Monday | 03.02 What: Nuovo Testamento and Dark Chisme When: 7 Where: Hi-Dive Why: Nuovo Testamento is a Los Angeles-based band that has made a reputation for itself as crafters of fine synthpop songs with some dark Italodisco flavor. Charismatic singer Chelsey Crowley’s rich vocals are reminiscent of peak 1980s Madonna. Dark Chisme from Seattle is musically adjacent but its sound more in the vein of darkwave with a touch of house in the production.
Final Gasp, photo by Caleb Gowett
Wednesday | 03.04 What:Final Gasp w/Victim of Fire, Ukko’s Hammer and writheinfear When: 7 Where: Bar 404 Why: Boston’s Final Gasp released its new album New Day Symptoms on Relapse on February 27, 2026. The record continues the development of the band’s sound fusing death rock and metallic hardcore. Live the group comes across as something from another era when subgenres didn’t matter so much in navigating the appeal of the music and sounds like the missing link between Christian Death and American Nightmare. Opening are some of Denver’s great hardoce bands in Victim of Fire, Ukko’s Hammer and writheinfear.
American Culture, photo by Tom Murphy
Friday | 03.06 What: American Culture w/Candy Apple, Spin Move and Blackberry Crush When: 7/8 Where: Seventh Circle Music Collective Why: American Culture kicks off its latest tour with this show of its own current fusion of shoegaze indie pop with punk attitude. The group’s most recent album, and arguably its best, Hey Brother, It’s Been a While, bears the hallmarks of the influence/impact of 90s Britpop psychedelia and its 2020’s echo in the modern underground/indie scene and electronic production. Opening are local shoegaze acts Spin Move and Blackberry Crush and atmospheric hardcore group Candy Apple.
Blackwater Holylight, photo by Magalena Wosinska
Friday and Saturday | 03.06 and 03.07 What: Blackwater Holylight w/Som and Dreadnought (03.06) and Cronos Compulsion (03.07) When: 8 Where: Hi-Dive Why: Blackwater Holylight released its new a.lbum Not Here Not Gone in January and its blend of doom and ethereal shoegaze this time out seems to chart the group’s relocation from Portland, Oregon to Los Angeles and embracing uncertainty and establishing new connections, roots and creative and personal evolution. Though heavy in a vein that fans of Slow Crush will appreciate there is a sensitive energy to the music that gives it an intimate feel throughout the album even as many of its songs soar into epic, exhilarating passages. Opening the tour is shoegaze-adjacent post-metal band Som and on the Friday show is Denver psychedelic doom group Dreadnought, on Saturday it’s experimental death metal band Cronos Compulsion.
Polly Urethane in 2022, photo by Tom Murphy
Saturday | 03.07 What: The Liberation Series Presents: Polly Urethane, Melodies Never Lie, Entrancer and Luke Leavitt & Eden Figueroa When: 7/8 Where: Squirm Gallery Why: This is a show series where the proceeds go toward benefiting an organization or person currently being persecuted by corrupt American institutions and imperialism. This night you can see performance artist, songwriter and composer Polly Urethane whose shows are all different from one another but always impressive. Also ambient indie pop shoegaze solo act Melodies Never Lie, techno/ambient artist Entrancer and post-jazz/classical duo Luke Leavitt and Eden Figueroa.
Peaches, photo from Bandcamp
Tuesday | 03.10 What: Peaches w/Cortisa Star When: 7 Where: Summit Music Hall Why: Peaches has been releasing provocative music that challenges norms of a sexually repressive and misogynistic societies and cultures since the turn of the century. Her production has been an influence on various artists over that time as well and sure overtly her songs trade in immediate terms that challenge the bases of norms of subject matter and creative use of language. She hadn’t released a record since 2015’s Rub until this year’s issuing of No Lube So Rude. Peaches’ production may have been updated to reflect the evolving nature of electronic music and methods of composition but her wonderfully vibrant and colorful use of words to challenge vested authority and power structures is still just as vital as ever.
Lala Lala, photo by Ariel Fish
Friday | 03.13 What: Lala Lala w/Lots of Hands When: 7/8 Where: Lost Lake Why: Lala Lala aka Lillie West was one of the leading lights of the Chicago indie rock scene in the late 2010s and with her 2021 album I Want the Door to Open she deconstructed her own sound palette and songwriting style to include more electronic aesthetics. Subsequently the musician/songwriter underwent a kind of personal journey to Taos, New Mexico where she more or less lived off the grid and drew inspiration from the pastoral beauty and unique energy of that town. Then she found her way to Iceland and a residency at LunGa school as well as some time in the capital city of Reykjavik. Out of that leg of her journey West crafted what is essentially an ambient/instrumental album including beautifully arranged field recordings called if i were a real man i would be able to break the neck of a suffering bird (as Lillie West). Lala Lala ultimately landed back in the USA in Los Angeles and on February 27, 2026 she released her new record Heaven 2 via Sub Pop. You can hear traces of West’s creative journey and development informing the record’s evocative soundscapes and existential sentiments. The almost sound design approach to the composition of the songs with West like a figure in her own cinematic creation draws the listener directly into the moments she builds as she catalogs life in the current era of being swarmed with distractions that inspire only overstimulation and yearning for nuggets of the authentic.
Tassles, photo by Tom Murphy
Friday | 03.13 What: Witch Cat Records Anniversary: Tassles, babybaby4ever, Watch Yourself Die, The Tammy Shine and Hotel WiFi When: 7 Where: Squirm Gallery Why: Witch Cat Records is celebrating its five year anniversary with this show including artists both on the label and adjacent to its aesthetic embracing the uniquely creative and finely honed experimental music whether pop or otherwise. Tassles is a band that shows how lo-fi shoegaze can have a maximalist emotional resonance, babybaby4ever is like a rebirth of tonally rich synthpop in an inspired idiosyncratic vein, Watch Yourself Die is a confrontational performance art band, The Tammy Shine is the iconic lead singer of Dressy Bessy doing her own version of spirited punk-edged pop and Hotel WiFi somehow reconciles country, emo and lo-fi indie rock.
Moon Pussy, photo by Tom Murphy
Friday | 03.13 What: Moon Pussy, Cleaner and Team Nonexistent When: 7 Where: The Crypt Why: Moon Pussy makes the kind of noise rock that makes you wonder why other bands don’t adopt a fully eccentric approach to lyrics and performance because they’re so compelling and unique that it’s difficult to really compare them to anyone else except to clumsily slap a genre term on them. Team Nonexistent started out as more of a Riot Grrrl-esque grunge band but now is more a raw punk thing with stirring hooks and pointed lyrics. Cleaner is a punk band with some threads of fuzzy, psychedelic 2010s garage rock.
Jeff Tweedy and band, photo by Rachel Bartz
Friday | 03.13 What:Jeff Tweedy w/Liam Kazar When: 6:30 Where: The Ogden Theatre Why: Jeff Tweedy released a thirty song opus of an album called Twilight Override in September 2025. The record showcases the songwriter’s typically thoughtful and personally insightful lyrics as well as his knack for writing paradoxically spare songs with orchestral arrangements. The gentle energy of the song reflects the guiding principle, as it were, of the release and that is how creativity is the antithesis of the pervasive destruction and darkness that is part of everyday life in America and so much of the world in this moment and if one is honest for years. The record is an attempt to stay above being overcoming by this tidal wave and show at least a little common human solidarity in songs that sound like an attempt to being drowned by personal anxieties and the ambient terribleness around us daily as they intermingle to reinforce each other in sinking every single one of us. Tweedy addresses all of this with warmth and humor and live he’ll likely have more than a handful of stories to enhance the intention of the album.
Bison Bone, photo courtesy the artists
Saturday | 03.14 What:Bison Bone and Chella Negro When: 8 Where: The Skylark Lounge Why: Courtney Whitehead will be moving out of Denver soon and this is a farewell show for his long-running project Bison Bone. Whitehead’s style of Americana is deeply personal with vivid portraits of life that illuminate universal human experiences of working class life and its often undersung and undercelebrated joys that aren’t often the subject of the myths of the wealth-obsessed end of our culture. Joining Bison Bone for the bill is another of Denver’s Americana greats with folk-inflected, alternative country acts Chella Negro whose own lyrics aren’t short on deeply insightful and affectionate depictions of a life we all known and relate to directly but maybe don’t examine with as much clarity as Chella reveals in her lyrics.
Saturday | 03.14 What: Glueman, Rugburn and Fossil Blood When: 8 Where: Hi=Dive Why: Glueman is going on tour and taking its potent brand of classic hardcore-infused garage rock to various corners of the blighted American landscape. It’s most recent album III is a bit like an amalgam of 90s and 2000s Memphis garage rock and Black Flag. Rugburn is a psychedelic fuzzy punk band from Denver, not to be confused with with the funk band from elsewhere. Fossil Blood sounds like they grew up on all Black Sabbath all the time and then embraced what Ronnie James Dio did before joining that band including his time in Rainbow and his early solo career with the epic riffs and the fantastical imagery.
Max Styler, photo by Clay Westcott
Saturday | 03.14 What: Max Styler w/Discip B2B Roddy Lima, Dan Molinari and GS When: 7 Where: Mission Ballroom Why: Max Styler got a boost up in his career when, at 18 years old, he was signed to Steve Aoki’s Dim Mak Records. Since then he’s had his music out via Mad Decent, Ultra Music and other prestigious imprints in the EDM universe. His blend of tech house, bass music, trap and dubstep often seems to land in a place of almost pop accessibility in the composition. Currently he is touring ahead of his headlining spot at Coachella on April 10, 2026 and this is a chance to catch him at a mid-sized venue with the best sound in Denver especially for this style of music.
George Cessna, photo by Tom Murphy
Sunday | 03.15 What:Fire in the Mountains Pop-Up: George Cessna, SHADOWROUGHT, PROGMISTRESS and Corpsewhale When: 7 Where: Hi-Dive Why: Fire in the Mountains is a festival happening in East Glacier, MT from July 23-26 that includes some of the best bands in the broader heavy music world (an exclusive reunion of the great, cosmic, tribal doom band SubRosa is part of the proceedings) but this edition includes representation of artists out of the spectrum of Gothic Americana including the reunited Sixteen Horsepower, Tarantella, Midwife and El Welk. For this show you can see George Cessna of El Welk perform a solo set as well as PROGMISTRESS of Dreadnought who will perform at the event as well.
Advance Base in 2018, photo by Tom Murphy
Sunday | 03.15 What:Advance Base w/Moontype and Pyramyd When: 7 Where: Glob Why: Owen Ashworth has for decades given us tender, heartfelt, emotionally unvarnished and honest pop songs in the lo-fi indie vein and his now long-running project Advance Base occasionally tours including this performance in Denver where he played in 2025. The authenticity and openness of Ashworth’s songs gives them an immediacy and relatability that is rare in a world that puts a premium on the flashy and overproduced.
Wednesday | 03.18 What:Testament w/Overkill and Destruction When: 6 Where: Summit Music Hall Why: Testament is one of the most influential and enduring of the Bay Area thrash bands from that second wave of the music. From early on the group’s storytelling and often socially aware lyrics set it apart from a lot of heavy metal of the day. While it didn’t become as famous as the likes of Metallica and Megadeth it has reliably put out worthwhile records including 2025’s Para Bellum which is the band’s first in five years. But apparently the members of Testament took it upon themselves to push their own songwriting boundaries as a band as well as that of thrash and metal generally with songs that fuse black metal, death metal, thrash and progressive chops. It’s one of their best records in a career not short on fine material. Also on the bill are thrash legends Overkill from New Jersey and German thrash luminaries Destruction.
Thursday | 03.19 What: An Evening with Bill Frisell When: 7 Where: The Federal Theatre Why: Bill Frisell is an influential guitarist mostly known for his contributions to jazz and new music. A graduate of Denver’s East High School, Frisell made a name for himself in the NYC Downtown Scene and has worked with the likes of John Zorn. Across his career his has contributed to albums by Ryuichi Sakamoto and Earth while living in Seattle. In his long career Frisell has collaborated with artists too numerous to cite here as a band leader, a curator and a creative co-conspirator and his work has been nominated for a Grammy. But his creative approach to technical music is what has set him apart from many of his peers and there is an accessibility to even his headiest music that has garnered him a cult following.
Jesus Christ Taxi Driver, photo by Hailey Jane
Thursday | 03.19 What:Jesus Christ Taxi Driver album release w/The Thing and Honey Blazer When: 7 Where: The Bluebird Theater Why: Jesus Christ Taxi Driver has been establishing itself as a kinetic live act from the Front Range of Colorado since founding in 2022. Plenty of acts have done the blues rock with power pop flair and punk energy but JCTD seems to be on a mission with ambitious songwriting to match its outsized stage presence. This year the group releases its new album, a follow up to 2023’s Like My Soul, titled Taxi the Rich. The record will see a vinyl release for this show a month ahead of its release on streaming platforms. If the previous album was an audacious and raucous affair the new record has a more focused clarity without losing the raw energy that has made the band so appealing like they’re channeling a bit of Jon Spencer Blues Explosion and Ty Segall simultaneously.
2charm, photo courtesy the artists
Thursday | 03.19 What:2charm w/Abrii and Vyblossom When: 7 Where: Larimer Lounge Why: Australian electronic duo 2charm has been on its debut headlining tour of the USA including stops at SXSW in support of its new album star scum city. The record is like a fusion of club style EDM, hyperpop and more mellow glitchcore. In many ways the mood of the music is reminiscent of a more dance music manifestation of chillwave that fans of Charli XCX and Sextile may appreciate for the tonal richness and playfulness of the music.
Sunswept, photo by Tom Murphy
Friday | 03.20 What: hlao, SixFM, Sun Swept and Polly Urethane When: 7 Where: Pablo’s East Colfax Why: A stacked lineup of local underground ambient and avant-garde electronic music including a more beat-based approach with hlao, progressive folk psychedelia ambient with Sun Swept and performance art/classical art pop/noise collage with Polly Urethane’s often confrontational performances.
The Playground Ensemble in 2019 performing Eight Songs For a Mad King, photo by Tom Murphy
Saturday | 03.21 What:The Playground Ensemble at 20 When: 7am – 3am Where: Various (see program below) Why: The Playground Ensemble is celebrating its 20 years of existence with a series of events this day as outlined below. For more information click here to read our recent piece on the event and our interview with founder Conrad Kehn.
Spontaneous Team Composition Workshop (all ages and levels welcome) Metropolitan State University of Denver’s Kalamath Building 800 Kalamath St, Denver, CO 80204
Join Denver’s The Playground Ensemble as we celebrate our 20th season with a 20-hour MARATHON of new music.
The day opens at 7:00 AM with a yoga session and gong bath, followed by the Sound Bites breakfast meet-and-greet.
After breakfast, participants will be divided into small groups and given 90 minutes to collaboratively create a new work to be shared at the end of the session. Each group will be facilitated by Playground Ensemble teaching artists who will guide participants through the music creation process using hand gesture composition, graphic notation, structured improvisation, digital audio workstations, and musical story-telling to name a few.
Bring your own instrument and we will also provide a variety of electronic and found sound instruments to help ‘orchestrate’ and inspire creativity. The teaching artists will demonstrate how these approaches are adaptable to a wide range of educational contexts and are accessible to learners of all ability levels and musical backgrounds. The session will conclude with a performance of each group’s composition.
Afternoon at The Stanley Marketplace 2501 N. Dallas St. Aurora, Colorado 80010
Join Denver’s The Playground Ensemble as we partner with Friends of Chamber Music to celebrate our 20th season with an afternoon of music creation and community at The Stanley Marketplace. Each session highlights a different part of what makes Playground Ensemble the innovative organization that it is.
Family/Community Music-Making 1-2:30 PM: We invite families (grown-ups too!) to create their own instruments and compositions. Create your own compositions using colors and shapes and hear them played on the spot! Record your own beats at our electronic music station. Make tongue depressor kazoos, and play our collection of strange found sound instruments.
At 2 PM, Sing With Us! Meet us in the Stanley commons for a community singing of Pauline Oliveros’ Tuning Meditation. Using any vowel sound, sing a tone that you hear in your imagination. Listen for someone else’s tone and tune to its pitch as exactly as possible. Introduce new tones at will and tune to as many different voices as are present. Sing warmly.
String Quartet Concert 2:30 PM: In keeping with the spirit of Stanley Marketplace, the Playground String Quartet provides an eclectic sample of works by Latino, Indigenous, and women composers. Including works by Gabriela Ortiz, Raven Chacon, and Caroline Shaw, this program contains the breadth of both Playground’s style and their mission.
Playground at 20! MCA Denver at the Holiday Theater 2644 W 32nd Ave, Denver, CO 80211
Hosted by MCA Denver at the Holiday Theater, this series of concerts is the heart of MARATHON.
The evening starts with Shane Courville (trumpet, electronics, composer) and Nathan Hall (piano, electronics, composer) presenting solo, duo, and improvised works on themes of freedom: freedom of nations and sovereignty, freedom to express our own identities, and the freedom of creative collaboration.
Up next join Leah and Josh for a 30-minute program of (mostly) contemporary art songs that recall childhood and gently remind us never to stop playing, even amidst the gloom and doom of life today. When you look through the kaleidoscope of your childhood, what do you see? Do the bright spots of hope, nature, and laughter stand out, or does darkness prevail?
After these two duo sets we gather for a celebratory toast to all that has been accomplished in the previous two decades while looking forward to the future.
At 8PM is the main event, The Playground @ 20!
This chamber concert features the first work we ever played, a new commission by Carlos Sanchez-Gutierrez for bass flute and ‘ghost’ string quartet, and a new work by Playground Director Conrad Kehn for the entire ensemble.
