Red Rocks – Queen City Sounds and Art

Live Show Review: Yeah Yeah Yeahs at Red Rocks 6/5/2023

Yeah Yeah Yeahs at Red Rocks 6/5/23, photo by Tom Murphy

The evening spring downpours in the Denver metro area took a break for the duration of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs show at Red Rocks but something about the atmosphere seemed to enhance a dream-like ambiance to the performance.

Perfume Genius at Red Rocks 6/5/23, photo by Tom Murphy

Opening act Perfume Genius turned the stage into something of a Broadway show set with a backdrop like a large theater curtain or a massive pipe organ. But whatever the exact nature of the image it enhanced the expansive power of Michael Hadreas’ operatic and impassioned vocals and commanding presence as he and his band performed a broad selection of ten songs from his most recent four albums including ending the set with a rousing version of “Queen” from 2014’s Too Bright, one of art pop classics of the past decade.

Yeah Yeah Yeahs are no strangers to Red Rocks over the years but how would the trio, a quartet for this tour, manifest its music for this concert? As someone who had only ever seen Yeah Yeah Yeahs once in 2002 when the group opened for Jon Spencer Blues Explosion after Liars did a mind melting set opening the entire show only to put on the kind of charismatic feat of rock and roll theater that has cemented the band as one of the greatest live acts of all time I had high expectations. Until recently reading Meet Me in the Bathroom and seeing the documentary of the same name I had more or less checked out of the band for the past twenty years but when Cool It Down came out in 2022 I’d hear singles randomly in public places and really got into those songs even though what I heard felt more mellow than I had been expecting from the group that put out that debut EP and Fever to Tell. A friend had gifted me an old promo copy of Show Your Bones awhile back and listening to that it was obvious I had missed out on years of music from one of early 2000s indie rock’s best bands through my own life’s inertia and following other paths of contemporary music.

Yeah Yeah Yeahs with Michael Hadreas at Red Rocks 6/5/23, photo by Tom Murphy

So how did Yeah Yeah Yeahs measure up 23 years into their existence? Brian Chase, Nick Zinner and Imaad Wasif walked onto stage in the beginning to set the mood. No big props, a projection screen mostly minimal until later in the set. When Karen O walked onto the stage she had an outfit like some kind of glam rock superhero mixed with Sun Ra (but what’s the difference there, right?). Opening the set with the opening track to Cool It Down “Spitting Off the Edge of the World” was an emotionally electrifying and epic swing into a generous selection of songs going back across all the full-length albums. Michael Hadreas joined Karen O center stage for his vocal contributions as he did on the studio record and the two singer’s keyed into each other and played off each other like old collaborators. And it was in that melancholic song that a sense of sustained joy coming from the musicians that permeated the rest of the concert.

There was a spontaneous energy to every song and you could see the band performing like they hadn’t been doing some of these songs for years, like they were playing this music at a small club but enjoying the large scale of the show and feeding off the energy of the collective moment. Karen O had the kind of on stage energy that’s impossible to resist and not be swept up into the music and share in her own excitement. You could see how the musicians all played off of one another and contributed to the momentum that coursed through from first song through the encore but in her movements and gestures and the enthusiasm she exuded, Karen channeled that to the audience and then back to the rest of the band in the kind of audience and performer interplay you hope to see but rarely experience at a large concert. So many of the songs are intimate and personal and that translated perfectly somehow to Red Rocks because Yeah Yeah Yeahs in this minimalistic stage set up put the focus on the human performance with projections like the spacescape later on and the streaming colors earlier accentuating the mood and providing atmosphere more than an inherent part of the appeal of the stage show itself.

There was no skimping on the energy, everyone in the band put their all into what they were doing and it was obvious that they wouldn’t rather be doing anything else but this thing they love that fortunately for them lots of other people love as well. When you’ve seen some of modern music’s greatest frontpeople for over 20 years it was perhaps more obvious this time out than it was in 2002 that Karen O and her combination of humor, exuberance and imaginative and unconventional style is one of the greats and that without the context of Zinner’s and Chase’s own passion and ability to sync with each other and connect with the people that showed up with such immediacy and affection none of this might have had the same impact. Evidently nine years after the previous Yeah Yeah Yeahs album, these now legends of NYC indie rock have plenty of new ticks up their sleeves and the ability to deliver the goods with one of the most captivating sets in a large venue in a decade.

