Weathered Statues – Queen City Sounds and Art

Best Shows in Denver and Beyond August 2025

**Latter performs at Ghost Canyon Fest on Saturday, August 22, 2025, photo by Vanessa Valdez**

Friday | 08.01
What: MSPAINT w/American Culture, Lip Critic and Pat and the Pissers
When: 7
Where: Marquis Theater
Why: MSPAINT came out of the hardcore underground as a band that didn’t have a guitarist instead took the attitude and applied it to a more synth-and-bass driven post-punk. Since then the group has evolved a sharp critique of American society and culture while maintaining a compassionate stance toward human vulnerability with an analog to what Chat Pile has been putting out. Its latest release is the No Separation EP on which the group expand its more experimental soundscaping tendencies while still having an arresting and commanding delivery. American Culture has had its own evolution as a band from earlier indie-pop-turned-atmospheric post-punk band but along the way it absorbed the influence of modern hardcore, The Cure and 90s Britpop simultaneously. It has resulted in a band that is not much like anything else going either.

Friday | 08.01
What: Down Time, Bluebook and Fingertip 57
When: 8
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Down Time is now based out of Los Angeles but cut its teeth in the Denver indie rock scene where its sophisticated songwriting and tender melodies struck a chord locally in certain circles. Since then the group has developed its fusion of synth pop and a more baroque sound that hits as timeless and very analog in its aesthetic so that it’s songwriting has a very tangible quality in its saturated tones. Bluebook is one of the premier art pop bands in Denver fronted by the enigmatic and charismatic Julie Davis backed by former Monofog frontwoman Hailey Helmericks, gifted songwriter Jess Parsons and Still Tide’s guitar genius Anna Morsett.

Entrancer at Listening Lawn I, photo by Tom Murphy

Saturday | 08.02
What: Listening Lawn V: Flyvee, Moth Sanctuary, Snowswept, Suo and Entrancer
When: 5-8
Where: Carpio Sanguinette Park
Why: This is an event organized by Multidim records and it’s for the experimental electronic heads who miss a time when this music had wider places to be experienced before Nü Denver came in and rapidly gentrified most corners of the metro area by the time the COVID-19 pandemic crashed into the headlong rush of all of that. This event will include notable producers and composers in the electronic realm including longtime forward thinking techno artist Entrancer. The event takes place in a park that is part ruin, part forgotten pocket of Denver and between complete corporate dominance and industrial land use. A perfect setting.

Saturday | 08.02
What: Lifeguard w/Autobahn and The Red Scare
When: 8
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Lifeguard is touring in support of its full-length album Ripped and Torn out now on Matador. The noisy post-punk discordant aspect of the band’s sound with the dub-like tonal ripple baked into the guitar riffs as they interact at odd angles with the rhythm might be something one has come to expect from Chicago’s rich noise rock and post-punk scene generally but Lifeguard sounds like it’s on the edge and expressing the nervous energy and fragility that seems ambient in the world at the moment.

Monday | 08.04
What: Badvril, Surprise Soup, BabyBaby and Headslug
When: 7:30
Where: The Skylark Lounge
Why: Badvril is a shoegaze band from San Francisco that is touring behind its new record In Heaven. If you’re into stuff like Letting Up Despite Great Faults and Wild Nothing you’ll probably enjoy what these people are doing. BabyBaby is a standout synth pop artist whose rich electronic melodies and effervescent spirit elevate any show of which she is a part. Surprise Soup is a Denver trio that sounds like it took a bit of inspiration from math rock bands of the late 90s, Pavement and Death Cab For Cutie. Headslug can be sorta ambient or shoegaze-adjacent but also lo-fi slowcore but always surprisingly interesting.

Monday | 08.04
What: MØAA w/Tassles
When: 7
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: MØAA is a Seattle-based artist whose 2021 album Euphoric Recall was a crossover hit in underground shoegaze and Goth/post-punk for the moody yet tonally rich guitar work and expansive drift. The breathy vocals and sense of space on the project’s 2023 album Jaywalker paired with the electronic beats is reminiscent of mid-2000s Ladytron but with decidedly modern flavor. Denver’s Tassles is hard to pin down to anything except the music sounds like shoegaze made by someone who has spent a lot of time listening to Black Marble and corporate training video music but somehow transcending the limitations of both. The recently released Net Worth album has a breezy quality that is summery without feeling similarly insubstantial. Psychedelic warping and techno beats and hazy around the edges production make it one of the more original entries into the crowded modern shoegaze field.

Tuesday | 08.05
What: Angel Band tour kickoff w/Sonic Chick, Fragrant Blossom and Scorplings
When: 7
Where: Seventh Circle Music Collective
Why: Angel Band is taking its twee jangle pop on the road and leading off with this show. Fans of Sarah Records bands and their fresh energy and borderline naive style songwriting or newer bands like Denver’s The Maybellines will find a great deal to like about Angel Band and its charismatic live show. Fragrant Blossom is more like an arty abstract jazz and New Age pop project that includes Ben Donehower aka Petite Garcon. Scorplings will bring an angular, Chicago scene style noise rock and Yo La Tengo bleeding edge pop sound to this show.

The Milk Blossoms in 2025, photo by Tom Murphy

Wednesday | 08.06
What: The Milk Blossoms
When: 5-8 pm
Where: Granby Ranch
Why: Denver-based art pop heartbreakers The Milk Blossoms make a rare trip to the hinterlands to charm and entrance an audience for a three hour set in a beautiful outdoor setting away from the baking heat of Denver in August. Likely the group will break out some of its older material to extend the set so if you’re lucky enough to be there you’ll get to experience a full range of the band’s songwriting, all of it poignant, deeply evocative and cathartic in the way that only songs that truly tug at the heartstrings and stir the imagination simultaneously as deftly as The Milk Blossoms’ material can and always does.

Thursday | 08.07
What: Dispatch w/John Butler, Donavon Frankenreiter and Illiterate Light
When: 6
Where: Red Rocks
Why: Dispatch is mostly known as an indie and roots rock band in the past decade and a half or so that it’s been back together. But its new album Yellow Jacket hearkens more back to its early days when the group was more steeped in a reggae and ska sound blended into its more folk rock sound. Of course it’s an update and the band’s songcraft is more honed than in its earlier incarnation but the songs are still informed by a spirit of human liberation and the joy of living with the ups and downs inevitable with human existence. The new record includes an acoustic song with Ani DiFranco that sounds like a 60s folkie protest song and all the better for it. Live the band brings a passion to the performances that elevate what might be perceived as more introspective and tranquil material.

White Rose Motor Oil, photo by Tammy Shine

Friday | 08.08
What: White Rose Motor Oil, Graveyard Choir and Chella & The Charm
When: 8
Where: The Skylark Lounge
Why: This is a stacked lineup for local Americana but one in which none of the bands are really even remotely alike. White Rose Motor Oil combines a rockabilly sound with stripped down country rock without compromising the passionate delivery. As a duo WRMO are surprisingly exuberant and warm in their performances. Graveyard Choir is a country rock group fronted by former In The Whale guitarist and singer Nate Valdez. The songwriting is more blues driven with more honky tonk bar style ragers but with more tonally expressive guitar than expected with that style of music. Chella & The Charm threads together alt-country creativity in the realm of Americana with lyrics that aren’t just sharply and sensitively observed but which offer a keen insight into social and psychological dynamics. And also performed with a commanding presence.

Friday | 08.08
What: Sharpie Smile, Pink Lady Monster, Chroma Lips
When: 8
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Sharpie Smile from Los Angeles just put out its new album The Staircase on Drag City. The mix of minimalist left field rock and hyperpop with ambient and industrial soundscaping lends its songwriting futuristic feel like music you’d more expect on a label like Ninja Tune or Warp. Its expert use of jump cut swells and subtle pitch shifting renders the music both accessible and pleasantly disorienting. Pink Lady Monster won’t be one for small minds either with its alchemical fusion of No Wave funk, avant-garde performance pop and skronk-infused free jazz. Chroma Lips is a psychedelic garage rock band from Denver that ditched the trendy sound of the 2010s and adopted the more krautrock end of shoegaze as a driver of its sound.

Victim of Fire in 2023, photo by Tom Murphy

Saturday | 08.09
What: Victim of Fire album release w/Speed of the Sorcerer, Womb of the Witch, Spear of Cassius and Ukko’s Hammer
When: 8
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Victim of Fire is celebrating the release of its new record The Old Lie with a stacked lineup of other bands within the wide realm of its own amalgam of d-beat, hardcore, black metal and crust punk. The fast-forward avalanche of both distorted and melodic guitar work and feral vocals suits well its songs about the deceptions of society and government regarding the organization of our resources toward war as part of an ongoing and age old charade of actions for the betterment of the country or our in-group. Speed of the Sorcerer, Womb of the Witch is a death doom band from Denver who seem to have fused perfectly classic death metal with melodic thrash including song titles that fuse ideas and concepts in an over-the-top and absurdly humorous fashion but which definitely conjure an image. Spear of Cassius is more of a screamo and power violence band with vocals that sound like they’re both distended and compressed with melancholic musical passages that suggest a great nuance of emotional expression than one often comes to expect from extreme metal. Ukko’s Hammer is classic crossover hardcore with caustic urgency in the vocals and percussion that seems to persistent it feels like the world drops out carried by the sheer momentum of the rest of the music and Zach Reini’s vocals over a chasm before re-engaging.

Bad Luck City in 2015, photo by Tom Murphy

Saturday | 08.09
What: Munly & The Lupercalians, Let the Dead Eat the Dead (feat. Members of Bad Luck City) and Weathered Statues
When: 8
Where: The Skylark Lounge
Why: Drummer and visual artist Andrew Warner is celebrating his birthday by playing sets with three of his bands. Munly & The Lupercalians is potent fusion of dark Americana and post-punk with folkloric lyrics. Weathered Statues is one of the few genuine death rock bands from Denver but one that utilizes soaring vocals and synths with sharp guitar work and some of the most powerful bass lines of any band in Denver or anywhere. Let the Dead Eat the Dead, though, is like a new incarnation of the great Americana band Bad Luck City. Fronted by the charismatic Dameon Merkl, BLC was clearly influenced by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds but with unique and often darkly humorous lyrics and noir storytelling that made it a local favorite for years.

In the Company of Serpents, photo by Kate Rose

Saturday | 08.09
What: In the Company of Serpents w/Palehorse/Palerider, Church Fire and Cronos Compulsion
When: 7
Where: The Bluebird Theater
Why: In the Company of Serpents has completely reconciled its musical impulses on its new record A Crack In Everything. It is one of its heaviest and most crushing records but infused with the atmospheric desert rock psychedelia that has been a part of its sound over the past decade and with lyrics that capture the emotional tenor of the moment through the expression of personal struggle. Fitting that psychedelic, experimental heavy folk outfit Palehorse/Paleride shares the bills as does politically charged industrial dance phenoms Church Fire and its live show to suit the name of the band.

Thursday | 08.14
What: Shannon Lay w/Cyrena Rosati and Ryan Wong
When: 7
Where: Squirm Gallery
Why: Shannon Lay probably became known to underground music audiences as a member of indie rock/punk band Feels even before leaving the group in 2020 her solo work has taken on different dimension entirely. Quickly evolving from a more bedroom pop sound to experimental yet earnest folk Lay signed with SubPop for two albums. August (2019) proved that Lay had a great command of what might be called cosmic, existential indie folk with an arresting sense of intimacy. Her 2021 album Geist found Lay shedding any and all adopted styles and personae for an album that was moving and tranquil with elegantly inspired guitar work. Cyrena Rosati may now be known for her commanding bass work in Quits, Cherry Spit and Supreme Joy but before all of that she made beautiful dream-pop infused indie rock as Sweetness Itself. Who can say what this solo set will sound like but it will be worth showing up early to see. Same with Ryan Wong, frontman of Supreme Joy and member of The Fresh & Onlys. His own expertise in the realms of psychedelic and garage rock and post-punk will likely shine through on this rare solo set as well.

Friday | 08.15
What: Entrancer, Lanx Borealis, Staggered Hooks, Quinn Boudeleaux, 4 Digit Visuals
When: 8
Where: Glob
Why: Entrancer has recently been mixing some older DIY, lo-fi electronic aesthetics into his masterful modern techno made with analog and digital synths. The result is audio time traveling layered together to great evocative effect like some 2020s rave music thoroughly blended with early witchhouse and 8-bit composition. Nothing like it. Lanx Borealis makes ambient music that integrates circuit bent devices and minimal synth. Staggered Hooks is Dean Inman who some may know for his involvement in the 2010s Denver rave scene but also for his fusion of hardware based dance music and noise with this project.

Saturday | 08.16
What: An Evening With Wilco
When: 6:30
Where: Mission Ballroom
Why: Wilco helped to pioneer and influence indie rock as we know it with eclectic yet coherent musical vision ever evolving past previous limits. Partly because the songwriting has always been imaginative and daring in its sonic creativity and also due to the insightful and poignantly earnest lyrics with a literary flavor minus the pretentious baggage. For this tour the band is playing choice selections from a large swath of its impressive and consistently quality catalog. Which could be mere fan service but Wilco is a band that brings a passionate delivery with the live show and at this point a nearly orchestral sound that elevates what indie rock and Americana music can be.

Tuesday | 08.19
What: Youth Code w/King Yosef, Street Sects and Insula Iscariot
When: 7
Where: HQ
Why: Stars of modern industrial hardcore for the entire night. King Yosef will have just released his new album Spire of Fear on his own imprint BLEAKHOUSE when this show happens and it includes contributes from space rock/black metal/shoegaze legends Holy Fawn. The album recorded and mixed by Kurt Ballou is an abrasive, disorienting and relentless listen with vocals that sound like they’re giving voice to the accelerated and amplified collective outrage over current world events with a direct personal resonance that may be reminiscent of Ballou’s main band Converge but with an aesthetic that more closely reflects King Yosef’s own work as a producer in the realm of electronic industrial music. A few years back Yosef worked with co-headliner Youth Code who were the industrial hardcore band of note around 10-12 years ago on a collaborative album called A Skeleton Key in the Doors of Depression (2021) that revealed his ability to enhance the virtues of a like-minded band in which each could complement each other perfectly. Youth Code returns with a new EP titled Yours, With Malice which showcases the duo in classic form with edgy, caustic and emotionally-charged EBM-infused hardcore. Street Sects are an Austin duo that pioneered a different edge of industrial hardcore with its fog-enshrouded yet confrontational live shows and manic energy. The music itself could be lost in the theatrical aspect of the show but listening to the records it was obvious they had incorporated elements of noise and dance music into the mix. This has become even more obvious with its “side project” Street Sex and its new album Full Color Eclipse with its fusion of industrial and synth pop like a disco darkwave with some gritty highlights. Street Sects is simultaneously releasing its new album under that name called Dry Drunk that is more in the vein of what you might expect but the sounds are often like a collection of samples assembled in a beautifully jarring fashion that also flows with pointed social commentary. The album cover looks like Charles Burns doing a tribute to Raymond Pettibon. Perfect for what you’ll hear on the record. Insula Iscariot is a death industrial act whose new album is out on Yosef’s BLEAKHOUSE imprint.

Street Sects, photo by Ismael Quintanilla III

Saturday – Sunday | 08.21-08.24
What: Ghost Canyon Fest
When: Varies by Night
Where: What’s Left Records (8.21), The Skylark Lounge (8.22), Hi-Dive (8.23-08.24)
Why: Ghost Canyon Fest is in its third year with yet another stellar lineup of bands from a broad spectrum of noise rock and experimental rock including Church Fire and Scorplings the first night and sort of pre-festival proper event at What’s Left Records in Colorado Springs, The Milk Blossoms and Pink Lady Monster with Honduh Daze at The Skylark on the second night, Flesh Tape and Flowting Clowds the afternoon of 8/23, Suicide Cages, Latter, Still House Plants and Black Eyes the third night at Hi-Dive (8/23), Moon Pussy and Dug the afternoon of 8/24 at Wax Trax, and Buildings and Cloakroom the concluding night Sunday 8/24 at the Hi-Dive. Look for our more comprehensive guide to the festival and interviews coming soon.

Tuesday | 08.26
What: Horsegirl w/Godcaster
When: 7
Where: The Bluebird Theater
Why: Chicago’s Horsegirl made waves when it released its debut single “Forecast” in 2019 and became a much hyped act out of the Windy City’s post-punk scene. Its minimalist guitar work and delicacy of feeling was reminiscent of the likes of a slowcore Raincoats or Young Marble Giants. The group’s new album Phonetics On and On was written when most of the trio have been students in New York and the introspection and evocation of uncertainty heard throughout the album lends it an emotional resonance that may suit young adulthood specifically but also reflects how in the current time things feel so fragile and tentative and the way you can navigate the energy with integrity is to approach things with intention and a sense of creating a normalcy rooted in exploring new expressions of confidence and a sense of play. The result is a song that is rewarding for its bold and sharply observed lyrics and paring the music to its absolute sonic essentials without skimping on a full sound.

Friday | 08.29
What: I’m A Boy w/Toddy Ivy, Gata Negra and Red Tack
When: 8
Where: Lost Lake
Why: I’m A Boy’s original lineup of singer/guitarist Jimmi Nasi, bassist/singer Whitney Rehr and drummer John Shipe are reuniting for a show that’s a bit of a celebration of its spectacular 2012 album Sensation. The record benefits from not just masterful musicianship from its three members with no shying away from technical flourishes. But it’s not showing off for the sake of doing so, it all serves the songs which are an unusually and refreshingly insightful take on what it is to be an adult that hasn’t lost the love of art and music as a valid art form and avenue of expressing and exploring the grown up psyche and looking back and remembering what made life feel vital and bringing that energy into the present and finding that essence in the context of where you are now. Looking back it’s a classic of Denver underground rock for the sophistication of the songwriting and the sheer moxy of its performances. Many bands of that time were trying to mimic classic rock glory in a fashion that felt try-hard. I’m A Boy always seemed to live and embody the spirit of its influences by writing songs that didn’t feel derivative but also in spirit not so far removed from its roots. For this show it’s not just the band reuniting but also Rehr’s excellent garage-blues adjacent Gata Negra, Red Tack (fronted by former Baldo Rex frontman Ted Thacker) and his own take on reinventing punk rock spirit into gritty singer-songwriter style music and longtime friend of everyone involved with this show Toddy Ivy aka Toddy Walters.

Best Shows in Denver and Beyond March 2025

**Rose City Band performs at Globe Hall on 3/13/25, photo by Robbie Augsberger**

Munly & The Lupercalians in 2010, photo by Tom Murphy

Saturday | 03.01
What: Munly & The Lupercalians, Rowboat at Redwing Blackbird
When: 7:30
Where: The Skylark Lounge Bobcat Club
Why: Jay Munly has been making music with his Munly & The Luperclians project since the mid-2000s when not focusing on Slim Cessna’s Auto Club and Denver Broncos UK. It’s more dark folk, more Goth than the other configurations of music for which he’s known down to the more ritualistic stage garb. But the level of songcraft and sonic details we have come to expect from Munly as well as the richness of storytelling infuses this band as well. In a completely different style but equally steeped in literature and emotionally charged indie rock is Rowboat fronted by Sam McNitt. Some may know him from his time in the great shoegaze band Blue Million Miles but with Rowboat McNitt seems to have found his most fruitful lane for songwriting with high concept albums and insightful lyrics backed by finely sculpted songs that often soar into passionate passages that bring the listener along for the catharsis. Redwing Blackbird is a fusion of Cure-esque post-punk and synth-driven darkwave with creative flair and more than a touch of grit.

Wednesday | 03.05
What: Glixen, She’s Green and After
When: 7
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Glixen is a shoegaze band from Phoenix that formed in 2025 and in 2024 could be seen touring with DIIV. This year the group released its latest EP Quiet Pleasures. Though citing influences as disparate as Godflesh, t.A.T.u, Hum and Björk the band’s output thus far seems most obviously inspired by My Bloody Valentine with the warping yet dense guitar atmospheres and paradoxically low key but loud and present production. Like floating through a storm of sounds and emotion with the band into transcendent spaces. She’s Green from Minneapolis is likeminded though more in the realm of indiepop but not short on the granular Slowdive-esque beauty in its melody crafting.

Wednesday | 03.05
What: Finom w/Brother Bird
When: 7
Where: Lost Lake
Why: Finom is the experimental pop duo from Chicago formerly known as OHMME. Its 2024 album Not God was produced by Jeff Tweedy and sounds like some kind of lost avant-garde New Wave from the 80s and benefiting from the excellent dual vocals the band has made a feature of its songwriting all along. It sounds like music for a stage play or other theatrical performance that has yet to manifest in the physical world outside the band’s typically engaging live performances.