The evening will also feature the Colorado premiere of Jerod Impichchaachaaha’ Tate’s Ithánali, about a Chickasaw woman astronaut who is designated to be the first human to set foot on Mars, aware of the irony of her own action – colonizing Mars – and how it compares/contrasts to the historic colonization of her own tribe.
We will also highlight one of our favorite works commissioned with I’m Waiting for Your Crip Cadence, a collaborative composition by Nathan Hall and performance artist MG Bernard that creates an auditory and visual experience of what it is like to exist in a chronically sick bodymind exploring ideas of the disabled experience of non-linear time, and the doctor-patient relationship through a visceral display of how she is bound to the medical industrial complex, dependent on uncomfortable relationships of care, and indentured to pain.
Late Night GLOB
Close out MARATHON at Denver’s DIY citadel, GLOB.
This underground atmosphere set will intersperse avant DJ sets by former Playground board member DJ i.lind before our Music of The Shining, a show based on music from the Stanley Kubrick (and Stephen King) classic.
At midnight Playground composer and board member Silen Wellington will lead us in Haunting, a ritual performance. This is followed by Loretta Notareschi performing How All’s to One Thing Wrought! an improvisational work for a custom-designed virtual instrument that uses the electronic transformation of a single cello low C to express the spiritual idea of an interdependent web of all existence. Luke Wachter will perform …and we are a collection of memory for solo vibraphone and still photography which juxtaposes the impermanence of improvisation with the immutability of static images, examining how identity is constructed in the mind by collecting and reinterpreting memories and shared experiences. Ryan Fiegl winds us down with an electronic music set with reactive video as his musical alter ego Severed Shadow.
The evening closes with an open invite community-improvised drone session carrying us into the early morning.
This program is supported by Denver Arts & Venues through the DENVER CREATES Fund.
Telescreens, photo by Sydney Lemons
Monday | 03.23 What:Quarters w/Porch Light and Telescreens When: 6 Where: The Bluebird Theater Why: Telescreens from New York occupies a musical territory balanced between early 2000s post-punk and power pop live energy and modern electronic production. You can hear roots in the music in 90s alternative rock and maybe a touch of Walkmen and The Strokes but Telescreens aren’t going for the image of either. Its new singles “Nothing” and “Preacher” are pure expressions of breaking out of self-imposed repression and the ambient despair that is the normal reaction to modern life. Headlining the show are fellow New York City alternative rock band Quarters whose own sound on its more recent music incorporates an R&B aesthetic into its rhythm and vocals.
mclusky, photo by RC Stills
Tuesday | 03.24 What:mclusky w/Cherry Spit When: 7 Where: The Marquis Theater Why: mclusky established itself as one of the more unhinged post-hardcore acts out of the UK in the 90s and early 2000s with records that were partly surreal humor and partly oblique social commentary often taking the piss out of more obvious sanctimonious approaches to having something to say. The band has album titles like The Difference Between Me and You is That I’m Not on Fire and Mclusky Do Dallas. The group split originally in 2005 and reunited in 2014 for a benefit show. But then did a 20-year anniversary tour for the underrated Mclusky Do Dallas delayed to 2024. Then the band released an EP in 2023 called Unpopular Parts of a Pig followed by a full length in 2025 titled The World Is Still Here and So Are We with a subsequent 2026 EP called I Sure Am Getting Sick of This Bowling Alley. With the dire absurdity of world events mclusky is a welcome presence in modern music. Opening the show is top tier Denver post-hardcore/noise rock quarter Cherry Spit who are a pure fusion of technical death metal, noise rock, post-hardcore and shoegaze.
Gov’t Mule, photo by Emily Butler
Friday | 03.27 What: Gov’t Mule at Mission Ballroom When: 6:30 Where: Mission Ballroom Why: Warren Haynes paid his dues as a musician throughout the 70s, 80s and 90s with stints in David Allen Coe’s band, The Nighthawks and on and off with The Allman Brothers Band which he joined in 1989. But in 1994 he formed Gov’t Mule in 1994 with Allman Brothers bandmate Allen Woody which became their focus when their more well-known project went on hiatus. With the then new band Haynes was able to channel his honed guitar work and insight into songwriting into original material with a masterful command of live improvisation so that the band has never been limited to expectations and sure there is the blues and country foundation but also the psychedelic flourishes that informed Haynes’ early influences with Hendrix and Clapton. The most recent Gov’t Mule record Peace…Like a River continues the band’s fusion of styles and influences into a sound that blurs the line between genres and seems orchestrated like a jazz record with contributions from the likes of Billy Gibbons, Ivan Neville, Ruthie Foster and Billy Bob Thornton.
Banshee Tree, photo by Christian O’Rourke
Friday | 03.27 What: Banshee Tree album release for Bad Luck w/Riley J Band When: 7:30/8 Where: Fox Theatre Why: Boulder-based Banshee Tree will release its sophomore album Bad Luck on April 17, 2026 but playing a hometown show ahead of the release likely featuring live versions of the songs from the forthcoming record. Banshee Tree’s eclectic mix of jazz inflected chamber pop and psychedelic folk pop is an apt vehicle for the eight songs on the record that have a gentle and contemplative quality like songs crafted late nights and honed in sessions around a campfire meant to be shared with friends. Despite this intimate aspect of the music each of the songs has an almost orchestral and expansive arrangement that flow into one another as though thematically Bad Luck is a concept album capturing a mood and state of mind wherein one examines wht to let go and what to hold onto going into a new chapter of life.
Pearly Drops, photo from Bandcamp
Saturday | 03.28 What:Pearly Drops When: 7 Where: Lost Lake Why: Finish dream pop band Pearly Drops released its latest album The Voices Are Coming Back to great acclaim in 2025. The record showcases the group’s gift for freely blending elements of hyperpop, glitch and what might be described as electronic dance shoegaze. Its gauzy and luminous atmospheres and entrancing, processed vocals sound like music from an as yet unrealized, existential indie science fiction film. It is an album that is its own world and one worth getting lost within and one you’ll get to experience a bit of live.
Friday | 09.01 What: Seraphim Shock w/Faces Under the Mirror and The Siren Project hosted by Sid Pink with DJ Slave 1 When: 7 Where: The Oriental Theater Why: Iconic Goth-industrial band Seraphim Shock returns to the Oriental Theater for a set of its theatrical performance are rock. After many years of being not as overtly creatively active, Charles Edward has been releasing the new set of Seraphim Shock EPs as the Fairmount Chronicles. Chapter One dropped in 2020 and now Chapters Two and Three are set to release in 2023/early 2024. Opening the show are long-running EBM project Faces Under the Mirror which has been going since around the time Seraphim Shock became an active band in the early-to-mid-90s and downtempo, dream pop band The Siren Project who themselves are aiming to release a follow up to its 2016 debut Denouement. The Siren Project will include Andrew Novick of Warlock Pinchers on guest vocals for this set too. Give a listen to our interview with The Siren Project here.
John Gross, photo by Tom Murphy
Saturday | 09.02 What: Human Fluid Rot (FL), Many Blessings, Castration Pact, Whitephosphorous (TX), Sounding and John Gross When: 7 Where: D3 Arts Why: A night of noise running the gamut of harsh noise, power electronics, industrial soundscapes and dark ambient. Check out our interview with John Gross here and with Many Blessings here.
Saturday | 09.02 What: Billy Idol at Budweiser Events Center When: 6:30 Where: Budweiser Events Center Why: Billy Idol is the charismatic singer and songwriter whose career spanned early English punk through the New Wave and hard rock. With his shock of bleach blonde hair and Elvis-esque snarl paired with commanding vocals Idol first caught attention as the frontman of punk group Generation X but garnered widespread mainstream fame releasing music under his own name. Scoring a string of hits throughout the 80s holstered by iconic music videos from the early days of MTV onward Idol’s songs have somehow become closely associated with the decade with an appeal that transcends pure, generational nostalgia. Songs like “White Wedding (Part 1),” “Dancing With Myself,” “Rebel Yell,” “Eyes Without a Face,” and “Flesh For Fantasy” are staples of any 80s and New Wave playlist but whose sound has aged well because of the strength of the songwriting. Idol has continued to release music since his heyday including the 2022 EP The Cage and his live performances remain vital. He performs a headlining show this night in Loveland and the next evening for Jazz Aspen sharing the stage with Foo Fighters and Jade Jackson (linked below).
Monday | 09.04 What:Blushing w/Wave Decay and Calamity When: 7 Where: Hi-Dive Why: Austin-based shoegaze/dream pop band Blushing returns to Denver touring behind the 2023 reissue of its first two EPs Tether/Weak out now in vinyl. Whereas the 2022 album Possessions was a collection of exuberant and spirited rock songs, the earlier material is more introspective and delicate in sound but live the band has a forcefulness that its recorded output might not lead you to expect and you can hear that behind much of the newer arc of songwriting as well. Opening are Denver dream pop band Calamity lead by Kate Hannington (who also plays guitar in psychedelic garage rock group Easy Ease) and Wave Decay, the Krautrock infused shoegaze band also from the Mile High City.
Bruno Major, photo by Neil Krug
Monday | 09.04 What:Bruno Major w/Lindsey Lomis When: 7 Where: Ogden Theatre Why: Bruno Major is from England and has a degree in jazz and started his formal music career in the 2010s though a session guitarist in his mid-teens. But listen to any of his records especially 2023’s Columbo and he sounds like he came out of somehow both the same worlds that produced the great soft rock of Laurel Canyon in the 70s and Nick Drake and Fairport Convention in the UK from the same time period. Not that you’d want to make a direct correlation but there is a sophistication and depth to his songwriting and a gentleness of spirit to his particular vocal style that is as soulful as it is insightful. Many modern artists have mined that territory in the past decade and more but Major seems to have truly tapped into the creative zeitgeist of an earlier era and translated it into the sensibilities and sentiments of our current place in history with an awareness of the personal challenges people face in reaction to the collective challenges crashing into all of our lives. You get the feeling Major understands and offers some moments of solace and solidarity in his music.
Glassing, photo from Bandcamp
Wednesday | 09.06 What: Glassing w/Deep Cross, Psychic Killers and Palehorse/Palerider When: 7 Where: Hi-Dive Why: Glassing is a black metal band from Austin, Texas whose 2021 album Twin Dream spanned the splintered emotional catharsis of the genre and its more distorted ghostly melodicism. Fans of later Daughters and maybe a touch of The Locust will appreciate Glassing’s seething, brooding soundscapes. Deep Cross also from Austin is musically somewhere betwixt ambient drone and industrial noise whose 2023 album Royal Water is as meditative as it is noisy and feral. Psychic Killers have been around awhile in the deep underground with its urgent lo-fi industrial noise. Palehorse/Palerider is Denver’s desert doom and ambient psychedelic post-rock whose own aesthetic dips into what you might expect but also an organic tribal sound.
Grandbrothers, photo by Toby Coulson
Thursday | 09.07 What:Grandbrothers When: 6 Where: Ophelia’s Electric Soapbox Why: Grandbrothers are a duo from from Düsseldorf, Germany comprised of pianist Erol Sarp and engineer/software designer Lukas Vogel who are making their debut North American live date at Ophelia’s Electric Soapbox in Denver, Colorado. The project recorded its most recent album Late Reflections inside the Cologne Cathedral marking its own first time place as a site for recording an album. Sarp and Vogel wrote the music for the venue and in crafting the music doing so as though recording in the cathedral and with the actual building and setting as the studio. The electronic rhythms and elegantly arranged melodies alongside the elabroate, staccato piano work weave in and out of each song and mutually enhance a mood of something suggestive of the title and taking late night moments of clarity to express what needs to be expressed with creative intention. There are only five dates on the tour and Denver is fortunate to get one of the dates of what promises to be a special musical experience of an evening of avant-garde electronic music, prepared piano and modern classical fusion.
Unwed Sailor, photo by Charles Elmore
Saturday | 09.09 What: Unwed Sailor w/TREMOURS and Los Toms When: 8 Where: The Skylark Lounge Why: Unwed Sailor is a post-rock band based out of Seattle that started in 1998 whose body of work is largely without vocals but whose instrumental rock has a style of composition that is accessible in the way of a pop or rock song but communicating with pure mood and rhythm. The band’s leader and bassist Johnathan Ford was originally a member of Roadside Monument and Pedro the Lion before embarking on a path of songwriting that has meant experiments in not just instrumentation and form and lineup but also presentation from what you might expect from a post-rock band to live film scoring and a companion piece to an illustrated children’s book called The Marionette and the Music Box (2003). The latest Unwed Sailor album Mute the Charm (2023) seems to be a series of musical vignettes expressing the essence of a time and place with its ambient mood and textures and pace captured with a poetic elegance of composition.
Animal Bite, photo by Tom Murphy
Saturday | 09.09 What: Animal Bite w/Gutter Hair, Indecisive and Propane When: 7 Where: Seventh Circle Music Collective Why: Animal Bite is a noise rock band from Casper, Wyoming whose sound is somewhere betwixt an Amphetamine Reptile artist, an industrial rock band and a psychedelic hardcore band. But really with its own aesthetic and a ferocious live show. Gutter Hair is the kind of noise and noise rock-adjacent band that should have been on Siltbreeze. May be from Casper as well but also possibly Laramie. Either way its 2020 sprawling collection of pieces called Dead Horse Sled is the kind of abrasive, self-indulgent, lo-fi affair that fans of the aforementioned label or of acts on Holy Mountain might appreciate. Indecisive is the kind of punk band that seems to have drawn some inspiration from straightedge hardcore but also touch of Dinosaur Jr and Black Sabbath.
Terravault, photo by Tom Murphy
Saturday | 09.09 What: Golden Donna w/CXCXCX, Terravault and FOANS When: 8 Where: Glob Why: Joel Shanahan has released music under various monikers over the years but as Golden Donna (his 2020 album Hush is a modern underground techno classic) his experimental electronic dance music could be described as the kind of rave soundtrack to the American DIY underground with vibes adjacent to IDM and early 90s techno and minimal synth. FOANS is in a similar realm of music with his own underground dance music roots as one of the artists that was a regular on the Deep Club circuit of nearly a decade ago. CXCXCX is generally a noise artist but aspects of his own sound are beat driven and he’ll probably cater his set more in that direction for this show. Terravault utilizes analog synths and fuses it with sequenced beats and punk rock spirit. Dark, spooky techno for the whole night.
Sweeping Promises, photo by Shawn Brackbill
Saturday | 09.09 What:Sweeping Promises w/The Tammy Shine and Cheap Perfume When: 8 Where: Lost Lake Why: A time not so long ago Lawrence, Kansas was known for great, underground indie rock if you were plugged into the DIY circuit. But like all college towns phases of who is around and active changes as the demographics change. So to hear about Sweeping Promises releasing their sophomore album Good Living Is Coming For You on Feelt It and SubPop came as a bit of a surprise. The duo of Lira Mondal and Caufield Schnug got their start in bands together n the late 2000s while at Hendrix College in Conway, Arkansas and then being involved in the Boston underground scene forming, according to Grant Sharples in a July 2023 profile on the band in Pitchfork, Sweeping Promises in 2019 after trying out different styles of music as Silkies, Dee-Parts and Mini-Dresses. In 2021 the group found a place in Lawrence near University of Kansas where Schnug has set up a studio and already recorded numerous bands. The new record is reminiscent of the kind of thing you might have heard on Kill Rock Stars or K Records in the 90s or out of Athens, GA in the 80s and 90s with punk rock spirit, pop accessibility and lo-fi charm. That Tammy Shine of Dressy Bessy fame is opening the show with her own effusive performance and Cheap Perfume with its righteous, feminist punk energy makes this a perfect lineup for a Saturday night.
Sarah Shook & the Disarmers, photo by Harvey Robinon
Sunday | 09.10 What:Sarah Shook & The Disamers w/Porlolo and Lines of Drift When: 7 Where: Hi-Dive Why: Outlaw country, country-punk, whatever designation fits Sarah Shook and the Disarmers, Sarah Shook is one of the most distinctive voices in modern country music on the still fairly underground level where a great deal of the best of that and other musical styles are found. Shook’s voice has enough of a rough edge to be interesting but their melodic resonance serves well stories of every day life written in a way that seems so specific yet relatable in spirit and substance. Speaking of, Pololo is more an indie rock band but Erin Roberts has a gift for turning a sense of humor into music with a sharply observational and existential bent. This is a bit of a make-up show for an event that had to be canceled in May 2023.
Becca Mancari, photo by Shervin Lainez
Sunday | 09.10 What: Joy Oladokun w/Becca Mancari When: 7 Where: Summit Music Hall Why: Acclaimed songwriter Joy Oladokun released her latest album Proof of Life this past April. The record solidified her reputation as an artist who is capable of unvarnished honesty and vulnerability with expression of her struggles and using that as a vehicle for emotional insight in crafting songs that are hopeful and fortifying without waxing into the performative. It is a pure fusion of folk and R&B in a fashion that hits with an immediacy and sophistication that lends its spirit of uplift an authenticity rare in mainstream pop music. Opening the show is Becca Mancari whose own 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 being cramped by circumstance, by culture, by one’s surroundings. Because of that the album’s music feels like something that settles in your brain with a gentle touch that soothes out ambient anxieties.
