Salads and Sunbeams – Queen City Sounds and Art

Best Shows in Denver December 2025

**Primitive Man performs at the Decibel Magazine Metal & Beer Fest on 12/6, photo by Vanessa Valadez**

Tuesday | 12.02
What: The Home Team: The Crucible of Life Tour w/Arrows in Action and Makari
When: 6:30
Where: The Oriental Theater
Why: Seattle’s The Home Team is touring in the wake of the release of the deluxe edition of its 2024 album The Crucible of Life. The record is a combination of its post-hardcore roots, R&B and modern alt-pop with the kind of production and electronic elements one would imagine out of that melding of sounds and styles. Also on the bill is Arrows in Action who recently released their new album I Think I’ve Been Here Before (Nettwerk). Since forming in 2017 the group’s fusion of modern rock and pop songwriting with R&B vocals and electronic pop production has garnered a bit of a wide online following. But live the band’s energy and commanding performances are proving it’s more than a studio creation capable of delivering a more visceral version of the slick production of its recordings.

Thursday | 12.04
What:Decibel Magazine Metal & Beer Fest: Denver pre-fest with Terror Corpse, Vimana and Death Possession
When: 7 doors
Where: Ratio Beerworks 2920 Larimer St.
Why: Decibel Magazine’s Metal & Beer Fest has been pretty reliable for booking some of the most interesting bands in the realm of extreme metal since its inception. This pre-fest event includes performances from Texas-based blackened death metal group Terror Corpse, technical death metal/grindcore band Vimana and the ominous sounds of Denver-based death metal outfit Death Possession.

Friday and Saturday | 12.05 and 12.06
What: Story Of The Year and Senses Fail w/Armor For Sleep
When: 7
Where: The Summit Music Hall
Why: Two of the better and more popular bands out of that post-hardcore and pop-punk crossover in the early 2000s are sharing the bill on this tour with Senses Fail and Story of the Year. The latter settled on the name in 2002 after forming in 1995 in St. Louis. It’s intricate yet hooky guitar riffs and emotionally charged vocals weaving between emo sensitivity and more distorted screaming meant Story of the Year was in the pocket of a popular style with younger fans of punk looking for something with more edge than the typical pop punk of the day. The band split for a couple of years in 2011 and reconvened in 2013. For this tour you may be able to hear some of the quartet’s forthcoming album A.R.S.O.N..

Blood Incantation, photo by Julian Weigand

Friday and Saturday | 12.05 and 12.06
What: Decibel Metal & Beer Festival Day 1 (12.05) Blood Incantation, Chat Pile, The Red Chord, Panopticon and Castrator, Day 2 (12.06) Acid Bath, Eyehategod, Deadguy, Primitive Man, Conan and Necrofier
When: 6 (12.05) 5 (12.06)
Where: Fillmore Auditorium
Why: Decibel Magazine brings to Denver a generous sampling of the best of current extreme metal for a two day festival. Attendees can opt to buy a ticket that includes getting in on the beer varieties being showcased at the event or a mere “Metal Only” pass for just the music. The first night is headlined by Denver-based psychedelic, progressive death metal band Blood Incantation and one might argue also the political noise rock legends Chat Pile. The second night is indisputably headlined by influential and foundational sludge metal group Acid Bath who are reuniting for a handful of shows this year. Also on that night earlier on is Denver’s death grind trio Primitive Man who recently released their latest sprawling epic of an album Observance with its even more pointed and withering commentary on a corrupt and self-destructive society and economic order and even their own part in its continuance.

Sunday | 12.07
What: Wet Leg w/Capture This and Bob Moses (club set)
When: 5
Where: Mission Ballroom
Why: Wet Leg is the scrappy post-punk/pop band from the Isle of Wight that started garnering a bit of a cult following after the release of its debut single “Chaise Longue” in 2021 followed by the full-length including that song in 2022. The song and the band’s general presentation is frank in its depiction of sexuality but with a wit and charm and undeniable hooks that keep you coming back to listen. The full length was brimming with tales of everyday life delivered with the spirited sass that you would hope would inform the rest of the songs. The group released its sophomore record Moisturizer in 2025 and its own eclectic set of songs delivered on the promise of the debut including lead single “Catch These Fists” about not defaulting to being polite when you get harassed in public places.

Tuesday | 12.09
What: House of Harm w/Past Self and killyouclub DJs
When: 8
Where: The Crypt
Why: House of Harm is a post-punk band from Boston whose sparkling melodies and melancholic vocals could be like any other band out of recent darkwave. But there seems to be a bit more emotional urgency in the singing and keen attention to the electronic end of the soundscapes that drive the music. Past Self is a darkwave/death rock band from Las Vegas with leanings toward more ethereal dream pop.

Friday | 12.12
What: Belly 30th Anniversary of King – 2 sets one night
When: 7
Where: The Oriental Theater
Why: Belly Formed in 1991 shortly after Tanya Donelly left influential post-punk band Throwing Muses. She had spent a brief stint in the early version of The Breeders but after 1992 Belly became the singer/guitarist’s main creative focus and the 1993 release of the group’s debut album Star landed the music on regular rotation on MTV during that first great wave of alternative rock. Founding bassist, and former Throwing Muses member, Fred Abong left the outfit a few months after the release of the record to be replaced by Gail Greenwood (who would go on to play in L7 and recently Gang of Four). The new lineup would record the follow up album, 1995’s King. At the time grunge was, in face, king, and the jangle-y, atmospheric power pop of the record meant it didn’t perform as well commercially as its predecessor but artistically it was a step forward into interesting directions. Belly gets the chance to revisit those songs live with you if you show up and there’s a better than average chance that some material from the first record and 2018 album Dove will end up on one of the two sets.

Saturday | 12.13
What: Lawsuit Models, Flutter, Black Dots, State Drugs
When: 7
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Lawsuit Models is the kind of modern punk band that clearly has roots in 90s and early 2000s pop punk but didn’t get stuck completely in that sound. But preserved is the best of that music and its relatable yearnings and an ability to take topical cultural references and make them into statements of more enduring human experience and struggle. The rest of this bill is also interesting because Flutter is a great power pop band who seem to have translated an older sound and sensibility into a modern context with a charismatic live show. Black Dots are a veteran punk act from Denver that has also made a transition into a more modern mix of sounds from a pop punk adjacent early sensibility to something more seemingly informed by a touch of Americana and more straight ahead rock. State Drugs come from that stand of punk that as into power pop of the late 80s and early 90s like they listened to the cooler end of The Goo Goo Dolls, Gin Blossoms and Soul Asylum and decided the songcraft in those bands and a knack for a melodic hook and earnest emotional expression was perfectly fine a well of inspiration as any other.

Saturday | 12.13
What: Jorma Kaukonen
When: 7
Where: Paramount Theatre
Why: Jorma Kaukonen was one of the members of the classic lineup of Jefferson Airplane. The latter helped define the San Francisco Sound of the late 60s and the early psychedelic rock of the era. Kaukonen came into the group as a blues guitarist who had earlier played a gig with Janis Joplin before either came to anything resembling prominence. The Airplane had hits like “Somebody to Love” and “White Rabbit” and its 1967 album Surrealistic Pillow is a classic of the 60s with songwriting that endures because it was unlike much of anything else in its then realm of rock music. Kaukonen’s instrumental “Embryonic Journey” and its elegantly intricate guitar work brought more than a touch of experimental folk to one of the great psychedelic rock albums of all time. Later in the 60s Kaukonen and some of his bandmates in the Airplane formed Hot Tuna, a group that continues to this day. Somewhere between a psychedelic country blues band and free improvisation outfit, Hot Tuna was a little difficult to pigeonhole though today would be considered on the higher end of the jam band spectrum. Kaukonen has also had an acclaimed solo career in which he can no more easily be classified but in which his energetic and free-flowing finger style guitar and seemingly endless ability to find ways for the guitar to express great feeling with nuance remains. For this tour, possibly the musician’s last on a wide scale at age 84 (soon 85 on December 23) Kaukonen will be joined on stage by heavy hitters R. Carlos Nakai & Will Clipman, David Hidalgo, Jack Casady, Justin Guip, and Ross Garren.

Tuesday | 12.16
What: Silver West (album release and Hali’s birthday) w/Marty Nation and Whitless
When: 7:30
Where: The Skylark Lounge Bobcat Room
Why: Silver West will release her debut album Ballads of a Heartbroken Hunter at this show. The songwriter/musician is relatively new to performance but has been around music her whole life and as a sound person at various clubs and other live show situations she’s certainly been witness to her fair share of music stories as well as firsthand experience with what works best in a live music format. How much of that shaped her songwriting, hard to say, but surely in the recording there will be an uncommon level of attention to detail and production. But if you’ve seen Silver West there is a compelling vulnerability to her particular style of cosmic Americana that is refreshingly raw and thoughtful.

Thursday | 12.18
What: Takipnik, Lost Relics, Chew Thru and Sungrave
When: 7
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Takipnik is a Denver-based heavy band that formed in 2019 and recently released its third album Awakened. The record reveals the band has a keen ear for ethereal atmospheric elements mixed in with those more distorted and raging. Think something like Agalloch and Russian Circles and you have an idea what to expect. Lost Relics bridges the gap between extreme metal and noise rock. Some of its members came out of the more interesting end of the Denver stoner rock scene of the 2000s and 2010s and found a way to sharpen the sound some without losing the ability to maintain a solid groove and thus hooks. Chew Thru has more roots in post-hardcore but still has the aggression and knack for a touch of melody that one might expect from a band with influences in 1980s thrash. Sungrave is in the metal universe as well but its sound clearly has some origins in psychedelic rock and the kind of post-metal one heard in the various incarnations of Isis and Neurosis. In moments the shoegaze fusion has Sungrave sounding more like the majestic pastoral side of Jesu.

Friday | 12.19
What: Cheap Perfume, Arson Charge, Gunk! and Cop Killer
When: 8
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Arguably the punk show of the month headlined by feminist/political punk band Cheap Perfume from Colorado Springs. Its latest album Don’t Care. Didn’t Ask. really does pushes its critique of society and capitalism to new heights and connects the dots in many realms of human life in the intersectional way that the current moment requires. Arson Charge includes former members of Native Daughters, Chieftain and Love Me Destroyer and fronted by SPELLS singer Ben Roy. It’s thrashcore and Roy takes on a different vocal style than you’d expect from him and it’s potent stuff tackling issues related to deeply personal experiences with abuse and the legacy of that for one’s own life in ways that the adult mind is beginning to grapple with. Gunk! Is a like-minded hardcore band from the Springs with a raw, caustic sound. Cop Killer recently released its self-titled EP and it is five tracks of the kind of aggressive hardcore you’d hope with the verbal content you’d hope was there including an updated rework of the Body Count classic.

Salads and Sunbeams, photo by Tom Murphy

Saturday | 12.20
What: Salads and Sunbeams and Gadget Cats
When: 8
Where: The Skylark Lounge Bobcat Room
Why: Salads and Sunbeams are one of the premier Denver-based indiepop bands. Coming out of noteworthy previous bands Fingers of the Sun and The Pseudo Dates (among others), the band’s songs are literary and steeped in 60s and 70s psychedelic pop but informed by modern experiences in the current socio-economic context. Its songs are tonally colorful and heartfelt and filled with creative storytelling. Gadget Cats are a grunge pop group from Fort Collins whose songs released so far seem to reflect some inspiration from 90s underground punk and indiepop.

Saturday | 12.20
What: Pons w/Bitchflower and Plastik Mystik
When: 8
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Pons is a mutant art punk/neo-No Wave noise rock band from Brooklyn, New York that incorporates classical instruments used in unorthodox ways. Often its songwriting sounds like it’s been influenced by experimental electronic music and left field jazz with splintered, fragmented tempos and imploded structure. Bitch Flower from Fort Collins sounds like it was inspired equally by the most jagged and confrontational punk and dark psychedelic rock like the Stooges and its own blues roots. Plastik Mystic is sort of a strange blend of psychedelic garage rock and something like moody punkers Wipers.

DJ boyhollow aka Michael Trundle of Lipgloss in 2021, photo by Tom Murphy

Wednesday | 12.31
What: A Lipgloss New Years Eve
When: 8
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Lipgloss has been held at various venues since starting as the prominent indie DJ/dance night in Denver and one of if not the longest running such nights in the country. Currently helmed by longtime DJ Michael Trundle aka boyollow, the night is being held perhaps for the first time at arguably the best small club in Denver, the Hi-Dive. Expect indie hits from the 90s, 2000s, 2010s and now with some sprinkling in of 80s and maybe even 70s music that inspired the music that launched the event.