Yeah Yeah Yeahs Set List for June 5, 2023 at Red Rocks
Spitting Off the Edge of the World
Cheated Hearts
Pin
Shame and Fortune
Burning
Zero
Wolf
Soft Shock
Lovebomb
Blacktop
Sacrilege
Turn Into
Gold Lion
Maps
Heads Will Roll

Encore
Y Control
Date With the Night

Live Show Review: Kraftwerk at Red Rocks 6/30/22

Kraftwerk at Red Rocks 6/30/22, photo by Tom Murphy

Kraftwerk went beyond the 3D presentation for the 2022 Red Rocks show. Seemed like it couldn’t work when the light was still strong well into the evening but apparently it was oddly effective and surreal if you got a pair of the glasses to fully take in that aspect of the performance. But even without the glasses whoever set up the sound for this night managed to give the renowned amphitheater a robust level of sonic fidelity adequate to one of the greatest and most influential bands of electronic and popular music.

On stage Kraftwerk walked on to a platform on the stage that gave the impression that we were watching the quartet on a television lending the whole show a meta quality that enhanced the group’s own implicit commentary on society, media and technology by employing the simple prop of a familiar cultural artifact write large from which to project the music to the audience. Behind the four members of Kraftwerk was one projection screen and when 8-bit graphic numbers counted to eight it was clear the concert would open with “Numbers.”

Ralf Hütter of Kraftwerk at Red Rocks 6/30/22, photo by Tom Murphy

Across the evening with so many of Kraftwerk’s great songs from the breadth of its recorded catalog one thing that had to have struck anyone close enough to see the expressions on the faces of the band and their movements is how much they put themselves as humans into the music even though they appeared to be standing at consoles simply pressing buttons and looking impassive. But Ralf Hütter looked impassioned at points and with the projections flowing depicting the settings and actions of the song it was the members of Kraftwerk that kept this music grounded in a shared human experience of music made using science seemingly written for cyborgs but performed by physical people and not an A.I.. Not that Kraftwerk might not find that a useful element of its compositions going into the future.

It’s easy to think of songs like “The Model,” “Autobahn,” “Trans-Europe Express,” “Tour de France,” “The Robots” and “Spacelab” as existing and best enjoyed purely in the mind but the low end and the broad frequency range of the music hit strongly and moved through you in this environment in a way that made it feel like the most transcendent music in the world. This music many of us have heard for most or all of our lives but maybe weren’t fortunate enough to witness other times Kraftwerk made a stop in Colorado came to life as day turned to night and even when the wind rose precipitously and the group left the stage for an intermission and came back it seemed to accentuate how Kraftwerk’s sounds and ideas have weathered well the decades and still sound fresh, unusual and strikingly original.

Live Show Review: Modest Mouse and Future Islands at Red Rocks, 9/28/2021

Modest Mouse at Red Rocks, 9/28/21, photo by Tom Murphy

On what turned out to be the last night before the rains and chill nights of fall came to stay in the Denver Metropolitan area, Modest Mouse and Future Islands brought an impressive display emotionally charged, melancholic pop. The great art punk band Empath opened the show but some of us ran into some of the gnarled traffic of rush hour, road construction and computerized misdirection getting into Red Rocks and had to miss their set.

Future Islands at Red Rocks, 9/28/21, photo by Tom Murphy

It would be easy to be jaded about what might be called classic indie rock at this point but something about the music of both Modest Mouse and Future Islands have built into their songwriting an enduring quality borne of the music coming out of genuine, heartfelt emotions and not coming at that songwriting from a conventional direction. That bands this idiosyncratic and imbued with a gloriously raw sense of heightened feeling are able to draw a crowd of size speaks to the validity of music that clearly isn’t being honed or polished to be anything more than what it was in the beginning and from which it developed organically.