Generationals, photo courtesy the artists
Monday | 09.11 What:Generationals w/Ramesh When: 7 Where: The Bluebird Theater Why: Generationals formed in New Orleans in 2008 in the wake of the dissolution of their critically-acclaimed band The Eames Era. Ted Joyner and Grant Widmer still wanted to pursue music while the other three members of the earlier band didn’t. It was a pivotal year for America in terms of the collapse of the real estate market and the election of the nation’s first black president with all its attendant hope for change in the national culture. But in terms of underground music Generationals were part of a wave of the new indie pop when it still had a creative leg in the older incarnation of the 90s. But Generationals incorporated elements of soul and R&B as well as vintage, pre-1970s pop music. It was an aesthetic the group has been able to spin into a consistently fruitful body of work. But in 2021 the duo more or less scrapped what would have been its seventh album after some studio sessions mainly because they didn’t want to release something that they didn’t feel was up to snuff. So they went back to file sharing as well as recording and experimenting in person and taking advantage of various would-be unfortunate situations that you can read about in the bio for the album on the Bandcamp page for the same. What came about in the end is Heatherhead, arguably the group’s most fully-realized album to date with the usual sharply observed pop songs with an experimental edge and more than its fair share of amalgamating its early influences with a modern take on dance funk and electronic dance music highlights.
Tuesday | 09.12 What: Dead Boys w/Fast Eddy and Flight Kamikaze https://theorientaltheater.com/event/415754/Dead-Boys When: 7 Where: The Oriental Theater Why: Dead Boys are the influential and notorious punk band from Cleveland whose legacy of rowdy shows and brilliantly nihilistic and lurid songs proved incredibly influential on American and UK punk beyond its initial 1975-1980 run. Its 1977 debut album Young, Loud and Snotty is a classic of punk with its song “Sonic Reducer” as one of the essential tracks of the genre. These days only lead guitarist Cheetah Chrome from the original lineup is in the band anymore but it is his guitar work that has endured as well as the late Stiv Bators’ sneering, acidic vocals.
Public Memory, photo from Bandcamp
Friday | 09.15 What:Plack Blague w/Public Memory, Voight and Kill You Club DJs When: 8 Where: Hi-Dive Why: Plack Blague is the now legendary industrial dance performance artist from Lincoln, Nebraska who has established itself as one of the most dynamic and visually striking artists in that realm of music now. Sure, Plack has recorded releases but the live show with Raws Schlesinger dancing and gyrating in his spiky, leather daddy outfit to heavy, relentless beats is where the real joy in a Plack Blague experience is to be found. Denver is fortunate to have had Plack Blague come through several times. But not so much with Public Memory. The latter is the project of Robert Toher who was once a member of experimental electronic pop group Eraas who once opened for TR/ST in 2013 at Larimer Lounge but when that project fizzled out he retooled his gift for soundscaping and songcraft and emerged as Public Memory the debut album for which is a modern classic of darkwave and ambient industrial pop in 2016’s Wuthering Drum. The most recent Public Memory record Elegiac Beat dropped on September 1, 2023 with a more downtempo sound but with the gritty lo-fi lost VHS science fiction cinema aesthetic still in place. Opening the show is Voight from Denver whose seamless fusion of shoegazing post-punk and industrial techno is imbued with an emotional intensity that releases in cathartic bursts throughout the set. That the lyrics often scorch the horrible bastards of society is a bonus.
Harmony Rose of The Milk Blossoms in 2021, photo by Tom Murphy
Friday | 09.15 What: The Milk Blossoms, Isadora Eden and Bell Mine When: 7 doors, 8 show Where: The Black Buzzard Why: The Milk Blossoms is the kind of indie pop band whose sound really isn’t in line with the more conventionally commercial form of that peddled to people through the “indie” branding in radio stations, playlists and festivals. There is something idiosyncratic and homespun and thus more original and endearing than most of the music that has been marketed to us. Fronted by Harmony Rose the delicate melodies and vulnerable and emotionally-charged music has an uncommon power because it feels raw and uncompromised. Isadora Eden’s brooding yet luminous new album forget what makes it glow swims in the same stylistic waters as Fiona Apple’s sultry pop, a noisy shoegaze band and PJ Harvey’s art rock. It’s a cathartic listen and the live band has amble amounts of that mysterious, dark energy as well. Bell Mine is a solo project whose gossamer atmospherics and textural sonic details lend it a mythological flavor that wouldn’t be out of place on a Panos Cosmatos soundtrack or touring with Laurel Halo.
King Krule in 2018, photo by Tom Murphy
Friday | 09.15 What: King Krule w/LUCY (Cooper B. Handy) When: 8 Where: The Ogden Theatre Why: Archy Marshall as King Krule is one of the few artists of recent years to have truly fused disparate styles and genres together and made something genuinely compelling, cool, inventive and creatively satisfying. You hear elements of hip-hop, post-punk, shoegaze, psychelic rock, indie pop and jazz. Listen to any of his records, his latest Space Heavy for instance, and you hear a disregard for conventional structure unless it serves the mood and message of the song. And every song feels like it was written for that specific emotional resonance with the instrumentation and production geared to enhance the effect. It’s tempting to compare King Krule to Unknown Mortal Orchestra in this way and like the latter, King Krule is a powerful live band that has this trippy and hypnotic music but delivered with a punk attitude.
Alice Cooper, photo by Jenny Rishe
Saturday | 09.16 What:Rob Zombie w/Alice Cooper, Ministry and Filter When: 4:30 Where: Fiddler’s Green Why: Halloween is on the horizon and with the advent of fall this is the perfect concert to usher in spooky season. Rob Zombie is of course the songwriter and musician who was the frontman of gonzo, psychedelic heavy metal band White Zombie from 1985-1998 after which time he embarked on a music career under his own name with a similar aesthetic of grindhouse meets schlocky horror and bombastic live shows. But chances are Zombie took more than a few cues from Alice Cooper, a band most closely associated with the lead singer/songwriter of the same name. Cooper combined vaudeville showmanship with campy horror cinema, hard rock and exploration of themes of struggle with personal demons and the inner contours of identity and its outer expression in conflict with restrictive social norms. Multiple songs are staples of classic rock and metal including “I’m Eighteen,” “School’s Out,” “No More Mr. Nice Guy,” “Welcome to My Nightmare” and “Under My Wheels.” Cooper indisputably established himself as the “Godfather of Shock Rock” for his 1970s concerts and their over the top stage shows with costumes, simulated death and elaborate props. These days Cooper is still a commanding presence who delivers a dramatic and theatrical performance and worth catching for that alone. Ministry too is likely an obvious touchstone for Zombie when that band transitioned from haunting and intense, pioneering EBM band to dark and highly political industrial rock from the 80s through the 90s. Apparently the group has been performing some of its older material, something largely unknown after the late 80s so you may catch a mix of its broad spectrum of musical styles. Filter is an industrial rock band that formed after Richard Patrick left Nine Inch Nails as a touring guitarist in 1993. In 1995 the group had its breakthrough single with “Hey Man Nice Shot” from its debut album Short Bus. Founding member Brian Liesegang left after the release of that record but has now reunited with Patrick for the writing and recording of the 2023 Filter album The Algorithm bringing his imaginative production and performances back into the mix.
French Police, photo from Bandcamp
Sunday | 09.17 What:French Police w/Closed Tear and Lesser Care When: 7 Where: Hi-Dive Why: Chicago’s French Police are prominent practitioners of that more lo-fi end of the modern post-punk spectrum that embraced that thin guitar sound and minimal electronic percussion. But its thoughtful, introspective lyrics and solid, melodic bass lines and fine use of space make up for what can come across as cookie cutter, Euro-post-punk style. It’s most recent album is 2023’s appropriately titled BLEU. Closed Tear is like the Los Angeles equivalent of the French Police but with its guitar style more in the realm of shoegaze and its bass lines generally more robust. Lesser Care, though, from El Paso, Texas is consistently a powerful live band with real sonic and emotional heft and intensity behind its performances. Like a band that was inspired by picking up some Chameleons records, early 90s shoegaze and maybe came up in the local punk and/or metal scene before deciding on charting a different musical path and one that has made it one of the most interesting rock bands out of the underground now.
Atmosphere, photo by Dan Monick
Sunday | 09.17 What:Atmosphere w/Danny Brown, Souls of Mischief, The Grouch & Eligh, DJ Fresh, DJ Mr. Dibbs and Breakbeat Lou When: 5 Where: Red Rocks Why: Atmosphere returns to Colorado to headline Red Rocks as one of the stars of hip-hop that emerged out of the 90s underground to attain mainstream success. Comprised of Slug and Ant, Atmosphere’s songs employ a cinematic musicality in which it embeds raw and vulnerable lyrics about life and the challenges and joys it can throw our way. Its prolific body of work and commanding live shows seem like creative demonstrations of exploring the human condition and embracing the flaws and virtues of existence with a solidarity of spirit and basic compassion that can be disarming and hit with an unexpected poignancy. This stacked lineup of modern hip-hop luminaries includes Souls of Mischief are legends of West Coast alternative hip-hop and inside and outside its membership in Hieroglyphics have demonstrated a deftness of lyricism embedded into jazz beats and deeply atmospheric production across its long career. Danny Brown might be too weird to fully fit into a mainstream hip-hop context but this isn’t his first time at Red Rocks either. His music is very much in the tradition of hip-hop but his unique and eccentric rapping style can sound both abrasive and playful as he modifies his delivery to suit the mood of the song and its subject matter. And his beats freely dip into jazz samples, punk, psychedelic rock and electronic music and the avant-garde to craft his own fascinating set of stories to the point that his albums seem like commentary not just on life and media but casting it as science fiction stories from a parallel society in either Utopian and/or dystopian fashion. His forthcoming album Quaranta has been in limbo for reasons you can read about on the internet but hopefully you get to see some of that live at this show but even if not, Danny Brown is one of the most entertaining rappers of his generation.
Arctic Monkeys, photo by Zackery Michael
Monday | 09.18 What:Arctic Monkeys w/Fontaines D.C. When: 6:30 Where: Red Rocks Why: Legendary poet John Cooper Clarke said in a 2014 interview for Esquire that Arctic Monkeys were the closest we had to the Beatles at that time. He was referring to how big a splash the post-punk band from Sheffield had made even before its epochal 2013 album AM was released and broke the group to the USA with the single “Do I Wanna Know?” fairly ubiquitous on modern rock and indie rock-adjacent playlists and radio stations. The Monkeys had borrowed Clarke’s words for the song “I Wanna Be Yours” from his poem of the same name and drawing on that resonance with UK popular music and culture going back decades. The band’s body of work has shown that it has been willing to evolve its sound in interesting new directions during the course of its career including the futuristic sounds of its follow-up album Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino and the darker, moodier 2022 album The Car behind which its touring now. Fortunately someone somewhere in the Arctic Monkeys camp brought on board for this tour the Irish post-punk band Fontaines D.C. whose own sound brings together the brooding, post-punk grittiness with a scrappy political folk spirit that should appeal to fans of the band’s peers like IDLEs and Shame.
Strange Ranger, photo from Bandcamp
Tuesday | 09.19 What:Strange Ranger w/Roseville and Fragrant Blossom When: 7 Where: Hi-Dive Why: With its 2023 album Pure Music, Strange Ranger has shifted significantly from its already respectable, earlier indie rock phase. Replacing the guitar pop is a more electronic sound palate that’s moodier and more steeped in a creative use of space that has more in common with 90s electronic pop and downtempo than 2010s rock. It sounds a bit like something Matthew Vaughn would put in his next action noir film. Fragrant Blossom is something like a psychedelic, non-Western folk and jazz band from Denver.
Nuovo Testamento, photo courtesy the artists
Wednesday | 09.20 What: Nuovo Testamento w/Church Fire and Desasociado and Niq V https://theorientaltheater.com/event/421388/Nuovo-Testamento When: 7 Where: The Oriental Theater Why: Nuovo Testamento is a synth pop band from Los Angeles whose vintage electronic dance sound hearkens back to an 80s aesthetic like a fusion of italo disco, Madonna, Bananarama and New Order with a commanding live show that feels like a club music performance from that era as well. The group released its new album Love Lines in March 2023. Church Fire from Denver has a similarly energetic live show but its musical roots are more in an industrial and synth pop vein of a more modern era and its politically charged lyrics very of the moment. Desasociado is a more minimal synth and coldwave style band from Denver and DJ-ing the night is Niq V who is perhaps best known for his manning the turntables and other music playing devices for Outrun and Dark Tuesdays.
The Walkmen, photo courtesy the artists
Thursday | 09.21 What: The Walkmen w/Yeah Baby When: 7 Where: The Ogden Theatre Why: The Walkmen were one of the big names of the New York City post-punk revival at the turn of the century forming out of the ashes of influential NYC cult band Jonathan Fire*Eater and The Recoys from Boston. The group’s 2004 album Bows + Arrows propelled The Walkmen into indie stardom and critical acclaim with singles like “The Rat” (recently performed on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wEg_8mpp_Kk) and “Little House of Savages.” The band’s scrappy spirit and nimbus of psychedelic melody around driving, noisy garage rock stuck a chord with audiences widely. But in 2013 The Walkmen went on indefinite hiatus until 2022 when it announced a string of shows in April 2023 and later in spring of this year a more full reunion tour.
Chromeo, photo by Grady Brannan
Friday | 09.22 What:Chromeo: Funk Yourself Tour w/Coco and Breezy When: 6pm doors/8pm show Where: Mishawaka Amphitheatre Why: Chromeo were early purveyors of electro-funk in the indie world in the 2000s after Dave 1 and P-Thugg took the skills they learned producing hip-hop tracks to make an adjacent kind of electronic dance music in the vein of funky synth pop but more rooted in the sounds of late 70s and early 80s disco and the compositional sensibilities of Bernie Worrell. But always in the way Chromeo presented itself and in its style of music embracing the irony of the bombast and making it both a celebration of the hedonistic aesthetic and a healthy sense of self-awareness that meant that they didn’t take themselves so seriously even as they made genuinely well-crafted dance party music. The group used to tour annually and bring some of the best more underground electronic rock and pop acts of the day regularly at large venues shining a light on those lesser known but the pandemic put the kabosh on that for a bit and now Chromeo is headling for the first time in four years and bringing the funk to the Mishawaka where it is very much needed and likely most welcome.
Infected Mushroom, photo courtesy the artists
Saturday | 09.23 What:Danceportation: Monstercat Takeover featuring Infected Mushroom, Koven, Godlands, ShockOne, Whales and more When: 9:30 Where: Meow Wolf Convergence Station Why: Canadian electronic music label Monstercat lands at Denver’s Meow Wolf for a night of psychedelic visuals and psy trance, bass music, glitchy EDM, progressive dubstep and dark, ambient IDM. Monstercat was started by two university students in 2011 with a passion for the then ascendant broad world of EDM and its adjacent styles more in the underground. The label focused on helping artists reach their audience with having a brand known as a portal of discovery and because of that unconventional approach to doing a label Monstercat quickly became a commercially successful concern that has partnered with various festivals and sought various avenues or promotion including the now defunct Pluto TV channel. The artists for this event which begins at 10:30 pm and runs through 2 am have all had releases on Monstercat demonstrating a sampling of its range and musical identity.
Chance Peña, photo by Shervin Lainez
Saturday | 09.23 What:David Kushner w/Chance Peña When: 7 Where: Bluebird Theater Why: David Kushner is a young singer-songwriter whose career got a massive boost from TikTok when his single “Miserable Man” went viral in 2022 and his music started charting outside of his home country of the United States. His introspective folk style and a voice capable of conveying emotional gravitas beyond his 23 years of existence has resonated with fans and even a casual listen to his music hits you with the sophistication of its songcraft and command of atmospheric mood. For the April 2023 release of his single “Daylight” and its enigmatic/borderline science fiction-themed video Kushner created the TikTok trend “You look happier, what happened.” Also on this tour is another rising folk pop artist Chance Peña who at 22 is a bit of a music industry veteran having worked in making music for film and TV as well as contributing to the work of other artists as with John Legend’s “Conversations in the Dark” from his 2020 album Bigger Love. Peña’s latest EP Lovers to Strangers (2023) with lead single “In My Room” dropped in the summer but has major fall energy with its melancholic yet emotionally effusive and vulnerable melodies and tales of life as a thoughtful young person in this very challenging and conflicted period in our culture.
Husbands, photo by Kelsey Davis
Tuesday | 09.26 What:Wilderado w/Husbands When: 7 Where: Boulder Theater Why: Indie folk rock group Wilderado originally from Tulsa, Oklahoma is touring ahead of a forthcoming sophomore album teased with the August release of its pastoral pop single “In Between.” Opening the show is Oklahoma City’s Husbands whose own new and appropriately titled fourth album Cuatro is due out October 13, 2023 through Thirty Tigers. The early singles including “Can’t Do Anything” have a touch of early 2010s chillwave atmospherics and post-Animal Collective, psychedelic indie pop but a fresh take on any possible influences. The new album has an undeniable post-summer reflective quality even when its melodies hit upsweeping, exuberant passages.
Tassel, photo from Bandcamp
Tuesday | 09.26 What: Tassel w/Street Fever, Teller, Desasociado and Kill You Club DJs & DJ Precious Blood When: 7 Where: Hi-Dive Why: Depending on where you check in with Tassel from Phoenix you’ll hear a different side of the songwriting and hear beautifully stark and noisy post-punk, industrial EBM, minimal dark techno and deathrock. Also on the bill is the enigmatic and epic transformation of what electronic dance music and darkwave and minimal techno and electronic dance music are supposed to sound like with a performance that is both confrontational and mysterious. Desasociado sits in the realm of post-punk and electronic coldwave with some nods to the Russian variety of both.