Wednesday | 12.31
What: Colfax Speed Queen, Jesus Christ Taxi Driver and Glueman
When: 8
Where: Lost Lake
Why: If a night of high energy punk is how you want to spend your New Year’s Eve this is the best bet. Colfax Speed Queen is really a psychedelic garage rock band that has made a name for itself in Denver and beyond. But its charismatic and charged performances propel its whole thing into the realm of punk. Jesus Christ Taxi Driver sounds like it came out of the American southeast with its blues-infused rock and roll. But its attitude is definitely adjacent to the irreverent spirit of punk and its live shows are played with a palpable intensity. Glueman these days sounds like its members were inspired by strands of the gloriously frayed and ferocious punk from Memphis, Tennessee from the 80s to now. Just raw and unmindful of a need for clean tonal lines and tapping into some wild energy. If you’re Oblivions you’ll probably be into Glueman.

Best Shows in Denver and Beyond November 2025

**They Are Gutting a Body of Water performs at The Marquis Tues 11/4, photo by Brian Karlsson**

Saturday | 11.01
What: Moon Pussy w/Old Deer
When: 3
Where: Mutiny Information Cafe
Why: This is your last chance of 2025 to see the noise rock juggernaut trio Moon Pussy. Whereas many noise rock bands are a permutation of post-hardcore and sludge metal, Moon Pussy is genuinely strange and both humorous and ferocious which is not a combination one sees often enough. Vocalist Crissy Cuellar’s on stage banter and absurdist (in the delivery) jokes does little to mask how smart the band’s music is or its inherent sophistication of concept and execution. Old Deer brings the doom to posthardcore in its own weighty style of noise rock.

Saturday | 11.01
What: Native Daughters, Abrams and BleakHeart
When: 8
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Instrumental, heavy noise core outfit Native Daughters doesn’t play out often these days and usually at bigger venues. But its epic, cinematic sprawl of post-rock post-metal has evolved to a degree of highly expressive and vivid sonic storytelling without words. Abrams is the perfect amalgamation of shoegaze and atmospheric post-hardcore like Torche and Cave-In. Fantastic, melodic harmonies and transporting guitar streams in heavy momentum and luminously gritty leads. BleakHeart will likely be in its new manifestation but probably still have the gorgeously dark and orchestral fusion of dream pop and heavy post-rock.

Sunday | 11.02
What: Ada Lea w/Porlolo and Autumnal
When: 7
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Ada Lea released her third album when i paint my masterpiece in August 2025 and further established her status as a modern master of finger picking style with expressive and beautifully intricate guitar work paired with her delicate yet assured vocals. She is currently signed to Saddle Creek Records which is fitting since an act to which she might be favorably compared is Azure Ray. Porlolo is the indie/acoustic band from Denver whose own aesthetic is adjacent to that of the headliner but Porlolo has been around considerably longer as a live act. Erin Roberts’ existential and poignant lyrics and occasionally dryly humorous stage banter with commanding vocals is what has keep the project a local favorite. Fort Collins’ Autumnal comes out of the indie folk corner of the Colorado music universe but its songs will assuredly appeal to those with a taste for pastoral slowcore and the tenderest of indiepop.

What: Ryan Davis & The Roadhouse Band w/Caspar Milquetoast
When: 7
Where: Larimer Lounge
Why: Acclaimed songwriter Ryan Davis and his band released one of the secretly great albums of 2025 with Ryan Davis & the Roadhouse Band “New Threats from the Soul.” On the surface it’s like some indie Americana thing but not long into the first song it becomes apparent that what you’re hearing is weirder and more creative but not in expected ways. It has the dapple lap steel flourishes enhancing the melodies like you’d expect from a solid country record but there are synths in the mix and tape loops so that at times things seem otherworldly and unpredictable but in the pocket of strong songwriting. It’s a fascinating effect. Plus Will Oldham contributes vocals to the album so you know it’s definitely coming from a different kind of place. The lyrics are also like something out of a Cormac McCarthy novel but sung like an artist out of the whole Laurel Canyon scene of the early 1970s.

they are gutting a body of water, photo by Kasey Agosto

Tuesday | 11.04
What: they are gutting a body of water w/Fib
When: 7
Where: Marquis Theater
Why: For several years Philadelphia’s they are gutting a body of water has been stirring noise and grime into drifty, warping shoegaze to create something like the equivalent of a lo-fi cassette only release by one of those weird late 2000s bands that would have belonged on Siltbreeze. Like Times New Viking or Eat Skull. But if those bands were more into Slint and Planning For Burial. Crush yet transcendent guitar tone, left field rhythmic structures or none at all and just stretches of raw sound that drops into fragmented melodies like these people listened to a lot of Canadian band Women coming up as well. The group’s new album LOTTO pushes the songwriting into even more unpredictable territory.

Wednesday | 11.05
What: Martin DuPont w/Church Fire and French Kettle Station
When: 7
Where: HQ
Why: After a nearly 25 year hiatus, French coldwave/New Wave band Martin Dupont re-emerged as a live project in 2023 and a new album of re-recordings of older songs titled Kintsugi. In 2025 a record of new material dropped called You Smile When It Hurts establishing that the members of the group were capable of crafting quality resonant songs on part with its acclaimed earlier material. Church Fire is Denver’s premiere industrial dance pop group. The impassioned performance style of the band always made it a standout but with expanded production as a trio and a dynamic light show Church Fire brings a large stage show visual impact to any venue. French Kettle Station is a one-man New Age dance project with no small amount of visceral energy of his own even when he’s triggering prepared electronic passages or performing live synth.

Thursday | 11.06
What: Packaging w/Barbara, Paw Paw and DJ Ryan Wong
When: 7
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Packaging is the new group formed between Daniel Lyon of Spirit Award and Daniel “Connor” Birch of Flaural. Their debut, self-titled album dropped October 10 and no surprise, perhaps, its lush and enveloping psychedelic pop benefits from the contributions of multiple artists out of the wider indie rock realm including Luke Temple (Here We Go Magic), Ash Reiter (Sugar Candy Mountain), James Barone (Beach House), Andreas Wild (Nathaniel Rateliff and the Night Sweats), Curt Kiser (Carriers) and Andy Rauworth (Gauntlet Hair). Its luminous melodies and melancholic urgency helps to set the music apart from yet another post-2010s psychedelia project. Its songs have emotional heft and the music is entrancing and commanding.

Death to All, photo courtesy the artists

Friday | 11.07
What: Death to All playing Spiritual Healing and Symbolic w/Gorguts and Phobophilic
When: 6
Where: The Gothic Theatre
Why: Death to All features former members of foundational extreme metal band Death including Gene Hoglan, Steve DiGiorgio and Bobby Koelble as well as former Cynic member Max Phelps on guitar and vocals. This tour the assembled band will perform the classic albums Spiritual Healing (1990) and Symbolic (1995), both albums that represented a progression of the band in new directions that would shape where technical death metal of the future worth listening to would go. Anyone that has caught the Death to All tours in recent years can attest to how legit the presentation and musicianship has been with some of the greatest heavy music of all time getting a live performance treatment that honors the legacy of founder Chuck Schuldiner’s vision with some of the only musicians that can make it happen.

Friday | 11.07
What: Hi-Dive 22 Year Anniversary Night 1: Nuclear Daisies, Cleaner, American Culture and Supreme Joy
When: 8
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Hi-Dive has arguably emerged as the premiere small club in Denver with solid bookings every week across a fairly broad spectrum of genres, styles and subscenes. Pick any week and there is at least one show that’s worth going to but probably really a few. It has had some of the best sound in a room of its size with a skilled sound crew. This two night celebration of Hi-Dive begins with sets from garage-psych giants Cleaner, shoegaze/indie pop legends American Culture, left-field post-punk/post-garage phenoms and headlined by noisy shoegaze dance dream pop group Nuclear Daisies.

Friday and Saturday | 11.07 and 11.08
What: Daniel Donato’s Cosmic Country Tour w/The Fretliners
When: 7
Where: The Ogden Theatre
Why: Daniel Donato started developing ideas for his version of “cosmic country” while playing in bands around Nashville and coming up with a fusion of country, rock and roll, the free associating improv he heard in the Grateful Dead and folk psychedelia. Think a sound and vibe more like a honky tonk end of Gram Parsons and you’ll have an idea what you’re in for. The live shows are imbued with a spirited creativity in the performance and inspired free flowing improvisation that goes beyond where most bands operating in musically adjacent territory seem to be able to conjure. The band is currently touring in support of its 2025 album Horizons.

Saturday | 11.08
What: Melodies Never Lie, Salads and Sunbeams, Mouth Cathedral at Squirm Gallery, benefit for Jeanette Vizguerra
When: 7
Where: Squirm Gallery
Why: Jeannette Vizguerra was detained by ICE on 3/17/25 with the aim of deporting the well-known immigration activist and remains in custody at the ICE detention center in Aurora. Her case received some press attention and despite the charges against her, Vizguerra’s situation parallels that of many others who are struggling with a broken and now very punitive system of immigration in the USA particularly with the involvement of the militarized and extremely politicized ICE organization which is an extension of the failed and catastrophic “War on Terror” that is now being used to persecute thousands in America and is essentially a private army of the most corrupt president in US history employed to terrorize people living in America. So this show is a benefit for one of the most visible people targeted by ICE and will hopefully help to create a ripple effect of resistance to the wave of fascism and tyranny plaguing not just America but the world. For more information helping Vizguerra click on the link in the band names. Melodies Never Lie is the ambient indie pop shoegaze solo project of Isaac Rivera whose roots in Denver underground pop, experimental rock and avant-electro goes back two decades. Salads and Sunbeams is the finely honed psychedelic indiepop group from Denver whose members came up in the DIY world and the underground scene developing skills and aesthetics that incorporate classic songwriting methods with modern sensibilities. Mouth Cathedral creates gorgeously transporting, ethereal dream pop.

Palehorse/Palerider in 2017, photo by Tom Murphy

Saturday | 11.08
What: Hi-Dive 22 Year Anniversary Night 2: Glacial Tomb, Palehorse/Palerider, Mournful Ruin and Eagle Wing
When: 8
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: This second night of the Hi-Dive anniversary celebration features music on the more heavy side. Glacial Tomb is a long-running death metal doom trio from Denver. Palehorse/Palerider makes a cinematic, unclassifiable heavy music that blends psychedelic, dark Americana and tribal post-punk. Mournful Ruin is more on the grindcore-influenced end of sludgy death metal. Eaglewing is a sort of throwback to early New Wave of British Heavy Metal sound akin to Judas Priest in moments and includes Yancy Green formerly of Aberrent and now of Roskopp.

Steven Lee Lawson, photo courtesy the artist

Saturday | 11.08
What: All Through the Night and Steven Lee Lawson
When: 3
Where: Mutiny Information Cafe
Why: All Through the Night is an Americana band that sounds like it makes music for a Jim Jarmusch film set in the highways and byways of Colorado, New Mexico and Wyoming meaning moody, emotionally immediate and drawing from eclectic roots rather than a more traditional country or rock and roll base. Steven Lee Lawson is a brilliant songwriter, lyricist and multi-instrumentalist whose music is also tending toward an Americana sensibility but he clearly draws inspiration from the likes of Harry Nilsson and 60s psychedelia.

Ax and the Hatchetmen, photo courtesy the artists

Saturday | 11.08
What: Ax and The Hatchetmen w/Kids That Fly
When: 7
Where: The Marquis Theater
Why: Chicago-based Ax and The Hatchetmen haven’t been around long enough to have played the legendary Chicago venue Lounge Ax but its brand of melodic indie rock with elements of jangle-y psychedelia wouldn’t have been out of place had the club endured through to today. Though the band has been around since 2018 its debut album So Much to Tell You debuted on October 24 via Arista Records. But the group has had EPs and singles along the way and the whole early pandemic stretched everyone’s timelines a bit so this band had time to incubate and hone its songwriting. The new record showcases how the band is able to orchestrate diverse influences into a sound that feels like a blend of power pop, turn of the century New York post-punk, soul and garage rock.

Sunday | 11.09
What: Emergence w/Voicecoil and Absynthe of Faith
When: 8
Where: Club 404
Why: Emergence was one of the prominent EBM/industrial bands of the 2000s that went on hiatus toward the end of that decade. The band commanded large audiences at the time in Denver and toured nationally before splitting around 2005. In 2024 the core of the group with new collaborators reconvened to re-start Emergence with a new sound palette.

Tuesday | 11.11
What: Agriculture w/Rhododendron and Clarion Void
When: 7
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Agriculture is the black metal band from Los Angeles whose sound struck a chord among fans of noise rock for its forays into wild sonic strangeness in its songs. The group’s new record The Spiritual Sound isn’t short on classic thrash style riffs and melodic breaks yet still feral rawness in the vocals and the erupting and imploding song dynamics and escalating sense of surreal hysteria. Agriculture is currently touring in support of its excellent new album The Spiritual Sound. Presumably Rhododendron is the experimental prog noise thrash band from Portland, Oregon and Clarion Void the death/blackened doom/sludge metal band from Colorado Springs.