Thursday | 03.06
What: Chat Pile w.Gouge Away and Nightosphere
When: 6:30
Where: Gothic Theatre
Why: Chat Pile delivered yet another scathing and electrifying set of songs with its 2024 album Cool World. There is more experimentation with the atmospheric backdop of the songs but don’t worry its delivered with the blunt and caustic fervor that has rendered the band one of the most exciting in the world of modern heavy music and noise rock. Somehow the band manages to skewer the worst aspects of culture and civilization while demonstrating a vulnerability and compassion for the less fortunate and oppressed in its pointed lyrics. Live the group also injects the performances with a sense of humor without downplaying the moment we’re all in given political and environmental reality. Gouge Away has been in a similar lane with its own lyrics but the Florida hardcore/noise rock band has a more angular flow to its rhythms that perfectly accent the ferocious vocals that fans of DC post-hardcore will fully appreciate. Nightosphere is a shoegaze-inflected post-hardcore outfit from Kansas City, Missouri who expertly navigate dreamlike reverie and scorching intensity and emotional heft. When the group played at Ghost Canyon Fest in 2024 in Denver it was a clear standout among standouts.

Thursday | 03.06
What: Palomino Blond w/High., Moonpool and Blackberry Crush
When: 7
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Palomino Blond released its latest album You Feel It Too last October confirming its mastery of blending a kind of pop-inflected shoegaze and grungy emo. High. from Boonton, New Jersey issued its new album Come Back Down on January 24, 2025 as an excellent set of glittery and fuzzy slowcore songs. Moonpool used to be called Sickly Hecks and put out some worthwhile indie rock in the more shoegaze vein but with the new name the outfit has traveled further in that direction including increased use of synth to craft its evocative soundscapes. Rounding out the evening of modern shoegaze is Denver’s Blackberry Crush whose inspirations from 90s grunge is really only apparent in its deft use of distortion and crunchy riffs in its more recent songwriting.

Friday | 03.07
What: Mind’s Eye w/Cathedral Bells and Bruha
When: 8
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Mind’s Eye has been mining the territory between dream pop, early 2010s indie rock, 2020s bedroom pop and post-punk for the past few years with vulnerable songs of yearning and heartache. Catch the group ahead of its March 21, 2025 release of the new album If she looks like heaven… Orlando, Florida’s Cathedral Bells has been one of the bands of choice for those with a taste for ethereal, synth infused, shoegaze-y chillwave. The recordings have a kind of lo-fi charm that the band is somehow able to translate well to the live setting even with the more present, richer tones, just the intimacy and immediacy of the performances intact.

Saturday | 03.08
What: Almanac Man, Only Echoes, Burning Sister, Shewolf
When: 7
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Almanac Man are a noise rock trio from Denver whose sound seems rooted in early 90s post-hardcore and the angular, math-y rhythms of DC post-hardcore and maybe they came together as appreciators of the likes of mclusky and Unsane. Its lyrics take a more creative approach to commenting on social issues and the state of the world as it has been for decades clearly informed by literature as much as music. Only Echoes is an instrumental, post-metal band with a knack for crafting epic melodies and equally grand, crushing riffs with a gift for dynamic arrangements that lend its songs a cinematic quality worthy of poetic song titles like “Locus Mons” and “Truth Unveiled By Time.” Burning Sister’s psychedelic stoner rock sounds like a better version of what some of the 2000s stoner rock bands were doing partly because this trio though clearly touched by the foundational mutations of Sleep and Black Sabbath appear to have gotten into Loop, Mudhoney and the heavier end of Krautrock. Shewolf, the Denver artist, is in a similar vein to the other acts on the bill but his sounds seem more influenced by shoegaze and he even has an ambient album but this show will probably be the heavier rock but it would be cooler if it was a full on ambient set instead to break up the evening a little.

Monday | 03.10
What: Crush of Souls, Weathered Statues, Plague Garden and Kill You Club DJs
When: 7
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Crush of Souls is a coldwave/post-punk band from Paris, France that sounds like he absorbed the great, percussive synth work of the better EBM bands, the mix of acoustic and electronic blend of Clan of Xymox and a touch of the enigmatic flair of Legendary Pink Dots. Opening are two of Denver’s, and America’s, best deathrock/post-punk acts. Plague Garden’s rhythm-driven songs and cinematic arrangements lend its songs a depth to match the emotionally-charged vocals. Weathered Statues is a band that came out of the local punk scene and that spirit is infused into its songs so that even as they are on the melancholic side they have an arresting exuberance, especially live. And like Plague Garden its electronic side of the music is imaginative and brings to the songwriting an early 80s New Wave sensibility that transcends time.

Lime Cordiale, photo courtesy the artists

Monday | 03.10
What: Lime Cordiale w/The Orphan and The Poet
When: 7
Where: Gothic Theatre
Why: Australian pop group Lime Cordiale formed in 2009 and spent some years developing from the founding duo of brothers Louis and Oliver Leimbach. Icehouse frontman and songwriter Iva Davies saw the brothers perform at a type of band competition and took them under his wing inviting the fledgling band on the 2011 Icehouse tour. After a string of EPs Lime Cordiale finally released its debut album Permanent Vacation (2017, no relation of or nod to a comeback record by some other band released thirty years prior). By that point the group obviously had a gift for crafting songs with a wide open feel, lush arrangements and the ability to take on heady themes without a heavy hand. 2024 saw the release of Enough of the Sweet Talk. This time out the band chart the course of a relationship from early idealizing of one’s beloved to that period when people understand one another and accept each other as they think they are and to the end when they don’t feel like they ever really knew each other. It is in a way the opposite of the usual pop album about how great love is, rather something more realistic about how many relationships progress yet without dishonoring the feelings of the best of that arc of human experience. And all graced with the band’s elegantly crafted melodies and vocals imbued with a sensitivity and warmth.

Monday | 03.10
What: Soccer Mommy w/Hana Vu
When: 7
Where: Ogden Theatre
Why: Sophie Allison’s gift for vulnerably introspective songwriting and imaginative songwriting and masterful guitar work has been on fully display since her earliest releases. And the 2024 Soccer Mommy album Evergreen with its embrace of a more intimate and organic sensibility dives fully into sounds that reflect an immediacy and tenderness that is palpable. Like hearing an indie pop reincarnation of the more cinematic end of Sparklehorse. There’s something so compellingly fragile about the songwriting that its easy to get caught up in its gentle energies even when Allison kicks up the grit a little on, say, “Drive.” Live Soccer Mommy seems to effortlessly prove she’s one of modern indie rock’s most interesting musicians and with flourishes of her prowess on guitar without undercutting the elegance of her entrancing songs.

Ripley Johnson of Rose City Band, photo by Sanae Yamada

Thursday | 03.13
What: Rose City Band w/Tan Cologne
When: 7
Where: Globe Hall
Why: Ripley Johnson is perhaps more widely known by many for his membership in influential psychedelic space rock band Wooden Shjips and the experimental psych rock outfit Moon Duo. Rose City Band delves into another corner of the psych universe as what might be described in short as a cosmic country band in the classic vein. With transporting pedal steel courtesy Barry Walker Jr. and Ripley’s seemingly effortless countrified riffs like a band playing in a backyard with a carefree spirit. The result is something that fans of early 70s Grateful Dead and Gram Parsons would appreciate and with an easy pace that is as calming as it is transporting. The songs get into your head the way and uplift the way a patch of nice weather will lift your spirits. The group’s fifth album Sol Y Sombra dropped on January 24, 2025 via Thrill Jockey and available on vinyl and for digital download and streaming.

The Space Lady in 2021, photo by Tom Murphy

Friday | 03.14
What: The Space Lady w/Golden Brown, snowswept and RAREBYRD$
When: 7-12
Where: The Aztlan Theater
Why: Susan Dietrich grew up in the rural environs of Las Animas, Colorado before trying college in Boulder and being disillusioned with academia made her way to San Francisco and became involved with the hippie movement. For years she and her then husband survived off their art and landing in Boston following the development of a fledgling synth and guitar band that morphed into a solo project for Dietrich. Starting what became The Space Lady with a winged helmet Dietrich evolved from performing with an accordion to a Casiotone MT-40 keyboard with vocals done through a delay pedal becoming a fixture of the San Francisco underground, street performer scene upon returning to the city in the mid-80s. Performing some originals and uniquely rendered covers of classic rock, synth pop and country Dietrich has become a legend of outsider music even after “retiring” in 2000 to return to Colorado to care for her parents. These days The Space Lady performs now and again in Colorado and beyond and this is a rare chance to see her at one of Denver’s classic, independently-owned venues with experimental artists no strangers to expanding the limits of conventional musical expressions.

The Tammy Shine in 2024, photo by Tom Murphy

Friday | 03.14
What: Witch Cat Records Presents: Tammy Shine, Baby Baby, Debaser, Head Slug
When: 7
Where: Squirm Gallery
Why: Witch Cat Records is celebrating its founding with this showcase of artists that reflect the eclectic yet well curated roster of the imprint. Tammy Shine is the charismatic frontwoman of Dressy Bessy and this solo project is no less spirited and raw but the songwriting is a little more stripped down without losing the emotional impact. Baby Baby is the art pop solo project of Lily Conrad. The 2023 album BabyBabyForever is like some kind of unlikely No Wave synth pop record that reflects the performance art aspect of Conrad’s live show. It is collection of melancholic dreamlike singles imbued with an entrance, ethereal appeal and richness of feeling that really sweep you into their spell. Debaser is the drum and bass project of Josh Taylor who some may know for his various projects over the years including Friends Forever and this particular effort dates back to that time as well and splices what might be described as outsider garage rock and jazz and punk. Head Slug, recorded anyway, sounds like the kind of haunted, lo-fi slowcore that you would hope to hear in some DIY art film.

Lazarus Horse circa 2017, photo by Tom Murphy

Saturday | 03.15
What: Gold Glue w/Zoya
When: 7
Where: Leon Gallery
Why: Gold Glue is the latest band from Eddie Durkin of Lazarus Horse and Sparkler Bombs so it’ll probably be heavy on well crafted pop songs with earnest poetry deep personal insight.

Lesser Care in 2022, photo by Tom Murphy

Saturday | 03.15
What: Lesser Care w/Candy Apple
When: 8
Where: The Crypt
Why: El Paso post-punkers Lesser Care are currently producing one of the most potent blends of shoegaze atmospherics and vulnerable post-punk melancholy played live with a forceful energy suggestive of a youth spent playing in punk and metal bands. Their 2024 album Heel Turn is like that sound but album-wise informed by great hip-hop records of the late 80s with an intro and nice interludes that connect a kind of narrative of survival and reinvention.

Saturday | 03.15
What: flipturn w.Krooked Kings
When: 7
Where: Mission Ballroom
Why: flipturn from Fernandina Beach in Northeastern Florida released its sophomore album Burnout Days in January 2025. The album seems informed by loving reflection on times in one’s life that felt like they lasted forever filled with a kind of vitality even if you spent that time spending one’s moments with a careless abandon as if one’s health and free time wouldn’t ever really run out. But the band doesn’t seem to bemoan this so much as try to reconnect with what made that time special. It’s a record of glimmering atmospheres and a wistful yet exuberant energy that illuminates its raw portraits of everyday life like the musical equivalent Polaroids that take you back to the exact moment and context depicted.

Saturday | 03.15
What: Evan Honer w/Leon Majcen
When: 7
Where: Gothic Theatre
Why: Evan Honer is a singer-songwriter whose eclectic style includes bits of acoustic folk, Americana and indie pop in the mix. He got a big boost when his cover, with Julia DiGrazia, of “Jersey Giant” by Tyler Childers went viral after its 2022 release to day garnering over 120 million streams on Spotify. Two years later Honer released his sophomore album Fighting For independently recording in unconventional spaces with friends. The album has a homespun minimalism that puts Honer’s emotionally vibrant vocals in the center with the spare instrumentation sharing space in the mix for a set of songs that feel intimate and worthy of Honer’s poignantly insightful portraits of everyday life and his own confessional explorations of personal struggles and working through the painful moments we all often have to deal with in isolation.

Monday | 03.17
What: Rachel Platten w/Ben Abraham
When: 7
Where: The Gothic Theatre
Why: Prior to the 2024 release of her latest album I Am Rachel Platten the singer/songwriter hadn’t offered a new album of material since 2017’s Waves. Platten has said that the new album came out of a time experiencing mental health struggles like anxiety, postpartum depression, deep self doubt, the vagaries of having a public presence and the turmoil of leaving one’s major label. The resulting music are the cathartic and vulnerable songs one would hope from an artist who isn’t simply patting herself on the back for having the inner strength to get through those struggles, rather Platten’s songs are filled with a knowing that you don’t conclusively overcome some issues forever because life has a way of challenging you in different ways. Platten shows that one can have some grace and dignity even in the darkest of moments. Her live shows are where Platten shines with an uplifting and at times exultant energy and she delivers her songs real emotional force.

Monday | 03.17
What: Poppy w/kumo 99
When: 7
Where: Summit Music Hall
Why: Poppy has been defying easy categorization since early in here career seeming to free associate between metalcore, synth pop and industrial rock and whatever other strands of style help to realize her musical leanings. Her latest album Negative Space sometimes hits as screamo but equally hyperpop and progressive metal. It is paradoxically eclectic and cohesive like if the members of Garbage had been born roughly 30 years later and absorbed then developing musical styles. Sometimes when a band tries to combine too many different musical ideas it’s a mess or it doesn’t work yet Poppy somehow orchestrates it all into a surprisingly effective synthesis especially live where the singer seems to channel that energy into a focused and theatrical performance like an updated version of something from the 90s and more than a cut above a lot of artists drawing upon similar inspirations.

Wednesday | 03.19
What: Russian Circles w/Pelican
When: 7
Where: Gothic Theatre
Why: Russian Circles is the Chicago-based post-metal trio that has garnered a bit of a cult following over the past twenty plus years that it’s been crafting its sound and songwriting concepts. Its most recent album was 2022’s Gnosis on which the group experimented with Celtic music tunings and the inclusion of a Moog Taurus synth to enhance the low end. The album while not hailed as among the band’s best nevertheless represents the band coming more fully into its cinematic musical ambitions. Also on the bill is another Chicago band that has made a name for itself with its heavy soundscapes and creative use of repetition, Pelican. The latter is on the verge of releasing its new album Flickering Resonance (out May 16, 2025) so you may get to hear where the group has gone since its excellent 2019 album Nighttime Stories. Earlier in its career the band wrote the early forms of its songs mostly on acoustic guitar to work out the chords and dynamics but since the 2019 record the group has gone for the louder foundation with electric instruments resulting in songs that take even more immediate advantage of the ways those sounds intersect to create unique resonances.

Thursday | 03.20
What: Midwife and Vyva Melinkolya perform Orbweaving w/BleakHeart and Volunteer Coroner
When: 7
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Midwife and Vyva Melinkolya released the collaborative album Orbweaving in 2023, the product of becoming friends in 2020 and meeting in person in 2021 for a recording residency. The album is a hazy, gauzy set of songs that are about dreams, personal myths, the beauty and horror of the world and getting through a time of extended grief and perilous uncertainty that seems to still be running through the world with no end in sight. The delicacy and vulnerability heard in its songs though is the ability to hang on in spite of these challenges and to navigate it with creative acts and being willing to feel those emotions that threaten to engulf you. The night begins with the ambient/analog synth sounds of Volunteer Coroner and the deep moods and engrossingly gorgeous harmonies of doomy, post-rock dream pop band BleakHeart.

Saturday | 03.22
What: Los Mocochetes, My Blue Heart and The Milk Blossoms
When: 8
Where: The Skylark Lounge
Why: Los Mocochetes is releasing its new 7” record “Huaraches”/”Sun Will Shine” via Unit E records and celebrating the occasion with this performance. The Chicano/funk band from Denver has been performing uplifting music aimed at turning the social and cultural power structure on its head since the 2010s. My Blue Heart might be described loosely as an art pop band in that its eclectic style is theatrical in presentation and in the way the music is performed but includes elements of blues, funk, jazz, prog and psychedelic rock. The Milk Blossoms is a band that seems to gather day dreams and poignant observations about the peaks and valleys of human emotional experience and crafts them into exquisite and finely honed pop songs that maintain more than a bit of the edges and unravellings that make for music that actually moves you.

Saturday | 03.22
What: Bluebook w/Body and Pleasure Prince
When: 7
Where: Meow Wolf Convergence Station
Why: Bluebook is a brooding yet electrifying dark, art folk band that has changed musical shape and membership for the past 20 years into its current form that comes across like a progressive art rock band with emotionally vibrant vocals and a riveting intensity. Body is a darkwave disco band that sounds like the trio spent a lot of time just listening to a bunch of mid-80s synthpop but updated by late 2000s indie rock. That the band includes Edmund Garthe and Stuart Confer formerly of Ned Garthe Explosion tells you there is a lot of creativity and imagination behind the music but then there’s also Roni Beer who brings her own left field pop energy into the mix. And to round out a fantastic bill is Pleasure Prince who seem to have mastered the art of pop songwriting utilizing real music chops in the vocals and percussion as well as a deep infusion of experimental edge.

Tuesday | 03.25
What: Pom Poko w/Fake Dad and May Be Fern
When: 7
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Pom Poko from Oslo, Norway released the bright yet introspective album Champion in 2024. Across its eleven songs the band showed the missing links between indiepop, post-punk and Kiwi rock resulting in a unique sound. The way Orions Belte, another Oslo band, seems to have fused jazz, psychedelia, world folk and pop without quite sounding like anyone else either.

Alex Wilcox (left), image courtesy the artist

Thursday | 03.27
What: Alex Wilcox, Vegan Gore & Vicky Burp, Church Fire and Sell Farm
When: 7
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Alex Wilcox came up in Texas but spent some time in Austin, Texas and then LA where he worked at Chalice Recordings in production and further refined the techniques and aesthetics of pop and hip-hop which he has subsequently applied to and evolved from in making his own style of glitchcore/experimental electronic dance music. Now based in Berlin is pushing boundaries as a DJ and crafter of cutting edge dance pop. Church Fire just got off tour with Moonpussy so who can say how this show will be except finely honed and maybe with some even more amped up stage antics. Sell Farm hasn’t flexed his industrial ambient music in a while either so catch him at a now not as common live show.

Martha Wainwright, photo courtesy the artist

Thursday | 03.27
What: Martha Wainwright w/Brad Barr
When: 6
Where: The Bluebird Theater
Why: Martha Wainwright might have had a bit of a big legacy to live up to as the daughter of Kate McGarrible and Loudon Wainwright III and with her brother being Rufus Wainwright. But Martha came out of the gates, as it were, with the 2005 EP Bloody Mother Fucking Asshole and the title track which is like a response to her father’s manner of writing songs about his family rather than tending to them as people. The EP also established her as a songwriter of note with a passionately expressive voice and command of rhythm guitar inflections to match her singing. In 2025 Wainwright released her new EP 6 Songs, a collection of songs rendered in her signature nuanced and emotionally vibrant vocals and delicate and imaginative guitar accompanied by a touch of psychedelic shimmer.

Dreadnought in 2022, photo by Tom Murphy

Friday | 03.28
What: Faetooth w/Iress and Dreadnought
When: 8
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Faetooth is the Los Angeles-based doomgaze band whose heavy atmospherics pair well with the fantastical lyrics. In moments bordering on dark folk but mostly feral energy and crunchy, crushing riffs with hovering menace to heighten a sense of otherworldliness. Think SubRosa leaning heavier into its Black Sabbath influences. Denver’s own Dreadnought will fit well with that rich atmospherics and science fantasy storytelling but more with touches of classical and orchestral sensibilities informing its dramatic compositions.

Friday | 03.28
What: Advance Base w/”Horse Girl” and Ground Hum
When: 7
Where: Glob
Why: Owen Ashworth is fondly remembered for his project Casiotone for the Painfully Alone and its almost outsider songwriter take on lo-fi indiepop. But there was always something endearing about his emotionally open lyrics and tender melodies as well as his unvarnished yet tuneful vocals. When Ashworth retired the project in 2010 with a final tour. But it wasn’t long before he continued making music under the moniker Advance Base and starting his Orindal Records imprint. With the new name Ashworth has delivered entire albums worth of deeply observant and poignant pop songs both melancholic and a celebration of the moments in life that we take for granted but which connect what we might consider the more peak (for good or bad) experiences. In December 2024 he released his latest album, the luminously warm Horrible Occurrences.

Saturday | 03.29
What: Gleemer w/American Culture and Ampule
When: 8
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Gleemer has been playing in the local scene in Colorado since 2011 but garnered an underground cult following by touring and making a bit of a name for itself far afield. Mixing emo, slowcore and shoegaze before that really became a bigger thing in the past handful of years, Gleemer’s musical instincts manifested most fully with its fifth and latest album End of the Nail (2024). Fans of Sunny Day Real Estate and Death Cab For Cutie will find a lot to like in Gleemer’s blend of grit and atmospheric melodies. American Culture came out of the indiepop underground but its players have real chops and lately have sounded more like they have been immersing themselves in the catalog of The Cure and the better end of early Britpop and C86.