Death Cab For Cutie, photo by Jimmy Fontaine
Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday | 09.26, 09.27 and 09.28 What: The Postal Service & Death Cab for Cutie w/Warpaint When: 6:30 Where: Mission Ballroom Why: The Postal Service was something of a supergroup that formed after Ben Gibbard of Death Cab for Cutie did guest vocals on the 2001 debut Dntel album Life Is Full of Possibilities. That record went on to be a classic of electronica and glitch and at the time Death Cab was still very much an indie band. But the song, “(This Is) The Dream of Evan and Chan,” performed well and embraced by other artists for remixes and Gibbard and Jimmy Tamborello (Dntel) decided to continue with their collaborative efforts. In the process of writing and recording songs Jenny Lewis, then of Rilo Kiley, came on board to contribute vocals before becoming a full time member. The trio’s debut Give Up (2003) is a modern classic of indie rock that helped to define that sound with the “Such Great Heights” single as one of the defining songs of that period in American popular music. Then in 2005 the group went on hiatus with a 2013 reunion tour celebrating the tenth anniversary of its debut and still sole album. Fast forward another ten years and The Postal Service is on tour perhaps celebrating 20 years of its only album but this time touring with Gibbard’s also rightfully respected band Death Cab For Cutie who have somehow managed to have a long career of emotionally rich and inventive pop music that has evolved from its more tender early releases that didn’t make it as obvious how much of a sonic powerhouse the group was even then to its more experimental later albums with fully integrated electronic elements that have broadened the group’s palette of sounds and widened its range of emotional expression. For these shows you also get to see one of the more pioneering modern shoegaze/psychedelic rock bands in Warpaint who are no stranges to bursting expectations with inventive use of electronics and left field production both live and on recordings.
Hannah Jadagu, photo by Sterling Smith
Wednesday | 09.27 What: Hannah Jadagu w/Miloe and Isadora Eden When: 7 Where: Larimer Lounge Why: Hannah Jadagu’s 2021 debut EP for Sub Pop What Is Going On? was one of the most promising releases by a new artist in recent years with her fusion of bedroom pop and robust and sonically inventive guitar rock. But Aperture, her 2023 debut full length album also on Sub Pop, made good on that promise of lush sounds, sophisticated arrangements and lyrics that get to the core of what’s going on in the world but casts them in a way that has immediacy and intimacy that’s accessible. Live, Jadagu is a commanding yet inviting and soulful performer whose command of an orchestral array of sounds is impressive.
Everclear, photo by Ashley Osborn
Thursday | 09.28 What: Everclear w/The Ataris and The Pink Spiders When: 6 Where: Gothic Theatre Why: In the alternative rock era probably no one was assuming their careers would span three decades but in 2022 Everclear celebrated its 30 years of existence with a national tour and a reissue of its 1993 debut album World of Noise. On September 8, 2023 the group released the 17-track Live at The Whiskey A Go Go comprised of songs recorded on the 2022 tour as well as two bonus studio recordings “Year of the Tiger” and “Sing Away.” Everclear burst out of the aftermath of the implosion of grunge and the first wave of alternative rock with heartfelt and vulnerable songs with grit and a clear sense of joy for life even when the songs tackled challenging subject matter. Fortunately for lead singer and primary songwriter Art Alexakis and his bandmates the music has aged well because it never fully fit in with alternative rock trends being too punk for grunge, too hard rock for punk and not short on memorable hooks and a live show that even now comes off raw and authentic.
Macula Dog, photo from Bandcamp
Friday | 09.29 What: Macula Dog w/Beau Mahadev, Docile Rottweiler, Pete Swanson (DJ) and Luke Petet When: 9 Where: Glob Why: Macula Dog is a New York City duo that maybe set out to write rock songs of a more left field variety but even its most accessible releases are filled with glitchy electronic mutant pop from a near future of failed states strewn with technological debris from which a diasporic human species will hobble together an existence before the next bubbling up of a coherent civilization. Or maybe it sounds like a glitchcore version of Anthony Braxton’s late 60s avant-garde albums. But Macula Dog also presents the music with self-made puppets and outfits to enhance the sense of something from a parallel universe visiting our own. Pete Swanson of Yellow Swans fame will be doing a DJ set.
Son Volt, photo by Auset Sarno
Friday | 09.29 What:28 Years of Son Volt: Songs of Trace and Doug Sahm w/Peter Bruntnell When: 8 Where: Gothic Theatre Why: Son Volt emerged out of the ashes of foundational alt-country band Uncle Tupelo in 1994 when Jay Farrar left to forge a different path while his former bandmates morphed the remains of their previous band into Wilco. Son Volt kept more closely to the roots rock and alt-country aesthetic over the course of a career of emotionally vibrant songwriting that has helped launch a musical movement beyond its modest 1980s beginnings. For this tour the group is celebrating its 1995 debut album Trace and the songwriting of Tejano luminary Doug Sahm.
John Gross, photo by Tom Murphy
Friday | 09.29 What: Granular Breath (IA), Dead Hawk (Springs), A Light Among Many and John Gross When: 7 Where: Seventh Circle Music Collective Why: Granular Breath is a drone artist from Iowa whose body of work is unsettling, deeply textural ambient music crafted from processed guitar and electronics hearkening back to a time in the 2000s when you would see a noise project perform that seemed rooted in metal but making something much more abstract yet no less intense and sonically engulfing. Also on the bill is Denver noise godfather John Gross as well as the like-minded A Light Among Many from Denver but whose soundscapes are closer to black metal and incorporate drums, vocals and Theremin and whose music has a darkly menacing quality.
Chameleons Vox in 2017, photo by Tom Murphy
Saturday | 09.30 What:The Mission UK, The Chameleons and Theatre of Hate When: 7 Where: The Oriental Theater Why: Three legends of UK post-punk on one bill. The Mission UK formed after Wayne Hussey and Craig Adams left Sisters of Mercy in 1985 and recruited members of Red Lorry Yellow Lorry and Artery, two of the great post-punk bands of the day, to join the band within a year and by late 1986 the new group had released its debut full-length God’s Own Medicine, one of the landmarks of 1980s Gothic rock followed two years later with another in 1988’s Children. The group would go on to evolve with a more dream pop sound that has persisted after the group has experienced two hiatuses and now the core and early trio of Hussey, Adams and guitarist/keyboardist Simon Hinkler have been actove since 2011 with new drummer Alex Baum since 2022. The Chameleons were one of the great post-punk bands that came out of Manchester, UK in the early 80s but its sound quickly progressed to weave earnest and impassioned vocals courtesy bassist and singer Mark Burgess with orchestral atmospherics from original guitarists Reg Smithies and Dave Fielding. The group’s songs tackled working class struggles and politics with a poetic sensibility and uncommon emotional power that helped its ethereal melodies transcend into something more elegant. Its sound seems a clear influence on the shoegaze bands of the late 80s and early 90s and long term a massive influence on modern post-punk bands whether they know it or not. For a number of years Burgess performed the band’s music as Chameleons Vox but with Reg Smithies back on board since 2021 you’ll get to see as close to the genuine article as we’re likely to witness minus Dave Fielding rejoining since founding drummer John Lever tragically passed away in 2017. Theatre of Hate bridged the gap between New Wave, post-punk and death rock in 1980 and its membership has included Billy Duffy of The Cult and Mark Thwaite who was in The Mission not to mention Craig Adams also currently in the mission. The band came out of the London street punk scene and from early on it brought in saxophone to give its dark melodicism an otherworldly yet playful element but the driving bass, gorgeously gloomy guitar work and Kirk Brandon’s unorthodox vocals has set the band apart from many of its peers.
Joy Subtraction in 2015, photo by Tom Murphy
Saturday | 09.30 What: A Lifetime of Ephemera release party w/Cyclo Sonic and Elegant Everyone and spoken word by Brian Polk and Charly Fasano When: 8 Where: The Skylark Lounge Why: Author and musician Brian Polk is releasing A Lifetime of Ephemera, his memoir of attending shows with ticket stubs and other memorabilia, for this show. Polk has been a fixture of Denver’s punk and literary scene for over two decades as a member of various projects including post-punk band Joy Subtraction and one of his other bands Elegant Everyone will perform this night alongside Cyclo Sonic, one of the best local punk and garage rock bands with former members of The Fluid, Frantix, Choosey Mothers and Rok Tots. Poet Charly Fasano will be on hand as well to do readings from his own body of extraordinary poetry.
Dethklok, photo courtesy Dethklok
Saturday | 09.30 What: BABYMETAL and Dethklok w/Jason Richardson When: 6 Where: The Fillmore Auditorium Why: Dethklok emerged out of the immortal ether in 2006 with an animated television program in 2006 called Metalocalypse on the Adult Swim block of Cartoon Network. The group was said to enjoy an immense popularity and whose wealth and organization was ranked as the seventh-largest economy on the planet by the conclusion of season 2. Of course it was a fictional band but it released a debut album The Dethalbum in 2007 and in 2009 following the release of Dethalbum II the group toured with Mastodon, High on Fire and Converge. But in order to do so an actual live performance a real group was in order and series co-creator Brendon Small did vocals and played guitar (and other instruments for the studio albums) while heavy metal legend Gene Hoglan (Dark Angel, Death, Strapping Young Lad, Testament, Fear Factory etc.) played drums. And although Dethklok the band from the animated series was a ridiculous caricature of some melodic death metal band from Sweden with absurd lyrics and alleged lifestyles the live, actual human version of the band has proven to be surprisingly viable beyond the gimmick of being the live band version of an cartoon. Currently the group is touring in support of its 2023 album Deathalbum IV and it recently released a direct-to-video film on Blu ray and digital based on the series called Metalocalypse: Army of the Doomstar. Co-headlining this show is Japanese kawaii metal band BABYMETAL. It’s a gimmick but the show is dramatic and big production with screaming and dancing from the trio of frontwomen if that’s your thing.
Cut Worms, photo by Caroline Gohlke
Saturday | 09.30 What: Cut Worms w/Ryder the Eagle When: 7 Where: Globe Hall Why: For the last several years Max Clarke has made a name for himself under the moniker Cut Worms. His variety of countrified garage rock had built into it a clear separation from the trendy garage rock of the 2010s and his unaffected pop songcraft has always come across as earnest and direct. His earlier music drew on obvious influences out of 1960s pop rock. The 2023 self-titled album which dropped on July 21 found Clarke in a different end of that sensibility by tapping into the mood of summer nights and a time in life when summer meant fewer real life responsibilities and the potential for the kinds of adventures that seem attainable and sustainable and which endure even if they’re not so dramatic. On the record Clark further refines his ability to say just enough with economical songwriting and bring to spare sounds a touch of atmospherics to give his songs the air of the urban mythical Americana.
Skinny Puppy performs at Fillmore Auditorium on May 3, 2023, photo by Emilie Elizabeth and John Kraw, 2014Ruston Kelly, photo by Alysse Gafkjen
Tuesday | 05.02 What: Ruston Kelly w/Briscoe When: 7 Where: Gothic Theatre Why: Ruston Kelly has never been limited by his association with country and Americana and his 2023 album The Weakness even expands what that music can sound like. His earnest and dynamically expressive vocals seem to come from a deep place in his live performances and in music that can have a hushed, introspective quality, Kelly brings a vulnerable fortitude to songs that could work as chamber pop or a cosmic and existential brand of folk informed by a frank self-examination that has an appeal that transcends genre. Best to catch an artist at a time of having transitioned to music that bursts past previous boundaries and fans of his earlier work would do well to see Kelly on this touring cycle.
Wilder Woods, photo by Darius Fitzgerald
Tuesday | 05.02 What: Wilder Woods w/Abraham Alexander When: 6:30 Where: Bluebird Theater Why: Needtobreathe lead singer Wilder Woods aka Bear Rinehart is now touring in support of his new album FEVER / SKY, a collection of spirited neo soul roots rock that sounds like it could have come from the same music scene that spawned Joe Cocker. It’s an album that sounds like the songwriter is coming to terms with who he is as a man and as an artist reckoning with his past and his purpose in life born of a time of isolation during the early pandemic and its impacts on the life of anyone that depended on the world of live music and its associated cultural and economic infrastructure. But Rinehart goes much further and hits deep places in his soul bared self-examination that are more cathartic than uncomfortable.
Skinny Puppy photo by Emilie Elizabeth and John Kraw, 2014
Wednesday | 05.03 What:Skinny Puppy w/Lead Into Gold When: 7 Where: Fillmore Auditorium Why: Skinny Puppy were pioneers of electronic industrial music when it formed in 1982 out of the Vancouver, BC New Wave scene. Taking new technologies like sequencers and samplers and pushing the potential aesthetics of these new tools, Skinny Puppy had as much in common with hip-hop artists of that time and now as it did with underground and experimental electronic and industrial rock acts. Its themes of alienation, environmental destruction, animal rights and left politics, Skinny Puppy innovated musically and challenging convention in musical form as well as content. When early member Dwayne Goettel passed away in 1995 the band ended for several years even as a recording project before reuniting in 2000 for its first live performance since 1992. Four years later the group’s new album, the pointedly titled The Greater Wrong of the Right, released and Skinny Puppy toured again and has remained an active project since but with composition steeped in sound design and even more keen social commentary. Unfortunately this tour has been announced to be its last and will more than likely include Skinny Puppy’s signature high use of theatrical performances and striking visuals and some of the most well crafted, intellectually stimulating and emotionally engaging electronic music ever made. The bonus is the opening act is Lead Into Gold, the long time project of Paul Barker, former bassist of Ministry.
Jason Isbell and The 400 Unit, photo by Danny Clinch
Wednesday and Thursday | 05.03 and 05.04 What: Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit w/Angel Olsen When: 6 Where: Red Rocks Why: Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit is touring ahead of the June 9, 2023 release of the band’s new album Weathervanes so you’ll get plenty of material from the new record for this show. Isbell has become one of the most acclaimed songwriters of his generation for his vivid, sensitive and imaginative storytelling and delicate vocal style that makes it easy to forget what style of music he’s playing as it engages your emotions with an unexpected immediacy. In that way he’s like Neil Young whose own diverse songwriting and performance draw upon a broad array of methods and aesthetics that nevertheless have a comfortable familiarity. For these two dates Isbell will be joined by another of the modern great songwriters of the current era in Angel Olsen who seems to be able to make retro musical sensibilities seem modern and vibrant.
Nuovo Testamento, photo courtesy the artists
Thursday | 05.04 What:Molchat Doma w/Nuovo Testamento and Mothe When: 7 Where: Ogden Theatre Why: Nuovo Testamento is a Los Angeles-based darkwave band whose sound blurs the line between post-punk, italo disco and synthpop. On its 2022 swing through Denver at the Hi-Dive the group’s performance was like seeing Madonna fronting Depeche Mode but with its own distinctive flavor. Its new album Love Lines is filled with gorgeously produced darkwave dance club hits like the soundtrack to a retrofuturist thriller that has yet to be made. Molchat Doma is the cult post-punk band from Minsk, Belarus whose introspective songs of loneliness and alienation have struck a chord well beyond their homeland. Its of necessity thin production style and minimalist guitar sound has proven massive influential in Russia as well as globally in the realm of post-punk and darkwave.
eHpH in 2023, photo by Tom Murphy
Saturday | 05.06 What:I Ya Toyah w/eHpH, Hex Cassette, DJ Nitrogen When: 9 Where: The Broadway Roxy Why: I Ya Toyah is a Chicago-based artist whose dark electronic music has a kind of European flavor in the production and tonal palette. Like a darkwave/industrial Danielle Dax with elements of noise, ambient and breakcore in the mix. ehpH is the evolving, long time project of Fernando Altonago and Angelo Atencio also of post-punk rock band Plague Garden. The blend of EBM and industrial with punk attitude and social commentary always hits harder than expected and for this show more of the industrial side of their songwriting will be featured. Hex Cassette is a one man EBM/industrial cult leader of furiously energetic dance music and confrontational stage performance whose banter unsettles some but the choice and absurd humor value is undeniable.
Fishbone, photo by Pablo Mathiason
Saturday | 05.06 What:Fishbone w/Frontside Five When: 6 Where: Levitt Pavilion Why: Fishbone has been genre bending and bursting since 1979. Its hybrid style of ska, punk, funk and beyond was like the punk side of Afrofuturism. Its songs always seemed to depict a time in the non-too-distant days to come where people could just be who they are and have the normal struggles of life we all face. All along the way the group’s sharp social commentary was couched in a surreal sense of humor and infectious party anthem grooves that didn’t downplay the issues so much as provide a soundtrack for working through them and shining a light on corners of American society that are often swept under the rug. The group recently released “All We Have Is Now” on the Bottle Music for Broken People compilation on Fat Mike’s new NOFX imprint with founding member Chris Dowd performing on a recording for the first time since 1994 and the song has the same irreverent and fun-loving spirit one would hope for with new Fishbone material.
Zealot in 2022, photo by Tom Murphy
Saturday | 05.06 What:Zealot w/Owosso and Loose Charm When: 8 Where: Hi-Dive Why: Zealot is celebrating the release of its new single “Newer Testament” at the Hi-Dive. Its literate yet spirited music is like if an indie rock band got reconnected with the intensity and musical inventiveness of early 2000s New York City rock with a similar level of imaginative songwriting and aim to make music that isn’t background playlist nonsense but which commands your attention. Owosso is a similarly-minded band comprised of local scene veterans who seem to have rediscovered a knack for crafting pop-inflected post-punk noise rock. If Loose Charm can be considered alt-country or post-rock its because its songs seem to be composed with ear for evocative melody and soundscaping that don’t usually go together unless you’re listening to something like Silver Jews or Wilco though Loose Charm doesn’t really sound like either.