Thursday | 11.13
What: Boris w/Cloakroom
When: 7
Where: The Gothic Theatre
Why: Boris is celebrating the 20 year anniversary of the release of its 2005 album Pink. The sprawling epic of a record was and still is a peak for the group in its complete disregard for needing to fit in with being a metal band, a shoegaze group, a heavy psych blues outfit, a noise project or post-rock. The sounds have grit and edge while simultaneously ethereal and uplifting and dense with tone and texture that swims and hurtles in often unpredictable directions. Pink sounds like it could have come out in the late 70s, the early 90s or in any of the most recent two decades and still come off as something mind-altering in its maximalist sonics. Opening is the Indiana-based heavy shoegaze band Cloakroom whose 2025 album The Last Leg of the Human Table proved it was capable of not only searing and transporting psychedelia but also pop hooks worthy of the best indie rock bands. Something about Cloakroom’s music feels like it’s coming from a near future science fiction universe where the world is both in deep civilizational decay and an underground cultural renaissance transmitting the kind of music we want to hear.

King Princess, photo by Connor Cunningham

Thursday | 11.13
What: King Princess w/spill tab
When: 7
Where: The Ogden Theatre
Why: King Princess has built a body of work that uses lush production and introspective lyrics to explore the nuances of personal psychology, social dynamics and relationships with creativity and sensitivity. The latest album Girl Violence and its masterful use of saturated synths, tonal processing and layers of atmospheric noise help to place the singer’s soulful vocals in settings that immerse the listener in the emotional moment of the song. It’s a bit of a journey of a record with contributions from Joe Talbot of IDLES fame.

Friday | 11.14
What: Underworld
When: 7
Where: The Fillmore Auditorium
Why: With the 1994 release of its landmark album Dubnobasswithmyheadman, Underworld helped to usher in an era of music fusing progressive house, techno, ambient, downtempo and psychedelic electronic music that proved influential on at least a generation of like-minded artists. The record is structured to be a little like experiencing the music at a rave with expert pacing and layers of rhythm and atmosphere to craft a sustained mood of sensuous transcendence. The duo’s latest album Strawberry Hotel (2024) is decidedly less dark and brooding than the aforementioned but still brimming with mysterious moods and the completely enveloping production one would hope to get from masters of the art.

Friday | 11.14
What: Kill You Club 8 year anniversary w/Nuxx, Puerta Negra, Lazer Bullet and Severed Reality
When: 8
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Kill You Club has been bringing some of the most interesting and cutting edge darkwave/Goth-adjacent bands to Denver for several years now. The kinds of artists the more traditional Goth scene seems to bypass and be unaware exists until a half decade or more later. Possibly because Brian Castillo has his finger on the pulse of what’s cool in that realm of music whether the more electronic end or the post-punk acts that are pushing the boundaries of what that music has been. Headlining this night is the edgy, synthwave punk/industrial trip hop artist Nuxx.

Friday | 11.14
What: Felly w/Breakup Shoes and Lady Denim
When: 7
Where: Fox Theatre
Why: Felly released his latest album Ambroxyde in June further solidifying his reputation as an artist who can take the gentle and delicate and turn it into something feels like it has some emotional substance even as his vocals are often bordering on the ethereal. The title track sounds like it coalesced out of the surrounding weather and that’s a feeling you get from the new album. It’s like something that feels instantly comfortable yet able to build in energy and enthusiasm without losing a sense of intimacy. It makes the music impossible to simply dismiss as another indie folk thing as the songwriting itself is more lush and sophisticated than appears on the surface.

Suzanne Ciani in 2023, photo by Tom Murphy

Saturday | 11.15
What: Suzanne Ciani w/Clarice Jensen
When: 7
Where: Central Presbyterian Church
Why: Suzanne Ciani is an innovator in synthesizer music composition with an influential career spanning more than fifty years. Her work, musical and sound effects, has been featured on soundtracks, television and in a pinball machine game called Xenon. In the 1980s her compositions became associated with new age music and by extension modern ambient. Ciani in recent years seems to have expanded her live performance itinerary and her 2023 appearance at this same venue showcased her gift for imaginative soundscaping on a large format with an inherent sense of play in the performance and songcraft.

Saturday | 11.15
What: Broken Record album release w/Precocious Neophyte and Safekeeper
When: 8
Where: The Skylark Lounge Bobcat Room
Why: Broken Record is a Denver-based band that formed after singer/guitarist Lauren Beecher and bassist Corey Fruin moved to the Mile High City from Connecticut in 2017. Both had roots in the underground and DIY scene in and around New Haven and in forming Broken Record around some material Beecher had been working on what emerged was music that reflected the influence of punk and hardcore, certainly in the ethos of the group, as well as the atmospheric melodic qualities of The Cure. If you caught the band early on you might be excused to hearing in the music a touch of Hüsker Dü’s emotionally rich and fierce yet gentle aesthetic. The fledgling outfit found a home in the local hardcore scene and played early shows with the likes of then relatively newly founded bands like Destiny Bond and Ukko’s Hammer. And yet Broken Record never seemed out of place even though the catharsis of its music wasn’t formed from the same set of sounds but the emotional core of the songwriting shared a similar vulnerability and intelligence in expressing emotion with a keen sensitivity in the language of emotionally charged rock music.

The quartet released its debut full-length I Died Laughing on April 24, 2020 and of course could not tour around the record due to the global pandemic. But on that album one hears the knack for melodic jangle and shimmer embedded into earnestly energetic hooks with the expert pacing and Beecher’s warmly thoughtful vocals that strike the perfect emotional coloring for songs that are often poignantly melancholic and always deeply observant. For the 2023 album Nothing Moves Me the songwriting seemed to experiment further with tone and style incorporating delicately minimal guitar leads and triumphant choruses while seeming to be able to mine the more interesting ends of adolescent angst as a lens by which to understand the sometimes disillusioning aspects of adulthood. Like an entire record of what your teenage self might have to say about your current adult self. The 2025 album Routine and its cover of suburban American would-be normalcy takes the band’s established themes further to seemingly comment with great insight into the compromises and perils of navigating life in late capitalism and how that can cast a pall over your life if you’re not equipped to find some meaning in a socioeconomic environment seemingly designed to erode your joy and ability to live a full and dignified life. But also on the album the band seems to find the threads of psychic resistance to it all in creative acts and writing songs that feel like a shaking off of the gloom with music that feels like an expression of basic human solidarity.

The Green Typewriters, photo by Tom Murphy

Saturday | 11.15
What: The Green Typewriters, Mr. Pacman and Pythian Whispers
When: 7
Where: Feldman Mortuary
Why: A rare show at a mortuary in Denver with psychedelic, experimental indie pop group The Green Typewriters. The band’s songs seem to stem from philosophical concepts as projected through the lens of analog human experience and emotions. Mr. Pacman is visionary blend of synthwave and punk with performance costumes like video game characters. Pythian Whispers is a psychedelic ambient cinematic noise prog band.

Cap’N Jazz, photo from the Polyvinyl Records website

Saturday | 11.15
What: Cap’N Jazz w/Rainer Maria
When: 7
Where: The Summit Music Hall
Why: Cap’N Jazz only released one full-length album, 1995’s Burritos, Inspiration Point, Fork Balloon Sports, Cards in the Spokes, Automatic Biographies, Kites, Kung Fu, Trophies, Banana Peels We’ve Slipped On, and Egg Shells We’ve Tippy Toed Over – often called Shmap’n Shmazz. But that record proved to be a template for a realm of math rock, emo and indie rock in all its messy and frenetic glory and its core of earnest emotions seemingly unleashed at once across twelve songs in thirty-one minutes, ten seconds. It sure wasn’t for everyone because those more into pristine arrangements and established, classic pop/rock songwriting structure and sounds probably found it just completely amateurish—which is an essential part of its appeal for others. When the group split in 1995 its members went on to groups like The Promise Ring, American Football, Joan of Arc and Make Believe. Cap’N Jazz has reunited a few times since it first broke up but this is its first wider tour since the 90s and along for this journey is Rainer Maria whose own poetic emo/space rock sound seems to resonate with the emo and shoegaze fusion that has been bubbling in the past several years.

Tuesday | 11.18
What: Brighde Chaimbeul
When: 8
Where: The Bug Theatre
Why: Brighde Chaimbeul is a Scottish musician who grew up in a musical family and herself learned fiddle and piano before setting out to play the smallpipes and bagpipe for which she is perhaps most well-known these days. She has worked with experimental pop artist Caroline Polacek and composer Colin Stetson and she recently released her latest album Sunwise. It is a rousing journey of a record that establishes a strong mood with drone and folk minimalism. It helps to expand the aesthetics of ambient with a profound sense of place through unconventional instrumentation for a sound one immediately associates with that broad genre of musical experience. It has a folkloric feel like the sense one gets when watching the 1970s films of John Boorman. It’s a deep record and one whose songs performed live are sure to mesmerize in this rare performance at one of Denver’s premier venues for the avant-garde as presented by Creative Music Works.

PORTUGAL. THE MAN, photo by Nathan Perkel

Tuesday and Wednesday | 11.18 and 11.19
What: PORTUGAL. THE MAN w/Ya Tseen
When: 7 both nights
Where: Fox Theatre (11.18) and Mission Ballroom (11.19)
Why: PORTUGAL. THE MAN has offered plenty of left field indie/psychedelic/hard rock/punk over the years with a body of work that is immediately identifiable if not so easy to pigeonhole into a simple marketing category. In 2025 the band has released one of its albums in its 21 years with Shish. The record is an endearing and at turns entrancingly melodic and harrowingly intense tribute the band’s home state of Alaska and the search for meaning not just in an edge of the world place like Alaska but in the tentative state of the world in general perhaps as embodied in the challenges of living in a place that is often so isolated and laden with snow. Jack London would certainly recognize what PORTUGAL. THE MAN is putting out there on Shish.

Wednesday | 11.19
What: The Beths w/Phoebe Rings
When: 7
Where: The Ogden Theatre
Why: The Beths are an acclaimed power pop band with a noteworthy career offering memorable songs often informed by a euphoric sense of joy in the performance even when the subject matter waxes heavy. But there’s something different about where the music is coming from partly because the group hails Auckland, New Zealand and its members have backgrounds in jazz. So the intricacy and attention to the delicacy of the performances comes off as natural and confident and fans of Kiwi rock in general and C86-era indiepop will immediately connect with its music. The band is currently touring behind its new album Straight Line Was a Lie which is rich with heartfelt lyrics, unconventional hooks and a keen ear for small sonic details that make the songs linger with you.

Diles Que No Me Maten, photo by Tom Murphy

Wednesday | 11.19
What: Diles Que No Me Maten, Pink Lady Monster and Sunswept
When: 7
Where: The Skylark Lounge Bobcat Room
Why: Diles Que No Me Maten from Mexico City is a band that on the surface is an odd psychedelic rock band with roots in Krautrock. But a closer listen and witnessing a live performance reveals the group seems to be coming from a background/interests in No Wave, experimental poetry and the more odd post-punk of The Fall with vocals that are part singing and part spoken word. So a good fit with Denver No Wave funk poetry weirdos Pink Lady Monster and the avant-folk psychedelia of Sunswept.

Juliet Mission in 2015, photo by Tom Murphy

Friday | 11.28
What: Juliet Mission, In A Darkened Room and Redwing Blackbird
When: 8
Where: The Skylark Lounge Bobcat Room
Why: Juliet Mission is the secretly great shoegaze/alternative rock band from Denver with one of its bonafide guitar heroes Doug Seaman who among other projects was and still is in influential alternative rock band Sympathy F. Tony Morales from that group is also in Juliet Mission and its exquisite soundscapes and emotionally expansive songs are rooted in Denver’s long tradition of moody, atmospheric rock partly in helping to establish that sound inspired by late nights and the former sprawl of urban decay inviting the imagination to project one’s dreams upon forgotten and neglected spaces. Redwing Blackbird is a darkwave band more in the vein of The Cure with the sparkling guitar jangle and mastery of melodic tone.

Saturday | 11.29
What: Malkasian – Heavy Blues album release, Riff Dealer and A Strange Happening
When: 8
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Malkasian released its latest album Heavy Blues on October 22, 2025 but you can get a copy of the vinyl at this show. The band could be described as heavy, psychedelic blues rock but it is weirder than that simple designation suggests. The vibe with its references to the occult and, um, “Long Pig,” suggest that the title of its previous album Macabre wasn’t just a throwaway descriptor. The mood is reminiscent of the 1989, spooky debut album by stoner rock pioneers Masters of Reality. A Strange Happening must be friends of someone in one of the other bands but even if not its own ambitious alternative pop songwriting and high concept storytelling in an Neil Young-esque gone indie rock vein is strong recommendation in itself.

