unusual rhythms and otherworldly melodies. Its new album Scholars has the band absorbing mainstream and synth pop and transforming it to suit the group’s own sensibilities as only it can. And this whole bill is filled with vocalists who use their powerful voices as instuments in themselves. Holland Andrews of Like a Villain creates sound environments that recall the soundtracks to Michael Powell films or Diamanda Galas and Björk collaborating on music to accompany a Stanislaw Lem adaptation. Holophrase’s Malgorzata Stacha channels moods and modes seemingly directly from the unconscious and makes it work in the context of experimental downtempo music.
Who:Show Me The Body w/Euth, Law of the Night and TARGETS When: Tuesday, 04.16, 7 p.m. Where: Hi-Dive Why: Show Me the Body from New York is technically a hardcore band but the vocal delivery sounds as much like what you’d expect as something from a weird hip-hop band. Fans of Sleaford Mods and IDLES will probably find a lot to like here though Show Me the Body is a bit darker than the aforementioned. The group recently released its 2019 sophomore album Dog Whistle.
Wednesday | April 17
HEALTH, photo by Faith Crawford
What:HEALTH w/Youth Code and French Kettle Station When: Wednesday, 04.17, 7 p.m. Where: Bluebird Theater Why: With the 2019 release of Vol. 4 :: Slaves of Fear, its first since the departure of guitarist Jupiter Keyes, proves that the remaining trio still absorbs new musical ideas and applies them creatively in its sonic palette while experimenting with its own production and sound processing as it has since its inception. This time the 8-bit crushing, driving-yet-fluid noise rock and ghostly, pitch-shifted/autotuned vocals give the impression of being layers in a dance track. It’s even difficult to tell whether the drums are analog or not and if so processed or submixed to EQ in unconventional ways. Honestly, knowing either way is irrelevant to anyone but purists of any stripe and HEALTH is a band that ditched notions of purity in music as boring and perhaps quaint long ago. The element that separates this new album and its music from 2015’s Death Magic is an element of industrial beat making. Sure the group worked with French industrial synth phenom Perturbator but if that was an influence it’s been wholly absorbed and incorporated.
Considering HEALTH’s new sound it’s only fitting that it’s touring with Youth Code. Both from Los Angeles, Youth Code was one of the major bands that was part of the recent darkwave revival of the past decade. Its confrontational EBM had the sharp edges of a hardcore band but its emotional resonance has been much broader.
Opening the show is Denver’s French Kettle Station. Always an incredibly energetic and dynamic performer, some might think there’s something of an act to it all beyond it being a compelling element to a live show. But Luke Thinnes’ enthusiasm is sincere and his mixture of 80s adult contemporary, Talk Talk and Arthur Russell. Speaking of 80s adult contemporary, FKS has been on a bit of a Phil Collins kick of late and even sometimes covers one of his iconic songs live.
Queen City Sounds and Art 
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