Polly Urethane in 2022, photo by Tom Murphy
Sunday | 05.07 What:Munly & The Lupercalians w/Polly Urethane When: 7:30 Where: Ophelia’s Electric Soapbox Why: Munly & The Lupercalians is like a darkly ritualistic, performance art mystical folk version of what Munly has been doing across his career. One might be tempted to compare it to neofolk but it’s more like a musical cognate to cinematic works like The Wicker Man and Kill List including the stage garb but also tied in with the singer’s baroque and stark poetry. Opening the performance is composer and performance artist Polly Urethane who seems to do a different type of performance and while sometimes combining musical elements and methods of previous performance with her new shows she always seems to push the boundaries of where she’s been before. Could be a weird DJ set, a visually striking performance to pre-recorded music with edgy components in presenting the material or who can say but always worth checking out.
Cobra Man, photo by Danner Gardner
Sunday | 05.07 What: Cobra Man w/Starbenders and Stolen Nova When: 7 Where: Gothic Theatre Why: Cobra Man is a self-styled “power disco” duo comprised of Andy Harry and Sarah Rayne and currently touring in support of its new EP New Paradise which releases on May 19, 2023. The lead single “Thin Ice” has all the bombast and gloriously, unabashedly epic sound of something you might have heard on the soundtrack for a Cannon Pictures action movie from the 1980s. And the live band isn’t just a couple of button pushers basically doing karaoke to well-produced tracks. They’re like a post-irony glam rock band that exults in the grand sweep and sonic excess of its music.
Nox Novacula in 2022, photo by Tom Murphy
Monday | 05.08 What:Nox Novacula, Plague Garden and Weathered Statues When: 7 Where: HQ Why: Nox Novacula is a post-punk band from Seattle in the gritty death rock vein. Its moody guitar is shot through with a wiry energy and urgency that pairs well with impassioned vocals and driving rhythms. Its 2021 album Ascension bears obvious comparisons with Xmal Deutschland but with a more punk edge. Opening the show are two of Denver’s best post-punk outfits. Plague Garden’s music has a more electronic, New Wave-esque foundation with brooding lyrics and fiery, twin guitar work. Weathered Statues is a little more stark but with bright and buoyant vocals.
Ringo Deathstarr, photo from Bandcamp
Tuesday | 05.09 What:Ringo Deathstarr w/Pleasure Venom, Cherished and Bloodsports When: 7 Where: Hi-Dive Why: Ringo Deathstarr is the cult shoegaze band out of Austin, Texas’ seemingly vibrant community for that style of music. Its own particular flavor is ethereal, drifty and transporting in that Slowdive and Lush vein but with its own fuzzily psychedelic sheen. It’s been two years since the group’s self-titled full-length so maybe we’ll get to see some newer material for this stop in Denver. For this trip to the Pacific Northwest, Ringo Deathstarr is joined by Austin noise-rock/art punks Pleasure Venom with local support in Denver from Sonic Youth-esque post-punk band Bloodsports and shoegaze/post-punk greats Cherished.
Death Grips in 2015, photo by Tom Murphy
Tuesday | 05.09 What:Death Grips When: 7 Where: Mission Ballroom Why: Death Grips is the now legendary industrial hip-hop group from Sacramento, California comprised of MC Ride, Andy Morin and Zach Hill. The group has become known for its edgy imagery and its disdain for playing along with music industry expectations and doing so with creativity and deep irreverence. But its well-publicized antics perhaps boosted the group’s cachet while its inventive music spoke for itself with artwork and album and track names that demonstrated a keen awareness of internet culture and American social reality. When the band did perform live it was an incendiary and aggressive affair that has been unforgettable.
Pond, photo by Matsu
Wednesday | 05.10 What:Pixies w/Pond When: 6:30 Where: Mission Ballroom Why: Pond from Perth, Australia has been developing and evolving its cinematic, psychedelic art rock since 2008 and its 2021 album 9 sounds like a series of interconnected short films. There’s a spaciousness and dramatic sense of mood and atmosphere that washes around the core rhythms and melodies as they burst with emotion. Like if Pink Floyd hung out with Hawkwind more and ditched their epic sweeps in favor of their more raw rock instincts but infused it with disco and funk. Australia has become known for its popular psychedelic bands but fortunately for the world they’re all very different from each other and Pond is a band whose creative trajectory has left behind some fine listening. Of course there’s also the headlining band, Pixies, who were a choice cult band in its first iteration from the mid-80s through the early 90s and highly influential for its wonderfully eccentric lyrics and brilliantly unconventional, noisy, eruptively energetic alternative rock. But once a younger generation caught wind of the band through the appearance of “Where Is My Mind?” on the soundtrack of Fight Club it became a much more popular band and able to tour on the strength of its older material and bring its sound, foundational to modern rock music, to a much wider audience.
Spike Hellis in 2022, photo by Tom Murphy
Wednesday | 05.10 What:Spike Hellis w/Candy Apple, Moon 17 and Sell Farm When: 7 Where: Hi-Dive Why: Spike Hellis is basically making the kind of modern EBM and industrial that is informed by punk and even hardcore in its raw energy of delivery. In the live show it’s reminiscent of the kind of hard hitting vibe one might hear in early Nitzer Ebb and Meat Beat Manifesto but with the aesthetics of a modern, glitchcore project but with all the extraneous sonics ripped out but with the bombast left in place. One of the most electrifying live bands in the modern realm of darkwave. Sell Farm has lately been dipping deep into sequencing and sampling to create dystopian, politically charged dub dance post-punk. Candy Apple bridges the gap between a hardcore band and shoegaze-tinged noise rock. Moon 17 is a “Sci-Fi Industrial” band from Kansas City helmed by Zack Hames. The genre seems to fit even if it was dropped as slightly humorous but one hopes Nicolas Winding Refn taps these bands for his next movie soundtrack.
Greg Puciato, photo by Jim Louvau
Wednesday | 05.10 What: Greg Puciato w/Escuela Grind, Deaf Club and Trace Amount When: 6:30 Where: The Marquis Theater Why: Greg Puciato is the former lead singer and lyricist for metalcore legends The Dillinger Escape Plan. Outside of the context of that band, Pusciato has been a member of synthwave band The Black Queen with its deep atmospheric, cinematic sounds akin to something you might expect to hear from the likes of Failure. And in recent years his solo records have been a fusion and evolution of his past work into something that reconciles an aggressive sound and energy with introspective sentiments and electronic aesthetics. The 2022 album Mirrorcell sounds like where metalcore should have gone and might be more favorably compared to a project like Author & Punisher or Blacklist. Opening are some heavy hitters as well with noise rock supergroup Deaf Club with Justin Person of The Locust, Brian Amalfitano of AcxDC, Scott Osment of Weak Flesh, Jason Klein of Run With The Hunted and Tommy Meehan of The Manx. And Escuela Grind, the modern grindcore/powerviolence legends from Pittsfield, Massachusetts who are quickly establishing themselves as a live band to catch whose songs are informed by a “intersectional progressive” revolutionary, inclusive fervor.
Metronymy, photo by Hazel Gaskin
Wednesday | 05.10 What:Metronymy w/Glüme When: 7 Where: Summit Music Hall Why: Metronymy has been constantly evolving its experimental pop sound with an early focus on exquisitely alien techno soundscapes to its more recent albums that demonstrate its finely honed songcraft with organic elements that seem to more directly reflect tender human experiences with a startling poignancy. Its 2019 album Metronymy Forever wasn’t the first hint at a shift in sound and style but it is an album full of the kind of songwriting one might expect on a Wilco record or an album by The National. And the group’s 2022 album Small World is fully in that mode with songs that are vulnerable yet rich in subtle production that clears the space for the lyrics and organic textures of the music to shine making Metronymy a fascinating anomaly in the expanded realm of modern indie rock.
Church Fire, photo by Tom Murphy
Friday | 05.12 What:Church Fire w/Calm., Moon Pussy, Sorrows When: 8 Where: Hi-Dive Why: Church Fire is celebrating the release of its new music video. For what song? Who knows? You’ll have to go to find out and maybe it’ll be released online later. But video or not, Church Fire’s emotionally vibrant industrial dance music is best experienced live without the filters of a purely online experience. Calm. is the hip-hop duo of Time and Awareness who have been putting out some of the most literate and politically charged hip-hop out of the Mile High City in recent years and don’t do many shows at venues like the Hi-Dive or similarly-sized venues these days. And hip-hop in generally isn’t getting a lot of traction at smaller clubs in general but Hi-Dive is an exception to that general rule. Chris “Time” Steele will probably crack wise between songs with genuine wit. Moon Pussy is the getting to be known nationally on the underground circuit noise rock band from Denver whose eruptive music and explosive energy always seems to exceed expectation. SORROWS is a downtempo electronic duo of Glynnis Braan and Lawrence Snell whose dark atmospherics and operatic vocals pull from diverse influences.
Friday | 05.12 What: 7038634357, Verity Larsen, Emilie Craig, sleepdial and Polly Urethane When: 9 Where: Glob Why: 7038634357 seems to be a generative ambient noise artist from Arlington, VA whose releases display a knack for signal processing. Verity Larsen combines musique concrète with prepared environmental recordings and ambient soundscapes to produce sonic experiences that recontextualize everyday experiences. French Kettle Station is performing as sleepdial, his more ambient experiments in electronics and sometimes guitar. Polly Urethan you just never know what to expect from how now broad palette of ideas for performance and music and just be prepared to get to witness something unique and potentially challenging.
Friday | 05.12 What: Frontline Assembly and Whorticulture When: 9 Where: Tracks Why: EBM pioneers Frontline Assembly is performing for this “Bladerunner — A Cyberpunk Party” and providing the perfect soundtrack for such an event with its dystopian lyrics and electronic industrial.
Friday | 05.12 What: Crowded House w/Liam Finn When: 7 Where: Paramount Theatre Why: Australian band Crowded House is perhaps best remembered for its outstanding 1986 hit “Don’t Dream It’s Over” with its spare yet orchestral melody. But Crowded House produced some quality folk pop during its initial run of 1985-1996 and when it has since reunited in the 2000s and 2020s still led by singer/guitarist Neil Finn who had a fairly successful career while Crowded House was split.
White Rose Motor Oil circa 2021, photo courtesy the band
Saturday | 05.13 What:Scott H. Biram w/Garrett T. Capps and White Rose Motor Oil When: 8 Where: Hi-Dive Why: Scott H. Biram is the renowned blues punk musician/solo artist whose troubadour country ballads could seem like pure affectation but he’s done his time in punk and metal and bluegrass in crafting his signature gritty, gospel blues sound. Supporting this bill is the great Denver-based alternative country/outlaw rockabilly band White Rose Motor Oil whose own spare line-up as a duo always seems to punch above its weight in its forcefulness and emotional impact.
Indigo De Souza, photo by Angella Choe
Sunday | 05.14 What: Caroline Polachek w/Alex G and Indigo De Souza When: 7 Where: Mission Ballroom Why: Indigo De Souza’s songs have since early on been an expression of a moody vulnerability cast as deeply atmospheric pop songs that are often pointed but never cruel, simply honest and poetic. Her latest album out on Saddle Creek is 2023’s All of This Will End continues the development of her vibrant songwriting filled with stories that take the pain of lived experience and reflecting on the broad expanse of feelings one goes through in life and sitting in them and finding a way to put them into stories that give them a context that makes them something from which to learn and exult in life rather than be overwhelmed by disappointment, bitterness, petty betrayal (by others and by oneself). And she’s a perfect artist in this line-up of other art pop practitioners of note such as Alex G who has taken conceptual psychedelic rock to fascinating new heights and headliner Caroline Polacek who as a member of Charlift (which was founded in Boulder, Colorado while she was attending CU) made some of the cooler indie rock to have emerged out of that decade that produced the foundations of much of what we hear now. But in her solo career she has emerged as an innovative and experimental artist whose pop songs don’t seem beholden to anyone else’s style bending genres and sounds to suit her creative vision of the moment. For her 2023 album Desire, I Want to Turn Into You you can hear the impact of hyper pop and glitch but as elements and not a root.
Salads and Sunbeams, photo by Tom Murphy
Sunday | 05.14 What: Spooky Mansion w/Sour Magic and Salads and Sunbeams When: 7 Where: Hi-Dive Why: Spooky Mansion is a surf-rock inflected psychedelic lounge pop band from Los Angeles making a couple of stops in Colorado including this date at the Hi-Dive. Denver’s Sour Magic sound like they could have come from a similar musical lineage but with more luminous guitar melodies. Like maybe they got deep into DIIV and Mac Demarco and found their own voice as a band. Salads and Sunbeams is the kind of band that has crafted exquisite psychedelic indiepop that might have come right out of an unlikely scene that included the Zombies and The Apples in Stereo. But it works and doesn’t have that throwback yesteryear worship vibe even if to some extent that’s what it is because the songwriting stands on its own and worthy of its obvious and not so obvious influences.
Wednesday, photo by Zachary Chick
Monday | 05.15 What:Wednesday w/Cryogeyser When: 7 Where: Larimer Lounge Why: Wednesday from Asheville, North Carolina has garnered a bit of a cult following among fans of experimental noise rock and shoegaze and whatever one might call Canadian guitar bands like Women, Preoccupations and FRIGS. But then there’s another side of the band’s sound and that’s the more country flavor of some of its songs, unabashed, borderline cosmic honky tonk stuff. And Wednesday makes it work because it’s obvious the group is fully steeped in both creative instincts and its records are a journey for which a variety of sounds make sense. In particular its 2023 record Rat Saw God and its vivid stories of life in the American South told with great nuance, insight and poignancy. At times the songs can take you by surprise with an offhand lyric that’s so real but delivered with the nonchalance that makes it palatable and it all feeds into what’s making Wednesday one of the most fascinating bands of this moment.
Monday | 05.15 What:Yves Tumor w/Pretty Slick and NATION When: 7 Where: Ogden Theatre Why: Yves Tumor is an artist whose genre-bending art rock/hip-hop/electronic dance music/funk seems tapped into a raw, otherworldly energy that is a reflection of the anxieties and nightmares of the world we experience everyday. The 2023 album Praise A Lord Who Chews But Which Does Not Consume; (Or Simply, Hot Between Worlds) is more overtly rock than earlier albums but still like an alien glam rock that feels ahead of the curve. Live, Yves Tumor is a commanding figure with a lot of swagger and electrifying presence.
Narrow Head, photo by Nate Kahn
Monday | 05.15 What:Narrow Head w/Graham Hunt, Public Opinion and Flower Language When: 8 Where: Hi-Dive Why: Houston’s Narrow Head much like Phoenix’s Holy Fawn probably come from a general realm of local scene music but whereas Holy Fawn has transcended black metal into more the realm of a post-rock shoegaze, Narrow Head may have found its origins in a music scene that had or has fine examples of the resurgence of hardcore and emo in the compelling form that emerged all over the country in the past decade. But the band as we hear it on its new album Moments of Clarity is the kind of heavy shoegaze with dynamics like blossoming melodies and soaring vocals that seem to harmonize with the ethereal fuzz and dense low end to give the songs an undeniable uplift.
Tim Hecker in 2019, photo by Tom Murphy
Tuesday | 05.16 What: Tim Hecker When: 7 Where: Boulder Theater Why: Can’t really blame Tim Hecker for expressing in his recent interview in the New York Times his misgivings for having helped to popularize ambient music since it has become such a workhorse of the bland playlist culture of Spotify. Who wants to be handmaiden to that? But to Hecker’s credit he’s always been an artist who has explored new vistas of the art form in terms of form, structure, sound palette, presentation and instrumentation. His new album No Highs is imbued with a textural, intimate quality that feels very much of the body as his music does in the live setting rather than the offensively bland and background quality of generic playlist ambient.
Mr. Bungle, photo courtesy Buzz Osborne
Tuesday | 05.16 What:Mr. Bungle w/Melvins and Spotlights When: 7 Where: Mission Ballroom Why: No matter where you check in on the Mr. Bungle timeline you will find boundary-pushing music that bends and breaks genres from the early death metal-surrealism to the lush and theatrical art rock of its late 90s output. Currently the band is touring with a lineup that includes Mike Patton, Trey Spruance, Trevor Dunn, Scott Ian and Dave Lombardo so who can say what the setlist will sound like whether its more baroque pop stuff or the material from its recently reissued 1986 demo The Raging Wrath of the Easter Bunny. Whatever it might be, the show will be bombastic and mind-expanding. Bonus: Melvins, the sludge rock legends, will bring their always riveting and cathartic performance of its own music that spans various ends of heavy rock with a hard hitting finesse.
Tuesday | 05.16 What: Hoodoo Gurus When: 7 Where: Bluebird Theater Why: Hoodoo Gurus are the legendary Australian garage rock band that was an influence on generations of bands that have been keyed into its particular brand of jangle psychedelia and punk. Currently the band is touring in support of its 2022 album Chariot of the Gods.
Future Islands in 2021, photo by Tom Murphy
Wednesday | 05.17 What:Future Islands w/Deeper When: 7 Where: Mission Ballroom Why: Future Islands has come a long way from playing DIY spaces in Denver to Red Rocks and now headlining Mission Ballroom. But what hasn’t changed is its emotionally gripping synth pop and impassioned live performances. For this night Chicago’s arty post-punk band Deeper will bring its darkly atmospheric and poignant music to the proceedings.