Saturday | 03.29
What: Spencer Sutherland w.Stacey Ryan and Cloe Wilder
When: 7
Where: Summit Music Hall
Why: Spencer Sutherland is a pop R&B artist who was already honing his skills as a singer and arranger before appearing on Today in 2017 followed up by being a contestant on the UK edition of The X Factor and then signing to a major label the year after. It did his career no harm appearing in films and TV series. But his 2023 debut album In His Mania and subsequent national tour boosted his musical endeavors some with opening slots from Cloe Wilder also on this tour in support of Sutherland’s 2024 sophomore effort Drama. The new record builds on the singer’s sense of humor as well as reveals an obvious influence from Freddy Mercury. Wilder recently released her latest EP Life’s a Bitch (March 21, 2025). Like her prior output the songs have an immediacy and intimacy built around her breathy vocals and knack for writing stories vivid with images of people, places and the emotional resonances of her experiences. Although only 19 years old, Wilder’s songwriting is confident and has a depth of feeling and nuance of expression more in line with a veteran artist.

Bob Log III, photo by C. Elliott Photography, from Bandcamp

Sunday | 03.30
What: Bob Log III, The Black Gloves and The Oldmen
When: 7
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Bob Log III has been doing his “One Man Band Boom” thing for three decades now performing with a Silvertone archtop guitar and percussion he provides with his feet. All while dressed up like a human cannonball. It’s unvarnished rock and roll played with punk spirit and although a bit of a gimmick it’s one that is entertaining and there is an appeal to the kind of music he’s doing that deconstructs rock and roll just a little while tapping into the spirit of the early era of that music. The Oldmen are a garage punk band that includes former members of Boss 302 so even if the name is a bit of a joke these guys will provide plenty of entertaining stage antics of their own with solid power pop hooks.

Amyl and the Sniffers, photo by Jamie Wdzieknoski

Monday | 03.31
What: Amyl and the Sniffers w/Sheer Mag
When: 6
Where: Mission Ballroom
Why: Amyl and the Sniffers from Melbourne, Australia are one of the most prominent punk bands at this moment. Its sound came out of a pub rock sound but live the group has a joyously ferocious presence with charmingly pointed lyrics. In 2024 the group released its latest album Cartoon Darkness which expanded upon the bands sound with a more focused presentation without losing the unhinged energy the band has made part of its essential appeal. Philadelphia’s Sheer Mag also powerful threads together classic rock’s best instincts and modern punk and power pop. The band’s own exuberant live shows are like an American analog to what the headliner’s are doing though Sheer Mag has been at it a little longer.

Monday | 03.31
What: Decibel Magazine Tour 2025: Mayhem, Mortiis, Imperial Triumphant and New Skeletal Faces
When: 5:30
Where: Summit Music Hall
Why: Decibel Magazine seems to put together a solid lineup for its tours and headlining this one is the legendary Norwegian black metal band Mayhem. The group’s storied history almost overshadows the music itself. But its iconic sound has been a template for the metal subgenre with sepulchral vocals over hanging atmospherics and headlong pacing. With Attila Csihar fronting the band expect plenty of theatricality and soul shaking vocals. Mortiis is from the black metal world of Norway but under this moniker he is more known for dungeon synth, ambient and what might be described as industrial darkwave. Imperial Triumphant is a more experimental black metal band from New York City whose new album Goldstar is like an avant-garde opera arranged in torrential black metal soundscapes. New Skeletal Faces might seem out of place here even though it fuses black metal guitar sounds and musicianship with death rock era The Cult. Fans of Final Gasp will appreciate what New Skeletal Faces are doing.

Best Shows in Denver and Beyond August 2024

**Bikini Kill performs at Mission Ballroom on August 27, photo by Debi Del Grande**

Brotherhood of Machines in 2016, photo by Tom Murphy

Friday | 08.02
What: Brotherhood of Machines (album release), Seance, Snowswept and Aloe Static
When: 8/8:30
Where: Glob
Why: Brotherhood of Machines is the project of Tyler Knapp who has been crafting haunted experimental electronic music for years in Denver alone. You wouldn’t call his music ambient though adjacent, not beat driven dance music though those influences are present and not noise though aspects of his compositions incorporate what often sound like field or otherwise repurposed recordings. In July 2024 he released two albums Loops From Temple Familiarity and Unknown Set and is releasing one or both at this show. Also on the bill are the ethereal melodies and ambient soundscapes of Snowswept and Aloe Staic’s more glitch and texture post-IDM environmental moods.

Friday | 08.02
What: SUMAC w/Portrayal of Guilt and Trigger Object
When: 7
Where: Meow Wolf Convergence Station
Why: In June SUMAC released its latest set of moody, evocative and crawling, post-metal improv The Healer. The trio channels intense passages of rhythm and sound into expressive bursts that sound like a death metal band discovered doom and utilized those musical modes to make a heavy post-hardcore designed to embody the deconstruction of the world and shedding of old ways and habits in favor of those more nurturing and open. Even more psychedelic than previous records, The Healer finds SUMAC charting new territories of of how heavy music can seem more immersive than merely monolithic. Portrayal of Guilt is the kind of hardcore band that enjoys drenching its aggressive sounds in caustic moods like it explored to the roots of he music that built where it had been and found the connections with the likes of St. Vitus, Celtic Frost and Possessed.

Saturday | 08.03
What: Alejandro Escovedo w/James Mastro
When: doors/dinner 6, show 9
Where: Ophelia’s Electric Soapbox
Why: Although Alejandro Escovedo is now rightly known as one of the great artists in modern roots rock and alt-country, he cut his teeth as a member of pioneering punk band The Nuns who were one of the two bands (including The Avengers) that opened for the Sex Pistols at the final live performance at Winterland in San Francisco in January 1978. In subsequent decades and in various bands and under his own name Escovedo has maintained more than a bit of that spirited, early punk and counterculture attitude including on his 2024 record Echo Dancing. Opener James Mastro also his his own unique place in punk and Americana as a member of The Richard Lloyd Group in his teens and later with a variety of music activities including in bands like The Health & Happiness Show. Mastro has been a staple of the rich NYC and Hoboken, NJ scenes and for this show he will be playing double bass in Escovedo’s band but prior to that he will perform liberally from his own 2024 record Dawn of a New Error with graced by the singer/songwriter’s warmly husky voice, expansive spirit and bright and vivid production courtesy engineer and mixer James Frazee and mastering by Greg Calbi.

Saturday | 08.03
What: Listening Lawn IV: Cholla, Blood Out w/Silt, Glissline, Combat Sport & DJ Ursa, Yonbre Netz and Sunswept
When: 5-8 pm
Where: Carpio Sanquinette Park
Why: These events happen in a semi-hidden pocket in Denver at a public park with a setting like ruins of an older Denver long neglected. The perfect setting to witness innovative electronic music in the realms of techno, ambient, IDM and free jazz.

“Horsegirl” in 2021, photo by Tom Murphy

Saturday | 08.03
What: A Rally For Worker’s Rights: Vegan Gore, F1sh1fty, “Horsegirl,” and Clayton Kenney
When: 6-10 pm
Where: Cheeseman Park Pavilion
Why: This is an event to draw attention to collective efforts at promoting the interests of workers in one of the more expensive cities in America with the sprawl of that income inequality spreading everywhere. The musical portion of the gathering includes performances by techno/glitch/IDM artist Vegan Gore and weirdo performance art dream pop band “Horsegirl.”

Wednesday | 08.07
What: Nox Novacula w/Church Fire and Weathered Statues
When: 7
Where: HQ
Why: Seattle deathrock band Nox Novacular is touring in support of its newly released latest album Feed the Fire. Its brooding atmospheres and impassioned performances have made the quartet a band of choice for discerning fans of post-punk like a commanding mix of Xmal Deutchland and the spookier end of The Cramps. Weathered Status from Denver is cut from a similar cloth with clear roots in punk with standout basslines and haunted synths. Church Fire while not a post-punk band plays its electronic darkwave with an electrifying conviction.

Thursday | 08.08
What: Orville Peck w/Jaime Wyatt and Gold Star
When: 6
Where: The Fillmore Auditorium
Why: Orville Peck performs his 70s cowboy country style music masked like a nod to The Lone Ranger. His songs about love and heartbreak are well within the storytelling tradition of classic country but with Peck infusing the songwriting with a queer perspective his songs have another dimension of potential resonance with fans. His latest album Stampede finds Peck collaborating with the likes of Willie Nelson, Beck and Nathaniel Rateliff among others.

Thursday | 08.08
What: Urban Heat w/Gvllow and Delores Galore
When: 7
Where: HQ
Why: Austin’s Urban Heat makes an appearance in Denver just over a week before the release of its latest album The Tower. The darkwave trio has mastered a reinvention of 80s moody synthpop into expansive darkwave with commanding and soulful vocals. The group’s 2023 cover of Q. Lazzarus’ classic single “Goodbye Horses” brought to the song a tonal richness and expressed the fiery intensity underneath the surface of the original. Urban Heat’s earlier releases showcased the band’s gift for EBM beatmaking akin to what TR/ST and Kontravoid have been doing by fusing techno sensibilities with emotionally-charged pop songcraft. The singles from The Tower thus far have revealed the band has been evolving its use of space to great evocative effect.

Friday | 08.09
What: Keytar Fest: The Jinjas and Claudzilla
When: 8pm doors/9pm show
Where: 715 Club
Why: Claudzilla returns for the most recent edition of Keytar Fest, an event that showcases artists that make use of that most visually iconic of 1980s synthesizer technology. Claudzilla is a little like a lo-fi weirdo outsider avant-pop performance artist that is part personae part a manifestation of inner space. Like if Klaus Nomi made indie pop. The Jinjas are a synth and drums-driven rock band that use bass synth and keytar to build a sound like a retro synth pop band with a songwriting style that’s more modern and akin to something like The Blow and Trans Am gone more pop.

Friday | 08.09
What: Magic Sword w/ESSENGER and Church Fire https://tickets.meowwolf.com/events/denver/magic-sword/
When: 7
Where: Meow Wolf Convergence Station
Why: Magic Sword is the costumed space night synthwave band from Boise, Idaho who sure do have a gimmick but its music speaks for itself with its saturated tones and science fiction epic themes like if Giorgio Moroder had been convinced to score the music for The Terminator, Children of Men or the latest Dune movies. Fresh off opening for Nox Novacula, Church Fire will be in good company here too with their own epic, emotionally vibrant, electronic dance ragers.

Plack Blague in 2023, photo by Tom Murphy

Friday | 08.09
What: Plack Blague w/God Save the Queens and Hex Cassette
When: 8
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Plack Blague is the by now legendary industrial techno and performance artist whose on stage personal is like a leather daddy delivering queer themed bangers in a darkwave mode. Reliably entertaining and charismatic. So it’s only appropriate that God Dave the Queens is part of this show as a drag show with Noveli, Heavenly Powers, Neurotika Killz and Belle Fegore. Opening is the one man, occult EBM freakout and heavy darkwave dance music Hex Cassette who excels at provoking the audience with good-natured ribbing.

Sunday | 08.11
What: Sluice w/Fust and The Milk Blossoms
When: 7
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Sluice aka Justin Edward Morris is an indie folk artist from Winston-Salem, North Carolina whose songs have a textured moodiness and freshness to them that gives the songwriter’s more pastoral musical impulses a tangible presence. His 2023 album Radial Gate is a deeply reflective set of seemingly autobiographical vignettes like a kinder, gentler Bill Callahan. Also on the bill is Durham, NC’s Fust whose music is similarly-minded in the mining personal history for creative illumination of everyday human experiences but in a more country rock mode. Opening the show are The Milk Blossoms whose tenderly rendered indie pop songs have some roots in folk but whose songs and performances have both a raw vulnerability and emotional intensity that powerfully manifest the group’s creatively poetic lyrics.

Monday | 08.12
What: Brijean w/Colloboh
When: 7
Where: Larimer Lounge
Why: Brijean Murphy is known for her time serving as a percussionist for Mitski, Poolside and Toro Y Moi but this project with multi-instrumentalist producer Doug Stuart has resulted in entrancing, dance-music adjacent art pop. The saturated synths, ethereal vocals and layers of textured polyrhythms sound like something from a retrofuturist disco if the music being played dipped liberally into 70s disco and 2010s deep house. The duo’s new album Macro introduces even more organic percussion and bass to great effect marking the record as one of the most fascinating electronic pop releases of the year alongside that of Mount Kimbie’s The Sunset Violent.

Thursday | 08.15
What: Mac Sabbath w/Tejon Street Corner Thieves
When: 7
Where: Summit Music Hall
Why: Mac Sabbath is celebrating 10 years of its absurd concept of doing parody covers of Black Sabbath songs with fast food-themed lyrics and fully committed stage costumes of characters not unlike some of the most well-known of McDonald’s characters. It’s a gimmick that the band has been able to sustain for a decade without admitting to being people other than the stage personae which is an accomplishment in itself in the modern era.

Friday | 08.16
What: Atmosphere w/Method Man & Redman, Deltron 3030, NOFUN! and Skratch Basitd
When: 5:30
Where: Red Rocks
Why: Atmosphere is of course the hip-hop duo from Minneapolis that were foundational figures in early alternative hip-hop and advocates for other underground artists in that style. Its eclectic and atmospheric beats and introspective lyrics are a consistently effective counterpoint to the group’s energetic and extroverted stage performances and Slug’s crowd interaction. The subject matter of the lyrics from Atmosphere have evolved in content and nuance over the years but always informed by a reflective and empathic sensibility paired with a sense of personal exploration of psychological and social issues. All along Slug and Ant have created a body of work with music that speaks to the artists’ innate curiosity and willingness to expand beyond where they’ve already been.

The Green Typewriters, photo by Tom Murphy

Friday | 08.16
What: The Green Typewriters, A Strange Happening and Van Death
When: 8
Where: Goosetown Tavern
Why: The Green Typewriters have become a bit of a psychedelic glam rock/indiepop mutant with their music but all for the better. The songwriting is as accessible and its sounds comforting yet mysterious and its live show colorful and friendly. A Strange Happening has always been a high concept indie rock band but its music has more of a raw and ragged Neil Young flavor recently.

Sunny Day Real Estate, photo from Subpop.com

Saturday | 08.17
What: Sunny Day Real Estate – Diary 30 year anniversary w/Kevin Devine
When: 7
Where: Summit Music Hall
Why: Sunny Day Real Estate’s 1994 debut album Diary is one of the blueprints of the Midwest emo sound with its post-hardcore grit, raw emotional vocal style, quiet-loud dynamics and gritty melodies. Though from Seattle the band’s sound then and now was out of step with the grunge bands its label Sub Pop was known for championing. But the live band and its earnest and intense performances resonated with that realm of music and has had a lasting impact on pretty much all emo since as well as modern sheogaze and a whole swath of punk adjacent music in a way that is obvious from the moment you play a song from that first record and this show will celebrate what SDRE accomplished on Diary.

Saturday | 08.17
What: King Dunn (King Buzzo & Trevor Dunn) w/JD Pinkus
When: 7
Where: The Bluebird Theater
Why: For this show King Dunn will perform the solo work of Buzz Osborne, the renowned guitarist and singer of Melvins with Trevor Dunn of Mr. Bungle fame on hand to provide bass duties as he did when Melvins toured as Melvins Lite a handful of years back. It’s the kind of left field move that Osborne seems to favor with Melvins always trying to do their tours a little differently and pushing into new territory in performance and songwriting. Osborne didn’t get to tour behind his 2020 solo album Gift of Sacrifice and there’s a good chance a lot of people haven’t seen the music from 2014’s This Machine Kills Artists live and the more acoustic guitar-driven songwriting from an artist perhaps most well known for some of the heaviest guitar rock in the modern era.

Barns Courtney, photo courtesy the artist

Tuesday | 08.20
What: The Struts w/Barns Courtney
When: 7
Where: Mission Ballroom
Why: The Struts are a band from the UK that rode that wave of retro glam rock revival that began in the early 2010s and garnered hit singles along the way. Luke Spiller early on having done his level best to tap into that Freddy Mercury sound. More recently the band has pivoted in a more pop-oriented style of songwriting channeled through the lens of 80s glam metal. Barns Courtney started his career in bands SleeperCell and more professionally with Dive Bella Dive until that band was hamstrung by label contracts. But those didn’t limit Courtney as a solo artist whose early singles caught the attention of audiences and garnered a recording contract. Fast forward to 2024, Courtney released his third full length Supernatural on July 19 for a record that showcases the songwriter’s commanding vocals and knack for crafting sonically rich rock songs of broad stylistic touchstones fusing acoustic and electric sounds. There is the sort of blues rock foundation there but Courtney injects the classic sounds with modern pop song sensibilities.

Tuesday | 08.20
What: Sheppard w/Seth Beamer
When: 7
Where: Moon Room at Summit Music Hall
Why: Sheppard is an indie pop trio from Brisbane, Australia that formed as a duo of siblings George and Amy Sheppard in 2009 but expanded to a six-piece by 2012 including their sister Emma on bass. In 2014 the group released its debut full-length Bombs Away and the record’s second single “Geronimo” became something of an international hit for its undeniably uplifting melodies and the kinds of song elements that invite participation among listeners including choruses pretty much anyone can sing and clap along rhythms, a hallmark of Sheppard’s songwriting in general. In 2023 the group relocated to Nashville and a year later issued its latest record Zora named for the now trio’s grandmother. It’s sounds are more atmospheric but the album is the kind of life-affirming/celebrating work that could be cloying but the songwriting finds Sheppard growing beyond where it has been before and its melodies undeniably infectious.

Wednesday | 08.21
What: Roselit Bone w/George Cessna and Fly Janet
When: 7
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Portland, Oregon’s Roselit Bone writes darkly dramatic songs like a noir version of country music with deep mood and a touch of psychedelia. So it’s a good pairing to have George Cessna on the bill with his own thought-provoking, dusky country in its own existential and cosmic mode. Denver’s Fly Janet will bring the spooky surf-spaghetti Western Americana.

Thursday | 08.22
What: Car Microwave, The Milk Blossoms and mLady
When: 8
Where: The Skylark Lounge
Why: Kansas City-based indie folk band Car Microwave released its latest record Photo Album in 2023. Its delicately rendered musicianship and vulnerable vocals have an underlying emotional strength that gives the music a charmingly earnest quality reminiscent somehow of both 10,000 Maniacs and one of Mary Timony’s bands or even in moments of Throwing Muses. One might be tempted to call The Milk Blossoms and indie folk band but with it too there is a poetry to the lyrics that more than hint at a more experimental creativity and there is a passionate delivery of the music that imbues even its most beautifully fragile moments with a vibrant emotionality.

Friday | 08.23
What: Acidbat album release w/Lanx Borealis and Church Fire at Glob
When: 8
Where: Glob
Why: Acidbat aka Seth Ogden celebrates the release of his latest album Empty Vial (out on Witchcat records) at this show feature other Denver luminaries of electronic and dance music. The new record is a further evolution of Ogden’s sonically rich and playful, psychedelic techno and ambient compositions using almost if not entirely analog synth sources. Lanx Borealis creates what might be described as ambient pop at least as far as her 2024 EP Released It seems to reveal. But think something darker with more grit but imbued with a sense of the fanciful. Church Fire is the now legendary industrial dance band with strong political content that while polemical doesn’t lack for creativity and a healthy sense of fun and humor. It is cathartic music that doesn’t skimp on the intellectual and socially critical element either.

Friday | 08.23
What: Ghost Canyon Fest Night 1: Noun, Lung, BleakHeart, Ex Everything and Cherry Spit
When: 6
Where: The Skylark Lounge
Why: Every night of Ghost Canyon Fest features some of the best weird and experimental rock and not-rock bands/artists operating today. This night kicks off with post-hardcore, thorny shoegaze locals Cherry Spit. Ex Everything will provide scathing and thrilling critiques of the prevailing order of things with its angular noise rock. BleakHeart’s dark, epic dream pop will provide the paradoxical chill and vibrant emotional expressions for the night. Lung’s fusion of punk, blues and classical sensibilities delivered with its raw energy will be a good pairing to come on the stage before Noun closes the night as the vehicle for former Screaming Females frontwoman Marissa Paternoster’s solo songwriting. The project dates to before Screaming Females formed in 2005 and over the years the songwriter has released Noun albums including the gritty and entrancing dream pop of the 2021 album Peace Meter.

Saturday | 08.24
What: Ghost Canyon Fest Matinee Show: Flaming Tongues Above, Lake Mary and Matt Talbot
When: 1
Where: Mutiny Information Cafe
Why: Flaming Tongues Above is the solo project of Amos Helvey who has been in various local bands over the years including American Culture, Destiny Bond and Angel Band. This is more a kind of cosmic bluegrass thing with exquisitely intricate musicianship. Lake Mary is the long-running project of Chaz Prymek whose compositions solo or with various collaborators is an embodiment of the spirit of improvisation and the pastoral sides of the American landscape and consciousness. Matt Talbot’s introspective, ambient slowcore minimalism is elegantly composed slices of tranquility in practice. Some may know him better as the lead singer and guitarist of Hum.