Best Shows in Denver and Beyond July 2025

**Planning For Burial performs at the Hi-DIve on 07.03.25, photo by Matt Hannon**

Planning For Burial, photo from Bandcamp

Thursday | 07.03
What: Planning For Burial w/Volunteer Coroner, Verhoffst and Patience, Ophelia
When: 7
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: It’s Closeness, It’s Easy, the latest transmission of deep, troubling thoughts as slow and unsettling, yet beautifully rendered, musical exorcism from Planning For Burial is the kind of record any of us with life experience need in this moment. The grinding light of its most headlong moments of gritty black metal-shoegaze alchemy burns off a touch of the middle age angst and despair at discovering you are well into and halfway through adulthood and a lot of what you were told mattered, or worse the things you told yourself mattered, don’t amount to much. And living with friends passing away in seemingly rapid succession and the lives of those around you crumbling in this sick excuse of a fake advanced industrialized country hollowed out by the savage neglect of late capitalism with no end in sight. But the album is also about finding the flickering of meaning and significance and emotional resonance among those ruins and scraps and holding on to what and who moves you the most with a tightness that you might not have understood without having gone through all the things that don’t affirm your dreams and fantasies but instead attempt to chisel them into nothing yet failing just a little. It’s also just a gorgeously heavy, atmospheric work of borderline lo-fi, scuzzy shoegaze with heartfelt lyrics and an irresistible uplift. Opening are harsh noise soundscape sculptor Volunteer Coroner, power electronics ambient composer Verhoffst and ambient bedroom pop band Patience, Ophelia which includes Samuel Rupsa and Madeline Johnston (Midwife).

Meet the Giant in 2022, photo by Tom Murphy

Thursday | 07.03
What: The Frickashinas w/The Born Readies and Meet the Giant
When: 7
Where: Lost Lake
Why: The Frickishinas are a melodic skate punk type of band from Denver in that sort of melodic hardcore borderline emo vein. The Born Readies are a kind of hybrid of hard glam and garage rock band also from the Mile High City. Meet the Giant, though they rock hard enough, are more of an alternative rock band steeped in electronic music aesthetics and deep mood atmospheric music so they might be considered a shoegaze outfit by some or leaning post-punk and even downtempo by others, there is an intensity and emotional depth to the music that reaches further than most more straight forward rock and roll.

Tuesday | 07.08
What: Jackson & The Janks w/El Welk and The Milk Blossoms
When: 7
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Jackson & The Janks is one of those retro old timey rock and roll and R&B bands with some garage rock spirit and gospel sensibility in its sound from New York City. El Welk is the new band from George Cessna who many may know from being a member of his father’s band Slim Cessna’s Auto Club or his former Americana outfit Snakes. But his solo albums have long been worthwhile for having existential lyrics and a spare and economic style. The Milk Blossoms is one of the best indiepop bands in the land at the moment with ear worm melodies and lyrics of uncanny poetic insight and imagination.

TopHouse, photo by Electric Peak Creative

Tuesday | 07.08
What: Fruition and TopHouse
When: 6:30
Where: Denver Botanic Gardens
Why: TopHouse is a Montana-based band whose roots in indie Americana and its bluegrass influences have been fully integrated into its heartfelt songwriting. In 2025 the band released two EPs: Theory in May and the newly released Practice. Obviously there is conceptual wit behind naming the two sets of songs but with the earlier EP was more upbeat and summery, the latest delves into struggle and self-re-discovery. The band’s masterful musicianship combines a sense of orchestral arrangements with emotional intimacy.

Thursday | 07.10
What: Howling Giant, Abrams, Voidlung
When: 7
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Stoner rock went out of style more or less around the turn of the 2010s but was replaced by its modern equivalent, psychedelic doom metal. But Howling Giant skipped the trend morphing and offered the kind of heavy music that is melodic yet hard hitting and and imbued with a sinuous rhythm style that gives the music a bit of sway. Denver’s Abrams clearly has similar musical inspirations as the headliner but with more than a touch of post-hardcore and post-rock.

Saturday | 07.12
What: Salads and Sunbeams w/Air Moons (first show)
When: 3
Where: Mutiny Information Cafe
Why: Salads and Sunbeams is a psychedelic indiepop band whose gorgeously lush songs and literate lyrics sound like something from another era when creative songwriting was at a premium. Yet it’s sound isn’t stuck in the past even if you hear the songs and they have the strong production and ear for impeccable melodies that you’d expect on a Harry Nilsson or Apples in Stereo record. It’s new album Into the Starless Night is front to back a masterpiece of modern pop songcraft imbued with psychological insight and delivered with fantastic vocals both lead and in harmony.

Saturday | 07.12
What: Lost Relics w/Moon Pussy and No Comma
When: 8
Where: The Crypt
Why: Lost Relics’ juggernaut fusion of Unsane-esque noise rock and post-metal circa Neurosis will headline this show which includes the mutant noise rock tricksters Moon Pussy who absolutely blur the line between Butthole Surfers, Big Black and Shellac in style, methodology and substance. All the bands are from Denver and No Comma doesn’t play often but it will bring a blunt and clipped hardcore and noise punk aesthetic to the proceedings.

Sunday | 07.13
What: Lyle Lovett w/The Five Blind Boys of Alabama
When: 7
Where: Fiddler’s Green
Why: Lyle Lovett is one of the most popular artists in modern country whose career spans over four decades. He first burst into popular consciousness with his 1986 self-titled debut and his hit song “Cowboy Man.” In an era when pop country lacked a certain authenticity of expression Lovett distinguished himself with a style that’s eclectic and drew on swing, jazz, folk, gospel and blues but with his lyrics somehow tied it all together to be more authentically country than a lot of what else was going on as true to form for a genre that itself was made up of a rich tapestry of influences. This time out Lovett is touring with his Large Band so you’ll get to see those classic songs and newer favorites writ large.

Saturday | 07.19
What: J. Carmone, Paranoid Image and Cosmic Smoke Wagon
When: 5/5:30
Where: Larimer Lounge
Why: The recent J. Carmone stuff sounds like a one-man psychedelic garage rock blues thing. Fuzzy melodies and simple chord and rhythm structure that’s broadly expressive even within that narrow range of elements. But in the songwriter’s bag of tricks are power pop hooks and a touch of indie jangle. Paranoid Image is an alternative rock band rooted in acoustic sounds and almost world music melodic structures. Cosmic Smoke Wagon as perhaps the name suggests is sort of a heavier blues rock quartet.

Saturday | 07.19
What: Rain City Drive, Arrows in Action, Charlotte Sands, Taylor Acorn, Beauty School Dropout, If Not For Me
When: 4
Where: The Fillmore Auditorium
Why: The Summer School Tour lands at the Fillmore showcasing some prominent bands in the realm of modern alternative rock informed by pop punk and melodic post-hardcore. Rain City Drive fronted by The Voice runner-up Matt McAndrew though from Palm Coast, Florida derived its name from the city where they all met for the first time, Manchester UK. Arrows in Action from Nashville is touring ahead of the release of its new album I Think I’ve Been Here Before out soon on Nettwerk Music Group. The new, third, record is brimming with summery energy and songs informed by youthful exuberance and a spirit of rediscovering one’s joy of life. It’s a complete fusion of electronic pop and the kind of eclectic alternative rock from the late 90s that embraced production elements in the songwriting. Charlotte Sands blends glitchy alt-pop and emo for a sound that fans of Charli XCX may enjoy. Taylor Acorn seemingly takes the structure and sound of pop country and infuses it with the kind of alternative pop exemplified by Echosmith. Beauty School Dropouts do look like if Ratt reincarnated as later era scene kids. And its music is rooted in that kind of emo but one that also recognizes that processing vocals and other instrumentation can make more straight ahead songwriting sound more interesting.

Lyra Muse, photo by Adam Debary @mr.debary

Sunday | 07.20
What: Lyra Muse w/BabyBaby and Dandelioness
When: 7:30/8
Where: The Crypt
Why: Lyra Muse is a dream pop artist from Santa Fe, New Mexico whose command of production, layered atmospheres and vocal processing is thoroughly entrancing. Like a downtempo act that learned a bit from maybe listening to a bit of early 80s Brian Eno, Nicolas Jaar and The Knife. The music’s organic flow and intimate tones are a little like New Age darkwave. On tour with Lyra Muse is Danelioness from Taos whose music is superficially the opposite from Lyra Muse with sounds you might expect more out of an indie folk act including clear and evocative singing but the production on the recorded music suggests something that was influenced by experimental 1980s pop like Kate Bush or Marianne Faithful’s synth-infused period. And from Denver BabyBaby will thrill your ears with exquisitely crafted synth pop and enhanced by charming and idiosyncratic stage antics.

This Will Destroy You on the original Young Mountain tour in 2006, photo by Tom Murphy

Sunday | 07.20
What: This Will Destroy You w/Jesse Beaman
When: 7
Where: Meow Wolf Convergence Station Perplexiplex
Why: This Will Destroy You will be performing its 2006 debut album Young Mountain and likely highlights from its album since then. This Will Destroy You from early on set itself apart from the glut of post-rock by making truly cinematic and expressive guitar compositions with emotional heft and dynamism that didn’t sound just like guys jamming out on a theme. The album has gone on to be a classic of the genre and nearly 20 years later its essential appeal as a set of music that stirs the imagination is intact.

Thursday | 07.24
What: Supreme Joy and Flutter dual album release show w/Team Nonexistent and Sun Swept
When: 7
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: There’s probably a numerological significance to the title of Supreme Joy’s new album 410,757,864,530 Dead Carps or it’s just a surreal semiotic exercise in the absurdity of naming an album brimming with themes of “everchanging American identity, class warfare and Debord’s spectacle.” It’s an overwhelming number which may by part of the point but the psychedelic garage rock post-punk is a sprawling and shimmering collection of sharp observations and an attempt to make sense of so much nonsense in the context of one’s own living of life which can be perilous at best but that doesn’t mean there can’t be plenty of play to be had while figuring it all out and that’s what the record sounds like in all its sonically kaleidoscopic glory. Also releasing an album this night is the great Denver power pop band Flutter and its refreshingly earnest and romantic When You Love Somebody and its full arc exploration of the course of love—the insecurities, the infatuation, the travails of being in love with a human rather than one’s image of one and coming to terms with the highs and lows. It has the exuberance of a record informed by adolescent spirit but the nuance of someone with a bit more emotional maturity making it more relevant for someone that wants to love someone for real and being willing to deal with everything that comes with it.

Wheelchair Sports Camp, photo by Tom Murphy

Friday | 07.25
What: Wheelchair Sports Camp, Jello Biafra and Alice Wong
When: 6-10
Where: Denver Art Museum
Why: Wheelchair Sports camp takes over the Denver Art Museum for an evening of performances and an interactive element in celebration of Disability Pride Month and the 35th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act. It’s a way to flip the usual narrative in which disabled folks serve as entertainment for society and instead own the spectacle rather than merely be it for the amusement of others. It’s activism as art and engagement as an act of transforming the usual dialogues and contexts. As part of the proceedings you’ll see Jello Biafra who will have some choice words and long-time disability rights activist Alice Wong, founder and Project Coordinator of Disability Visibility Project which collects oral histories of people with disabilities in the USA.

Saturday | 07.26
What: of Montreal – The Sunlandic Twins 20th anniversary tour
When: 7
Where: Gothic Theatre
Why: Long-running indie pop group of Montreal is celebrating the 20 year anniversary of its 2005 album The Sunlandic Twins. The album is a bit of a fusion of the group’s signature, psychedelic pop and early Brian Eno solo album strangeness for an effect that is like listening to something just out of the frame of usual reality which is what you want from an of Montreal album. And per usual there will probably be a unique stage presentation of the music including sets and costumes to enhance the sense of being witness to something fantastical.

Saturday | 07.26
What: Caamp w/Whitney
When: 7
Where: Fiddler’s Green
Why: Caamp had modest beginnings when Taylor Meier and Evan Westfall met at, yes, summer camp in middle school and then formed the band after high school while students at Ohio University. It’s upbeat indie folk apparently struck a chord with its simple but appealing melodies and intimate presentation. Its latest album is the summery Copper Changes Color. Opening is Chicago’s Whitney which came out of the now defunct psych rock band Smith Westerns when Max Kakacek and Julien Ehrlich formed the project when their old band split in 2014. What they’ve done as the band has evolved and taken on new members is write orchestral pop songs in the vein of Laurel Canyon circa 1972 psychedelic folk rock but with a modern sense of exuberance and tapping into that time’s exquisite use of tonal arrangements. The band released a new single “Darling” so maybe it’s safe to say to expect a new album in the none-too-distant future.

Tuesday | 07.29
What: Sculpture Club, Flesh Tape and French Kettle Station
When: 7
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Sculpture Club is a post-punk band from Dallas that sounds like it took more inspiration from the more pop inflected end of that music like some of the upbeat Smiths-esque guitar melodies were a direct influence. Its 2024 self-titled album is reminiscent of The Prids with that neo-New Wave flavor and breezy dynamics and upbeat yet moody music. Flesh Tape is a vital hybrid of noise rock grit, emo vulnerability and shoegaze soundscape songwriting style. French Kettle Station could be any incarnation of his music of the moment from New Age glitch ambient or emotionally vibrant experimental pop. You’ll just have to go and see.