Sparta, photo courtesy the artists
Thursday | 05.18 What:Sparta w/’68 and Geoff Rickly When: 6 Where: Bluebird Theater Why: The 2002 album Wiretap Scars is where Sparta picked up where At The Drive-In, singer Jim Ward’s then most recently prominent band, left off. The angular, Fugazi-esque, anthemic songs that astutely commented on the times without being so topical as to age poorly in the years ahead. Rather, Wiretap Scars today seems perhaps even more relevant than it did when America was in a state of confusion and nascent authoritarianism and misplaced nationalistic patriotism was starting to settle into the swing of public life. There is a passionate coherence of productive outrage on the record and based on the group’s 2022 tour Sparta will deliver on that messaging on this tour as well.
Thursday | 05.18 What: The Mssng w/To Be Astronauts and Tiny Humans When: 7 Where: Hi-Dive Why: The Mssng is a band whose hybrid of styles sometimes comes off like people who were inspired by the agglomeration of 90s alternative rock, post-punk revival and the glam rock end of modern garage rock. To Be Astronauts has generally been sort of a 90s throwback, alternative hard rock band who displayed all the stylistic fingerprints of 2000s stoner rock but with more melody. Lately some of the band’s recordings have included versions of songs, live and otherwise, that reveal that if you strip away some of those hard rock instincts you find a band that has some solid songwriting with nothing to prove. Sure, it’s a bit like a better version of the kind of acoustic and electric alt-rock you might have heard from the likes of Counting Crows which isn’t for everyone but respectable nonetheless. Tiny Humans, what can you say, except that the singer has to stop being carted on stage in a wheelchair and in hospital robes and pretending like he’s doing a Nirvana tribute band when it’s more obvious it’s a strange attempt to fully emulate The Amboy Dukes’ guitarist’s entire solo career. But hey, who doesn’t appreciate such fetishistic performance art?
Friday | 05.19 What:Vast Aire (Cannibal Ox) w/Gee Tee and guests When: 9 Where: Bar Red 437 W. Colfax Why: Vast Aire is the charismatic and enigmatic rapper who is perhaps best known for his work with alternative hip-hop group Cannibal Ox. His forceful delivery and vivid, socially conscious storytelling once encountered sticks with you because his various collaborators like El-P on the 2001 classic album The Cold Vein are able to create a darkly haunting soundscape from which his voice stands out like an urban mystic and mythological poet.
MUNA, photo by Isaac Schneider
Friday | 05.19 What:MUNA w/Nova Twins When: 7 Where: Mission Ballroom Why: Given that the members of MUNA all have academic backgrounds in music or cultural studies one might expect the music to be something more cerebral or conceptual. And initially when developing their own material the trio of Katie Gavin, Josette Maskin and Naomi McPherson experimented with sounds and styles before coming upon exuberant pop songs with earworm hooks and lyrics that are sure about instantly relatable subjects of love and relationships but also with a sensitivity toward issues of identity beyond the usual tropes and which resonate broadly. The group released its 2022 self-titled album to critical acclaim and now MUNA is on a headlining tour of large concert halls with a supporting slot on the upcoming Taylor Swift tour where an appreciative audience for its particularly expansive and upbeat songs will be found.
Friday | 05.19 What: Shady Oaks w/Weary Bones, Fern Roberts and The Picture Tour When: 7 Where: Lost Lake Why: Shady Oaks is a mix of blues and indie rock and Americana. Weary Bones is a bit of an Americana jam band from Louisville, Colorado but more in the vein of Widespread Panic where there are coherent songs that have resonance beyond the genre. It released its latest album Humble Echoes in 2023. Fern Roberts might be described as an indie rock band that seems to be equally influenced by Bright Eyes, 90s alternative rock and the more pop end of Built to Spill. The main reason to go to this show is to see the live debut of former Emerald Siam guitarist Billy Armijo’s band The Picture Tour. Its 2022 album Before the Sound, Before the Light was an audacious debut of introspective, gloomy shoegaze with an ear for interweaving atmospheres and feedback sculpting to produce unique melodies and an enveloping sound.
Fruit Bats, photo by Chantal Anderson
Friday | 05.19 What:Fruit Bats w/Kolumbo When: 7 Where: Ogden Theatre Why: The new Fruit Bats album A River Running To Your Heart seems assembled and composed as a cinematic experience as much as one more musical. When the record gets up and going its intricate guitar arrangements flow with a grace and elegance that one normally hears more in music that operates at a slower pace and yet for this set of songs Eric D. Johnson and the band never sound rushed. The music is just focused even in reflective passages and there is an energy to the music that pulls you in. Fans of early The War on Drugs will hear some resonance here but Johnson’s songs seem to reign in the impulse to psychedelic self-indulgence and one gets the sense that as free as the music feels that it’s been crafted to edit out excesses that don’t contribute to one of the most consistently enchanting pop albums of the year.
Placebo, photo by Mads Perch
Saturday | 05.20 What:Placebo w/Deap Valley and Poppy Jean Crawford – canceled When: 7 Where: Fillmore Auditorium Why: Placebo emerged at a time in the mid-1990s when the alternative rock wave was basically spent and a lot of really dull, beige rock and roll and uninspired pop was peddled as exciting. Placebo offered something that seemed to reinvent the edginess of the darker end of grunge with a more glam rock sense of theater and drama. Its early albums dipped into rock and dance music equally before it became even more of a thing at the turn of the century and in a fashion different than had been done by the likes of New Order, Primal Scream and their storied ilk. Its 1998 album Without You I’m Nothing and its promotional videos revealed a band that seemed to have embraced Goth-like personal darkness in musical style and outward presentation. That the band appeared in Velvet Goldmine, Todd Haynes’ 1998 glam rock fictional biopic of David Bowie and Iggy Pop and that early 1970s era didn’t hurt in establishing Placebo’s cred as a band that embodied the emerging new alternative culture. The band’s 2022 album Never Let Me Go, perhaps a reference to Kazuo Ishiguro’s 2005 tragic novel of of the same name as well as the 2010 film, its first in 9 years has Placebo pushing its own boundaries beyond where it has been before as a band with an unabashed use of saturated synth melodies and a much more creative use of processed guitar in rock music than we’ve heard in awhile. And if you’re going to have an opening acts like mutant garage psych duo Deap Valley and experimental pop/singer-songwriter Poppy Jean Crawford that just hints that someone in your camp has been listening for something different and actually cool which isn’t always the case in the music industry even on accident.
Fenne Lily, photo by Michael Tyrone Delaney
Saturday | 05.20 What: Fenne Lily & Christian Lee Hutson w/Anna Tivel When: 8 Where: The Bluebird Theater Why: The intimate production on Fenne Lily’s new album Big Picture puts her expressive and breathy vocals front and center without pushing the delicate, almost impressionistic, warm and layered guitar work into the background. The songwriter sounds resigned on these set of songs but that seems to come more out of a sense of having to come to terms with how you can never really get too complacent in life nor do you want to and that sometimes getting to used to comfort can be a path antithetical to personal growth but also how feeling like you’re always having to fend off life’s static and unpredictably intermittent challenges can be kind of a bummer even if you’re able to brush them off and move forward. Lily sounds like she understands and has some deep empathy for how in recent years everyday challenges have seemed like a bit much and how that pace isn’t exactly relenting yet we do have to maintain a core of some grace to weather this steady stream of a whole lot of everything. Big Picture, the title alone, points to how stepping back in the moment can give you the pause you need to keep things in perspective even if you have a moment or ten.
Shania Twain, photo courtesy the artist
Sunday | 05.21 What:Shania Twain w/Hailey Whitters When: 6:30 Where: Ball Arena Why: Shania Twain needs no introduction. The “Queen of Country Pop” is one of the best selling artists of all time. Certainly in the realm of country and pop music of the last 30 years. Normally in this show listing these kinds of artists don’t make the cut because they’re just too mainstream and not creatively interesting. But Twain was a pioneer in pushing country music into the realm of pop. She and Garth Brooks, whether you’re into their music or not, paved the way for people like Taylor Swift and Carrie Underwood to find an audience beyond the niche of country. Twain’s humor and charisma made her songs appealing beyond genre and continue to do so. In 2023 Twain released her new album Queen of Me which features current production techniques (even some elements of hyper pop) one might expect to hear on the record of a newer artist but of course the draw is her commanding voice and ability to articulate a range of feelings that seem to capture timeless experiences in new ways that fortunately hint that Twain is keenly aware of not only her place as a country artist that has always embraced new sounds but as one who has also been trying on new ways of having her songs hit with fresh sounds and songwriting that doesn’t sound like she’s stuck in the past.
Sunday | 05.21 What:Violent Femmes w/Jesse Ahern When: 5 Where: Levitt Pavillion Why: Violent Femmes will perform its 1983 self-titled debut album in its entirety for this show. That record was a staple of alternative rock radio and college dorms for decades. Its weird blend of folk, punk, jazz and outsider pop had an undeniable, immediate and enduring appeal with classics like “Blister in the Sun,” “Add It Up” and “Gone Daddy Gone” but the whole record beginning to end is a journey into the essence of youthful angst and frustrations but expressed in a way that somehow remained relevant well beyond anyone’s teen years. The Femmes remain a force in the live setting and always surprisingly powerful yet fun.
Arts Fishing Club, photo courtesy the artists
Tuesday | 05.23 What:Arts Fishing Club w/Homes at Night When: 7 Where: Globe Hall Why: Arts Fishing Club is an indie rock band from Nashville that formed in 2016. Singer/guitarist Christopher Kessenich grew up seeing live music with his father and older brothers witnessing a mix of alternative music, classic rock and jam bands all of which fed into his own eclectic songwriting. The band’s debut album Rothko Sky (due out June 16, 2023) is arranged as a kind of personal journey of a person who in the first half of the record sets out in life idealistic and open to everything only to find out that all of us have limitations both human and of our own unique psychology. On the album’s second half there is a reflection on the nature and impact of love, sex and pain and how that can shape who we are once the shine and novelty of new experiences evolves into appreciating the breadth and depth of life. The songs have a bluesy grit and an often impassioned delivery informed by the flow of its narrative element for a record that sounds like it had to be made by a band a few releases into its career once it has figured out who it is and what it wants to say with intention but with the exuberance of a new band intact. Listen to our interview with Kessenich on the Queen City Sounds Podcast on Bandcamp.
My Life With the Thrill Kill Kult in 2012, photo by Tom Murphy
Monday | 05.22 What:My Life With the Thrill Kill Kult w/ADULT. and KANGA When: 6:30 Where: Oriental Theater Why: My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult is currently touring celebrating its 36 years as a band with a set list that focuses on the group’s first decade. The band’s campy, industrial disco sleaze has always demonstrated a more fun and lighthearted side of industrial culture while offering a distinctive visual and musical style in its bombastic live shows. By the time Thrill Kill Kult appeared in The Crow (1994), the band had already been staples of the more underground end of alternative rock write large but its performance in the film was the perfect embodiment of the aesthetics of the movie. ADULT. is the great industrial post-punk duo from Detroit whose music of the past few years has really been the musical reflection of the conflicted and dystopian times we’ve been going through with a world on the brink of domination by authoritarian regimes and the already unfolding disastrous consequences of climate change with little to no vision and action by world leaders. ADULT.’s music is an act of human solidarity and a catharsis of ambient despair. KANGA is a Los Angeles-based producer whose dusky pop music is darkwave adjacent but also adjacent to a more dance beat infused chillwave and vaporwave with sultry vocals. It might be more apt to compare KANGA to the likes of Charli XCX and Jessie Ware than an artist out of the Goth world.
Martin Dupont, photo from Bandcamp
Tuesday | 05.23 What:Martin Dupont w/Julian St. Nightmare and French Kettle Station and Kill You Club DJs When: 7 Where: Hi-Dive Why: Legendary French New Wave band Martin Dupont, formed in 1982, is playing few shows on this tour through the US and one of those stops is in Denver. The group has a new album out called Kintsugi that with its sweeping synths and darkly melancholic melodies seems to have arrived in time for the current era of appreciation for its particular style of cold wave pop/minimal synth and marking its first album in 36 years. French Kettle Station might be described as a hybrid New Age/glitch/post-Cloud rap/abstract post-rock artist whose stage antics involve some impressive dance moves and prodigious energy. Julian St. Nightmare is one of the best post-punk bands from Denver at the moment whose songs seem to have emerged out of its members having gone through phases of playing garage and psychedelic rock and surf but come through with some strong songwriting skills and the ability to craft moody yet powerful songs that don’t sound like the cookie cutter version of modern darkwave.
Y La Bamba, photo by Jenn Carillo
Tuesday | 05.23 What:Y La Bamba w/Ritmo Cascabel When: 7 Where: Bluebird Theater Why: Ya La Bamba is currently touring in support of its new record Lucha which in its typically exploratory fashion employs folk music of various traditions and an experimental soundscaping aesthetic that allows for a rich expression of themes and the sounds that serve to anchor them in your mind. The album is one about various identities and how they overlap and how we can come to embrace them as a coherent and intermingled part of our existence no matter what those categories might be of gender, sexuality, culture and individual psychology. It’s a gentle record but one that runs deep into the aforementioned subjects and through that more vulnerable approach that encourages patience with self and others is able to more successfully enter into the more tender realms of the heart and mind and comment with an intuitive insight. The psychedelic folk of these songs are ambitious in scope and imagination and the live band always seems to truly render the songs into a vibrant and moving form.
Mareux, photo by Nedda Afsari
Friday | 05.26 What:Mareux w/Cold Gawd When: 7 Where: Marquis Theater Why: Mareux established his cult following as a darkwave artist with singles and EPs over the past few years. What set him apart from some of his peers though are his deeply lush and detailed production with rich low end, his dusky and soulful vocals and his poetic tales of romantic yearning like something out of late night cafe reminiscing about heartbreak and lost loves. Currently the producer/singer/songwriter is touring in support of his debut full-length Lovers From the Past, a record that reveals a dimensionality to Mareux’s gift for conveying sonic depth and emotional nuance. Opening is the Cold Gawd whose 2022 album God Get Me the Fuck Out of Here was one of the records of choice to connoisseurs of shoegaze and music that pushes the boundaries of established styles. With R&B beats and granular guitar melodies in densely expressive layers, Cold Gawd is helping to reshape what both forms of music have to sound like and whether there has to be a separation.
Hot Chip, photo by Matilda Hill-Jenkins
Friday | 05.26 What: Chromeo and Hot Chip w/Coco & Breezy and Cimafunk When: 5 Where: Red Rocks Why: Canadian electro-funk duo Chromeo seems to regularly tour with its bombastic and visually arresting live show and always with an innovative opening act or two along for the ride. For this outing at Red Rocks you will get to see Hot Chip. The UK band came to prominence in the early 2000s for its innovative fusion of synthpop and dance music that sounds like a successor to the kinds of sounds we heard out of Madchester, the Balearic Beat, disco and neo soul. Hot Chip always seems to have a keen ear for use of space in its compositions and how that can have a very powerful emotional resonance that goes beyond the mere us of dazzling, atmospheric melodies and strong beats. Its latest album is 2022’s Freakout/Release which found the band leaning heavy into its alternative pop sound with some nice experimental moments reminiscent of Kraftwerk and perhaps contemporaries it influenced like Cut Copy. It might be the group’s most full-realized album in its long career.
Ganser, photo from Bandcamp
Friday | 05.26 What:Ganser w/Antibroth and The Red Scare When: 8 Where: Hi-Dive Why: Chicago’s Ganser is probably well within the realm of post-punk but artier and with a more interesting palette of sounds upon which it draws. In moments like noise rock math rock psychedelic weirdos with angular flow but with an ear for sculpting the collective soundscape it creates. In this way the band has more in common with other Chicago weirdo post-punk bands like Facs or Dehd or beyond the Windy City and akin to bands like Studded Left, Body Double, Dry Cleaning, Lithics or FRIGS. Whatever the exact nature of Ganser might be for anyone into more experimental post-punk that isn’t being defined by a trendy sound. Opening are confrontational, mathy post-punk band Antibroth and the more noise rock The Red Scare.
Suzanne Ciani, photo by Katja Ruge
Saturday | 05.27 What:Suzanne Ciani w/Colloboh When: 7 Where: Central Presbyterian Church Why: Synth pioneer Suzanne Ciani is doing a rare performance in Denver this night with quadraphonic sound and a projection-mapped light show. Ciani’s long career has seen her work appear in film, television and commercials as music and sound effects and her 1980s and beyond New Age albums have been nominated for a Grammy five times. Her contributions to sound design and music has been a part of popular culture in ways both subtle and overt and her unique achievements as a composer in league with the likes of Morton Subotnick, Wendy Carlos, Laurie Spiegel, Pauline Oliveros and Delia Derbyshire. Don’t sleep on these shows. You may never get another chance to see Ciani live.
Nerver, photo from Bandcamp
Saturday | 05.27 What:Nerver, Almanac Man and Edith Pike When: 8 Where: Hi-Dive Why: Nerver from Kansas City is a rising noise rock band in the vein of the kinds of artists you’d hear from Amphetamine Reptile and Touch and Go. It’s 2022 album CASH was a brutal yet haunting selection of songs that are somehow both melancholic and introspective yet fiery in their cathartic moments. In 2023 Nerver released a split with noise rock legends Chat Pile called BROTHERS IN CHRIST. Edith Pike’s self-titled EP from 2022 may have been pretty lo-fi but you can hear the kind of screamo-noise rock crossover sound that may have its roots in hardcore but has evolved beyond the predictable version of that music. Almanac Man also from Denver has the kind of gristly noise rock that’s feral like Neurosis but with a post-punk angularity that gives its music a vibe like Shellac if Steve Albini had come up in the music world he helped to influence.