Saturday | 08.24
What: Ghost Canon Fest: Replica City, Stress Palace, Nightosphere, Ghostlike, Aseethe, Jaye Jayle, Wolf Eyes
When: 6
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Replica City is an angular post-punk band from Denver whose atmospheric shimmer contains as much urgency and menace. Stress Palace is a noise rock band from Kansas City, the kind with caustic and desperate vocals and seething, suspended guitar when it’s not gouging the air alongside pummeling percussion. Nightosphere also from KC is a darkly slowcore project that some may be tempted to call dream pop but it’s a little too gloomy and noisy for that and more for fans of the likes of Flooding and Unwound’s more atmospheric moments. Ghostlike hails from Lincoln, Nebraska and its dense drifts of tone are in the region of shoegaze but more slow-moving like a post-metal band with unconventional melodies. Aseethe’s brooding, crushing doom metal sounds like colossal weather patterns struggling with each other until the vocals come in and then it’s like a possessed person for an effect akin to Neurosis gone more grindcore. Its 2024 album The Cost is brimming with the purge of negative emotions transformed into transcendent heaviness. Jaye Jayle is the solo project of Young Widows’ Evan Patterson who brings to this project a sensibility of mystical, experimental, tribal folk. Wolf Eyes is of course the legendary noise improv band from Detroit who have been prolifically exploring the possibilities of the use of sound since 1996. Now a duo of Nate Young and John Olson Wolf Eyes has always bucked the perception of noise being just harsh noise and mere chaos for the sake of putting off normies. There is an odd accessibility to the work of Wolf Eyes that is more like an unpretentious art that live has always been compelling and unlike anything much else even of previous performances and thus more in the vein of early Cabaret Voltaire and Throbbing Gristle.

Saturday | 08.24
What: Alvvays w/The Beths
When: 7
Where: Mission Ballroom
Why: Something about Canadian pop band Alvvays has always set it apart from being just an indie pop band or shoegaze or psychedelic. Its melodies drift and warp in sometimes unpredictable directions off so that Alvvays consistently has a quality of unpredictability and inspired imperfection though its tone is coherent and entrancing. Out the gates with its self-titled debut the band started garnering a bit of a cult following for its emotionally rich vocals and layered, atmospheric guitar and poetic and sharply observed lyrics. The most recent Alvvays album Blue Rev proved that the quartet is as capable of captivating twee sounds as robust guitar rock and live something about the band seems to exude a kind of mystique most bands can’t muster.

Saturday | 08.24
What: Dad Bod w/Oruã and Totem Pocket
When: 5
Where: Larimer Lounge
Why: Dad Bod is a psychedelic pop band from Salt Lake City that seems steeped on folk rock of the 70s. Oruã is like if a great modern jazz band decided to start doing a garage rock version of krautrock and came off a little like a bedroom version of a psychedelic rock band from Texas but just a little weirder. Totem Pocket rides the line well between 2010’s psych rock and shoegaze.

Nina Nastasia, photo courtesy the artist

Sunday | 08.25
What: Ghost Canyon Fest: Animal Bite, Fainting Dreams, Bear Claw, Missouri Executive Order 44, Nina Nastasia and Young Widows
When: 6
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: The final night of Ghost Canyon Fest begins with a set from Casper, Wyoming’s mutant, heavy, psychedelic noise rock quartet Animal Bite. Fainting Dreams is now like the opposite image of its more dream pop beginnings, more thorny, more sonically pointed yet also moody and an intense release of tangled emotions. Bear Claw is a two bass and one drum set outfit from Chicago whose jagged and clipped dynamics range widely and akin to the likes of Mclusky and yet one gets the impression that at least one person in the band is into Failure. Missouri Executive Order 44 may or may not be based out of the Missouri side of Kansas City. But its post-hardcore, math-y riffs and mischievously surreal song titles suggest metalcore roots before the members discovered the Butthole Surfers.

Nina Nastasia is the critically acclaimed songwriter currently based in Seattle who grew up in Hollywood but moved to New York before making a name for herself as a gifted musical artist who worked throughout much of her career recording with Steve Albini. Due to years of abuse by her then partner, Nastasia left music in 2010 before returning to writing and releasing songs Her return to releasing music was the 2022 album Riderless Horse, an album or tender sounds and textures but whose subjects are a rich tapestry of the evocation of love, despair, loss, and finding moments of joy and humor in the great sprawl of life especially when you’ve been suppressing your creative gifts and now finding your vehicle of expression once again free of former limitations. The album charts the aftermath of the death of Nastasia’s former partner in 2020 and her own rediscovery of being able to write music with integrity after around a decade of finding herself unable to do so. It’s a record of rare beauty and deep personal insight that while bearing the hallmarks of going through periods of personal darkness ends up being an uplifting record and a declaration of self-empowerment. While writing and recording that record, Nastasia was simultaneously crafting the songs that would comprise the 2023 self-titled debut album by Jolie Laide, a duo with Nastasia and Jeff MacLeod. Both records have a noir quality in the nuance of emotional expression and entrancing moods that have a cinematic quality that one might compare favorably to Lana Del Rey and Cat Power.

Young Widows from Louisville, Kentucky formed following the dissolution of influential post-hardcore band Breather Resist. Young Widows’ own music was in a post-hardcore vein with roaring guitar sounds and crushing rhythms. But its musical ideas stretch out the sounds into unpredictable shapes a little more and its lyrics often depict the world as we know it, not inaccurately, as a place of great perils and challenges.

Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday | 08.26, 08.27 and 08.28
What: Khruangbin
When: 7 (each night)
Where: Mission Ballroom (08.26) and Red Rocks (08.27 and 08.28)
Why: Houston’s Khruangbin is a trio that may have absorbed the surf and garage psych influences that were shaping a good swath of rock music in the 2010s but all along the group also employed non-standard rhythms and elements of dub, funk and non-western musical forms into its sound. Its latest album A La Sala (2024) is more mellow than one might have expected and yet it’s perfectly in line with the energy Khruangbin has tapping into for years with the mood of a chill disco lounge in a retrofuturist cosmopolitan city near the beach.

Monday | 08.26
What: HIDE w/Mirrored Fatality, Bent and aeonexit
When: 7
Where: Seventh Circle Music Collective
Why: HIDE is the industrial noise punk duo from Chicago that has been releasing some of the most pointed and cathartic music of the past several years critical of the worst aspects of our culture and civilization. Its live performances are confrontational and not for the faint of heart or the easily spooked. And just from the raw intensity of the the band especially vocalist Heather Gabel’s seeming embodiment of the collective outrage of the oppressed and of the abused world challenging the foundations of power. Bent is an industrial noise project from Colorado Springs with a similar aesthetic and ethos. Mirrored Fatality is a brilliant, darkwave industrial hyperpop duo that produces scathing yet danceable critiques of late capitalism and its corrosive effects on us all. And aeonexit has long been producing experimental electronic music in forms that are as cohesive as they are eclectic, as structured and as coherent as they are intuitive and amorphous. Its in the realm of noisy ambient but even at its most darkly menacing has a gentleness that renders the music inviting rather than forbidding.

Bikini Kill circa 1995-1996, photo by Lisa Darms

Tuesday | 08.27
What: Bikini Kill w/Sweeping Promises
When: 7
Where: Mission Ballroom
Why: Bikini Kill is the legendary feminist punk band originally from Olympia, Washington that in part inspired the riot grrrl movement and a branch of third wave feminism. The group was part of a community of like-minded artists of various types and not just musical and often lost in the projected hype is how Bikini Kill’s music while a vehicle for an important perspective was also thrilling and exciting with performances that helped show other women how you could be a member of a powerful band or something else cool and important and reclaim and own your power regardless of your role in life without having it be contingent upon what a man would have to say or the conventional social mores of mainstream society with its baked in misogyny. That was an important message and example to set even when the band split in 1998 but oddly just as relevant when the band reconvened in 2019 at a time when the then president’s influence on society seemed to expose deep currents of American racism, misogyny and xenophobia. Bikini Kill had to cancel its 2020 tour for obvious reasons but making up for it at a time that feels like yet another too soon cultural crossroads for the USA.

Thursday | 08.29
What: Lamb of God & Mastodon w/Kerry King and Malevolence
When: 7
Where: Red Rocks
Why: Lamb of God formed in 1994 and Mastodon in 2000 in Richmond, Virginia and Atlanta, Georgia respectively. That was a time when metal other than Metallica and “nü metal” was largely relegated to the underground. But both groups evolved and built up a strong following that has all but broken into the mainstream. Lamb of God has generally written music in a groove metal vein but its 2022 album Omens leans into the harder-edged and at times sounds like its members have been influenced by crossover thrash with lyrics reflecting the state of the world seemingly on the edge of environmental collapse and the rise of global authoritarianism. The band has teased the release of a new album and you may hear some of the new material at this show. Mastodon tends to be more psychedelic and melodic in its sound with progressive rock structures and diversity in rhythms. Its own most recent album Hushed and Grim is like a anthology of haunted and spooky stories utilized to discuss personal struggle in a way accessible and more creative than something more straightforward. Kerry King is one of the former guitarists of Slayer who released his debut solo album From Hell I Rise in 2024.

Friday | 08.30
What: Alternative TentaclesFEST hosted by Jello Biafra: Tsunami Bomb, Kultur Shock, Wheelchair Sports Camp and Dead Pioneers
When: 6
Where: Levitt Pavilion
Why: Legendary record label Alternative Tentacles headed by former Dead Kennedys frontman Jello Biafra is having a festival in Colorado featuring various acts on the label. Tsunami Bomb from Petaluma, California is a pop punk band with keyboards so it’s sound is decidedly different from other bands in that vein. Seattle’s Kultur Shock is a self-styled gypsy punk band that sounds more like Grazhdanskaya Oborona and its eclectic and experimental leanings than Gogol Bordello. Wheelchair Sports Camp is the great hip-hop group from Denver with the charismatic Kalyn Heffernan as the MC and contributors who are most often musicians with serious jazz chops. Dead Pioneers is a heavily political punk band from Denver but with a wry sense of humor that keeps the music from feeling didactic.

Friday | 08.30
What: Daniel Rachel Appearance Promoting Too Much Too Young: The 2Tone Records Story
When: 6 (start time)
Where: Tattered Cover (Colfax)
Why: Acclaimed and prolific writer and journalist Daniel Rachel saw the 2024 US publication of his 2023 book Too Much Too Young: The 2Tone Records Story, a non-fiction history of the influential but relatively short lived record label that helped launch modern ska into international consciousness and the careers of the likes of founders The Specials as well as The Selecter, Madness, The Beat and others. It is part oral history and part narrative and a compelling read particularly since Rachel was able to interview or find quotes from almost all of the major figures in the history of that music and movement. This event will be hosted by Queen City Sounds and Art writer and editor Tom Murphy whose own work has appeared in publications such as Westword, The Onion A.V. Club, Dagger Zine, Birdy, Denverse and Tidal HIFI.

Daniel Rachel, photo courtesy the author

Friday | 08.30
What: X
When: 7
Where: Summit Music Hall
Why: Influential Los Angeles punk band X is doing one final tour in conjunction with the release of one final album so if you’ve ever wanted to see the pioneering poetry, punk and Americana band definitely make it to this show. They may swing back through before retiring the band but maybe not.

Friday | 08.30
What: Isadora Eden, Pill Joy and May Be Fern
When: 8
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Dark dream pop band Isadora Eden has a rare headlining show at the Hi-Dive ahead of taking some time off to work on its next record. Also on the bill are all non-male funk band May Be Fern and the excellent slacker pop shoegaze group Pill Joy.

Pleasure Prince, photo courtesy the artists

Saturday | 8.31
What: Pleasure Prince w/Sunstoney, DeEt ta Jain
When: 8
Where: The Skylark Lounge
Why: Pleasure Prince is releasing its new album General Pallor at this show. The project is the duo of Lilly Scott and William Duncan whose eclectic background and musical chops prior to this project has yielded a strong body of creative work that blurs the line between avant-garde electronic music and ambient, techno, hip-hop, jazz, downtempo and dream pop. The new record further reveals the band’s knack for innovative songwriting with hazy atmospheres layered with those more vivid. As vocalists both Scott and Duncan complement each other well in delivering thoughtful lyrics and a deep sense of tranquility. The songs from the new album is like a fusion of neo soul and krautrock-flavored chillwave and a welcome respite from living in interesting times.

Best Shows in Denver and Beyond February 2024

**Tigercub performs at The Fillmore Auditorium on February 22 2024, photo by Andreia Lemos**

Friday | 02.02
What: Honey Blazer w/The Blue Rider, Ryan Wong Band and Soulfax DJs
When: 8
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: This will be an evening of bands who have drawn upon some of the essence of the songwriting prowess and musicianship of 70s era rock where psychedelia and Americana blurred some lines. Honey Blazer’s 2022 album Lookin Up revealed a knack for channeling that lush and chill Laurel Canyon country rock and weirded it up some with layers of atmosphere and texture expressed as entrancing pop songs. The Blue Rider’s vibe is more like unhinged garage rock in that 60s mode but driven in part by analog synth weirdness. Ryan Wong Band sounds like Wong himself went on a retreat and took in the entire catalog of 70s country and injected it with some of the cosmic strangeness of Townes Van Zandt.

Saturday | 02.03
What: The Disassociation of Aaron Dooley, Yard Art and Psilocyborne
When: 9
Where: Roxy on Broadway
Why: Aaron Dooley is perhaps better known for his membership in Denver shoegaze greats Totem Pocket. But in 2023 he put out an album called The International Disassociation of: Aaron Dooley that is like a combination of prog rock, psychedelia and free jazz so this is going to be something a little different. Yard Art’s own alchemy of progressive rock, psych and freak folk will fit in with the night. The name Psilocyborne kind of tells you what that band might be about.

Saturday | 02.03
What: Flesh Tape and Fainting Dreams album release w/Dry Ice
When: 8
Where: The Skylark Lounge
Why: This is a dual album release show from Flesh Tape and shoegaze/dream pop/emo group Fainting Dreams. The latter dropped its latest release Those Left Untouched By the Light on January 12 but this is the official unveiling of the album. Anyone that saw the band early in 2023 or in 2022 saw the more dream pop side of the songwriting from Elle Reynolds but recent performances have been more in the vein of tribal noise rock with expansive guitar atmospherics for something refreshingly original that fans of Kansas City noise rockers Flooding will truly appreciate.

Wednesday and Thursday | 02.07 and 02.08
What: Twin Tribes w/Urban Heat and Vandal Moon
When: 7:30/8 and 7
Where: Fox Theatre (02.07) and Oriental Theater (02.08)
Why: Twin Tribes is one of the most prominent darkwave/post-punk artists in America at the moment. Hailing from Brownsville, Texas, the duo’s richly synth-driven music offers not just tales of the usual rock and roll subjects but informed by the occult and esoteric subject matter that blurs the line between the supernatural, the romantic and a style of science fiction that incorporates elements of Gothic literature. Currently touring in support of its 2024 album Pendulum. Austin’s Urban Heat’s style of post-punk is more steeped in EBM but graced with frontman Jonathan Horstman’s commanding baritone vocals. Vandal Moon is a darkwave band from Santa Cruz, California whose sound seems rooted in a coldwave version of early 80s synth pop with some clear influence from Depeche Mode and Duran Duran.

Thursday | 02.08
What: Chance Peña w/Hayd
When: 7
Where: Lost Lake
Why: Rising folk pop artist Chance Peña is a bit of a music industry veteran at age 22 having worked in making music for film and TV as well as contributing to the work of other artists as with John Legend’s “Conversations in the Dark” from his 2020 album Bigger Love. Peña’s latest EP Lovers to Strangers (2023) with lead single “In My Room” dropped in the summer but has major fall energy with its melancholic yet emotionally effusive and vulnerable melodies and tales of life as a thoughtful young person in this very challenging and conflicted period in our culture.

Friday and Saturday | 02.09 and 02.10
What: Cold War Kids 20 Years Tour w/HOVVDY
When: 8
Where: Gothic Theatre
Why: Cold War Kids is celebrating its 20 years together as a band with this tour in the wake of the release of its tenth, self-titled, album in 2023. After a trilogy of albums called New Age Norms (1-3 respectively) from 2019-2021 and its topical subject matter examining developments in society and culture with the group’s typically blues-and-soul-infused indie rock flair, the new album feels more like a set of power pop songs but with the same uplifting energy and thoughtful lyrics that has garnered the band its sizable following. Also on board for this tour is Austin-based indie pop group HOVVDY whose own self-titled album is set for release on April 26, 2024. The duo of Charlie Martin and Will Taylor are no strangers of utilizing electronic elements and aesthetics into its sound and performances but the advance singles from the new album sound like the guys have been listening more to some hip-hop production and incorporated beat-making into their songwriting in a way that just expands its evocative range and nuance of composition. It’s a creative development that frankly sets the group apart from many of its would-be brethren in indie music generally especially in the particular way they have utilized the new sound palette. Should be interesting to see how they pull it off live.

Saturday | 02.10
What: The Kills w/The Paranoyds
When: 8
Where: The Summit Music Hall
Why: The Kills have reliably produced hard rocking music of great imagination and creative production since its earliest days and the live shows always never skimping on the passionate performances. The duo’s new album God Games (2023) is yet another flavor of the group’s alchemy of rock and electronic music with some of its more gloriously moody and sonically enveloping pieces of its career. The Paranoyds from Los Angeles has been one of the more interesting punk-adjacent post-punk bands of recent years with its noisy guitar rock and mutant synth freakouts sounding like a band that could have been on both Kill Rock Stars and GSL Records.

Dressy Bessy in 2022, photo by Tom Murphy

Saturday | 02.10
What: Dressy Bessy w/Barbara, The Raton 3 and Bad Boy Bug
When: 8
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Dressy Bessy are the reigning legends of Denver indiepop with roots back to its formation in the 90s including then current and former members of The Apples in Stereo and Sissy Fuzz. These days the group is as vital as ever with live shows that are as joyously unhinged in the best tradition of great rock and roll but with catchy hooks and heartfelt lyrics. The Raton 3 is a band that includes Deborah Iyall who some may remember as the lead singer of New Wave legends Romeo Void perhaps best remembered for the iconic single “Never Say Never.” Raton 3 is more like psychedelic indiepop with a tender spirit and the kind of frayed edges you wish you heard more in pop music generally.

Wednesday | 02.14
What: Midwife w/American Culture, Cherished and Water on the Thirsty Ground
When: 7
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Midwife’s ambient folkloric shoegaze that she dubs “heaven metal” is awash in a tenderly cosmic insight into human frailty and vulnerabilities that manifest as deeply atmospheric songs that hit like direct doses of emotional catharsis and transcendence. American Culture is an evolving rock band whose roots in indiepop and punk lands in always interesting and unique places so it’s never quite fit into some trendy subgenre insipidity. Cherished is like if a raw emo band fused with a shoegaze band that came out of punk but with more focused chops. Water on the Thirsty Ground might be different now but it’s experimental, industrial-inflected, noisy glitchcore has to be taken on its own terms of its own unfiltered emotional exuberance.

Friday and Saturday | 02.16 and 02.17
What: Yo La Tengo
When: 7
Where: Boulder Theater (02.16) and Washington’s (02.17)
Why: Yo La Tengo delivered one of the best records of its career with 2023’s This Stupid World in which it pushes the boundaries of its pop aesthetic and further into its knack for epic, expansive noise rock. The veteran band has always steered its own course and carved out a unique place as a foundational indie rock band whose sounds have waxed into the realms of Krautrock, space rock, noise, jazz, warmly rendered shoegaze and folk pop with a consistently evocative creativity and imaginative sonics. Live the group has also been pretty reliable as being able to manifest its most delicate songcraft and its roaring burns of rock theater.

Friday and Saturday | 02.16 and 02.17
What: Sarah Jarosz w/The Ballroom Thieves
When: 7
Where: The Gothic Theatre (02.16) and Boulder Theater (02.17)
Why: Sarah Jarosz released her new album Polaroid Lovers on January 26, 2024. The now Nashville-based, Austin, Texas born singer-songwriter garnered a sizable following with her more Americana flavored songwriting and delicately expressive vocals and lushly pastoral aesthetic. Her songs have always seemed to be informed by poetically observant lyrics that are vividly rendered emotional experiences and expressed in ways that are refreshingly free of clichés. The new record finds Jarosz building upon her mastery of the use of space and minimalism in her songs with deeper forays into electric sounds and soundscapes without sacrificing the aspects of her songs that feel intimate and brimming with great personal insight.

Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs, photo from Bandcamp

Tuesday | 02.20
What: Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs w/Space in Time and Cheap Perfume
When: 7
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: The band aka Pigs x 7 is a psychedelic doom band from the UK whose musical momentum is almost the opposite of what one most often associates with the current equivalent of stoner rock. Like a weird fusion of Neurosis and Sleep and with a quality that makes you think maybe people in the band were in hardcore groups prior to this. Its latest album Land of Sleeper blends sonic aggression with warped atmospheres and a cathartic treatment of existential dread. Space in Time is the long-running boogie rock/psych doom band from Denver who seem like the idea opening act for this show. Cheap Perfume is the political punk band from Colorado Springs whose joyful takedowns of misogyny and right wing ideology as it manifests in the culture are thrilling because they are creatively and poignantly on point.