After having seen Future Islands at much smaller venues from the more intimate like the Denver DIY space Rhinoceropolis in 2008 and 2010 and Larimer Lounge in 2011 and small/medium sized rooms like The Bluebird Theater and the Gothic Theatre it was refreshing to see that the band was able to take its hushed and reflective yet expansive art pop and its delicate sensibilities to the big stage and translate songs of such deep personal meaning for such a large performance space. Of course frontman Sam Herring treated us to his acrobatic movements, dramatically acting out the powerful feelings coursing through him as he relives some of the experiences that inspired the lyrics and as melded with the dynamic and evocative music that gave those words such a resonant context. In one moment Herring went for it so hard, swept up in the moment that he fell down and joked about the last time he played Red Rocks he tore his ACL with the moral of the story being “Don’t try to impress Morrissey” as that’s for whom Future Islands opened in July 2015. The set consisted of some of the band’s most beloved songs including breakthrough hit “Seasons” as performed memorably on Late Night With David Letterman in 2014 as well as deep, older cuts like “Tin Man” and “Little Dreamer.” Songs from the band’s 2020 album As Long As Your Are, “Plastic Beach,” “Thrill,” and especially “For Sure” with its tonal nods to early Depeche Mode hit the perfect mood for the night and a strong reminder that Future Islands has from the beginning established an aesthetic that is equal parts nostalgia and immediacy, a mix that seems somehow to help with processing regret and the kinds of emotional trauma that don’t crash into your psyche so much as haunt the back of your mind.

Nearly 30 years into his career writing music with Modest Mouse, Isaac Brock might be excused for resting on his laurels some but if his recorded output and this performance are any indication that’s not exactly happening. The band is supposedly known for having bad live shows but having seen the group in 2000 for the Moon & Antarctica tour and in 2008 opening for REM at Red Rocks while Johnny Marr was in the band I’d say the only Modest Mouse gigs I’ve seen have been solidly emotionally stirring including this concert. I also read some reviews of the band’s latest album, 2021’s The Golden Casket, with criticism of how there’s too much going on in every song. Perhaps we heard different albums or someone missed how eclectic the band’s music has been since very early on making for a fascinating eclectic body of work that isn’t stuck in a stylistic rut yet possessed of a signature sound. Maybe this new record didn’t work for those more critical reviewers.

Seeing newer songs like “We Are Between,” “Wooden Soldiers,” “Fuck Your Acid Trip” and “Back to the Middle” alongside classic tracks like “Cowboy Dan,” “Bukowski,” “Tiny Cities Made of Ashes,” “Float On” and “Dark Center of the Universe” made it all seem like part of the band’s colorful and unique storytelling style with a broad palette of sounds that reconcile punk, synth pop, Americana, funk, Eastern European folk etc. into one of the distinct branches of indie rock that Modest Mouse helped to establish. That is to say a kind of music that makes it acceptable to write music that encourages you to take it on on its own terms without it needing to conform to something more familiar and established. The band’s multiple instruments were arrayed across the stage like a kind of orchestra in miniature so that its layers of sound could be brought to bear with ease and a precision that doesn’t seem there as the emotions are frayed around the edges in the vocals and expressive instrumentation. But seeing Modest Mouse in this incarnation made the intentionality of its sprawling and patchwork style obvious.

Later in the set proper Brock mentioned, with some amusement, how he was made aware of how his shouts of “Well” in “King Rat” had been made into a meme, providing a moment of humor in a set of music brimming with emotional intensity and insightful observations on personal psychology and society that have aged surprisingly well since the 90s. Perhaps this tapping into universal and long term human psychology explains some of Modest Mouse’s continued popularity but seeing the newer and older songs together in a touching demonstration of authentic feeling in musical performance it was also obvious that one of the classic bands of indie rock as we know it could evolve without losing sight of why it wrote music earlier in its career and why someone might connect with its songs.