Meet the Giant in 2022, photo by Tom Murphy
Saturday | 05.27 What:Meet the Giant album release w/Church Fire and The Mssng When: 8 Where: Enigma Bazaar Why: Meet the Giant is releasing its new album We Are Revolting. The group’s 2018 self-titled debut was the product of several years of woodshedding musical ideas and songs as well as production and its gritty mix of rock and downtempo with emotionally stirring vocals reflected with the then emergent live band. This time around the trio appears to have focused on an even sonically edgier catharsis with songs that express an anger born of frustration and weariness at the political and cultural situation in which we find ourselves in America and really worldwide. As touchstones one might point to the likes of Failure and its own fusion of rock and electronic sensibilities and a sheen of the cinematic. Or Nine Inch Nails in even further implementing sound design elements in the mix. But Meet the Giant’s songs tend to be more melodic and its sound having more in common with a modern shoegaze band with a bit more rock and roll kick to its songwriting. Church Fire is also on the bill bringing its own reinvented amalgam of political, electronic industrial dance music and are rock touches.
Sarah Shook and the Disarmers, photo by Harvey Robinson
Sunday | 05.28 What:Sarah Shook and the Disarmers w/Porlolo and Wheelright When: 7 Where: Hi-Dive Why: Outlaw country, country-punk, whatever designation fits Sarah Shook and the Disarmers, Sarah Shook is one of the most distinctive voices in modern country music on the still fairly underground level where a great deal of the best of that and other musical styles are found. Shook’s voice has enough of a rough edge to be interesting but their melodic resonance serves well stories of every day life written in a way that seems so specific yet relatable in spirit and substance. Speaking of, Pololo is more an indie rock band but Erin Roberts has a gift for turning a sense of humor into music with a sharply observational and existential bent.
Yob, photo courtesy the artists
Sunday | 05.28 What:Yob w/Cave In and Dreadnought When: 7 Where: Gothic Theatre Why: Yob is an influential doom band that began in 2000 before splitting in 2006 and reconvening in 2008. Its sound is definitely in that realm of mining what Black Sabbath, Saint Vitus, Sleep and Earth had done before but seeing Yob live it seems obvious that Mike Scheidt is injecting a sense of fun into the music and its flows of heavy rock is tinged with psychedelia. This coming year the group is re-issuing its debut album Elaborations of Carbon so perhaps the set list will favor that record but either way, Yob is a fun live band that makes music that is both cosmic and deeply human. Cave In is the influential post-hardcore, foundational metalcore band from Massachusetts. Dreadnought is the doom band from Denver whose rhythmic style has a tribal sensibility and whose overall sound is more atmospheric, psychedelic and more rooted in dark folk than many of its heavy music peers.
Djunah, photo from Bandcamp
Monday | 05.29 What:Djunah w/Moon Pussy and Limbwrecker When: 7 Where: Hi-Dive Why: Chicago’s Djunah is a noise rock band of the kind that fans of the jarring and cathartic music of HIDE and Diamanda Galás might find much to their liking. Fronted by guitarist/singer/Moog bass player Donna Diane, Djunah recently released its new album Femina Furens. The heaviness of the music doesn’t just come from its gloriously clashing dynamics and instrumentation, it’s, per Djunah’s Bandcamp page, “the story of diagnosis and continuing recovery from complex post-traumatic stress disorder, or C-PTSD. The album’s title comes from the Latin for ‘furious woman.’ The artwork is inspired by representations of the divine feminine in 1970s sci-fi metal art.” Touchstones on a quick listen would have to include Chelsea Wolfe, Patti Smith and Nick Cave for the exuberantly unleashed emotional energy present within. Who better to open than Denver’s Moon Pussy whose own eruptive noise rock while often accompanied by an eccentric sense of humor between songs has a similarly elemental energy that releases personal darkness, pain and frustrations in built and rapidly uncoiled tensions. Limbwrecker has a similar aesthetic though from a place that seems more steeped in a foundation of hardcore and extreme metal.
James Murphy of LCD Soundsystem, photo by Ruvan Wijesooriya
Monday and Tuesday | 05.29 and 05.30 What: LCD Soundsystem w/M.I.A. and Peaches When: 6 Where: Red Rocks Why: LCD Soundsystem is the band started by James Murphy of DFA Records as a vehicle for his experiments in blending indie rock and electronic dance music. Though often associated with “dance punk,” LCD Soundsystem is much more wide-ranging than that designator would suggest with innovative production and a highly experimental approach to songwriting format and style beginning with the early single “I’m Losing My Edge” to its newer material like “New Body Rhumba” from the soundtrack to Noah Baumbach’s 2022 film White Noise based on Don DeLillo’s 1985 novel of the same name. Perhaps just as noteworthy for this show are the opening artists. Sure, irreverent and theatrical electroclash pioneer Peaches was in Denver recently with a powerful and entertaining show at the Summit Music Hall but rapper M.I.A., who learned how to make her own music from Peaches, hasn’t played in this area since her most recent national tour in 2008 at the Fillmore Auditorium, and her own music and performances are informed by her fusion of hip-hop, experimental electronic dance music, non-Western musical styles and an activist bent that challenges human rights abuse and imperialism.
Helloween, photo by Martin Häusler
Tuesday | 05.30 What:Helloween w/Hammerfall When: 6 Where: Ogden Theatre Why: Helloween is the influential power metal band from Hamburg, Germany. Since 1984 released a string of albums that have often featured concepts and storytelling commenting on the human condition in both personal, emotive narratives and paralleling historical references with current events and commenting on recurring themes of human civilization and the impact of culture and those in power on the lives of people within and without a particular country. The iconography of the pumpkin has been part of the group’s artwork since early on and infuses the often weighty subject matter of the songwriting with a touch of humor and humanity. In 2016 older Helloween lead vocalists Michael Kiske and Kai Hansen rejoined along with long time singer Andi Deris for the kind of sound not many groups in metal have ever had in one band. In May 2023 the group was slated for induction into the Metal Hall of Fame. In the coming days look for our audio interview with guitarist Sascha Gerstner on the Queen City Sounds Podcast series.
Ryan Oakes, photo courtesy the artist
Tuesday | 05.30 What:Ryan Oakes w/Layto and Cherie Amour When: 7 Where: Globe Hall Why: Ryan Oakes released his new album WAKE UP on May 12, 2023. The album makes good on the rapper’s experiments in genre bending and blending. The subject matter is about personal struggle, mental health difficulties and overcoming adversity but the attitude and delivery is punk set to trap beats and production for a sound that could be a complete disaster but works because the words are raw and real and the music hitting with an exhilarating immediacy. Somehow Oakes takes the anthemic quality of modern post-hardcore emo and a dazzling parade of current cultural references to tell stories of striving and struggling in an era of amplified anxiety and pressure to succeed despite human limitations and vulnerabilities. Oakes doesn’t bother not tapping into hyper pop’s sonic surrealism and industrial hip-hop as well as the aforementioned styles to create a compelling sound of his own.
Drain, photo by Christian Castillo
Tuesday | 05.30 What:Drain w/Drug Church, MSPAINT and TORENA When: 7 Where: The Marquis Theater Why: Drain is a melodic hardcore trio from Santa Cruz, California that recently released its new album Living Proof. Drug Church hails from the opposite end of the country in Albany, NY but its own style of hardcore is also not short on melody but its style is one with some roots in pop punk or the modern, better, version that emerged in the early 2010s. But the real reason to go to this show is to see MSPAINT from Hattiesburg, Mississippi whose debut full length Post-American release came out on Convulse Records. Clearly the band came out of the punk/hardcore scene but it’s synth-driven art punk is stranger and more colorful than a lot of what else is on offer for this night but delivered with the same level of intense energy and outpouring of passion. One might compare the band to Milemarker and The VSS but it’s really its own, unique flavor of challenging-to-classify punk.
Chella and the Charm in 2022, photo by Tom Murphy
Wednesday | 05.31 What:Chris King & The Gutterballs w/Chella and The Charm and Silver Triplets When: 7 Where: Hi-Dive Why: Chris King & The Gutterballs is a band from Seattle whose flavor of Americana has more in common with CCR than the more modern country folk strain though that’s in the mix too. Chella and The Charm has for the past decade or so provided the kind of Americana that is an urban soundtrack to contemplating life and the sorts of issues and thoughts and feelings that drive an authentic existence and performed with the earthy energy of a rock and roll band. But even within that you can hear the irreverent humor and sharp social commentary and observations on human behavior with affection and insight.
Wednesday | 05.31 What:Ultra Bomb w/Black Dots, The Black Gloves and Shiverz When: 7 Where: HQ Why: Ultrabomb is a punk supergroup featuring Greg Norton of Hüsker Dü, Jamie Oliver of UK Subs and Finny McConnell of The Mahones. The music that’s been available appears to be a particularly vibrant style of power pop and fantastic vocal melodies that one might expect from a group of such punk luminaries.
Thursday | 12.01 What: Wild Pink w/Trace Mountains and Knuckle Pups When: 7 Where: Globe Hall Why: Wild Pink’s John Ross wrote one of the great story albums of recent years with 2021’s A Billion Little Lights and its themes of coming to terms with adulthood while staying connected with one’s creative life and navigating the temptations to ditch music as the occupation of adolescence. And how through creative work one can explore an evolving sense of meaning that hits you throughout your thirties and the rest of your life. 2022’s ILYSM (an acronym for “I Love You So Much”) takes that perspective to examine the details of life that deepen one”s bond with the people in your life. Knuckle Pups in from Denver released a deeply self-reflective album with 2022’s TV Ready in which the ambitious pop band fuses radical vulnerability with a compassionate honesty that is not nearly common enough in the realm of indie rock or any form of music today. Sometimes earnestness can seem like a pose but with Knuckle Pups it seems inspirational in its lack of pretension.
Cold Cave in 2011, photo by Tom Murphy
Friday | 12.02 What:Cold Cave w/Voight and Hex Cassette When: 7 Where: The Oriental Theater Why: Wesley Eisold of Cold Cave has been mostly been releasing singles and EPs since the most recent full length album Cherish the Light Years came out in 2011. His most recent Fate in Seven Lessons (2021) is well within the realm of modern darkwave post-punk with his usual gift for teasing grit and darkness out of the songwriting although plenty of the music has a beautifully melodic melancholia reminiscent of New Order. Eisold has also been involved in a bit of writing including his work with the late, great Mark Lanegon on the book of poetry Plague Poems (2020). Opening the show are two Denver acts. Hex Cassette’s confrontational industrial dance music challenges notions of the role of artist and audience and breaking that barrier for a collective experience. Voight seems to be making good on its threat of completely injecting techno into its own searing shoegaze-infused post-punk and emotionally intense music.
Cannibal Corpse, photo by Alex Morgan
Friday | 12.02 What:Decibel Magazine Metal & Beer Fest Denver 2022 Day 1: Cannibal Corpse, Dark Funeral, Immolation, Black Anvil, Onyx and In The Company of Serpents When: 5 Where: Summit Music Hall Why: This unique event includes some pretty extensive beer tasting for those so inclined but the real reason is to get to see some of the great extreme metal acts of today. That includes death metal legends Cannibal Corpse whose over the top gory lyrics have been banned in various countries despite how obviously absurd they are in the vein of the most demented horror movies of the 80s but really just more creative than a lot of those films. And the music itself stands up well in upholding the brutality of the lyrics with a technical proficiency worthy of the name of the band. Get there early to catch the bluesy, cinematic doom band from Denver In the Company of Serpents who don’t play Denver as much as they once did these days.
Wayfarer, photo courtesy the artists
Saturday | 12.03 What:Decibel Magazine Metal & Beer Fest Denver 2022 Day 2: Pig Destroyer, Skinless, Wayfarer, Of Feather and Bone and Wake When: 4 Where: Summit Music Hall Why: Day two of this event includes more noteworthy acts out of the broad world of extreme metal including performances from Denver’s masters of cinematic doom, Wayfarer, the caustic death grind onslaught of Of Feather and Bone, the blackened grind of Calgary’s Wake and grindcore legends Pig Destroyer whose contorted and savagely brutal music is a fitting companion to JR Hayes’ darkly incisive lyrics about human experiences on the edge.
Soccer Mommy, photo by Sophie Hur
Saturday | 12.03 What: Soccer Mommy w/TOPS When: 7 Where: The Ogden Theatre Why: Sophia Allison has been writing music and performing as Soccer Mommy since she was in college before dropping out and moving back to Nashville to pursue her career as a musician full time. It helped that she had a record deal with Fat Possum which released her debut album Clean in 2018 before she turned twenty-one. The album’s emotional openness and unabashed embrace of unconventional melody and song structure while crafting undeniable hooks garnered the record widespread critical acclaim. The most recent Soccer Mommy album Somtimes, Forever (2022) was produced with Daniel Lopatin aka Oneohtrix Point Never and the team-up brought to Allison’s particularly confessional lyrics and always imaginative guitar work an experimental edge and sound design element for the songwriter’s most musically adventurous recording of her career thus far. Additionally, the lyrics probably startled listeners that expect artists to be vague in their sentiments in a pop song setting but hasn’t Allison been poetically pointed and vivid in her words all along? Opening the show is Montreal’s indie pop band TOPS whose gentle yet passionate compositions seem like they’d be pretty light and airy live as well but at the show the band seems to exude an unexpected vitality.
HaemoGoblin, photo courtesy the artists
Saturday | 12.03 What: HaemoGoblin and Fast N Loose at L. Lazer art opening When: 9 Where: The Crypt ($10 cash) Why: HaemoGoblin is an electronic duo that will be performing what it calls a ritualistic invocation. Calling the performance “Inauguration” what you will see is a “mini stage play set to music, designed to disorient, disturb and ‘shake awake’ the audience for a half hour or longer.” What will this look like? Well, veteran carnie frontwoman Ortenzia von Deadworry and S.S.G. her “summoned demon” synth player will definitely bring some theater to an often very predictable local music scene. Also on the bill for this art opening featuring the work of L. Lazer is Fast N Loose is a Motorhead tribute band.
The Soft Moon in 2015, photo by Tom Murphy
Sunday | 12.04 What:The Soft Moon w/Nuovo Testamento and Kill You Club DJs When: 8 Where: Hi-Dive Why: Luis Vasquez was a little ahead of the curve when he launched The Soft Moon in 2009. Originally a solo project, The Soft Moon evolved to become more of a live band that brought Vasquez’s songs of nervy energy and anxiety-purging urgency to life. His most recent album is 2022’s Exister which in the wake of one of the most challenging periods in recent world history on a wide scale is a catharsis of overcoming the enervating influences that come your way and considering the mere continuation of existence a triumph in itself. The songs seem to have leaned more into the industrial side of Vasquez’s songwriting with some real visceral power driving the moody atmospherics. Los Angeles-based darkwave/synth pop band Nuovo Testamento opens the show.
Hembree, photo by Jonny Marlow
Sunday | 12.04 What:Hembree w/Little Hurt, False Report and Mae Mae When: 7 Where: Larimer Lounge Why: Hembree from Kansas City, Missouri that formed in 2015 and its big break to a national audience was the placement of its single “Holy Water” in an Apple ad during Super Bowl LII. The group’s tight rhythms serve as a foundation for the rest of the songwriting to stretch out whether into focused, unadorned rock songs or expansive, moody pieces and the techno-underpinned indie funk that is at the core of its sound. The group’s new album It’s a Dream! is a record tinged with nostalgic examinations of the roots of current anxieties and insecurities expressed in hazy melodies and resonating tones driven by a hypnotic beat. On the surface it may sound like another current indie rock offering with more than its fair share of more imaginative songwriting but Hembree really charts an internal journey in which one is prepared to exit the gauntlet of lucid dreams trapped in feeling everything until it makes sense and after one is able to move through tangled emotional memories.
The Lemonheads, photo by Barry Brescheisen
Monday | 12.05 What: The Lemonheads w/Bass Drum Of Death and On Being an Angel https://www.bluebirdtheater.net/events/detail/443688 When: 7 Where: The Bluebird Theater Why: The Lemonheads are one of few still extant bands to have come to prominence during the alternative rock era that didn’t quite fit in with the more trendy subgenres that made that era one of the most vibrant in the history of popular music. Its own brand of power pop was a vehicle for the songwriting of only constant member, singer and guitarist Evan Dando. The latter seems to have an ability to look into situations and people and extrapolate poetic insights with a compassionate perspective. The title track of the group’s 1992 breakthrough album It’s A Shame About Ray isn’t just about a troubled person who doesn’t fit in with any school and its politics, it’s about feeling like a perpetual outsider and the rest of the songs on the record are vivid stories about people we all know and might even be in a way that didn’t comport with the tales of desperation one heard in a lot of grunge and too “dark” for more faux posi faire of that era to now. Ever since The Lemonheads went on hiatus in 1997 and returned to operations in 2005, the group hasn’t been prolific with original material but Dando’s interpretations of artists that have influenced him on Varshons (2009) Varshons 2 (2019) have been a peek into what Dando’s brain has latched onto for inspiration and perhaps for this performance we’ll get to hear what the veteran songwriter has been up to in recent years. One thing is for certain his own songs have aged far better than those of many of his contemporaries owing in part to the gentle but raw honesty of the songwriting. Also on this bill is Bass Drum of Death originally from Oxford, Mississippi whose blues tinged noisy garage rock has a refreshing level of grit and menace befitting the name of the project.