Reverend Kristin Michael Hayter, photo from Bandcamp

Wednesday | 02.21
What: Reverend Kristin Michael Hayter
When: 7
Where: The Bluebird Theater
Why: After Kristin Hayter shelved the arresting avant-garde/classical/noise project Lingua Ignota after a lengthy tour in 2023, the artist had announced a new musical direction with Reverend Kristin Michael Hayter and an album SAVED! Which dropped in October of the same year. It’s a collection of songs that document Hayter’s, according to the blurb on the Bandcamp listing, “earnest attempt achieve salvation through the tenets of charismatic Christianity, focusing on the Pentecostal-Holiness Movement, which dictate that one’s closeness to God is demonstrated through transcendental personal experience.” So it’s a similar experience as what Hayter seemed to be doing with Lingua Ignota and with similar musical methods and sounds but fusing her original music with traditional hymns. Given Hayter’s unique performance style and emotional commitment to the concept as a vehicle for personal transformation it will likely be quite the thing to witness.

Wednesday | 02.21
What: Provoker w/Riki and Candy Apple
When: 7
Where: Larimer Lounge
Why: Provoker is a post-punk band based in Los Angeles with roots in the musical scores of horror cinema with brooding and low-end robust synth, driving bass lines and soulful vocals. A lot of current post-punk has a spindly lo-fi sound and Provoker is in sharp contrast to that with lush production and a refreshingly richness of tone. Opening the show is the noisy post-punk/post-hardcore trio Candy Apple and Riki. The latter is hopefully due for a new album this year but either way her moody synth pop is like a musical time travel journey to a time and place that doesn’t exist where the 1980s didn’t end and bands could pick up where Depeche Mode left off with Speak & Spell and picked up a bit of Kim Wilde and baked it into modern minimal dance pop.

Thursday | 02.22
What: Circling Over w/Weathered Statues, Summer of Peril and Mood Swing Misery
When: 7
Where: HQ
Why: Circling Over is a dark post-rock band from Denver in that heavy shoegaze vein. Weathered Statues is probably the best death rock band in Denver at the moment with poignantly evocative vocals and dense yet dynamic rhythms that set it apart from the often sonically thin music rampant in modern post-punk. Summer of Peril calls itself “grungegaze” but its musical output so far sounds like that end of emo that wasn’t trying to adhere too closely to the punk roots and went for pure emotional expression through crafting vulnerable, atmospheric sounds to process melancholic moods.

Thursday | 02.22
What: Porno for Pyros farewell tour w/Tigercub
When: 7
Where: The Fillmore Auditorium
Why: Porno for Pyros is an alternative rock band that formed following the 1991 dissolution of Jane’s Addiction when frontman Perry Farrell and drummer Stephen Perkins brought on board Peter DiStefano and Martyn LeNoble for a group with similar sensibilities and knack for unconventional melodies and sophisticated rhythms. The songs that would emerge on the band’s 1993 debut album were more chill and experimental in sound palette than Farrell and Perkins had employed with Jane’s and more psychedelic but maintained a sense of otherworldly mystique that surrounded the music and image of their previous band. The group remained active until 1998 and has had reunion performances since then in the 2000s and 2020s (before the pandemic botched an initial attempt at a reunion and release of new material to support). In 2023 founding bassist Martyn LeNoble announced his amicable departure from the band with his supportive words for the as yet unreleased music aside from the “Agua” single but former member, and punk legend, Mike Watt (Minutemen, fIREHOSE, Dos, mssv, Stooges etc.) agreed to return for this final run of live shows assuming the band doesn’t decided to do performances in support of what one hopes is a final release of the recordings done with LeNoble.

Tigercub is a rock band from Brighton, England that formed in 2011 by vocalist and guitarist Jamie Stephen Hall and drummer James Allix who met a university and joined by bassist Jimi Wheelright in 2012. From its earliest releases the trio has demonstrated a knack for crafting commanding hard rock with a cinematic sensibility that it has consistently evolved into a body of work that has expanded its range and variety of expression across now three albums including arguably its most fully realized work to date with 2023’s The Perfume of Decay. The group’s 2021 album As Blue as Indigo delved deep into themes of anxiety, depression, mortality and loss. The latest release found the band exploring the use of found tapes that Hall had been collecting from old Dictaphone machines found in thrift stores as a layer of atmosphere that served as almost a sonic canvass upon which its hard rocking sound could find a subtle context. It’s a subtle effect but for the keen listener there’s a certain something to the music on the record that lends it an emotional impact like a well chosen setting and time of year can add something unmistakable and compelling to a film.

For the new album some of the themes of the previous offering linger as emotional fallout and reflecting the kinds of experiences we all go through when we’ve been through a particularly traumatic period and have to return to going through the usual daily experiences with a different emotional lens having been changed by grief and existential turmoil. For the new record the group seems to have taken in the influence of early shoegaze and Can in terms of working out the underlying moods and atmospherics and challenging themselves to produce something another level of creative ambition with its arrangements. You can hear the impact of Queens of the Stone Age in its fluid use of heavy guitar and rhythms but in its perhaps not as obvious ear for the aesthetics of electronic music and in the structure of where the sounds sit in the mix one might compare Tigercub to Failure whose own fusion of hard rock, post-punk and the influence of cinematic sound design has yielded its own career of noteworthy records. Listen to our interview with Hall for the Queen City Sounds Podcast.

Thursday | 02.22
What: Spectral Voice album release w/Mephitic Corpse and Street Tombs
When: 7
Where: The Bluebird Theater
Why: Denver-based death metal/doom band Spectral Voice is celebrating the release of its new record Spargamos with a these days rare performance in town at The Bluebird. The new album expands on the group’s claustrophobic, dark, atmospheric, grinding and caustic sprawl. It hasn’t sounded like some black metal aficionados recording in their bedroom or garage in awhile and that might put off purists but now its darkly cosmic sound just hits with an enveloping spirit of desolated awe in the face of the possibilities of existence beyond our mortal ken. Spooky but never corny.

Thursday | 02.22
What: Gig for Gaza w/Time/Calm., Church Fire, Stay Tuned, Team Nonexistent and Damn Selene
When: 6:30
Where: The Marquis Theater
Why: Probably everyone you know to the left of center and at this point even people who think of themselves in the political center in America have been critical of the response of Israel to the October 7, 2023 attacks of Hamas. Dropping more bombs in a shorter period of time on a much smaller land than America did in all of the Iraq War with the supposed aim of rooting out an organization that is often cited as a terrorist organization in the West seems like a genocidal war crime to anyone that isn’t buying into warhawk propaganda. When an election hasn’t been allowed since 2007 and the majority of the population of Gaza and the West Bank in general wasn’t born at that time or an even vaster number at most children it seems obvious that holding them accountable in such a barbaric fashion for the acts of a political party acting rashly in response to horrible conditions imposed on their people should be condemned and de-funded by the rest of the world. Until then independent methods of aiding the people of Gaza have been organized including this event. When world leaders especially those in the USA work to end this conflict and others around the world maybe these sorts of events don’t need to happen to raise funds and highlight atrocities. Fortunately all the acts on this bill are worth seeing beyond any political activism.

Sweeping Promises, photo by Shawn Brackbill

Saturday | 02.24
What: Sweeping Promises w/Colfax Speed Queen and Angel Band
When: 8
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: A time not so long ago Lawrence, Kansas was known for great, underground indie rock if you were plugged into the DIY circuit. But like all college towns phases of who is around and active changes as the demographics change. So to hear about Sweeping Promises releasing their sophomore album Good Living Is Coming For You on both Feelt It and SubPop came as a bit of a surprise. The duo of Lira Mondal and Caufield Schnug got their start in bands together n the late 2000s while at Hendrix College in Conway, Arkansas and then being involved in the Boston underground scene forming, according to Grant Sharples in a July 2023 profile on the band in Pitchfork, Sweeping Promises in 2019 after trying out different styles of music as Silkies, Dee-Parts and Mini-Dresses. In 2021 the group found a place in Lawrence near University of Kansas where Schnug has set up a studio and already recorded numerous bands. The new record is reminiscent of the kind of thing you might have heard on Kill Rock Stars or K Records in the 90s or out of Athens, GA in the 80s and 90s with punk rock spirit, pop accessibility and lo-fi charm. So if you missed the band when it was in town in September 2023 this is your chance to rectify that as well as catch local psych garage greats Colfax Speed Queen and Angel Band.

Monday | 02.26
What: Militarie Gun w/Pool Kids, Spiritual Cramp and Roman Candle
When: 6
Where: The Marquis Theater
Why: Los Angeles-based post-punk band Militarie Gun has garnered a bit of cachet for itself with its exuberant live shows and music that taps post-hardcore and noise rock roots for its own melodic manifestation of the synthesis of those influences. In 2023 the group released the anthemic Life Under the Gun and toured extensively in support of the album and now with another swing through Denver in the wake of the release of its new EP Life Under the Sun which is much more minimal versions of songs from the aforementioned record and not so obviously grounded in punk with lush atmospheres and contributions from Bully, Mannequin Pussy and Manchester Orchestra.

Small Black in 2010 at Rhinoceropolis, photo by Tom Murphy

Tuesday | 02.27
What: Small Black w/NITE
When: 7
Where: Meow Wolf Convergence Station
Why: Small Black were pioneers of the chillwave sound, although it never embraced the genre tag because its own music was more in line with experimental, DIY electronic weirdos like Pictureplane and drawing inspiration from early synthpop which was making up its style as it went and incorporating noise and generating its own aesthetics, when it formed in the late 2000s and its 2010 debut album New Chain a classic of the genre. But that music was surpassed in development and sophistication by its 2013 record Limits of Desire which got a double vinyl deluxe reissue for its 10 year anniversary in 2023. For this tour you’ll probably get a bit of those older flavors of its music as well as its even more lush and R&B inflected newer material.

Queen City Sounds Podcast S4E02: Weathered Statues

Weathered Statues in 2023, photo by Tom Murphy

Weathered Statues is a post-punk band from Denver whose sound is more in the deathrock vein with clear roots in punk with an edge in its overall sound. The quartet got its start in the mid-2010s when singer Jennie Mather’s previous band Cloak of Organs dissolved and she, original guitarist Jason Heller and then (and current) drummer Andrew Warner reconvened as Weathered Statues, borrowing the name from the 1982 T.S.O.L. EP. The group played its first shows by spring of 2017 and was immediately striking for not really fitting in with the ascendant darkwave scene but very much in the post-punk vein of dark tones and an exceptional rhythm section. The following year the band released its debut LP Borderlands via Finnish label Svart Records and toured Finland and Europe in the wake of that release. But within a year or two Heller dropped out of the band, Andrew Warner took a bit of a hiatus during which Clusterfux guitarist Justin Lent filled in on drums before taking over on guitar when Warner returned to the fold and syncing perfectly with Bryan Flanagan’s creative and powerful bass lines.

Since the current lineup has gelled in the last few years Weathered Statues has released the Desolation EP (2019) and played numerous shows and expanding its sound some with Mather taking on the role of keyboardist as well. The band’s music hasn’t always fit in neatly with a subscene in Denver because it isn’t a darkwave band but whose emotionally resonant songs, reminiscent of Xmal Deutschland, Christian Death and Skeletal Family, is clearly adjacent to the sounds of modern darkwave and post-punk groups but its guitar tones tend to be more robust than one often hears among many bands out of that movement and Mather’s vocals more passionate. All the members of the band have been veterans of the Denver music scene with Lent as a member of the aforementioned, long running punk outfit Clusterfux, Mather and Flanagan having been members of punk group The Nervous and Warner in numerous noteworthy rock and experimental bands over the years (including Bad Luck City, Red Cloud, Snake Rattle Rattle Snake, Dormition and currently Slim Cessna’s Auto Club) which goes some way to explaining why Weathered Statues isn’t much like its presumed peers but that storied lineage has also not instilled in the members of the band a sense of resting on its laurels or riding a trend it helped to establish. Its songwriting and commanding live shows speak to deserving that recognition on their own. Expect a new Weathered Statues album by summer or fall 2024.

Listen to our interview with Jennie Mather and Justin Lent of Weathered Statues on Bandcamp and follow the band at the links below. You can catch the outfit live on Saturday, December 30, 2023 at the Hi-Dive with Moon Pussy opening for Denver Americana legends Slim Cessna’s Auto Club and Thursday, February 22, 2024 at HQ with Circling Over, Summer of Peril and Mood Swing Misery.

Weathered S tatues on Instagram

Weathered Statues on Bandcamp

Best Shows in Denver and Beyond December 2023

The Keening performs at Decibel Metal & Beer Fest at The Summit Music Hall on Saturday, December 2, 2023, photo by Jared Gold and Angela Brown

Friday | 12.01
What: Cherished w/Pill Joy, Replica City and Flesh Tape
When: 8
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Cherished headlines this show with its emotionally vibrant shoegaze. Pill Joy has the kind of sound that seems to be rooted in emo but more in line with an atmospheric lo-fi slowcore band. Replica City is a shoegaze-y post-punk band in that slowcore lane as well. Flesh Tape from Fort Collins is supposedly an emo band but its favoring of noisy atmospheres places it in a realm of music adjacent to that of all the bands on this finely assembled bill.

Friday | 12.01
What: Decibel Metal & Beer Fest w/Khemmis, Cephalic Carnage, Red Chord, KEN Mode, Morbikon and Phobocosm 2-day passes available
When: 5
Where: Summit Music Hall
Why: The first night of this festival featuring some of the great extreme metal bands of today includes performances from Denver legends like doom band Khemmis and internationally renowned death metal outfit Cephalic Carnage playing a rare local show. KEN Mode from Canada brings its harrowing noise rock for its second time through Denver in 2023. In September the quartet issued its latest set of caustic, haunting and cathartic songs as the album VOID. A companion to the 2022 album NULL, the new record is all downbeats but delivered with a spirited resistance to life’s inevitable misfortunes.

Hiss Golden Messenger, photo by Graham Tolbert

Saturday | 12.02
What: Hiss Golden Messenger w/Adeem the Artist
When: 8
Where: Ogden Theatre
Why: Hiss Golden Messenger is a prolific and critically acclaimed indie folk band from Durham, North Carolina. Don’t worry about the genre description so much because the group’s music is ambitious in its songwriting and sonics particularly on its new album Jump For Joy (2023). In its sounds you hear as much the influence or impact of the likes of Peter Gabriel as Palace Brothers. The group is able to navigate both crafting an intimate quality to the songwriting and orchestral arrangements. Not chamber pop so much as bringing rich arrangements to bare bones songwriting so that each composition teems with life without distracting from the emotional range of the music and its pastoral yet thoughtful storytelling.

The Keening, photo by Jared Gold and Angela Brown

Saturday | 12.02
What: Decibel Metal & Beer Fest w/Agalloch, Midnight, Primitive Man, Krypts, The Keening and Mother of Graves
When: 4
Where: Summit Music Hall
Why: The second night of the festival brings to you The Keening, the latest project from Rebecca Vernon who was once the lead singer of legendary cosmic/tribal doom band SubRosa from Salt Lake City. The Keening brings forward Vernon’s gift for weaving together Gothic Americana sensibilities with a detailed tapestry of atmospheric sweep and orchestral arrangements like something out of a hidden, mythical west. The new album Little Bird is a gorgeously doom-laden set of songs that would be a great soundtrack for a future film from John Adams, Zelda Adams and Toby Poser whose films Hellbender and Where the Devil Roams are right in line with the moods Vernon excels at evoking in her music. Agalloch reunited for some shows in 2023 and this is one of them. The Portland, Oregon-based band and its transcendental, folky black metal has exerted a strong influence on most of the better bands mining that sonic territory since the group’s origins in the 90s. Primitive Man will likely be the heaviest band of the whole festival with the trio’s mastery of crushing dynamics and orchestrated emotional release through colossal noise.

Rosegarden Funeral Party, photo by Tom Murphy

Saturday | 12.02
What: Rosegarden Funeral Party w/Faces Under the Mirror and WitchHands
When: 8
Where: The Crypt
Why: Rosegarden Funeral Party from Dallas puts on one of the most impassioned performances in the realm of modern Goth and post-punk. Leah Lane isn’t just a front person with the commanding voice, her guitar work is a refreshing departure from the thin and minimalistic sound that has been plaguing much of darkwave and post-punk lately. Faces Under the Mirror is the long-running EBM project of Jayke Haven and one of the few projects in that particle style that seems to continue to innovate with emotionally vibrant songwriting. WitchHands is the excellent deathrock band from Colorado Springs.

Tuesday | 12.05
What: Blood Club w/Dustbowl Champion and Floats
When: 7
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Blood Club is a darkwave band from Chicago whose lo-fi production is fairly standard for a certain stripe of post-punk these days. But its ethereal guitar work is more diverse and creative than a lot of what’s going on in various corners of current post-punk. Frontman Jess Flores was once a member of French Police who have attained a bit of a cult status these days and Blood Club is not so far removed from that sound with icy synths and spindly guitar tone but more minimal and spacious. Dustbowl Champion from Fresno, California is cut from similar cloth but as a solo project with echoing guitar, vocals and synth with a spare drum machine beat like something recorded to a cassette and transferred to an iPhone for mixing. Floats is a lo-fi punk pop band from Texas that sound like its members got into some of that 2010s garage punk and indiepop and wanted do something with the same spirit but a different sound.

Thursday | 12.07
What: Soy Celesté, Pretty. Loud, To Be Astronauts
When: 8
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: It would be a mistake to genre pigeonhole Soy Celesté but based on the debut Break Out EP there’s a bit of fuzzy lo-fi pop and the kind of socially aware and confessional indie rock that one hasn’t heard much of since the 2000s. Pretty Loud appears to be the kind of pop band that is inspired by music from theater and the vaudeville chamber pop sort of thing but live seem to be fairly animated and driven by piano/keyboard melodies and vocals. To Be Astronauts has a sound reminiscent of 1990s grunge period alternative rock bands with some blues in the mix.

Saturday | 12.09
What: SORROWS, Dragon Drop and Bell Mine w/DJ set by Shhadows
When: 8
Where: Glob
Why: This is a show featuring some of the more inventive experimental pop songwriters from Denver. SORROWS is a duo comprised of vocalist Glynnis Braan and percussionist Lawrence Snell both of whom contribute electronic production to songs that are an evolution of downtempo with soaring, melancholic vocals and deep mood. Dragon Drop centers around the hyperpop and darkwave songwriting of former EVP singer/guitarist and current member of Princess Dewclaw Amanda Baker. Bell Mine is an ethereal darkwave solo project whose music seems resonant with the sound and style of artists like Laurel Halo and The Knife.

Saturday | 12.09
What: Messiahvore w/Church Fire and Moon Pussy
When: 8
Where: The Skylark Lounge
Why: Messiahvore’s eclectic heavy sound came out of its members’ collective experience with making sludge metal, doom and hard rock in the past couple of decades and more. But Messiahvore hits as more experimental, more psychedelic and with lyrics that dabble more in social commentary. And really one of the more entertaining and commanding bands in Denver’s heavy music underground. So it’s different to get to see very political, industrial darkwave dance band Church Fire on the bill with its own sense of play while delivering vital and insightful lyrics about the state of things without waxing too topical. Not to mention Moon Pussy whose irreverent humor tends to happen between songs when Crissy Cuellar gets on the mic with her self-aware dad joke routine that isn’t truly a routine because it’s always off the cuff. But the songs are some of the most cathartic, abrasive and inspiring blasts of noise rock happening anywhere right now.

Sunday | 12.10
What: The Playground Ensemble Presents: Tatsuya Nakatani
When: 6
Where: Leon Gallery
Why: Tatsuya Nakatani is a renowned avant-garde composer and percussionist originally from Japan who now makes Truth Or Consequences, New Mexico his home. This set will be one of the musician’s solo sets and an improvisation piece done in collaboration with Denver’s Playground Ensemble director and Conrad Kehn who is a bit of a figure in the local music scene in his own right with modern classical and the avant-garde in recent years and with industrial and Gothic rock in the 90s through the turn of the century.

Sunday | 12.10
What: Jarhead Fertilizer w/Phobophilic, Crownovhornz and Death Possession
When: 7
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Jarhead Fertilizer is the influential grindcore band from Ocean City, Maryland and currently touring in support of the December 8, 2023 release of its latest album Carceral Warfare. Phobophilic is a deathgrind band from Fargo, North Dakota. Crownovhornz from Pennsylvania released an unusual hip-hop album called Appalachian Aesthetic in August 2023 that is a tale of life in impoverished America and about life in bars and jail. Definitely within the realm of alternative hip-hop. But who knows? Maybe they’ll be playing some death metal too since that’s a tag on the Bandcamp page for the record.