Fitz and the Tantrums, photo by Matty Vogel

Tuesday | 07.29
What: Fitz and the Tantrums
When: 6:30
Where: Denver Botanic Gardens
Why: Fitz and the Tantrums from Los Angeles have had a successful career with its brand of fusing indie pop and neo soul and ably tapping into uplifting melodic hooks and bringing to them great mood and emotional range. Sure its songs tend to be the kind built for parties and summertime fun but there is something that seems to bridge the style and sound of decades for something that sounds like something for today in the songwriting. The group is currently touring in support of its new album Man On The Moon and its outer space imagery as a vehicle for injecting the music with some hope and romance.

Wednesday | 07.30
What: Tripp Nasty, Debaser, Sense From Nonsense and Pythian Whispers
When: 7
Where: Squirm Gallery
Why: Full disclosure, the writer of this piece is in Pythian Whispers. But really this show includes some old school Denver DIY scene artists from the 2000s through the 2020s era. Tripp Nasty these days has brought to bear his skills as a composer and technician of electronic music to produce vibrant and imaginative analog synth music that is both avant-garde and accessible. Debaser is the drums and bass guitar solo project of Monkey Mania founder Josh Taylor. It’s like the joyous noise rock with pop exuberance that is an analog to what he brought to the original Friends Forever. Sense From Nonsense is the solo project of former Echo Beds drummer/vocalist/synth composer Tom Nelsen. Sense From Nonsense has gone through various iterations but the current version has been a vehicle for doing live versions of the music from his short films and performance art like an outsider live juke box that irreverently deconstructs unexpected hits. Pythian Whispers for over a decade has included former Tornado Alley and 900 Ancestors guitarist Tom Murphy, former Odam Fei Mud percussionist and current Animal / object multi-instrumentalist David Britton and former Great Atomic Motor and Sense From Nonsense bassist Harmony Fredere. As this band it’s left field ambient and abstract progressive rock with elements of the band members’ various influences blended and layered into dense and dynamic soundscapes.

Thursday | 07.31
What: Midwife w/Jenny Haniver and Fainting Dreams
When: 7
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Midwife is of course Madeline Johnston whose ethereal guitar work and live production transforms a core of deeply emotional and melancholic songwriting into something that feels like experiencing a dream in real time. Her records are a catalog of giving honor to the pain and loss one must bear across a lifetime as well as the more understated joys that sustain us in unexpected moments when we need them most. Jenny Haniver is a post-hardcore industrial post-punk band from Portland. Fainting Dreams might be described as a transcendent black metal band that channels the trauma and emotional catharsis of surviving the degradations and limitations imposed on us by late capitalism.

Thursday | 07.31
What: Ozomatli w/Las Cafeteras
When: 7:30
Where: Arvada Center Amphitheater
Why: Ozomatli kind of got dubbed a party band in the 1990s because its music was popular at celebrations of all kinds. But the members of the band met when trying to form a workers union in Los Angeles. The band’s seamless integration of elements of hip-hop, funk, Chicano rock and various cultural music from around the world has mean its sound has been evolving from the beginning and with an appeal that transcends genre boundaries. All along the band has lived its social convictions and supported farm-workers’ rights and immigration issues and decidedly anti-war in the 2000s when it seemed like Americans were encouraged to be rah rah for expanding the empire. To the band’s credit its politics have become even more relevant as has its ability to bring joy and celebratory energy to its famously exuberant live shows.

To Be Continued…

Best Shows in Denver and Beyond April 2025

clipping. perform at Larimer Lounge on April 27, 2025, photo by Daniel Topete

Tuesday | 04.01
What: Refused are Fucking Dead w/Quicksand and Cleaner
When: 7
Where: Ogden Theatre
Why: Sweden’s Refused are now in the middle of their farewell tour at a time when its music and professed politics are needed as the polar opposite of global fascism. The group pioneered subgenres of punk in the 90s culminating in the influential 1998 The Shape of Punk to Come that in a way presaged where punk and hardcore would go afterward even if Refused didn’t strictly innovate all of those styles of screamo, metalcore and the like. One of the top tier live acts of the past 30 years just go expecting greatness and be open to your expectations being exceeded if you haven’t seen the band before. Opening are NYC post-hardcore legends Quicksand whose own DNA in angular DC post-punk they have evolved into their own sound. Interestingly enough Quicksand formed shortly before Refused, split around the same time in the late 90s and re-formed in 2012 as well. Might be something in the universe but both are a welcome catharsis from the ambient dread and anxiety coursing through the world. Denver’s garage punk greats Cleaner will start things off which includes former and current members of Dirty Three and Muscle Beach.

Tuesday | 04.01
What: Hinds w/Mamalarky
When: 7
Where: Meow Wolf Convergence Station
Why: Hinds are an indie rock band from Madrid, Spain that have garnered a bit of a following since coming to the attention of an international audience around 2014 with the release of its early singles. Its 2024 album Viva Hinds is a solid manifestation of the group’s eclectic stylistic leanings blending hearty garage rock, ethereal dream pop and charmingly lo-fi indiepop in the classic vein from the 80s and 90s. Opening the show is Mamalarky. The psychedelic pop band is also one that has hit upon its own sound that seems to have incorporated the kind of jazz and prog sounds one might expect out of a group of people that listen to a ton of Stereolab, library music and left field jazz. Its new record Hex Key is set to release on April 11, 2025 and for this show you’re more than likely to hear the new music and witness a band that has mastered the art of fusing transporting melodies with rhythms that sound assembled with choice stops and starts as if the people in the band are also very into Dilla and Palm.

The Bug Club, photo courtesy the artists

Tuesday | 04.01
What: Ducks Ltd. w/The Bug Club and Mainland Break
When: 7
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Sure Ducks Ltd. sound like its members grew up on a steady diet of C86 and Sarah Records and adjacent bands like The Pastels, The Clean and Talulah Gosh. To the extent the group is derivative at least its songwriting is worthy of being in such company and worthy of the comparison for its exquisite guitar work and pop songcraft. The band’s 2024 album Harm’s Way built upon the significant virtues of its previous output with irresistible energy and shimmery melodies that take the band’s tales of struggle and maintaining in a world that is undeniably crumbling into a lesser version of an already flawed version of itself. The Bug Club is a Welsh band that is a great fit for this bill with its raucous and noisy garage pop about everyday life which makes the title of its 2024 album On the Intricate Inner Workings of the System seem appropriately cheeky but is it? Yes, but because the inner workings of the systems we all live in are impossible without the contributions of people you may never know or encounter or you’re one of those people who doesn’t get recognition while all the credit goes to phony visionary billionaires.

Wednesday | 04.02
What: Kraftwerk
When: 7
Where: Ellie Caulkins Opera House
Why: Kraftwerk helped to popularize electronics in popular music with its influential and oddly popular avant-garde albums of the 1970s and this tour the group celebrates 50 years of its landmark 1974 album Autobahn. The latter pushed Kraftwerk into an international and even mainstream audience when it got radio airplay well outside of the band’s home country of Germany. The album also marked the shift of Kraftwerk being more conscious of their look as a band and a conscious effort at incorporating pop music concepts into its songwriting. If you’re wondering if visually the show will be interesting, yes. Will it sound rich and immersive? At this venue yes as well. If you’ve not seen Kraftwerk before best to check them out before it’s too late.

Friday | 04.04
What: ALO w/Cris Jacobs Band https://cervantesmasterpiece.com/event/alo-w-cris-jacobs-band/cervantes-masterpiece-ballroom/denver-colorado/
When: 7
Where: Cervantes’ Masterpiece Ballroom
Why: ALO aka Animal Liberation Orchestra celebrates the release of its new album Frames (Brushfire Records) with a show in Denver. The band has evolved considerably since its core formed in 1989 while Zach Gill, Steve Adamsn and Dan Lebowitz were in middle school as Django. Of course when you transition into high school and then into your 20s your musical tastes will develop and change particularly during that period when popular music was turned on its early when alternative rock exploded in 1991-1992. What is often missed is how jam band music as we know it now came together around that time as well with groups like Widespread Panic and Phish emerging from the 1980s with albums and tours proving that improvisational music with roots in jazz, progressive rock, funk, folk and psychedelia could be made accessible to a wide audience beyond Deadheads. ALO’s earlier albums had a more experimental bent clearly influenced by that realm of music but by the late 2000s the group seems to have honed in on crafting ambitious pop songs that benefit from masterful musicianship. The early singles from Frames confirm that ALO’s attention to production detail has certainly resulted in music that is expertly layered and imbued with an accessible immediacy that will be on full display at this show.

Saturday | 04.05
What: Barbara (album release) w/The Milk Blossoms and Flutter
When: 8
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Denver’s Barbara is releasing its new album SO THIS IS LIVING. The album sounds like a much more original fusion of hazy 1970s folk rock and deserty shoegaze. The rhythms are seemingly as tapped into Bossa Nova as standard pop song time. The psychedelic soundscapes shift mood and mode seemingly effortlessly so that there is a surprising depth to the music in which the breathy vocals perfectly evoke a dreamlike perspective suiting the themes of the record. Lyrics about disillusionment and wanting to cast off shallow and associations and trying to remain connected to what feels most vital and meaningful in life make up a solid portion of the album like an existential crisis examined from various perspectives of the lived experience. It’s a pleasantly surprisingly ambitious and actualized work of songcraft with a deep resonance sonically and emotionally. So it’s only fitting that another band well versed in poetic evocation of vibrant emotional openness and experimental, atmospheric pop, The Milk Blossoms, are on the bill as well bringing a full set of radical vulnerability. Flutter opens the proceedings with its jangle-y power pop seemingly steeped in the sounds and sensibilities of the likes of Big Star, The Posies and Teenage Fanclub.

A Strange Happening, photo by Tom Murphy

Saturday | 04.05
What: A Strange Happening, Steven Lee Lawson and El Dolor
When: 8
Where: The Skylark Lounge Bobcat Club
Why: A Strange Happening, go expecting to see the live band equivalent of an old time radio play mixed with a gritty, indie Americana band with all of the more ambitious storytelling required in the songwriting. There is a touch of vaudeville to the live show and the music in the best since of the band’s style being eclectic and refreshingly not really cribbing the style of another band. Steven Lee Lawson is one of Denver’s best lyricists and songwriters on his own with his own flavor of Americana borne of maybe listening to a lot of Neil Young and Sparklehorse early in life but Lawson is also someone who honed his ear and musical instincts being around the record store world and his poetry by living for a time in rural Colorado and daring to follow his dreams as a songwriter to Portland where it didn’t take root but which pushed him to setting aside his gift for a time before coming back to it seemingly more creatively focused in recent years.

Sunday | 04.06
What: Greg Norton & Büddies w/Black Dots and Valdez
When: 5
Where: HQ
Why: Greg Norton is the bassist of Hüsker Dü and this show will be him and members of Drag the River doing some of his old band’s music with openers in melodic punk group Black Dots and the solo work of soon to be former In the Whale guitarist Nate Valdez as Valdez. This project is more moody singer-songwriter material that in its own way is equal in quality to his more well known punk project with broad vistas of sound in the songwriting.

Monday | 04.07
What: Bestial Mouths w/The Siren Project
When: 8
Where: The Crypt
Why: Bestial Mouths is the long-running project of Lynette Cerezo whose alchemical blend of electronic industrial soundscapes, ritualistic rhythms and psychedelic tribal vocals has yielded a career of cathartic music that serve as a scathing critique of the destructive aspects of our civilization and culture on the personal and the societal level. The music is dark but Cerezo’s commanding presence as a performer seems more life affirming than melancholic. The Siren Project has been playing mostly in and around Denver since 1998 but it has also been one of the best and most compelling bands in the Mile High City though pretty much sticking to the Goth underground. This show is a surprising foray into the more indie American underground rather than the more traditional lanes tread by the band. With the Siren Project think something like a dream pop band that is influenced equally by the likes of The Cure, Cocteau Twins and Skinny Puppy with strong vocals and rich electronic atmospherics.

Dead Boys circa 2017, photo by Jeff Fasano

Wednesday | 04.09
What: Dead Boys w/Burn Kit and King Rat
When: 6
Where: The Oriental Theater
Why: Dead Boys came about properly when punk was becoming a thing identifiable as such but have a leg in what might looking back seem like proto-punk. But after splintering off from the influential Rocket From the Tombs Dead Boys had a thrillingly scuzzy sound with poetic and borderline nihilistic lyrics that manifested perfectly on its 1977 debut album Young, Loud and Snotty and the 1978 follow up We Have Come For Your Children. Then the band split for many years as an active thing with lead singer Stiv Bators going on to form the also influential Gothic rock band Lords of the New Church before passing in 1990. Since 2017 Dead Boys have been back active with talk of a new album in the works although not without some controversy doing with A.I. for the vocals but this show will have a real live singer. King Rat is one of the classic Denver punk bands in the retro rock vein but with a passionate performance style and surprisingly literate lyrics for songs that often have to do with the usual rock and roll subjects.