Monday | 12.05 What:W.A.S.P. w/Armored Saint When: 7 Where: The Oriental Theater Why: W.A.S.P. is the kind of band out of the glam metal era in Los Angeles of the 1980s that more than any other group out of that world that courted controversy. Its music was and is a spirited, melodic hard rock with a strong sense of theater even in the songwriting. Sure its cover art for its debut single “Animal (Fuck Like a Beast)” with the circular saw codpiece offended people that took it more literally than could even remotely be intended. Certainly former guitarist Chris Holmes looked the buffoon drunk in a pool with his mother sitting by in the 1988 documentary The Decline of Western Civilization Part II: The Metal Years seemed to affirm the extreme and self-destructive hedonism associated with the band. But at its best W.A.S.P. were avatars of a music scene that could be cartoonish, bombastic and puerile while offering an alternative to a conformist puritanical culture with its lurid and triumphant storytelling. Perhaps co-headlining though less notorious is Armored Saint who also started in 1982 in Los Angeles and also pre-dated glam metal though often associated with that world of music due to the big hair and knack for solid melodic hooks. But like W.A.S.P. there was something with more edge than most of its glam rock contemporaries. While never quite having any mainstream breakthrough hits, Armored Saint was a staple of 1980s metal that has held up better than much of the music out of the 1980s Los Angeles heavy metal scene has.
Water From Your Eyes, photo by Ana Fangayen
Tuesday | 12.06 What: Palm w/Water From Your Eyes When: 7 Where: Larimer Lounge Why: As Water From Your Eyes, Nate Amos and Rachel Brown have made a career of using an eclectic and ever evolving palette of sounds to explore ideas and concepts through what could be considered dance pop. That is if your frame of reference might be the experimental electronic and punk out of New York and Los Angeles of the last fifteen years. Its 2020 album 33:44 is something you’d expect more out of a band on the Northern Spy label with its beautifully dire, ambient and modern classical soundscapes that are almost an homage to Penderecki’s “Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima” crossed with Howard Shore’s work for the films of David Cronenberg. But the duo’s most recent album Structure at times sounds like what might have happened if Aphex Twin in writing Selected Ambient Works Volume II had decided to turn those into pop songs. Except that Water From Your Eyes inserts enigmatic spoken word elements that serve as a a meta narrative that re-configures traditional album structure and gives the whole album a non-linear quality made cohesive by reimagining the nature of how creative work is structured. Fitting that this arty yet incredibly accessible group is sharing the stage with Philadelphia’s art rock weirdos Palm touring in support of Nicks and Grazes, an album that sounds like the band challenged its members to go on separate retreats to clear their minds of contemporary influences and to immerse themselves in non-musical art forms and come back to make the kind of psychedelic rock record that comes across like a collage of playful daydreams and arranged in a way that brushes aside conventional structure itself.
OFF! photo by Jeff Forney
Thursday and Friday | 12.08 and 12.09 What: OFF! w/Zulu When: 8 Where: Hi-Dive Why: OFF! is of course the newer hardcore project fronted by legendary vocalist Keith Morris formerly of Black Flag and of Circle Jerks. The current lineup includes founding member Dmitri Coats of Burning Brides on guitar and as of 2021 Autry Fulbright II on bass and Justin Brown on drums. After an eight year hiatus on releases, OFF! released Free LSD in 2022. It’s still the searing hardcore sound you’d expect from the group but there are some clear differences with what sounds like synth and other ambient sounds giving the songs a psychedelic feel that wasn’t so much a part of its earlier sound. A refreshing update for a band that still maintains the intensity and edge without being stuck in a stylistic rut. Opening both dates at the Hi-Dive is anti-racist powerviolence band Zulu which injects its music with R&B samples and eschews the tough guy stance of hardcore.
Pond, photo by Matsu
Friday | 12.09 What:Pond w/Cryogeyser — rescheduled to April 16, 2023 When: 8 Where: Gothic Theatre Why: Pond has shared membership with Tame Impala over the years with lead singer Nick Albrook being involved with both bands for a few years and Kevin Parker serving as drummer in earlier years and as a producer until 2020. The polished psychedelic pop of its first eight albums was helped in no small part due to Parker’s influence in the production department but with the 2021 album 9, Pond has given us its most interesting record to date with more grit in its overall sound, some edge to its funk elements and a willingness to embrace some rawness in its sound as well as take its atmospherics into a realm flirting with space rock. Los Angeles-based jangle fuzz trio Cryogeyser opens the show with its melancholic, lo-fi dream pop.
Obituary, photo by Tim Hubbard
Friday | 12.09 What:Obituary w/Amon Amarth, Carcass and Cattle Decapitation When: 5:30 Where: The Fillmore Auditorium Why: Obituary is touring ahead of the 2023 release of its new album Dying of Everything. After nearly 40 years as a band exploring the outer edges of the death metal format and pioneering some of that aesthetic it can be challenging to have something new to say with your music and a return to form can be tedious. But Obituary this time decided to stick to writing a strong set of material worthy of its pre-1997 split output. The dire messaging delivered with still convincingly brutal vocals but without cartoonish lyrics. Rounding out the bill are Seattle grindcore outfit Cattle Decapitation who are somehow both keenly aware of the absurdity and cruelty of modern human civilization and the need to ridicule the hubris of our species without making light of the situation in which we and other animals find ourselves due to a tolerance for savage forms of economic and social organization. And yes, grindcore/death metal legends/pioneers Carcass and Swedish, melodic death metal group Amon Amarth and its proclivity for lyrics about the Viking Age and a time before the Christian domination of Nordic culture.
The Smile, from the band’s Facebook page
Saturday and Sunday | 12.10 and 12.11 What: The Smile w/Robert Stillman When: 7 Where: Mission Ballroom Why: The Smile is Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood of Radiohead fame with drummer Tom Skinner of Sons of Kemet. The trio made its debut at Glastonbury Festival in 2021 and its music produced during the limitations of association and collaboration during the COVID-19 lockdown emerged as an intimate and spacious, lonely set of melodies and fragile emotional expressions. In 2022 the group released its debut album A Light for Attracting Attention. The record is contemplative as one might expect with the musicians involved but also vulnerable and open in sentiments embracing a massive level of uncertainty and peril that continues to flow seemingly unchecked in a world beyond the ongoing pandemic and perpetuating a sustained anxiety that will have untold impacts for decades to come and written about in history books or their equivalent in some future time should such indulgences be permitted in a post-authoritarian era. The Smile seems to have written a record from the perspective of people keenly attuned to these concerns and not knowing if they’ll live long enough to see better days but not being attached to a sinking spirit of despair.
Bartees Strange, photo by Luke Piotrowski
Wednesday | 12.14 What:Bartees Strange w/Pom Pom Squad and They Hate Change When: 7 Where: The Bluebird Theater Why: Bartees Leon Cox Jr. has worn various hats in his career both musical and otherwise. But he is perhaps best known for his music under the moniker Bartees Strange following his stint in in the post-hardcore band Stay Inside. With the release of his 2020 debut Live Forever, Cox has proven himself a master of writing emotionally nuanced and vulnerable pop songs that incorporate elements of indie folk and, synth pop and hip-hop but with a production element that seems to make the music and its complex arrangements hit with a stirring immediacy. Fans of Twin Shadow will hear some similar sonic touchstones and the sophomore album Farm to Table (2022) revealed more of Cox’s gift for genre bending to great effect in delivering songs that are at once deeply personal and politically charged.
Twin Tribes, photo from Bandcamp
Thursday | 12.15 What: Twin Tribes w/Dancing Plague and Plague Garden When: 7 Where: HQ Why: Twin Tribes from Brownsville, TX have garnered no small amount of buzz for its blend of minimal synth and post-punk and a kind of vitality amid melancholic tones. Its most recent studio album Ceremony (2019) sounds like songs written during a flurry of peak emotions and capturing the urgency and desperation of a recent breakup. In most cities of size, Twin Tribes is performing in medium sized clubs but in Denver we’re fortunate to be able to catch the popular band in a small club like HQ. Dancing Plague is a darkwave solo act from Portland, OR whose dusky synth pop is like a darker OMD with some touches of influence from John Maus. In the interest of full transparency, the author of this blurb is in Plague Garden, a noteworthy post-punk/New Wave band from Denver.
ABANDONS, photo by Tom Murphy
Thursday | 12.15 What:ABANDONS w/Old Soul Dies Young, Almanac Man and Fainting Dreams When: 7 Where: Hi-Dive Why: This show is a nice split of experimental noise rock and shoegaze. ABANDONS might at another time be considered a post-rock band but in its mix one hears bits of post-metal, noise rock and ambient and it live shows have a visceral quality with music that one might more expect to be performed in a more meditative spirit. Old Soul Dies Young is the kind of band that happens when guys who were way into post-hardcore and doom drop that sound palette for something more melodic and atmospheric but with the same level of sonic bombast. Almanac Man is like a collision of doom and borderline aggressive, Chicago style noise rock. Fainting Dreams is the kind of dream pop band that comes about when its members maybe came up through hardcore and death metal and are shedding the aggression and mathematical precision and heaviness for radical vulnerability and dreamlike tones.
Organ, photo by Tom Murphy
Friday | 12.16 What: Sounds for Charity: Avarice, Organ, No More Cheering, Gabriel Albelo When: 7 Where: Glob Why: Proceeds from this show go to Colorado Coalition for the Homeless. Warm weather gear and hand warmers also accepted. For your donation you can catch the glitch industrial dance stylings of Organ, Gabriel Albelo’s solo performance of his heavy psychedelic rock, Avarice’s dark, menacing industrial techno and the prepared noise environment soundscapes of No More Cheering.
Meet the Giant in 2022, photo by Tom Murphy
Saturday | 12.17 What:Love Stallion w/Shanghai Metro Temple and Meet the Giant When: 8 Where: Lost Lake Why: Love Stallion is basically an 80s style glam metal band and if that’s your thing they’re definitely on the better end of the modern version of that with of course stage antics and style and the level of musicianship you’d expect. Shanghai Metro Temple is a fairly straight ahead indie rock band that sounds like it is heavily influenced by late 90s alternative and hard rock. Meet the Giant fuse downtempo electronic pop with post-punk, heavy shoegaze and imaginative soundscapes on the production end.
Wave Decay in 2022, photo by Tom Murphy
Saturday | 12.17 What:Bluebook w/Wave Decay and Mon Cher When: 8 Where: Globe Hall Why: Bluebook these days isn’t the experimental indie folk jazz band of its early days. Instead there is a darkness and not so buttoned downed, controlled intensity to the performances. Seems like Julie Davis is letting her flaws, anxieties and dreams hang more loosely with this version of the band and that has just meant its music has blossomed more and its sound palette greatly expanded with the inclusion of formery Monofog and Snake Rattle Rattle Snake singer Hayley Helmericks on drums and backing vocals, Jess Parsons on keys and other instrumentation and maybe even Anna Morsett on guitar. Wave Decay is the kind of band that sounds like it took the door through psych garage into more shoegaze sounds and all the better for it. Mon Cher’s music is a particularly transporting and lies somewhere between dream pop and downtempo jazz.
Milk Blossoms in 2021, photo by Tom Murphy
Saturday | 12.17 What:Milk Blossoms w/Meek and Knuckle Pups When: 8 Where: Hi-Dive Why: Knuckle Pups write radically vulnerable and thoughtful indie pop in the classic mold and its 2022 album TV Ready is both heartbreaking and uplifting. Milk Blossoms play a rare show with Michelle Rocquet now that she spends much of her time in New York City for professional and academic pursuits. So with this configuration of the band you’ll get the full dual vocal effect of powerfully rendered, tender pop songs that are irresistibly twee and cathartic.
Master Ferocious in 2021, photo by Tom Murphy
Sunday | 12.18 What:Never Kenezzard w/Zingaro, Sea of Flame and Master Ferocious When: 3 Where: Globe Hall Why: Never Kenezzard don’t really fit in with the metal scene so much though its blend of progressive rock sensibilities, doom and psychedelia finds it in a particularly more interesting corner of that realm of music. Sea of Flame are a sludge rock/doom band whose epic arrangements are not the rote edition of what doom has become. Master Ferocious somehow mix classic power metal with glam rock without seeming corny because the musicianship is so strong and the performance bordering on theatrical.
Alaska Thunderfuck, photo by Albert Sanchez
Sunday | 12.18 What:Alaska Thunderfuck Presents: The Red 4 Filth Tour When: 7 Where: The Bluebird Theater Why: Alaska Thunderfuck is perhaps best known for her competing in RuPaul’s Drag Race but over the last several years she has cultivated a pop music career. Steeped in modern electronic pop and a showcase for her outsize stage persona. Her latest album Red 4 Filth leaves behind some of the camp and humor of previous releases with a more obviously sincere set of pop songs that bring together sounds from hip-hop and classic modern pop including a cover of “All That She Wants” by Ace of Base.
Faceman in 2013, photo by Tom Murphy
Thursday | 12.22 What:FaceMan Western Jupiter vinyl release, Tivoli Club Brass Band and Anthony Ruptak When: 7 Where: The Skylark Lounge/Bobcat Club Why: Faceman celebrates the release of its latest album on vinyl as well as making available on vinyl for the first time its 2016 album Wild and Hunting. The band fronted by Steve Faceman has long offered finely crafted pop Americana with an experimental edge though its new album Western Jupiter shows an embrace of a more straightforward approach to songcraft. But every release is fulled with songs that have heartfelt and sharply observed lyrics in stories about life that feel like they’re part of your life because Steve has honed in on an aspect of culture and social reality that seems to be in the air in that moment. In years past Faceman has put on theatrical performances with set pieces and costumes that help to illustrate the music in dramatic fashion in collaboration with local visual artists who have helped to make these outfits and elaborate sets and pieces of artwork like the stage Megalodon of several years ago or the huge tornado of paper made for the epic Faceman’s 100 Year Storm event of 2016 at The Oriental Theater in which Faceman invited 100 bands to perform. So there’s a bit of community involvement and creative vision behind what drives the band even if it’s not necessarily abundantly obvious from listening to its excellent songs on their own.
SORROWS, photo by Tom Murphy
Friday | 12.23 What:Baby Baby, Gila Teen, SORROWS and Ray Diess When: 7 Where: Enigma Bazaar Why: Baby Baby is the indie dream pop project of Lily Conrad. Reminiscent of bedroom pop artists of the late 90s and 2000s and has the aesthetics of lo-fi but with better sound production than much of that stuff often had. Gila Teen is the genre defying emo-shoegaze-post-punk band whose eccentric songs nevertheless always seem to be a direct line into the anxieties and affections coursing through the cosmos at the given moment of the performance. SORROWS is an emotionally charged downtempo band comprised of vibrant vocals, elegantly crafted rhythms and electronic production. Ray Diess is one of the Denver scene’s most compelling darkwave pop artists operating today.
Julian Street Nightmare, photo by Tom Murphy
Friday | 12.23 What: Fast Eddy, Julian Street Nightmare and Morning Oil When: 8 Where: Globe Hall (free) Why: When garage punk and the more mundane end of psychedelic rock collapsed under the weight of its own hubris and fake excitement some of the people who were on one end of that broader scene with any talent or imagination had to do something different and Fast Eddy came out of that milieu as a solid power pop band. Julian Street Nightmare create music from a thrilling nexus of post-punk, surf rock and art rock. Morning Oil sounds like it took some bit of inspiration from the better part of 80s glam metal and The Dead Boys.
Tuesday | 12.27 What:The Roots and BIG K.R.I.T. When: 7 Where: Mission Ballroom Why: The Roots are the influential, jazz rooted hip-hop band from Philadelphia that many may also know for serving as the house band on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. Its use of live musical instrumentation has always set The Roots apart from most hip-hop groups whose use of samples is most often used to craft the beat and thus its live performances have a powerful physical presence that is impossible to duplicate otherwise. Big K.R.I.T. is the acclaimed rapper and producer from Mississippi whose eclectic production and socially conscious lyrics seem to hit at a very grassroots level of appeal with an accessible sound and a way of presenting heady ideas in a way that is both creative and personally relatable.
Voight, photo by Tom Murphy
Thursday | 12.29 What: Watch Yourself Die, Voight, Sell Farm https://www.eventbrite.com/e/sell-farm-voight-wyd-at-the-mercury-cafe-tickets-481076160747?aff=ebdshpsearchautocomplete When: 8 Where: Mercury Café Why: Watch Yourself Die is kind of a post-punk supergroup comprised of members of Hex Cassette, Ray Diess and Julian Street Nightmare. Voight has long blurred the line between shoegaze, post-punk, darkwave and techno and infused it with emotionally intense live performances. Sell Farm might be an indiepop band but one that doesn’t see a reason why heavy dub and industrial music can’t be a part of the overall wheelhouse of sounds going into the project’s eclectic but always interesting songwriting.
Thursday | 12.29 What:Discomfort Creature w/Curious Things, Nightfishing When: 8 Where: Hi-Dive Why: Discomfort Creature is a punk band from Denver whose lineup includes current and former members of Gamits and Uphollow and this show signals the vinyl release of its 2021 self-titled debut on Snappy Little Numbers now that Chris Fogal is back in town for the occasion from his current residence in Switzerland. The record is an energetic fusion of pop punk and the more angular, Dischord-esque variety of punk.
Brotherhood of Machines at Deep Club event in 2014, photo by Tom Murphy
Friday | 12.30 What:FOANS, Brotherhood of Machines (album release) and Luxury Hearse When: 9 Where: Broadway Roxy Why: FOANS is the brainchild of producer Andrew Dahabrah whose melancholic house and techno music has been at the center of Denver’s underground dance music world for several years. Luxury Hearse is the project of Dan Coleman (Blank Human) and Rin Howell (Psychic Secretary) that breaks the barrier between techno, ambient and musique concrète. Brotherhood of Machines is apparently returning with its first new release and album in over six years. The project live has been a mysterious and sonically rich example of where ambient, abstract industrial, techno and noise converge to produce a sound that establishes a deep sense of mood and place.
Queen City Sounds and Art 
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