They Are Gutting a Body of Water, photo from Bandcamp

Tuesday | 12.12
What: They Are Gutting a Body of Water w/Full Body 2, The Red Scare and Empty4400
When: 7
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: They Are Gutting a Body of Water brings its brand of lo-fi bedroom shoegaze jangle from Philly to Denver this night. And by shoegaze do not take that to mean conventionally pretty guitar work and maybe some melancholic vibe. It’s more the noisy, disorienting, genuinely psychedelic sound but threaded together with the kind of weirdo twee indiepop of the 90s and 2000s. Also from Philadelphia is Full Body 2 whose own shoegaze flavor is steeped in ambient breakcore soundscaping. The Red Scare from Fort Collins will provide plenty of its own hazy, distortion-sculpting post-punk. Some might call it shoegaze but those people might also think Daydream Nation is a shoegaze album. The Red Scare if it can be called post-punk is more that vein of deep, gritty, disorienting atmospheric noise with some actual song structure. Empty4400 is more on the grittier, punk/emo-rooted end of the shoegaze spectrum for this night.

Limbwrecker in 2023, photo by Tom Murphy

Thursday | 12.14
What: Limbwrecker, Grief Ritual, Holographic American and ZEPHR
When: 7
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: It’s good to know that mixed bills can happen and with this you get one of the great hardcore/extreme metal bands from Denver in Limbwrecker whose caustic yet playfully delivered sounds and cathartic and primal vocals is definitely for people into powerviolence. Grief Ritual’s own style of hardcore has plenty of math-y progressions that make the more cutting, atmospheric sounds and gruff and impassioned vocals hit a little harder with the realization that the songs are often a melancholic exploration of tragedy and a critique of an abusive economic and political reality experienced by all of us daily. Holographic American includes Caleb Tardio who plays keyboards in noteworthy Denver melodic death metal band NightWraith. But HoloAm has more in common with one of his older bands, the mathrock/progressive alternative rock band I Sank Molly Brown. But more noise rock, more in the vein of post-rock of the vintage one found in the American midwest in the 90s. ZEPHR is a trio also from Denver whose music has brought together elements of pop-punk but the kind that borders on emo, risking that noisy and not perfectly melodic yet compelling imperfection, and performed with a raw and heartfelt energy.

Friday | 12.15
What: Cathedral Bells, Juli a n St. Nightmare and Hex Cassette
When: 7
Where: Lost Lake
Why: Cathedral Bells is a dream pop/shoegaze from Orlando, Florida whose 2023 album Everything at Once was released in May through eclectic Philadelphia-based Born Losers Records. Its sound is the kind of melodious, ethereal soundscape-y guitar pop that seems to draw on 80s synth pop and jangle-y indie rock of the 80s vintage as well circa C86 and Sarah Records. Also on this bill is one-human death/blood cult Hex Cassette and his energized, industrial/EBM dance music. Sometime during his set you will be asked to offer a blood sacrifice and he will come out into the audience and mix it up with the people that show up. But all in good fun. And this will be one of the final live shows you’ll get to see from Denver darkwave/post-punk band Julian St. Nightmare. In its short tenure as a live band, although it formed and started writing music in 2018, the quintet has developed its fusion of spidery post-punk, garage rock, surf and dark synthpop into an emotionally rich and powerful body of work and intense and electrifying live show. Listen to our interview with members of the group on the Queen City Sounds Podcast.

Friday | 12.15
What: Alexandra Kay w/Haley Mae Campbell
When: 7
Where: The Oriental Theater
Why: Independent country artist Alexandra Kay released her debut album All I’ve Ever Known on October 26, 2023. Kay has garnered a large fanbase online with millions of followers on TikTok and hundreds of thousand followers on Instagram and nearly as many subscribers on YouTube. But none of those numbers would mean much if Kay didn’t have the talent to warrant attention. Fortunately, her new album is a showcase for Kay’s diverse songwriting style with songs that seem to have poignant personal insight and lack the posi bravado that is too common in popular music. Kay’s songs shimmer with an inner light provided in part by lap steel and the perfect blend of acoustic and electric guitar working to craft the backdrop to Kay’s vibrant vocals to cinematic effect. Her music may be rooted in country but its of the kind that has inherent appeal beyond genre and crosses well over into the realm of pop and in moments even dream pop.

Saturday | 12.16
What: Mindforce w/Destiny Bond, Moral Law and guest
When: 7
Where: D3
Why: Mindforce is the thrashcore band from Poughkeepsie, New York touring in support of its 2022 album New Lords. Destiny Bond’s particular style of hardcore seems more steeped in anarcho punk and a more experimental, noisy yet melodic sound like some DC hardcore and early emo with a touch of the kinds of punk that would have influenced or channeled into Christian Death like Adolescents. But all with a political edge and socially critical lyrics. Moral Law is a vegan, straight edge band and its own music like a very focused yet seething hardcore at times that sounds in the realm of grind.

Wednesday | 12.20
What: The Gamits w/Bandaid Brigade and despAIR Jordan
When: 7
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: The Gamits are Denver pop punk legends and influential in the local punk scene at least certainly among punk acts with roots going back before the 2010s and with vocalist and guitarist Chris Fogal living abroad these days this is a rare live performance. Bandaid Brigade is a band from San Diego who seem to have combined elements of pop punk, yacht rock and adult contemporary without it imploding into an ungodly mixture. The members of despAIR Jordan were and in some cases are members of formerly or current prominent bands in the Denver punk scene like SleeperHorse, Sugar Skulls and Marigolds and Pinhead Circus and currently releasing some finely crafted songs of its own in a more atmospheric post-hardcore vein.

Commerce City Rollers, photo from Bandcamp

Thursday | 12.21
What: Up Yours People, The Picture Tour and Commerce City Rollers
When: 7
Where: Lost Lake
Why: Up Yours People is the latest band from Rich Groskopf. The Picture Tour will bring the rainy day shoegaze/dream pop sound to the proceedings and thus more than a touch of musical elegance to the evening. And yes Commerce City Rollers is the band that used to play the dive bars at punk shows in the late 90s with its melodic garage punk fronted by Maranda “MJ” Gaylord that had basically split for years until reuniting a bit before the pandemic and releasing a 2019 album Backstories.

Friday and Saturday | 12.22 and 12.23
What: DeVotchKa performing How it Ends (with Claire Heywood on 12.23)
When: 7
Where: The Bluebird Theater
Why: Across two nights, the legendary “gypsy punk” band DeVotchKa performs its 2004, and arguably finest, album How It Ends in its entirety including its heartbreaking title track. It was the last album the group released before garnering greater success and fame with its music featuring in the 2006 film Little Miss Sunshine. Its orchestral arrangements and depth of feeling and stirring melodies was a big leap forward for the band that some of us got to see play shows in dive bars like 15th St. Tavern and unglamorous opening slots. But something clicked somewhere and the ambition of the songwriting expanded greatly and now while the band isn’t necessarily even indie famous it can command a sizable audience in and well beyond Denver with shows that while somewhat choreographed still pack that emotional punch that has made it worth witnessing in person.

Saturday | 12.23
What: Church Fire, The Milk Blossoms, Curta and debthedemo
When: 8:30
Where: The Roxy on Broadway
Why: This show will put you through some moods that’ll be good for you this holiday season. Church Fire will bring the energized industrial dance synth pop and all the feels. The Milk Blossoms will perform its heart-rending, gossamer tender pop songs this time in a slightly different configuration since drummer Tyler Lindgren won’t be able to perform replaced by bassist David Samuelson behind the kit. Curta’s weirdo alternative hip-hop returns to Denver for a rare engagement from Chicago and Boulder’s debthedemo will inject some beautifully crafted ambient rap house with performance art strangeness. In most ways the local show of the week for the discerning listener.

Slim Cessna’s Auto Club, photo by Tom Murphy

Saturday | 12.30
What: Slim Cessna’s Auto Club w/Moon Pussy and Weathered Statues
When: 8
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Slim Cessna’s Auto Club headlines two nights at the Hi-Dive for the New Years Eve weekend with its energetic and brilliantly executed Vaudevillian Americana post-punk. For this first night you also get to see Moon Pussy, the arch practitioners of dangerous noise rock delivered with an irreverent humor and incredibly intensity and Weathered Statues whose particular style of post-punk is more akin to the more death rock and spidery punk sound of Xmal Deutschland and Christian Death than the synth-driven style of groups more in line with darkwave.

Sunday | 12.31
What: Slim Cessna’s Auto Club w/Palehorse/Palerider and Snakes
When: 8
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: This second night of the SCAC headline run for the holiday features opening acts Palehorse/Palerider whose psychedelic, deserty post-punk doom truly creates a deep sense of space and enigmatic moods and twangy garage rock Americana of Snakes. All killer, no filler.

Best Shows in Denver and Beyond October 2023

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

The Brook & The Bluffs, photo by Noah Tidmore

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

Nothing But Thieves, photo by Beatriz Oliveira

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

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

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

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

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

Roselit Bone, photo from roselitbone.com

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Mountain Goats, photo by Jackie Lee Young

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Acid Mothers Temple, photo by Tom Murphy

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

The Stargazer Lilies, photo courtesy the artists

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

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

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

Brian Jonestown Massacre circa 2012, photo by Tom Murphy

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

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

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

Wolves in the Throne Room, photo from Bandcamp

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

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

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

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

Julian St. Nightmare, photo by Tom Murphy

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

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

Bambara at TV Eye in 2021, photo courtesy Bambara

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

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

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

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

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

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

To Be Continued…

Best Shows in Denver and Beyond July 2023

Sparks perform at Boulder Theater on Sunday, July 9, 2023. Photo by Munachi Osegbu.

Monday | 07.03
What: Glare, Alien Boy, Roseville, Face Ghost, Broken Record
When: 7
Where: Seventh Circle Music Collective
Why: Glare is a heavy shoegaze band from Austin, Texas whose sound swings elegantly between dream pop, the moody delicacy of late 90s, atmospheric emo and slow burn distortion. Alien Boy from Portland, Oregon has long been evolving out of its early more pop-punk origins into a Cure-esque post-punk and emo powerhouse with emotionally rich vocals and heartfelt lyrics. Broken Record is a band from Denver whose own sound might have a touch of shoegaze tonal incandescence but its melodic songcraft hints and the influence of late 90s Midwestern emo and noise pop bands.

Destroy Boys, photo courtesy the artists

Monday | 07.03
What: Blink-182 w/Turnstile and Destroy Boys
When: 6:30
Where: Ball Arena
Why: Blink-182 is a popular band that helped push pop punk into the mainstream with a string of 90s and 2000s hits and it’s either your thing or not. But the openers for this one point to the fact that someone in the Blink camp isn’t divorced from what’s vital and cool in the realm of music that isn’t already stadium big from the neo-nü metal phenoms Turnstile and Destroy Boys. The latter has been evolving its thrillingly arch socially critical punk rock since forming in 2015. Its ferocious mix of hardcore and garage rock has given us songs like “Locker Room Bully” and its music video that pretty much spells out and dismantles a genre of misogyny in connecting historical parallels between the witch hunts of the middle ages to the early modern era (and depending on what part of the world you live in, even now) and the various linguistic tricks used to dismiss women in the current era. But Destroy Boys has really delivered on exciting songs with heady content all along. The group’s video for its new song “Beg For Torture” looks like a cross between a really wrong ARG mixed with recovered police footage from an abuser’s dungeon and paired with the lyrics that point to casting off the effects of gaslighting and reclaiming one’s power upon coming into full awareness of the situation infuses the song with welcome originality of concept.

Wednesday | 07.05
What: Josephine Foster w/Advance Base
When: 7
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Josephine Foster is a singer-songwriter from Colorado whose musical path has been as varied as it has been inventive and imaginative. Her vocals recall those of folk singers from the first half of the Twentieth Century but with some background in opera there is always something different and otherworldly to her delivery. Her music is pretty much impossible to easily classify with elements of freak folk, Americana and ambient throughout her idiosyncratic career as an artist. Her latest album Domestic Sphere is like a musical chapterbook of haunted places and people, an homage and gentle celebration of the neglected and forgotten cast in pastoral moods and tones of fragile elegance. Sharing the bill is Owen Ashworth who for over a decade (1997-2010) wrote some of the most tenderly heartbreaking outsider pop recorded in recent years with his project Casiotone For the Painfully Alone. Since retiring that moniker and a bit of the ideas and aesthetics of that music, Ashworth has been building another respectable and affecting body of work under the name of Advance Base with its slowcore folk pop sound and emotionally resonant atmospherics.

Stinking Lizaveta, photo by Singletary John

Thursday | 07.06
What: Telekinetic Yeti w/Stinking Lizaveta, Somnuri and Hashtronaut
When: 7
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Telekinetic Yeti is a psychedelic doom band from Dubuque, Iowa in that post-Sleep/Baroness mold but at least its 2022 album Primordial lives up to the title with a set of songs that humorously reference cannabis, supernatural entities, esoteric knowledge and a more liberated future. Stinking Lizaveta is a trio from Philadelphia that formed in 1994 creating instrumental rock with roots in prog, jazz and cinematic music. The style the group has developed from the beginning has been summed up with the descriptor “doom jazz” because its sound has often combined heaviness with a musical complexity and elegance. Stinking Lizaveta establishes a mood early in its songs and its compositions vividly express ideas and emotional nuance that engages the listener’s imagination. Read our interview with the group here.

Friday | 07.07
What: REZN w/Oryx https://hi-dive.com/event/rezn-grivo-oryx
When: 8
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Oryx is the respected doom band from Denver whose majestic yet scrappy songs break out of the tropes of the genre by helping to redefine it with more inventive rhythms and creative crafting of colossal, atmospheric guitar riffs. REZN is a heavy psych band from Chicago whose forays into evocative and haunting music incorporate the aesthetics of doom, shoegaze and cinematic ambient to create dynamic soundscapes that capture a sense of the cosmic and of the deep mystery of nature. The group recently released its new album Solace. The record’s cover looks like something one might have expected on an old Rainbow or Hawkwind record of windswept mountains and the sunlight breaking through a raging storm. The music within is not unlike that expectation set of epic journeys and existential catharsis through finely sculpted and orchestrated volume and majestically accented rhythms. If Lovecraft and Michael Moorcock had somehow collaborated on a dark science fantasy trilogy in the modern era this is the music for that story—menace, spiritual contemplation and transcendence. Listen to our interview with bassist Phil Cangelosi below.

Friday | 07.07
What: FOANS album release w/Taylor Bratches, ALX-106 and Scarien
When: 9
Where: Glob
Why: Andrew Dahabrah meant to dump a hard drive of nearly six hours and 100 tracks of his diverse body of techno, house and ambient music in 2018 when he posted it to Bandcamp and then retire his long running project FOANS. Times change and now a carefully curated 11-track selection of those recordings is coming out as Selected Classics on digital and vinyl with a release show this night. Respected Denver and now international DJ and electronic music artist Taylor Bratches will perform as will downtempo techno artist ALX-106 and his nature inspired compositions and minimal techno/house artist Scarien.

The Beets at Rhinoceropolis in 2010, photo by Tom Murphy

Saturday | 07.08
What: Juan Wauters w/Los Narwhals, Flora De La Luna, Movete Chiquita Vinyl Club
When: 8
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Juan Wauters was born in Montevideo, Uruguay but moved to New York City in 2002 and within the decade formed one of the better of the then nascent modern garage rock revival bands The Beets. The group toured regularly throughout America often at DIY spaces and dive bars and made an impact with its lively performances and its three records and a handful of singles and EPs. But the singer-songwriter set forth with a project under his own name and a sound that wasn’t so terribly separated from what he’d done in his previous band but often with more of a folk sensibility. This is particularly true of his deeply introspective 2023 album Wandering Rebel which was written like many recent albums partly or wholly during the extended period of the early pandemic when no one was performing many shows and a lot of people had to take stock and stew in their own frustrations and anxieties and reassess life at least a little. Too bad America as a nation didn’t seem to learn much from the experience and got right back to the business and business and crushing the working class under the weight of spiraling income inequality and unaffordable cities with little relief in sight while the harbinger of fascism looms across the world including the USA where the call has been coming from inside the house for years. But Wauters definitely took the experience to heart and dove deeper into the potential lessons of those aforementioned times and gleaned some personal and social insights that he casts forth in arguably the best set of songs of his solo career thus far.

Sparks on the FFS tour in 2015, photo by Tom Murphy

Sunday | 07.09
What: Sparks
When: 7
Where: Boulder Theater
Why: With the 2021 biographical documentary The Sparks Brothers following the 2015 collaborative supergroup FFS with Franz Ferdinand, Sparks has become more than a relatively obscure cult band once again and deservedly so. Forming as Urban Renewal Porject in 1966 in the greater Los Angeles area the core duo of brothers Ron and Russell Mael renamed themselves Sparks in 1972 and finding little support or interest in America relocated to the UK in 1973 for a few years. During that time Sparks hit its first creative peak as evidenced by its classic, weirdo art pop masterpiece Kimono My House (1974) and its highly underrated follow-up Propaganda (1974). Though the brothers eventually returned to America that time left an impression in the UK with Sparks exerting a bit of influence on the nascent punk scene with its irreverent attitudes and disdain for dull nonsense. Over the years the group’s unique creative vision has occasionally made waves in the mainstream but mostly among connoisseurs of visionary, idiosyncratic pop music. Its music influenced artists as diverse as Joy Division, Siouxsie and the Banshees (who covered “This Town Ain’t Big Enough for the Both of Us” on its 1987 covers album Through the Looking Glass), Sonic Youth and Björk. Sparks worked with Giorgio Moroder on its 1978 album Nº 1 in Heaven and secured its place as a direct influence on the direction of synth pop and its 1982 song “I Predict” cracked the Billboard Hot 100 as a “New Wave” hit. Whether you know it or not you’ve heard music by Sparks in multiple movies and television shows and its infectious melodies have become an underappreciated part of music culture. And now you can see the legends touring in support of their new album The Girl Is Crying in Her Latte, another respectable entry with forward thinking, innovative, creative music throughout. The live show is theatrical, informed by genuinely clever humor, self-aware cultural references and commentary and surprising moments from the brothers Mael who don’t skimp on bringing a sense of the spontaneous and often unpredictable to the proceedings.

Bring Me the Horizon, photo by Jonti Wild

Sunday | 07.09
What: Fall Out Boy w/Bring Me the Horizon and Royal & the Serpent
When: 6:30
Where: Fiddler’s Green
Why: Fall Out Boy has been for years the go to band for teen angst in the form of pop punk emo and if you’re of a certain age it’s definitely part of your cultural zeitgeist with its long string of hits going back to the early 2000s. Royal & the Serpent is the project of Ryan Santiago whose music is an unlikely but effective fusion of electronic pop and pop-punk with songs that are real, raw and vulnerable and delivered with an immediate accessibility. Maybe it’s because the band is from Sheffield, England where most of the bands have a leg in the experimental but Bring Me The Horizon though known for its explosive, emotionally vibrant and expansive metalcore sound also seems to be able to freely associate other styles of music into the mix as well as a wide array of artists brought in for collaborations that mutate its sound even more. The results may not be for everyone particularly if you’re not on board for the band’s current core aesthetic of scream-y post-hardcore and electronic/industrial rock fusion. But at least Bring Me the Horizon is trying not to get stuck in outdated notions of the good old days and other impulses that undercut creative growth.

Monday | 07.10
What: Creux Lies w/Plague Garden and Redwing Blackbird
When: 7
Where: HQ
Why: Creux Lies is a post-punk band from Sacramento whose sound is completely fused with a more dream pop and shoegaze sound rather than the spindly post-punk noodling that has been popular in those circles in recent years. Plague Garden is a post-punk band from Denver whose pure fusion of electronic and rock blurs the line between deathrock, dream pop and neo-New Wave. Redwing Blackbird is a post-punk duo whose sounds are steeped not just in the gloom pop of The Cure but of psychedelic rock in the vein of The Legendary Pink Dots and Pink Floyd.

Bonnie “Prince” Billy, photo by Natasha Via

Tuesday-Friday | 07.11-07.14
What: Bonnie “Prince Billy” w/Faun Fables
When: 7 (07.11 and 07.12), 6 (07.13), 7 (07.14)
Where: Soiled Dove (07.11 and 07.12), The Armory (07.13) and Lulu’s Downstairs (07.14)
Why: Ahead of the August 11, 2023 release of his new album Keeping Secrets Will Destroy You on Drag City, Bonnie “Prince” Billy aka Will Oldham is touring with a string of shows in Colorado in Denver, Colorado Springs and Fort Collins. Maybe you’ll get to hear more of the new material than has already been revealed online but either way, Oldham’s singular voice and creative vision as a songwriter and artist who pushes the boundaries of the kind of freak folk, country and and lo-fi rock that has been the hallmark in his career from the various Palace projects, the prolific releases under the Bonnie “Prince” Billy moniker to Superwolves and other collaborations. He has a knack for making the cosmic intimate and the profane profound both on the recorded format and as a live performer.