Wednesday | 04.09
What: Archer Oh w/Couch Dog and Bruha
When: 7
Where: The Black Buzzard
Why: Archer Oh are a garage rock band originally from the Inland Empire but not in the vein that was popularized so much in the 2010s. If its new album The Internal Album is any gauge the group was more inspired by Gothic rock, 1960s pop, maybe The Walkmen and modern retro-garage bands like Shannon and the Clams. Meaning more than an average amount of reverb in the vocals and a willingness to head into distorted vocal territory in delivering its emotionally-charged songs.

Thursday | 04.10
What: Beth Gibbons w/Cass McCombs
When: 6:30
Where: The Paramount Theatre
Why: Beth Gibbons is the legendary singer of influential trip-hop band Portishead. With the latter Gibbons’ passionate, broadly expressive voice brought the soul and humanity to the group’s brilliantly ethereal music and a performance style that felt elemental as well. She sang that music with her entire being in the live setting. With her 2024 album Lives Outgrown Gibbons delivers an even more intimate sound with organic, acoustic sounds establishing the settings for her affecting songs of grief and loss. Anyone of a certain age gets to that part of their lives, particularly if you’re in the realm of creative types, that good friends and associates seem to pass away with alarming frequency and with a seeming cruelty of suddenness. It’s one of her most rewarding records of her long career and one imbued with a poignancy and compassion for human fragility. By all accounts the live performances of this music is as transporting and as emotionally cathartic as one might hope for.

Friday | 04.11
What: Bob Mould w/Craig Finn
When: 7
Where: The Marquis Theater
Why: Bob Mould has somehow had an entire career of solid songwriting and live performances from his early days with foundational early alternative rock/post-punk band Hüsker Dü to Sugar’s amped power pop to albums under his own name with the always inventive and creative guitar work and knack for commenting on American culture with great insight and making it somehow personally resonant. In 2025 Mould released the excellent Here We Go Crazy and cementing himself as an artist that still finds a corner of sound and rhythm that he hasn’t completely worn thin and something to say about life worth uttering.

Friday | 04.11
What: Black Ends w/Supreme Joy, Team Nonexistent and Head Slug
When: 8
Where: Squirm Gallery
Why: Seattle’s Black Ends gets compared to grunge a lot because of where they’re from and probably because of the choice use of distortion. But listen to the songs on any of their releases and you hear a band that seems to be deconstructing rock music a little, dips into psychedelic microwormholes of tone bending, discordance built into melodies and off center yet commanding vocals that lean into the swaying and torrent of the songs’s unconventional structures. Refreshingly different from bands trying to be in an established style. Supreme Joy is the great, post-punk, post-garage band from Denver, Head Slug is a hybrid of noise rock and abstract pop and Team Nonexistent although from Denver and not the PNW seems most rooted in the realm of 90s grunge and punk but also without coming off stale.

Salads and Sunbeams, photo courtesy the band

Saturday | April 12
What: Salads and Sunbeams album release w/Angel Band and Rabbit Fighter
When: 8
Where: The Skylark Lounge Bobcat Club
Why: Into the Starless Night is the name of Salads and Sunbeams’ 2025 album out now on purple vinyl, digital download and likely on streaming platforms. The latter is stated that way because this band’s songwriting is steeped in an aesthetic and sensibilities of a more analog time and universe. Its warmth and lingering emotional coloring weave perfectly into its fine crafted melodies. Nathan Barsness has been in and around Denver in bands like the art punk pop band Insider Spider, the indiepop groups The Pseudo Dates, Games For May and Fingers of the Sun. All with fine releases along the way. But the new record is arguably the best set of music with which Barsness has been involved with along with his bandmates Suzi Allegra and Joshua Taylor. The songs all tell stories that embrace an adult version of the kind of fanciful whimsy and indulging the imagination as an attempt to hold on to the vulnerable and emotionally open aspect of one’s humanity. Its as much a work of literature as music. Angel Band sounds like it dropped right out of the C86 era with a stop in early 2000s Denver had they hung out with The Maybellines—so indiepop in the classic sense with the wonderful twee sensibilities that made so much of that late 80s and early 90s music on labels like Sarah Records and Slumberland so enduringly appealing—tender ballads and magnetically delicate melodies. Rabbit Fighter is similarly minded but its own songs have a bit more grit and rough edges in a way one might expect from the realm of all that great music one heard out of K Records and Kill Rock Stars.

Sunday | 04.13
What: Matt Andersen w/Julian Taylor
When: 6
Where: Swallow Hill
Why: Canadian blues musician Matt Andersen is touring ahead of the April 25 release of his new album The Hammer and the Rose. The title track is now available to check out as a single with a performance video that showcases Andersen’s emotional and tonal range as a songwriter. Andersen’s hearty vocals and energetic performance style is present on the album but the title single reveals Andersen’s level of nuance as a songwriter with vulnerable lyrics and command of atmosphere in the context of a song that transcends the style one might assume is his repertoire. While Andersen is no stranger to bringing a soulful tenderness to his vocals and musicianship, the new record’s level of sonic detail is impressive in how each element serves to make the songs memorable.

Tuesday | 04.15
What: Rosegarden Funeral Party w/Missing and Summore
When: 7
Where: HQ
Why: Rosegarden Funeral Party is Gothic post-punk band from Dallas that seems to weave in a much more tonally rich guitar sound than many of its peers seem to these days, borderline shoegaze. And with vibrant vocals reminiscent of a band out of the Los Angeles Paisley Underground with a similarly fearless incorporation of an eclectic palette of songwriting styles without losing a compelling moodiness. Missing from New Orleans struck a chord in its opening gigs with The Chameleons in 2024 and its album of the same year Nocturnalia represented well the depth of moody atmospheres and beautifully layered guitar work that elevated what might be solid post-punk band into something more epic in scope and creatively ambitious. Summore is a darkwave duo from Columbus, Ohio whose saturated synth tones and richly melodic vocals made its 2021 album Surfaces a standout of minimal synth dance pop.

Thursday | 04.17
What: Sean McConnell w/Amy Martin
When: 7
Where: Globe Hall
Why: Sean McConnell is a veteran songwriter who has been a contributor and collaborator with the likes of Tim McGraw, Martina McBride and Rascal Flatts. But since 2000 he has released albums of his own. At the end of February 2025 McConnell offered his eleventh album Skin. These songs find the artist expanding his style while really opening up for a listen that is both bold and intimate as he reflects on his life as a musician and family man and the challenges and revelations that come about as you try to do your best in the role of the latter and finding new ways to grow as the former. McConnell’s attention to sonic subtlety as someone steeped in country and folk is there but in moments such as the fiery “Demolition Day,” McConnell comes off like one of those great power pop rock artists of old but imbued with a refreshing immediacy.

Saturday | 04.19
What: Pale Sun and The Picture Tour
When: 3
Where: Mutiny Information Cafe
Why: Pale Sun is the non plus ultra space rock and shoegaze band from Colorado that includes former members of Bright Channel and Space Team Electra. Theirs is a dense and emotionally charged sound that carries you along to emotional depths and sonic heights. Billy Armijo may joke about being dark and Goth and his work with The Picture Tour is steeped in the gloomy melodic atmospheric rock you’d expect from someone who spent some time in their youth honing their guitar sound and style binge listening to The Cure, My Bloody Valentine and on an edgy day The Jesus and Mary Chain. But Armijo has songwriting chops that he put to great use in his old pop band The Bedsit Infamy and refined to even greater effect with his current band with wonderfully melancholic melodies and robust guitar tone that more bands that are dipping into the more interesting realm of post-punk should try to emulate. Catch both bands at a rare time during the day in a venue that isn’t a dark dive bar or their ilk.

Mogwai at Ogden Theatre in 2017. Photo by Tom Murphy.

Sunday | 04.20
What: Mogwai w/Papa M
When: 7
Where: The Ogden Theatre
Why: The title of Mogwai’s new album The Bad Fire is a Glaswegian term for Hell. Sounds like the members of the band were going through a tough spell. But these days doesn’t it feel like we all are to varying degrees? Reliably the band’s epic soundscapes take us through a catharsis of these feelings with expansive melodic vistas. This time out the group includes even more vocals than before and the songs sound more ethereal and fragile, brighter even at their most menacing. Somehow more cinematic than recent albums and among the band’s most creatively daring mixing expert use of space and an almost sound design approach to the mixing of elements. Papa M is legendary musician David Pajo formerly of Slint, Gang of Four, Dead Child. Papa M’s catalog is so diverse that saying you can expect this or that seems unfair to Pajo’s immense talent as an artist and songwriter, just go expecting something excellent and different. His new album Great Escape Artist brings together Chrome-esque noisy guitar fugues and Eno-esque guitar acrobatics alongside Motorik beats.

Dead Pioneers, photo courtesy the artists

Sunday | 04.20
What: Dead Pioneers w/Cheap Perfume, SPELLS and I Am the Owl
When: 7
Where: The Bluebird Theater
Why: Dead Pioneers released its incendiary new album PO$T AMERICAN on April 11, 2025 and probably landed its members on a plane to a death camp in El Salvador. But that’s the risk you take when you write a noisy punk record that is beginning to end inspired invective against American exceptionalism built on a legacy of genocide and patriarchal racism. What was slavery after all but genocide directly fueling capitalism and practice for the modern capitalism we’ve been living under our whole lives? It’s astonishing the number of ways the band has found to educate and smash American myths and cherished notions built on the most flimsy of foundations. There’s a song called The Caucasity and while it contains a humorous message told in surrealistic and Alice Donut-esque fashion fitting the title it really does take down a far too prevalent phenomenon in American culture. So go expecting solidarity against everything that makes America kind of a terrible place too often but a place that can, we hope, improve. But wait the openers are also worth your time among some of Denver punk’s best as well as the fiery Colorado Springs political punk quartet Cheap Perfume, some of the best to ever do it.

The Backseat Lovers, photo by Allyson Lowry

Sunday and Monday | 04.20 and 04.21
What: The Backseat Lovers w/Jonny’s Day Out
When: 7
Where: The Fox Theatre
Why: The Backseat Lovers haven’t toured in a couple of years and make a two night stop at The Fox Theatre. The group from Provo, Utah first made a splash with audiences outside of their region with the release of their 2019 album When We Were Friends and breakout hit “Kilby Girl” (with its nod to the longest running all-ages and essentially DIY venue in SLC Kilby Court). Though the band is known for its live stage show its songs have an intimate quality with hushed melodies and vulnerable tenor and well orchestrated atmospheric elements that lend the perhaps more indie folk underpinnings of some of the songwriting an added dimension so that the band’s songs even in their occasional simplicity take on an epic quality that introspective musings often can in your own mind. The group hasn’t released an album since 2022’s Waiting to Spill so who can say what you’ll get to see at this show.

Tuesday | 04.22
What: Snooper, The Nervous, The Clue and Pink Lady Monster
When: 7
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Nashville’s Snooper is a punk band in the sense that noisy weirdo eccentrics No Age are a punk band. Utilizing lo-fi electronics, frantic energy and surreal imagery the band sounds like a No Wave band had it discovered 2000s Memphis punk first and then went weird. The Nervous is a ferocious punk band in the thorny 90s vein that was decidedly and refreshingly not pop punk. Pink Lady Monster are definitely plugged into the No Wave, weirdo funk, jazz and noise pop thing with playfully imaginative lyrics and an undeniable groove even though the band’s music is gloriously yet elegantly splayed.

Wednesday | 04.23
What: Djo w/Post Animal
When: 7
Where: Mission Ballroom
Why: Djo aka Joe Keery is perhaps more known to the world as an actor who has a recurring role on the hit science fiction series Stranger Things and was seen in the fifth seen of the TV series Fargo. Before his commitments to Stranger Things and acting generally took up more of his time and focus and need to be away from Chicago from 2019 onward, he was a member of psychedelic garage prog greats Post Animal. Keery released his first album as Djo Twenty Twenty in 2019. The music is more stripped down than what he did for Post Animal but it was clear Keery had maintained his ear for unconventional melody crafting with sounds that dip into non-Western psych and fuzzy stoner rock-inflected garage and richly realized synth-driven atmospheric passages like something out of a 1970s art rock record. In April 2025 Djo released his new album The Crux, an effort that showcased Keery’s gift for humorous couplets and self-aware observations. Post Animal got lumped in with a lot of the 2010s garage psych bands of that time but anyone that saw the band could tell there was something different about what they were doing and where they were coming from even if it wasn’t obvious. Something heavier, more rooted in hard rock with chops but also with the spontaneous energy that made that decades garage rock bands worth seeing. Though it’s been a few years since Post Animal’s most recent album it was announced that the group will be releasing its new album IRON on July 25. The record brought all six original members of the band together including Joe Keery and the lead single “Last Goodbye” sounds like the band has further evolved its sound into the realm of cosmic Americana. Expect a Post Animal headlining tour in fall 2025.