Wednesday | 07.12
What: Final Gasp w/Weathered Statues, Victim of Fire, Merry and Maintainer
When: 7
Where: Seventh Circle Music Collective
Why: The members of Final Gasp came out of hardcore (Antagonize, Wound Man) but with its 2019 debut Baptism of Desire and its follow-up Haunting Whisper from 2021, that kind of energy and intensity is channeled into a moodier deathrock sound that incorporates that hardcore sensibility with metal and post-punk. The group is currently touring ahead of the September 22, 2023 release of its new record Mourning Moon. Joining them for this show are local bands across the spectrum of hardcore (Victim of Fire) and post-punk (Weathered Statues) and sounds outside of that direct spectrum of rock.

Friday | 07.14
What: Wallice w/Nitefire and Card Catalog
When: 7
Where: Globe Hall
Why: Wallice was born and raised in and is now based out of the Los Angeles area. Since 2017 she has released a series of songs and EPs noteworthy for their self-aware wit and sharply articulated sociological observations and commentary on modern life and relationships. Though her output might be loosely described as bedroom pop there is a level of production and songcraft that elevates her songs into the realm of indie pop more often associated with the likes of Snail Mail and Soccer Mommy. Directly off a Australian dates with The 1975, Wallice is touring in support of her new EP Mr. Big Shot, her most fully realized and set of compositions to date.

Saturday | 07.15
What: Isadora Eden album release w/Pink Lady Monster and Deth Rali
When: 7
Where: The Marquis Theater
Why: Isadora Eden started as a solo project in a more indie singer-songwriter vein but even the early releases were imbued with an imaginative flair and an ear for deeper emotional coloring. As Eden brought on board collaborators to help flesh out the sound in the newer songs she was writing the music evolved into a darker, more sonically rich sound that was a bit more like something one might expect to hear from a songwriter like PJ Harvey or Mary Timony but more darkwave, more flourishes of atmospheric sounds both guitar-rooted and electronic akin to the stranger end of shoegaze. This creative period has resulted in one of the more fascinating records of 2023 in forget what makes it glow, the debut full-length for the project. Eden’s deeply evocative voice guides you through an introspective set of songs that are melancholic, reflective and in the end cathartic. Like the kind of dream pop record with some grit and edge, willing to wax noisy in moments as if to embody the way life and our subsconscious experiences are analog and meaningful, intimate, in a way pristine digital and curated experiences rarely are. The album will be available on vinyl and digital and for more information on finding group’s releases, social media and upcoming shows please visit the band’s website.Pink Lady Monster is one of the most interesting bands out of Denver or anywhere now because it incorporates elements of experimental dream pop, experimental jazz and noise rock for a sound that is entrancing and challenging at once.

Saturday | 07.15
What: The Goddamn Gallows w/IV and The Strange Band and Volk
When: 8
Where: Globe Hall
Why: The Goddamn Gallows are a band that has picked up musical ideas and styles in its meandering journey as a band since beginning in the early part of the 2000s. These days the group is a raucous and charming mish mash of punk Americana and metal with an wisacre sense of humor long on irony. Volk is a rambunctious, psychedelic honky tonk duo from Nashville that recently released its latest EP, Stand the Test which reveals its knack for pop songcraft as remixed and reinterpreted by friends into new territory for the band. Volk’s spirited and sometimes surreal live show is proof positive that plenty of weirdos exist in the realm of country music in Tennessee.

Sunday | 07.16
What: Chaepter w/Specific Ocean and Jeremy Mock
When: 7
Where: Mutiny Information Café
Why: Chaepter is an artist from Chicago whose music is the kind of bedroom pop that blurs the borders between slowcore, dreampop and indiefolk. Specific Ocean is an indie rock band with a strong undercurrent of jazz sensibilities. Jeremy Mock was the frontman and guitarist of the great and now defunct Denver post-punk band Antibroth. He is playing a rare solo show before moving to New York City and this will be the last chance to catch his idiosyncratic music styling for some time to come.

Tuesday | 07.18
What: d4vd w/Scott James
When: 7
Where: The Bluebird Theater
Why: d4vd is the performance and songwriting moniker of David Anthony Burke who got his start making music composing pieces for his montage videos of Fortnite and he’s been a member of esports group Team Limit. But his July 2022 dark dreampop single “Romantic Homicide” was his breakthrough with its horror short-esque music video paired with the poignant lyrics of heartbreak and the intense feelings that can ensue following a romantic split. In March 2023, the debut d4vd album Petals to Thorns dropped collecting his singles and adding new music to the artist’s growing repertoire of melancholic and soulful bedroom pop songs articulating feelings of loneliness, love lost, romance gone wrong, self-doubt and yearning for redemption.

Wednesday | 07.19
What: Pardoner w/American Culture, Supreme Joy and Fishlegs
When: 7
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Imagine the unlikely combination of Superchunk and a hardcore band and you’ll have some idea of what you’re in for with Pardoner. The band from San Francisco recently released its latest album Peace Loving People which sounds like the above if that band also dipped into the more angular and intense end of Circle Jerks/OFF. American Culture is what happens when an indie pop rooted band rediscovers its love of punk and The Cure in equal measure. Supreme Joy is like a garage rock band with chops and a taste for psychedelia.

Wednesday | 07.19
What: X w/James Intveld
When: 7
Where: The Oriental Theater
Why: X is the influential and well-known Americana punk band from Los Angeles whose body of work is among the most literate rock and roll ever written but without losing the punk rock and beat poetry spirit that inspired it from its inception. Live still a little off the cuff and occasionally unhinged.

Wednesday and Thursday | 07.19 and 07.20
What: Caamp w/Carsie Blanton and Zach Nytomt (07.19) and Lady W r ay and Tucker Gill (07.20)
When: 6
Where: Red Rocks
Why: Caamp is an indie folk band from Columbus, Ohio that has built a steady following over the past near decade and not so long ago you would have caught the group playing small clubs. But its 2019 album By & By garnered Caamp critical accolades and its first appearance on commericial charts. For the group’s latest album, Lavender Days, Caamp enlisted Nathaniel Rateliff and Katie Crutchfield (of Waxahatchee fame) on vocals and the resultant album is one that expands the core sound of elegantly pastoral pop with incandescent warmth and an introspection that is also forward looking.

What: Gorilla Biscuits w/H2O Direct Threat and Time X Heist
When: 7
Where: The Oriental Theater
Why: Gorilla Biscuits were part of that final period of the first era of hardcore that emerged in the mid-to-late 80s in New York City before the movement all but imploded by the early 90s before many of those early bands re-formed in the 2000s as a new era of hardcore was beginning to gather steam and transform and redefine the sound. Gorilla Biscuits benefited from having formed in the wake of crossover and its sound was more in line with a more modern style. Also on the bill is H2O, a NYC melodic hardcore band that got going in 1994 and Direct Threat and Time X Heist from Denver who are carrying that torch of hardcore’s era of blunt, unvarnished sonic aggression.

Glass Spells, photo courtesy the artists

Friday | 07.21
What: Glass Spells w/Tepid and DJ Tower
When: 8
Where: HQ
Why: Glass Spells is a post-punk band whose sound is more in line with synthwave and minimal techno, like it took some inspiration from both early Ladytron and ADULT. Its 2021 album Shattered released during the late period when live shows weren’t happening and so the duo didn’t get a proper showing of its music until later and no more wide national tour until now. Tepid is the solo minimal techno project of Nick Salmon of industrial post-punk band Voight from Denver.

Friday | 07.21
What: Julian St. Nightmare, Sell Farm and Dream of Industry
When: 9
Where: Glob
Why: A showcase of some of the better post-punk adjacent bands out of Denver with the more darkwave Julian St. Nightmare whose commanding live shows are a well kept secret of the Mile High City for now. Sell Farm is more in the realm of dub-inflected Godflesh. Dream of Industry infuses its own dark, post-punk flavor with shoegaze highlights.

Mainland Break in 2019, photo by Tom Murphy

Saturday | 07.22
What: Mainland Break w/Kiwi Jr. and Candy Chic
When: 8
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Mainland Break is a jangle pop/power pop band from Denver whose latest album One Way Ticket to Midnight is being celebrated at this show. It’s sparkling melodies and intricate guitar work recall the simple charm of early 2000s indiepop and that era of 80s underground rock best represented by the Paisley Underground, early Flying Nun acts and C86.

Saturday | 07.22
What: MF Ruckus w/The Blind Staggers and Ipecac
When: 7
Where: The Bluebird Theater
Why: MF Ruckus is releasing its latest album The Front Line of Good Times Vol. I through Glory or Death Records. The long-running Denver hard rock band has a style that bridges any gaps between bluesy hard rock and melodic thrash with a high energy and entertaining live show.

Monday | 07.24
What: Caterina Barbieri — CANCELED
When: 7
Where: Central Presbyterian Church
Why: Caterina Barbieri is an Italian composer now based in Berlin whose fusion of analog synthesis and generative/algorithmic method of crafting her idiosyncratic electronic soundscapes has garnered her wide acclaim. Her 2017 breakthrough album Patterns of Consciousness on Important Records introduced her efforts at breaking down the barriers between dance music, pop and the avant-garde to the larger world of fans of experimental electronic music. On both sides of the pandemic lockdowns of 2020 Barbieri has released two, remarkable sister albums with 2019’s Ecstatic Computation and the 2023 opus Myuthafoo both now on digital and vinyl through her own light-years imprint. Think of her as a kind of creative and spiritual descendant of Suzanne Ciani, Laurie Spiegel and Jean-Michel Jarre in terms of innovative technique and accessibility.

The Mighty Missoula, photo from Bandcamp

Monday | 07.24
What: The Mighty Missoula w/Abandons and Only Echoes
When: 7
Where: Seventh Circle Music Collective
Why: The Mighty Missoula is an instrumental post-rock band from Portland, Oregon whose body of work waxes more into the realm of ambient. At least its most recent EP Virga named for the falling rain that evaporates before hitting the ground has a pastoral drift not unlike what it might be to meditate on a late afternoon and early evening in mid-spring in the Pacific Northwest observing the movements of clouds as they course toward forming days of drizzle punctuated by sunlight bursting through unexpectedly. Abandons and Only Echoes are also post-rock bands but from Denver. Abandons is somewhere between post-metal and the kind of experimental noise rock that has been blurred into more abstract structures whereas Only Echoes sculpts from a heavier sonic palette with more in common with the riff focus of acts like Pelican and Agalloch.

Tuesday | 07.25
What: Braid w/despAIR Jordan https://www.bluebirdtheater.net/events/detail/485237
When: 7
Where: The Bluebird Theater
Why: Braid were (and are) one of the most influential bands out of Midwestern emo with its 1998 album Frame & Canvas one of the absolute classics of the genre. What perhaps separated Braid from some of its peers was its clear roots in the kind of angular post-hardcore of Discord bands and expanding on melodic hooks and raw emotionalism of the likes of Embrace and of course Fugazi. Denver’s despAIR Jordan is comprised of veterans of the punk and post-hardcore scene that emerged in the wake of the foundation laid by Braid, Mineral and Christie Front Drive with its own moody, melodic fusion of shoegaze and emo.

Middle Kids, photo by Michelle Grace Hunder

Tuesday | 07.25
What: Jimmy Eat World w/Manchester Orchestra and Middle Kids
When: 5:30
Where: Red Rocks
Why: Jimmy Eat World was one of the bands whose amalgam of pop punk and emo helped take those sounds into the mainstream following Green Day and NOFX paving that way earlier in the 90s. With the 2001 release of its album Bleed American and the ubiquitous and now classic single “The Middle” Jimmy Eat World with an album of undeniable hooks proved it could transcend preconceptions of its roots. At a time when a lot of generic pop punk was flooding airwaves and mediocre, trend hoppers were forming and playing festivals and occupying the same lane as cookie cutter grunge bands had less than a decade prior somehow Jimmy Eat World stood out because of the quality of the songwriting. Opening this night at Red Rocks is Middle Kids from Sydney, Australia who have been delivering poignant and introspective indie rock since its 2016 inception. The group’s self-titled debut EP seemed to be filled with songs of unlikely sophistication and advanced songcraft so early in the trio’s career. Its sweeping and delicate mini epics on the EP were both delicacy of feleing and shot through with a exuberant and charismatic energy. The band is set to release its new album in the none-too-distant future and its lead single “Bootleg Firecracker” with its acoustic sounds and intimate mood hints at yet another shift in musical direction for talented pop group even further into turning a personal storytelling style into something with a wide appeal.

Janet Feder and Fred Frith in 2017, photo by Tom Murphy

Tuesday | 07.25
What: Janet Feder and Ian Argys
When: 7-9
Where: Broadway Roxy
Why: Denver based avant-garde composer and guitarist Janet Feder is performing a rare set this evening with solo and duo sets with accomplished jazz and experimental guitar player Ian Argys. Sounds like it could be a little too cerebral but Feder’s humor and warmth as a performer is always engaging and she is able to make heady, technical music accessible.

(L-R): Cavetown, Ricky Montgomery and mxmtoon, photo by Lauren Tepfer

Wednesday | 07.26
What: Bittersweet Daze: mxmtoon w/Cavetown, Ricky Montgomery and grentperez
When: 4:30
Where: Levitt Pavilion
Why: Bittersweet Daze is a tour featuring three stars of modern bedroom pop with mxmtoon, Cavetown and Ricky Montgomery. The three artists recently collaborated on and released the single “Nobody Loves Me,” a song about love and yearning and a vulnerable self-awareness seemingly written from a place of existential angst yet channeled into a tenderly earnest pop song. Individually mxmtoon and Cavetown got started writing music during their middle school years starting their own YouTube channels as an outlet for sharing their songs. But those fledgling efforts blossomed into an internet phenomenon through various social media platforms including TikTok. Cavetown produced mxmtoon’s 2019 single “Prom Dress” which went viral and has been used in tens of thousands of TikTok videos. Montgomery had pursued a more traditional indie rock band route with his group The Honeysticks but nearly quit music entirely by 2020. But during the early COVID-19 pandemic of 2020 he released singles that too went viral on TikTok with “Mr. Loverman” and “Line Without a Hook.” In 2021 he saw mxmtoon perform on Twitch and discovered she’d been a fan of his Vine clips before that platform took a dive in the mid-2010s. All three artists excel at blending intimate folk pop with modern electronic and hip-hop production to craft songs that speak to the aspirations and anxieties of a younger generation while navigating communicating with potential fans through savvy and creative use of online platforms that bypass traditional forms of music distribution.

Tedeschi Trucks Band, photo by David McClister

Friday and Saturday | 07.28 and 07.29
What: Tedeschi Trucks Band w/Vincent Neil Emerson
When: 6
Where: Red Rocks
Why: Susan Tedeschi was already hailed as one of the most gifted modern blues guitarists and songwriters of her generation before she married another such luminary in Derek Trucks who had been a part of The Allman Brothers Band, the group one of his uncles had helped to found. Their band together, Tedeschi Trucks Band, launched in 2010 when each put their solo efforts on indefinite hiatus and these days the twelve members of the band seem to have an intuitive connection that gives what might be considered an established blues Americana sound a vibrant energy. Tedeschi’s passionate and expressive vocals and both her and Trucks’ masterful guitar interplay syncing with a group of ace musicians on horns, bass, percussion and is orchestral in scope with layered vocal harmonies boosting the impact of the songs truly elevates this bands performances beyond where many other artists aiming at similar musical leanings are able to achieve. It’s not a jam band though there is plenty of off the cuff improvisation, it’s not simply blues or Americana or rock and roll but its own thing with those roots blended together.

Monday | 07.31
What: Overcalc (Nick Skro b isz of Multicult and The Wayward) w/Equine and Fungus Panel
When: 8/9
Where: Bar Bar aka Carioca Café
Why: Overcalc is the solo project of Nick Skrobisz of Multicult and The Wayward Fame. The music of Overcalc combines guitar experiments with layers of electronic elements to produce texural tones and rhythms akin to something one might have heard on an old Faust record. The latest album from Overcalc is 2022’s Fruits of the Decision Tree recently issued on Sleeping Giant Glossolalia. Opening the show is Equine, the solo guitar soundscaping project of former Motheater and Epileptinomicon member Kevin Richards whose experiments in rhythm and feedback sculpting with unique guitar chords and arrangements of amps bridges the gap between drone and the avant-garde.

Monday | 07.31
What: Big Thief w/Lucinda Williams https://www.redrocksonline.com/events/big-thief-466494/
When: 6:30
Where: Red Rocks
Why: Big Thief has been evolving its idiosyncratic brand of indie folk since its 2015 inception in Brooklyn. Its 2022 album Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You contained aspects of field recordings within its pastoral, deeply atmospheric, delicate pop songs grounding what could be ethereal faire especially given Adrianne Lenker’s introspective tones that seem to be a little like getting to hear what it’s like to sit inside a reflective, cinematic daydream. Lucinda Williams is opening this show but the country rock and folk singer is an influential and pioneering legend in her own right and the headlining status could have gone either way on a bill like this. Her latest album Stories From a Rock n Roll Heart dropped at the end of June and reflects her sharp ear for crafting not just strong personal stories but bluesy rock songs in a way that teems with life rather than a retread of a well worn musical path.

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.

Salads and Sunbeams, photo by Tom Murphy

Sunday | 05.14
What: Spooky Mansion w/Sour Magic and Salads and Sunbeams
When: 7
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Spooky Mansion is a surf-rock inflected psychedelic lounge pop band from Los Angeles making a couple of stops in Colorado including this date at the Hi-Dive. Denver’s Sour Magic sound like they could have come from a similar musical lineage but with more luminous guitar melodies. Like maybe they got deep into DIIV and Mac Demarco and found their own voice as a band. Salads and Sunbeams is the kind of band that has crafted exquisite psychedelic indiepop that might have come right out of an unlikely scene that included the Zombies and The Apples in Stereo. But it works and doesn’t have that throwback yesteryear worship vibe even if to some extent that’s what it is because the songwriting stands on its own and worthy of its obvious and not so obvious influences.

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.

Meet the Giant in 2022, photo by Tom Murphy

Saturday | 05.27
What: Meet the Giant album release w/Church Fire and The Mssng
When: 8
Where: Enigma Bazaar
Why: Meet the Giant is releasing its new album We Are Revolting. The group’s 2018 self-titled debut was the product of several years of woodshedding musical ideas and songs as well as production and its gritty mix of rock and downtempo with emotionally stirring vocals reflected with the then emergent live band. This time around the trio appears to have focused on an even sonically edgier catharsis with songs that express an anger born of frustration and weariness at the political and cultural situation in which we find ourselves in America and really worldwide. As touchstones one might point to the likes of Failure and its own fusion of rock and electronic sensibilities and a sheen of the cinematic. Or Nine Inch Nails in even further implementing sound design elements in the mix. But Meet the Giant’s songs tend to be more melodic and its sound having more in common with a modern shoegaze band with a bit more rock and roll kick to its songwriting. Church Fire is also on the bill bringing its own reinvented amalgam of political, electronic industrial dance music and are rock touches.

Sarah Shook and the Disarmers, photo by Harvey Robinson

Sunday | 05.28
What: Sarah Shook and the Disarmers w/Porlolo and Wheelright
When: 7
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Outlaw country, country-punk, whatever designation fits Sarah Shook and the Disarmers, Sarah Shook is one of the most distinctive voices in modern country music on the still fairly underground level where a great deal of the best of that and other musical styles are found. Shook’s voice has enough of a rough edge to be interesting but their melodic resonance serves well stories of every day life written in a way that seems so specific yet relatable in spirit and substance. Speaking of, Pololo is more an indie rock band but Erin Roberts has a gift for turning a sense of humor into music with a sharply observational and existential bent.

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.

Best Shows in Denver and Beyond July 2022

Primitive Man performs at Bluebird Theater on July 15, 2022

Aldous Harding at UMS 2017, photo by Tom Murphy

Friday | 07.01
What: Aldous Harding w/H. Hawkline
When: 7 p.m.
Where: Gothic Theatre
Why: Ever since the release of her 2014 self-titled debut album Aldous Harding has been crafting some of the most unique songs in the realm of indie folk of the past few decades. With each album Harding offers songs that seem like a blend of the deeply personal, the mythical and the conceptual. Her song titles suggest a surreal aesthetic that lends itself to her imaginative story telling and a willingness to seek beyond tropes and clichés for ways of signing about relationships, identity, aspirations and dreams and commenting on society. 2017’s Party and her subsequent North American tour revealed Harding to be a truly and fascinatingly idiosyncratic artist whose emotionally powerful and riveting performances were reminiscent of Joni Mitchell with a touch of Kate Bush. Her latest album Warm Chris (2022) puts the focus on fusing the jazz elements of her songwriting with the avant-garde pop for a set of songs that sound like lounge music from a parallel universe where creative weirdos are in charge and creativity is more valued than affirming popular trends.