Thursday | 04.24
What: Spiritual Poison, Compactor, Maltreatment, Dead Hawk and Fauve at Glob
When: 7
Where: Glob
Why: Spiritual Poison is Ethan Lee McCarthy’s dark ambient project. Compactor is a New York based death industrial artist that uses outmoded machines and other objects to make uniquely unsettling sounds. Maltreatment is the solo project of Brandon Artus who is in Vermin Womb with McCarthy and it’s some harsh noise, tape manipulation and samples sound collage. Dead Hawk from Colorado Springs seems to create soundscapes to fit titles that are a poignant and pointed commentary on the destructive effects of late capitalism and social neglect. Fauve is probably not the French multimedia collective but a noise artist with connections the better end of the local metal scene.

The Velveteers, photo by Jason Thomas Geerin

Friday | 04.25
What: The Velveteers w/Tiny Tomboy and May Be Fern
When: 7
Where: The Bluebird Theater
Why: The Velveteers are headed out for a couple of big dates with The Black Keys but headlining this hometown show at The Bluebird. The band that fuses heavy blues rock, psychedelia and electronic pop recently released A Million Knives that showcased the band’s evolving into that expanded palette of sounds and modes of expression. Tiny Tomboy recently released its own album 2025 Psychic Scar showcasing knack for combining grunge/noise pop grit and shoegaze-inflected pop songcraft. May Be Fern is a talented band that seems at home playing a variety of musical styles landing somewhere in both funk and indie rock.

Saturday | 04.26
What: Clementine Was Right w/The Milk Blossoms and Silver West
When: 8
Where: The Skylark Lounge
Why: Clementine Was Right sounds like a band that came up listening to a lot of alt-country and decided some of it was better than other aspects and discovered ample fodder for songwriting for turning memories of growing up in rural California into surreal poetry and with real immediacy that would be recognizable to anyone that came up under less than ideal circumstances. Didn’t most of us? All of us? The Milk Blossoms always sound like it came out of finding the tender places in the psyche after examining the experiences that seem to stick out in our minds for all manner of reasons and transforming those nuggets into ear worms to soothe the thorny spots in our brains. Silver West is a solo cosmic country and folk project from photographer and sound mixer Hali Webb.

Saturday | 04.26
What: Cryogeyser w/Flooding and Flesh Tape
When: 8
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Los Angeles-based Cryogeyser has a sound that fits somewhere in the realm of desert-y dream pop and introspective dream pop though its live shows tend to feel more visceral. Its self-titled 2025 album finds the band heading into more sonically elevated territory in moments when it leans into the raw emotional lyrics more heavily and with elegantly crafted, spacious guitar work. Flooding is like if a dark folk band embraced black metal aesthetics to pair with songs about the collective trauma late capitalism is inflicting on everything and everyone. It’s elemental and enthralling stuff and as pointed as it is cathartic. Flesh Tape from Fort Collins is an amalgamation of noise rock and the shoegaze end of emo.

Saturday | 04.26
What: Jan Jelinek/Andrew Pekler w/sleepdial, virga delta & Mitch Smith
When: 7
Where: Aztlan Theater
Why: Jan Jelinek and Andrew Pekler are both composers from Berlin who in their separate endeavors have mastered their individual aesthetics of ambient and minimal techno. Both masterfully weave field recordings and processed samples into their soundscapes with inspired collages of sound to create greater emotional resonances. Denver’s sleepdial will put in a rare performance of abstract post-rock expressionism.

Sunday | 04.27
What: L.A. Witch w/DAIISTAR
When: 7
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: L.A. Witch has never really been content to languish in a stylistic rut but it has always been able to maintain a sort of mystique with albums that explore themes through concepts that on the surface are easy to understand and reveal their complexity and richness the further you go in. The band’s new album DOGGOD was recorded in Paris rather than the band’s home city of Los Angeles and the songwriting isn’t short on the economical use of elements to craft expansive songs that has kept the band interesting all along. This time out the guitar lines are slinky and dark and trace new paths to an existential psychedelia via Krautrock-esque rhythms that easily go off the beaten path and back. In moments it sounds like if The Cure came up through garage rock and went weirder with that aesthetic. On this tour you also get to see Austin’s DAIISTAR whose melding of 60s psychedelic rock, Madchester and synth-infused space rock sets it apart from its peers with shades of BJM and Indian Jewelry on the edges of that sound.

Sunday | 04.27
What: clipping. w/Counterfeit Madison
When: 7
Where: Larimer Lounge
Why: Los Angeles hip-hop experimentalists clipping. have truly been pushing the artform to new realms from the beginning. But its new album Dead Channel Sky sounds like it’s anticipating a renaissance of tapping into the ideas and hybrid styles inherent to the literary form of cyberpunk for inspiration. The touchstones are all over the record but taken to a new level. The title of the album alone is a clear nod to the iconic first sentence of William Gibson’s influential 1984 novel Neuromancer. There’s a song called “Mirrorshades pt. 2 (ft. Cartel Madras)” that is an obvious reference to Bruce Sterling’s 1986 landmark cyberpunk Mirrorshades anthology. And the other allusions are so on point for the present with some furious updates to big beat sounds that groups like Sextile and Jockstrap have been incorporating into their own music but clipping. is using these concepts and sounds to make a commentary on how the dystopian science fiction of another era while it never quite happened the way it was presented but that our world has manifested an even darker vision of the extreme corporate Libertarian nightmare that Gibson, Sterling, Lewis Shiner, Pat Cadigan, John Shirley, Rudy Rucker and he godfather of that movement Philip K. Dick had projected onto the future. With rapidfire rapping worthy of Busdriver, Dead Channel Sky finds clipping. delivering music even more relevant than when it was showing other hip-hop artists the way over a decade ago. Counterfeit Madison is a Chicago-based composer, pianist and soul singer whose forceful and heartfelt vocals and performances likely landed her on this bill.

Godspeed You! Black Emperor, photo by Tom Murphy

Monday | 04.28
What: Godspeed You! Black Emperor
When: 6
Where: The Ogden Theatre
Why: Godspeed You! Black Emperor is of course the legendary and even foundational post-rock band from Montreal, Quebec, Canada. For those unaware the band’s music though generally functionally instrumental with some vocal samples included as part of the music has from its early days included social and political commentary into its album and song titles whether directly, poetically or creatively or all. Its latest album is 2024’s “NO TITLE AS OF 13 FEBRUARY 2024 28,340 DEAD” which is more than likely a reference to the Palestinian genocide ongoing and the relative apathy or disregard the world powers have shown to halting those events and how the allowance of that genocide is a precursor to conflicts to come and a sign of the hollowing out of even the conceit of international law much less human rights. It’s a set of mournful pieces imbued with great delicacy of feeling that expresses the horrors and despair of the moment but indulges a moment of hope in the end.

Tuesday | 04.29
What: Korine, Johnny Dynamite & The Bloodsuckers and Uhl
When: 7
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Philadelphia’s Korine has been offering a gorgeous fusion of shoegaze and synthpop that fans of M83 will appreciate. Its new album A Flame In The Dark is even more deep into the realm of chillwave. Live the band comes off as an especially sonically present and emotionally charged post-punk band if the members had come up on emo and discovered post-punk and its immediate pipeline to dream pop and shoegaze.

Wednesday | 04.30
What: Dummy w/Supreme Joy, Cherry Spit and Sun Swept
When: 7
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Dummy from Los Angeles only has two albums out so far but both are examples of how you can completely embrace pop songcraft, experimental soundscaping and art concepts and make something mysterious and entrancing. Musically the group often remind one of what would have come next out of the indie underground of the 2000s had too many parts of that not been overshadowed by the glut of garage rock. Colorful melodies, layered rhythms not all steeped in the Western mode and a willingness to overlap retro sounds and modern production techniques. Maybe these people listened to a lot of Stereolab and Broadcast but also stuff like Zero Zero and Peaking Lights. If not the emotional and sonic resonances are there for fans of any of that. Supreme Joy is like a post-punk band if it came up through garage rock and Pavement. Cherry Spit is an explosive hurricane of noise rock. Sun Swept is the Denver-based cosmic ambient project of Sarah Christiansen.

Best Shows in Denver January 2024

Nabihah Iqbal performs at Lost Lake on January 25, 2024

Friday | 01.05
What: The Salesmen w/Billy Conquer, Tuff Bluff and Candy Chic
When: 8pm doors/8:30pm show
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: The Salesmen might be considered post-punk because its music has that angular aspect and seems informed by political edge in the more interesting end of punk but its eclectic style doesn’t fit a narrow genre tag. Its 2023 EP WAR IN COLORADO! sounds like they grew up listening to Red Hot Chili Peppers, pop punk and 90s art rock in the vein of Mr. Bungle and took what chops they learned that mutant route and made something decidedly different. Billy Conquer from Gunnison, Colorado unabashedly claims its garage rock roots but its 2020 EP Garage Hits has a flavor that sounds more like the guys grew up having their brains poisoned by classic rock and jam band overload (it happens whether through parents or peers) but then discovered T-Rex and Big Star and rather than follow the typical garage punk route of the 2010s actually honed their chops both technical and songwriting-wise to make something that dips into the classics a bit but so well developed you don’t mind. Tuff Bluff is the latest punk band to include Sara Fischer who some may remember for her time in old school Denver groups like Pin Downs, The Speedholes, New Idols, The Manxx, Bluebelle and others. So of course the songwriting is well crafted and both gritty and melodic Candy Chic has been around longer than one might assume since its cachet has caught on a bit more over the past year. Its music doesn’t seem beholden to surf rock, indiepop or post-punk though general fans of that kind of music will find something to appreciate about the band’s deft navigation of a sound that may remind some of early Slumberland bands or even Sarah Records acts with a gentle touch and a knack for tender and ethereal melodies and richly emotional vocals.

Friday and Saturday | 01.05 and 01.06
What: Daniel Donato’s Cosmic Country & Trouble No More (A Celebration of Allman Brothers Band)
When: 7pm doors/8pm show both nights
Where: Cervantes’ Masterpiece Ballroom (01.05) and Cervantes’ Masterpiece Ballroom (01.06)
Why: Daniel Donato released his latest album Reflector on November 10, 2023 and its richly diverse sounds and styles are entrancing and lively. It’s the kind of country one would expect from an artist rooted in modern Nashville in that he seems to have absorbed the sounds where country intersects with psychedelia, indie rock and the jam band universe and produced an orchestral yet accessible sound of his own. Donato’s songwriting isn’t same-y and through the album and his body of work he offers uplifting and thoughtful tales of human existence with great imagination and energy.

Sunday | 01.07
What: Equine, Church Car (NYC) and Adam Baumeister
When: 7 pm
Where: St. Pauli Tavern
Why: Equine is Kevin Richards’ long-running, solo, free jazz-inflected, avant-garde guitar drone project with several albums in his body of work to date. Richards was once the genius guitarist of post-hardcore band Motheater and a member of noise band Epileptinomicon and Equine reflects that background some in that he brought truly unorthodox jazz chords to post-hardcore guitar style and a structure, albeit one more intuitive, to noise. Church Car is the latest project of Ian Douglas Moore who was known in Denver more for his time in punk adjacent and Americana bands. Adam Baumeister? Who knows what you’ll get because his wide-ranging creativity has meant he was a member of Bad Weather California, art-punk weirdos Navy Girls, his own experimental guitar and cosmic country grunge pop band Littles Paia and Lil’ Adam as well as numerous other musical endeavors over the years including his running of lathe cut imprint Meep Records.

Sunday | 01.07
What: Nocturnal Prose w/Hex Casse, Empty4400 and Luna’s
When: 7pm
Where: Seventh Circle Music Collective
Why: Nocturnal Prose is a noisy post-punk/shoegaze band from San Antonio, Texas. Hex Cassette is the one man cult and industrial dance extravaganza who always seems to find a way to joke darkly with the audience while getting them to dance by bringing the performance into the crowd. Empty4400 is a true fusion of noisy shoegaze and emo. Luna’s is a hardcore band from Denver.

Thursday | 01.11
What: Plaid w/Rameau Control
When: 8
Where: Meow Wolf
Why: Plaid is the influential and foundational IDM duo from the UK. From its early days when Andy Turner and Ed Handley were part of The Black Dog Plaid has been pioneering forward thinking electronic musical ideas, forms and methods of composition including crafting their own electronic instruments in software form not to mention its creative use of hardware. Plaid’s diverse body of work has pushed the boundaries of modern electronic music and its latest album 2022’s Feorm Falorx is one of its most accessible records with bright melodies and finely sequenced beats like dance music for the soundtrack to a deceptively utopian thriller set in an off world holiday resort.

Friday | 01.12
What: Poison Tribe w/Upon a Fields Whisper, Clarion Void and Empire Demolition
When: 8
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Poison Tribe is a crusty hardcore band from Denver whose body of work thus far seems like a caustic critique of state violence and the horror of the dystopia that is too obvious from any remotely realistic assessment of world events and American national and local politics. Upon a Fields Whisper is an atmospheric doom/blackened crust band from Colorado Springs comprised of noteworthy musicians from that city’s always surprisingly great local music scene including Brian Ostrow of numerous other bands including 908 and formerly of Blighter. Also Bryan Webb who has also been a mainstay of Colorado Springs music in various bands perhaps most well known for some for his tenure in garage punk legends Nicotine Fits and The Conjugal Visits. Clarion Void also from Colorado Springs seems to traffic in the kind of existential blackened doom that means it is deft at both introspective melodies and blisteringly intense riffing that it often lets hang in the air like a harbinger of disaster. Empire Demolition is sort of a powerviolence/deathgrind band from Denver who are set to release their new album Defenestration on January 12, 2024 in time for this show.

Saturday | 01.13
What: Bluebook w/The Still Tide and Uhl
When: 8
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Bluebook is the long-running musical project of Julie Davis that has undergone various incarnations as a vehicle for her jazz-inflected, experimental downtempo chamber pop. But the current iteration of the band is a bit of an all-star lineup including former Monofog and Snake Rattle Rattle Snake singer Hayley Helmericks on drums, Anna Morsett of The Still Tide on guitar and Jess Parsons (The Still Tide, Patrick Dethlefs, Alex Cameron) on keyboards, all of whom also contribute vocals to the project. The result of this amalgam of talent is a group that conveys an emotional depth like a brooding, dark folk art rock pop group. Not much else like it. The Still Tide proves that Anna Morsett isn’t just a gifted songwriter but one of the best lead guitarists in a band in Denver with a knack for using alternate tunings and expertly placed capos to create a unique sound palette alongside what bandmate Jake Miller is doing on his own guitar. Uhl is the art pop project of Isabella Uhl whose vocals focused compositions have garnered critical attention from national publications like Under the Radar and whose music might be compared to ambitious songwriters in a more dream pop vein like Kate Bush or perhaps more directly like Jenny Hval and Fever Ray.

Saturday | 01.13
What: Rowboat, Zealot and A Strange Happening
When: 9
Where: The Roxy on Broadway
Why: If you were to put the names of a dozen of the best indie rock bands in Denver in a hat and draw them out you couldn’t do better than this. Rowboat is a trio fronted by Sam McNitt who starts with a folk foundation on acoustic guitar in his songwriting process and builds them into emotionally charged and poetically insightful songs well orchestrated in the live setting on electric guitar and bass and synth from Scott Frank and drums by Brian Lepien. It is powerful and consistently underrated stuff in recent years in Denver from former members of Blue Million Miles and Fucking Orange. Zealot is a band that is comprised of brilliant songwriters and musicians in their own right but lead by Luke Hunter James-Erickson who perhaps is inspired greatly by the literary indie rock of The Mountain Goats but whose own creative muse has lead him down various fruitful paths and interests over the past couple of decades in Denver. But on board are former Fingers of the Sun and current Salads and Sunbeams songwriter, bassist and singer Suzi Allegra, former Facade and Violent Summer guitarist and singer Kitty Vincent and Michael King who is one of the great bass players in Denver indie rock but plays drums in this band. On the recording of the group’s latest single are Jacob Adamson and Elisha Coy from A Strange Happening whose own concept pop indie rock is a brilliant fusion of radio play storytelling style and indiepop in the classic 90s vein.

Saturday | 01.13
What: Pink Hawks release of Elote w/Don Chicharrón, 2MX2 and Fuya Fuya
When: 7
Where: The Oriental Theater
Why: Pink Hawks came out of Yuzo Nieto’s fascination with experimental music, jazz and the possibilities in fusing those impulses with Afrobeat and other forms of African and Latin popular music. This show is a celebration of the release of the vinyl edition of the group’s new record Elote. So it’s only fitting that Latin psychedelic rock band Don Chicharrón is on hand on the bill as well as excellent Spanish language hip-hop duo 2MX2.

Cheap Perfume circa 2016, photo by Tom Murphy

Wednesday | 01.17
What: Cheap Perfume, Dead Pioneers and Elegant Everyone
When: 8
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Three of the most overtly political bands from Colorado on one bill? And all with lyrics that are smart, poetic and poignant? Each of these acts are also entertaining, energetic and those lyrics don’t feel like a lecture at all but a rallying cry for something important and a sharp, pointed and clever critique of some of the worst impulses of our collective culture and society. That’s what punk can, has been, and should probably be more often.

Thursday | 01.18
What: In Plain Air w/Corsicana, Deth Rali and Tarantula Bill
When: 7
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Psych prog trio In Plain Air is launching its long weekend tour through Kansas at this show with support from dream pop band Corsicana, Deth Rali and it’s unorthodox blend of thrash and psychedelic prog and Tarantula Bill who, based purely on song streaming, seem to ably enough perform music clearly inspired by early 2010s psychedelic indie rock.

Wave Decay circa 2023, photo by Tom Murphy

Friday | 01.19
What: Wave Decay w/Pale Sun and Galleries
When: 8
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: This will be a show of the heavier end of shoegaze and psychedelia. Wave Decay’s sound is rooted in the angular disorient and sonic discipline of krautrock but with dense atmospherics reminiscent of music done by Jeff suthers of Pale Sun whose own mastery of soundscaping and emotionally charged songwriting all at once is more or less unmatched in Denver. Galleries came out of the 2010s based in the classic rock resurgence and psych garage and its current musical offerings are in that vein but the band appears to have followed an instinct for expansive melodies and the kind of psychedelia one might more expect from the more rock and roll end of Deerhunter.

Friday | 01.19
What: Wreckno w/Moore Kismet, Thelem and Eyezic
When: 8
Where: Ogden Theatre
Why: Wreckno is now based in Indianapolis but started out in small town Michigan and garnered a cult following as a queer rapper, producer and DJ in the bass music/EDM world with a presentation that is as colorful as it is inventive in genre bending and collaborating with a wide range of artists in his wheelhouse and beyond. But if you’re going definitely get there early enough to catch Moore Kismet whose 2022 debut album Universe, released when he was 17, revealed a gift for layering rhythms and atmospheres in a way reminiscent of the production of Flying Lotus and beats fusing ideas out EDM, trap and the more experimental hip-hop auteurs of the 90s and 2000s and progressing it into his own style. Fans of the aforementioned and the more electronic dance end of Jockstrap will get a lot of Moore Kismet’s creative experiments in the electronic music art form.

Saturday | 01.20
What: Broken Record, Quits, despAIR Jordan and DJ Listen Up Nerds
When: 8
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Nothing Moves Me proved that Denver’s Broken Record had polished its already noteworthy songwriting into a shining body of work that has the emotional nuance and conviction of a great emo band but with power pop knack for hard hitting melodies like Dinosaur Jr had that band come up through 90s underground rock rather that influenced a lot of it. Quits is a juggernaut noise rock band who will be hitting the road to the West Coast in the first week and a half of February in support of its 2023 album Feeling It out on Sleeping Giant Glossolalia. DespAIR Jordan somehow came out of the punk scene and writes glittery and uplifting, shoegaze-adjacent pop rock that sounds more like The Dismemberment Plan than Sunny Day Real Estate but without truly sounding like either.

Tuesday | 01.23
What: Squirrel Flower w/Goon and Lu Lagoon
When: 7
Where: Larimer Lounge
Why: Ella O’Connor Williams was involved in the Boston DIY scene in her teens before moving to Iowa to attend Grinnell College where she wrote her first EP Early Winter Songs From Middle America as Squirrel Flower and releasing it herself in 2015. Eight years, two further EPs and four albums later Williams released 2023’s Tomorrow’s Fire. The songwriter already had more than a touch of that Low-esque talent for melodious vocals and emotional delicacy of expression baked into the music but also some of that scrappy energy that propels her folk-inflected songs into an elevated realm of sonic power. The new record simply opens up where Williams is able to go with her experiments with sounds and styles in unexpected directions and at times is reminiscent of the eclectic and explosive music of Wednesday. Except of course that Williams has her own perceptive observations about the challenges of modern, working class life told in musical shadings introspective and brash yet always sensitive and vulnerable in the way that only truly powerful music can be.

Wednesday and Thursday | 01.24 and 01.25
What: Nabihah Iqbal w/STAR Inc. and DJ Ladybug
When: 6pm doors/7pm show on 01.24 and 7pm doors 8pm show on 01.25
Where: Washington’s (01.24) and Lost Lake (01.25)
Why: Nabihah Iqbal was a human rights lawyer before crafting the music for which she would later be known though has likely dabbled in music across a lifetime. An early contributor to the work of the late experimental pop artist and producer Sophie, Iqbal released her debut album under her own name in 2017 with Weighing of the Heart. In 2023 she unveiled Dreamer via the respected avant-electronic imprint Ninja Tune with its intricate layers of hazy, luminescent atmospheres and flows of introspective vocals. The music casts light on the aspirations, challenges of joys of navigating the world and its sweeping dynamics intermingle the musically tactile with the ethereal for an effect that is transporting yet grounded. Iqbal’s navigation of these aesthetics and creative impulses is masterful and often attempted by more conventional shoegaze bands but not always to the same degree of effectiveness.

King Cardinal, photo from kingcardinal.com

Friday | 01.26
What: King Cardinal w/Cous and Hunter James and The Titanic
When: 7
Where: Globe Hall
Why: Brennan Mackey of King Cardinal says on the band’s web bio that he moved to Denver on a whim after working a finance job he didn’t love and perhaps dreading what the rest of his life might look like he decided to throw that caution to the wind. Fortunately for us, Mackey is a gifted songwriter and musician and the 2017 debut album from King Cardinal, Great Lakes, is a choice example of when an Americana band can infuse its more homespun charm with mood and imagination. Dynamic flows of tones and textures in expressive rivulets around Mackey’s own fine singing. The group is now releasing its new album Landlines. Haven’t heard any of the new material but based on the attention to songwriting details and delicacy of delivery it’s likely to be another set of songs of pastoral beauty and sentiments that have made the group’s previous offerings eminently listenable.

Friday | 01.26
What: Rowboat, Blacktop Musical and Owosso
When: 8 doors/9 show
Where: 715 Club
Why: Rowboat is making a rare live showing inside of the same month with this show and bringing some highly literate and passionate folk-rooted, shoegaze adjacent rock to this small room. Also on the bill is the Owosso whose members came up in the punk and early modern indie rock milieu and whose music has that scrappy angular energy blended with melodic songwriting acumen that made the many of the DC post-punk bands so perennially appealing.

Saturday | 01.27
What: Buck Meek w/Dylan Meek
When: 7
Where: Globe Hall
Why: Buck Meek is perhaps best known as the guitarist and backing vocalist of indie rock phenoms Big Thief. But for the past half a decade and more he’s carved out an musical identity to explore separate from the band and his third album Haunted Mountain was issued by 4AD in 2023. The cosmic, ambient folk/alt-country is at turns poetically fantastical, tenderly personal and organic in its arrangements. Each song seems to emerge, unfold and grow into charming, poignantly knowing vignettes of life. If you’re a fan it would be advised to catch him on this tour to see how the band pulls this off live.

Tuesday | 01.30
What: Digable Planets Reachin’ 30th Anniversary Tour w/Kassa Overall
When: 8
Where: Ogden Theatre
Why: Digable Planets began as a solo project of Ishmael “Butter Fly” Butler in the late 80s but the demos blossomed when Butler met and began collaborating with Mariana “Ladybug Mecca” Vieira and Craig “Doodlebug” Irving after he started interning at Sleeping Bag Records in NYC and in 1989 the current and classic lineup of Digable Planets was born. Like some of its contemporaries the trio was immersed in the aesthetics and creative impulses of jazz fused with highly literate lyrics and brought that sensibility firmly into hip-hop in a way that translated as particularly experimental and to this day surprisingly forward thinking. During its first iteration from the 80s through 1995 the group only released two albums, 1993’s Reachin’ (A New Refutation of Time and Space) and 1995’s futuristic Blowout Comb. The group has reunited twice from 2005-2011 and 2015 to the present and although it hasn’t released an album’s worth of new music its live show maintains a certain mystique and late night jazz vibe that is still deeply compelling.

Best Shows in Denver and Beyond May 2023

Skinny Puppy performs at Fillmore Auditorium on May 3, 2023, photo by Emilie Elizabeth and John Kraw, 2014

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Ultrabomb, photo from ultrabombmusic.com

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.