Reverb and The Verse, photo by Tom Murphy

Friday | 07.01
What: Yonbre Netz w/Reverb and The Verse
When: 9 p.m.
Where: Broadway Roxy
Why: Yonbre Netz is a Boulder-based hip-hop and experimental electronic artist whose varied collaborations can be heard on his Spotify account where his keen ear for colorful, percussive melodies can be heard. But this is also a rare chance to catch Reverb and The Verse who recently put out their tenth and supposed final album BLACKWALL under this project name. Shane Etter and Jahi Simbai have been at it since the late 90s making hip-hop that has always been rich with creative soundscaping and truly clever wordplay informed by incisive commentary on society and the travails of everyday life. Seemingly never content to repeat the same musical ideas album to album the duo’s catalog of material is a great trail of creative evolution and experimentation. BLACKWALL is a little like if Public Enemy collaborated with Nine Inch Nails with the gift for emotionally charged and politically and poetically astute as that comparison might imply. You may not get many chances to catch those guys in action and the Broadway Roxy would be a great room to make that the opportunity to witness one of the finest hip-hop acts Denver has to offer.

Friday | 07.01
What: Vmthanaachth w/Church Fire, Sell Farm, Ray Diess (album release) and Coma Roulette
When: 8 p.m.
Where: Glob
Why: Vmthanaachth from Dallas, Texas combines ambient music and industrial with classical avant-garde in a way that fans of Pedestrian Deposit will appreciate. Church Fire has been really upping their game with making irresistible bangers that also dismantle status quo sentiments and ways of being. For those not in the know Church Fire is something like an alchemical mixture of synth pop, industrial dance music, confrontational feminist punk and one of the best bands out of Denver or anywhere of the past decade. Ray Diess is releasing his latest album the hyperpop inflected and rawly honest It’ll Always Ache. It sounds like something that might have come out of Manchester in the late 80s or early 90s but with musical references and more obvious inspirations of a couple of decades later. There is some fine shade and ascerbic wit across the album but in the end it’s about seeking the authentic in experiences and embracing one’s own feelings as valid and does so with passion and playfulness.

Friday | 07.01
What: Spyderland video/EP release w/Machu Linea and Random Temple
When: 8 p.m.
Where: The Skylark Lounge/Bobcat Room
Why: Spyderland is an electro pop duo comprised of Marie Litton and Drew McClellan. The two have been veterans of the Denver underground scene for years and to their credit this project is really unlike anything else they’ve done. Rather, they’ve taken their strengths as artists and applied then to crafting a different style of music meaning an experimental form of pop that can at times be a bit downtempo but with a spirited sense of play running through how they spark off each other as performers. It comes off as a bit of a musical dialogue which lends itself to a body of imaginative and fresh songwriting. For this show Spyderland is releasing a new animated video and its new EP. Machu Linea is a likeminded artist who can often be seen DJing around town but it turns out Armando Garibay has a gift for assembling beats and sounds that transform popular styles into something far more inventive. The 2020 album HeXotica showcased Garibay’s range as an artist and collaborator with some of the most talented artists in the local hip-hop and electronic music scenes. Random Temple has been in various types of bands over the years but under this moniker his ambient and IDM music freely weaves together textures, tones and even musical structures as a way to deconstruct conventions of genre.

sleepdial in June 2022, photo by Tom Murphy

Monday | 07.04
What: Zach Rowden, Terravault Network, Tripp Nasty and sleepdial
When: 9 p.m.
Where: Glob
Why: Zach Rowden is a member of collaborative improvisational project Crazy Doberman that began life as a series of collaborations with John Olson of Wolf Eyes fame. But since its inception in the late 2010s Crazy Doberman has had a prolific output of recordings. Under his own name or with Tongue Depressor Rowden has been running experiments in texture and environmental sounds as they intersect with a hypnotic, almost ritualistic form of ambient. Terravault Network is Eli Windler (Spectral Voice, City Hunter, No Thought and others) and Kevin Wesley (Hot White) making industrial ambient soundscapes that sound like abstracted and processed environmental field recordings at a distance from an active factory late night near the train tracks and processed to preserve rhythms and an enigmatic mood. Tripp Nasty has had quite the eclectic run of music experiments over the years from modern classical music to performance art, weirdo punk and now an almost academic analog/modular synth composition project that he recently displayed opening for legendary avant-garde musician William Basinski. Sleepdial is Luke Thinnes’ musical alter ego to French Kettle Station. Whereas the latter pushes the boundaries of electronic dance music and new age pop, the former is Tim Hecker-esque textured ambient music that layers subtle running pulses and flowing drifts of white noise and purely abstract melody that conveys a sense of endless space and wonder.

Tuesday | 07.05
What: Darkest Hour w/Toxic Holocaust and Necropanther
When: 7 p.m.
Where: The Marquis Theater
Why: Darkest Hour from Washington D.C. has been evolving its particular flavor of melodic death metal mixed with post-hardcore since its inception in 1995. Its epic guitar progressions and apocalyptic visual style makes the band sound and look like something from the near future after the fallout of the collapse of worldwide civilization as we know it has been sorted out. This tour represents the group’s first with new lead guitarist Nico Santora and Darkest Hour will perform its 2007 album Deliver Us in its entirety and subsequent to the tour the group will return to the studio to record its tenth album. Opening the show is blackened death thrash mutants Necropanther from Denver as well as veteran thrash band Toxic Holocaust from Portland, Oregon whose own music has more than a leg in hardcore and grind as evidenced by its blast beats fused with acidic, Venom-esque menace.

Grief Ritual October 2021, photo by Tom Murphy

Tuesday | 07.05
What: Under the Pier, The God Awful Truth, Vexing and Grief Ritual
When: 7 p.m.
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Under the Pier is a math-y post-hardcore outfit from Baltimore whose songs feel chaotic even as they are guided by a bizarre precision of execution. Vexing from Denver is difficult to pin down even though it clearly has roots in extreme metal and post-hardcore mainly because it also comes off like a grindcore band that’s dialing back the onslaught a little to let sounds hang in the air and hit you differently than a persistent force. Makes its gruff vocals and mathematically precise accents in a riff seem more nuanced and creative. Grief Ritual is going through some transitions since long time guitarist Mykel Monroe is departing but this may be a last chance to check out his guitar wizardry with Grief Ritual. Its own hardcore stylings have a brutal elegance from guitar pyrotechnics, to finely executed, cathartic vocals to surprisingly spare yet interlocking rhythms that allow for the songs to switch moods and focus of forcefulness with great flexibility. Its most recent album The Gallows Laugh may be more in the realm of metallic hardcore but has the beautifully confrontational and caustic quality of a melodic black metal record.

Wednesday | 07.06
What: Puscifer w/Moodie Black
When: 7 p.m.
Where: Mission Ballroom
Why: Puscifer is Maynard James Keenan’s vehicle for a plethora of creative musical ideas that don’t really fit in with the art prog of his more famous band Tool. So he’s been able to infuse it with some of his more innovative experiments in sound and theatrical performance. The group hasn’t toured the U.S.A. since 2016 and reports of shows and footage that has made it onto the internet reveals what you might hope for and expect with elaborate sets and Maynard performing almost like a cosmic variety show host and his cohort of weirdos. The most recent Puscifer album Existential Reckoning (2020) must have been a head scratcher for anyone expecting industrial rock or hard rock in general. Its extensive and evocative use of synths and other keyboards as the drivers of melody and dramatic vocals is tempting to compare to something Peter Gabriel might be doing now but also not unlike something Gary Numan might do and really one of the most sonically fascinating records of Keenan’s career thus far.

Thursday | 07.07
What: The Pine Hill Haints w/Glueman and George Cessna
When: 8 p.m.
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: The Pine Hill Haints from Auburn, Alabama perform fairly traditional bluegrass and folky country with great the intensity and energy. Fans of rockabilly will probably appreciate what the Haints have to offer but its music also seems just slightly out of frame of normalcy to be interesting. Opening the show is George Cessna whose 2021 album Lucky Rider is a beautifully and paradoxically warmly haunting piece of work that transcends “alt-country” into the realm of slowcore and pastoral, Lanois-esque Americana that feels like reading an idiosyncratic noir novel comprised of impressionistic vignettes about navigating a culture and society in decline and trying to do something worthwhile with integrity in spite of one’s personal limitations and the weight of one’s history and attachment to tradition and sentimental notions.

Friday – Sunday | 07.08 – 07.10
What: Compost Heap Music Festival V
When: 3-11 p.m.
Where: Seventh Circle Music Collective
Why: Can’t sum up why better than the verbiage from the FB event below which includes set times and other information.

“It’s happening again! July 8th, 9th, and 10th! One of the biggest temporary DIY music festivals you’ll ever see! Three days of great music from underground bands from across the nation and local support that you may have never heard of but you will definitely love!

ACCESSIBILITY INFO: This event will be wheelchair accessible. ADA portapotty onsite. Proof of vaccination is required. Masks are strongly encouraged. Denver will be hot and dry, dress in breathable and moisture wicking clothing and avoid dark colors. There will be shade provided and cooling misting fans throughout the day. This event will be live-streamed.
We created this festival with a goal, it’s organized to center and amplify the music and art of marginalized folks, and to celebrate radical perspectives and ideologies in general. It’s focus is to try and raise awareness about oppressive institutions that stunt our ability to flourish as individuals and communities, and to come together to resist against them for our collective liberation, express solidarity and make some new friends.

FRIDAY, JULY 8TH
4:00-4:25 Team Nonexistent
4:35-5:00 Mx Wander (PA)
5:10-5:35 Old Scratch & The Holy Mess (AZ)
5:45-6:10 Bird Teeth (WA)
6:20-6:45 Chatterbox and the Latter Day Satanists
6:55-7:20 Endless, Nameless
7:30-7:55 Gutter Town (AZ)
8:05-8:30 Fables of the Fall
8:40-9:05 Shooting Tsars (TX)
9:15-9:45 RAT BATH (WI)
10:00-10:30 Ceschi Ramos (CT)
10:45-11:15 Crow Cavalier

SATURDAY, JULY 9TH
3:00-4:00 OPEN MIC
4:00-4:25 Marissa.
4:35-5:00 Loud in the Morning (WA)
5:10-5:35 Sunnnner
5:45-6:10 HappyHappy (IN)
6:20-6:45 Fruiting Body of the Larger
6:55-7:20 Straight Line Arrival (ND)
7:30-7:55 Gila Teen
8:05-8:30 Danbert Nobacon (WA) (x Chumbawamba)
8:40-9:05 Ludlow (OR)
9:15-9:45 Self Neglect (NM)
10:00-10:30 Lo Cash Ninjas (NN)
10:45-11:15 Doom Scroll

SUNDAY, JULY 10TH
3:00-4:00 OPEN MIC
4:00-4:25 The Michael Character (MA)
4:35-5:00 Rumbletramp (NC)
5:10-5:35 Hello the Camp (ID)
5:45-6:10 Helga Pataki
6:20-6:45 Gone Full Heathen
6:55-7:20 The Ragetones
7:30-7:55 Mr. Atomic
8:05-8:30 Dana Skully and the Tiger Sharks (IN)
8:40-9:05 Caustic Soda
9:15-9:45 Noogy (TX)
10:00-10:30 Plasma Canvas
10:45-11:15 Anxiety Cat (LA) (x Taxpayers)

Compost Heap music festival is a not-for-profit event. All festival revenue will be used to pay touring bands, or donated to the Harm Reduction Action Center in honor of Marci, a dear friend who is no longer with us. Thank you for your support.

$45-75 suggested donation for a weekend (3 day) pass

$20-25 suggested donation for a day pass

+$5 SEVENTH CIRCLE MEMBERSHIP FEE (if you don’t have one already): In order to attend any event at the venue you must posses a membership card. This helps 7C stay afloat and protects them from getting shut down, help keep DIY alive in Denver!

If you would like to pre-order your weekend pass, please email us @ compostheap2022@gmail.com (please put “Compost Heap 2022 pass” in the subject line) You should get an immediate response, but if for some reason you don’t, please email wormfooddiy@gmail.com instead.”

Saturday | 07.09
What: Derek Monypeny w/New Standards Men, Sex Funeral and Pythian Whispers
When: 2 p.m.
Where: Mutiny Information Café
Why: Derek Monypeny is coming from communing with the Methuselah tree to bring his accumulated musical wisdom fostered while living in Joshua Tree. Think drone and “free jazz” if you were hanging with Alejandro Jodorowsky and Werner Herzog. Sex Funeral brings their celebration of the transmogrification of tantric rites through the necromantic meditation practices cultivated in secret sites in southern Iowa. The manifestation of these mystical energies will emerge as improvisational ritual drone for guitar and electronics. New Standards Men are fresh off a sabbatical merging analog synth and guitar as synth alchemy as structured exercises based on the deep secret knowledge shared by Robert Moog, Don Buchla and Morton Subotnick as conducted by Terry Riley. And probably opening this afternoon of high psychedelic frequency modulation is Pythian Whispers. Lore has it the three early members of the band that wrote and performed the album The Dark Edge of Hippie Life met on a mountaintop, perhaps at Machu Picchu, perhaps at Alamut Castle, perhaps in the secret chamber below the skeletons of ancient trees at the top of Mount Evans. Whatever the truth might be and whatever arcane secrets of improvisational music learned it will be unleashed in short form by those ragged vagabonds of psych prog ambient. So what do you have to lose and trust me everything of something to gain? Probably donation based. We’ll see if Jodorowsky can come from Paris to do tarot readings for the event but no promises. Tamam shud.

Sunday | 07.10
What: Skeleton and Hulder
When: 7 p.m.
Where: Larimer Lounge
Why: Austin’s Skeleton started out as a hardcore band but has since its 2014 inception morphed into something that has clear sonic roots in thrash and black metal. Its 2020 self-titled album is too slow to be some kind of crossover thing but not slow enough to be some kind of doom project. Its blunt yet jagged riffs are reminiscent of early thrash but without be defined by that aesthetic. Also on the bill is HULDER whose own black metal style weaves together an elegant classical music sensibility with a refined black metal onslaught that reaches epic peaks of evocative and gritty atmospheres like the elevated subjects of her songs. The new album The Eternal Fanfare finds HULDER expanding her sonic palette so that melody and texture seem to work in perfect tandem to cinematic effect like scoring the saga of an ancient heroic journey to the underworld and back.

duck turnstone, December 2021, photo by Tom Murphy

Monday | 07.11
What: TV Star w/Broken Record, Flor De La Luna and Duck Turnstone
When: 8 p.m.
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: TV Star from Seattle apparently aimed at being somewhere between the sound of dysfunctional era The Brian Jonestown Massacre and the more dream pop period of The Jesus and Mary Chain. But it ended up more in the realm of late period Sarah Records jangle pop with delicate melodies and warm vocals. Denver’s “Flora de la Luna” talks about being a “tough guy boy band” but really sounds more like an angsty power pop band with really tight songwriting and enough sneer to keep it from being safe. Maybe that’s what they meant by the whole “tough guy” thing that one presumes was a more humorous and ironic thing you write about your band as an inside joke. Broken Record also from Denver is like if an emo band discovered Dinosaur Jr and didn’t shed some of its roots including drawing some slight inspiration from Rainer Maria. duck turnstone is the band fronted by Melissa K. Jones who moved to Denver in 2018 with her then partner, apparently had an ugly break-up, and then shortly thereafter the pandemic happened and she had the opportunity to pour some of her heartbreak into writing music that in 2021 she was able to turn into a full band shortly after she released the album Howling & Crying under her own name. The album is a collection of vivid and delicate portraits of human vulnerability and exploring the nuances of rebuilding your life on your own terms. The live band is more in the power/indie pop vein.

Tuesday | 07.12
What: Kill You Club Presents: Haunt Me w/Weathered Statues, S!ntax and Precious Blood
When: 8 p.m.
Where: Glob
Why: Haunt Me is a post-punk/darkwave band from Austin whose 2021 album This Sadness Never Ends had some familiar hallmarks of the genre with the spidery guitar melodies and Paul Banks-esque vocals. But Haunt Me tends to switch up the rhythms and dynamics in unexpected ways and never full stays the same vibe for the whole song thus setting itself apart from many of its peers. Weathered Statues is a post-punk band from Denver with roots in the local punk scene. S!ntax is an industrial noise project with some grounding in confrontational performance art.

Tuesday and Wednesday | 07.12 and 07.13
What: The Airborne Toxic Event w/Mondo Cozmo
When: 7 p.m.
Where: Ogden Theatre
Why: [Rescheduled from April 2022] Joshua Ostrander aka Mondo Cozmo made a name for himself as the frontman for Laguardia in the the first half of the 2000s and then for a decade as the lead singer for Eastern Conference Champions. But since 2015 he has been recording and performing under the Mondo Cozmo moniker and crafting heartfelt and genre eclectic music. His new album, 2022’s This Is For The Barbarians takes Ostrander deep into his roots in rebellious folk artists like Bob Dylan and his more experimental electronic interests at the same time. The album is like a Radiohead album but more informed by folk and more overtly pop but with the appropriately rough around the edges quality to suit the times that surrounded the process of writing the songs with Ostrander commenting on the highs and very low depths of the world in the past half decade and his insight into personal psychology and the American zeitgeist is as cathartic as it is inspirational. And yes, opening for Toxic Airborne Event whose own long career of luminously gritty alternative rock has garnered a bit of a cult following. Its 2020 album Hollywood Park, sharing the title with singer Mikel Jollett’s memoir of the same name from the same year, was unsurprisingly as literarily as musically as poignant album as any in the group’s career to date and certainly seemingly its most personal.

Wednesday | 07.13
What: The Black Keys w/Band of Horses and Ceramic Animal
When: 6 p.m.
Where: Red Rocks
Why: When The Black Keys started out of Akron, Ohio in 2001 it seemed very much like a niche, blues rock outfit like the lesser cousin of The White Stripes. When the duo first rolled through Denver it played small venues like Lion’s Lair where it opened for Reverend Dead Eye. But Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney stuck it out and developed their sound and songwriting and transformed what was likely a stripped down initial configuration into something more akin to a minimalist funk phenomenon as embodied well by its 2022 album Dropout Boogie. With the expansion of sounds and textures for the album the touring line-up of the band is also much more expansive than the core of Auerbach and Carney that will showcase how The Black Keys are a bit like a blues based rock version of ELO which is no bad thing. Opening is the well-known indie rock power pop group Band of Horses whose expansive songwriting is irresistibly uplifting especially its 2006 hit “The Funeral.” The proceedings will begin with a set from Ceramic Animal whose Dan Auerbach produced new album Sweet Unknown is brimming with warmly melancholic songs informed by a poignantly tangible sense of loss and reconciliation with emotional devastation and the inadequacy with which life and culture prepares one for the loss of the most significant people in your life.

Ceramic Animal, photo by Up in Smoke Photo

Elizabeth Colour Wheel in 2019, photo by Tom Murphy

Friday | 07.15
What: Primitive Man w/INDIAN, Jarhead Fertilizer, Body Void, Spirit Possession and Elizabeth Colour Wheel
When: 7 p.m.
Where: Bluebird Theater
Why: Primitive Man assembled one of the most interesting lineups of heavy music you’re likely to see in Denver all year in celebration of its 10 year anniversary as a band. The death-grind trio has long created some of the most brutal, crushing and exciting music of the past decade obliterating the line between noise, extreme metal and doom while making commentary on a world all but ruined by international corruption and collusion in diminishing the lives of everyone below the 1% of the 1% of the economic and political power scale in ways deranged and in the end self-destructive. It’s cathartic stuff and in its sharp edges and raw ugliness holds a mirror up to the world we all feel hitting us but may not see or hear concentrated so powerfully in one place. It will also be one of the few times to see the band locally for a good deal of time to come. Chicago’s INDIAN has for nearly 20 years crafted a sound that wouldn’t be out of step with what one hears out of a band on Amphetamine Reptile or Touch and Go but with more sludge rock flavor and songs that go in for a more fluid and wide ranging dynamism than most bands that get lumped in with the canon of doom. Elizabeth Colour Wheel is a startlingly energetic fusion of a noisy shoegaze band and a grindcore outfit as unlikely as that combination sounds. Body Void’s ominous, clashing guitar and drum interplay has a somehow both feral and elegant quality that lends the desperate, distorted vocals an elevated outrage and pain like a harsh noise duo using more standard instrumentation to deliver a dense, caustic and textural soundscape.

Knuckle Pups in October 2021, photo by Tom Murphy

Friday | 07.15
What: Knuckle Pups “TV Ready” album release w/Jeff Cormack of South of France and Earth to Luna
When: 7 p.m.
Where: Mercury Café
Why: Knuckle Pups is an indie pop band that has been around for a few years but which is finally putting out its debut album TV Ready. Oliver Holloway was once a member of the great folk punk band The Fainting Fansies that used to hold shows at a place where some or all of the band members lived back when people could rent out a house in neglected or underutilized houses or buildings in Denver. That time in deep, DIY “Old Denver” days has stuck with Holloway and Knuckle Pups isn’t a band short on charmingly earnest expressions of joy helped by the fact that the group’s multiple singers harmonize extraordinarily well.

Saturday | 07.16
What: The Velveteers w/Sky Creature and Holographic American
When: 2 p.m.
Where: Larimer Lounge
Why: This is probably the smallest venue you’re going to see The Velveteers play for some time. The band that has taken a foundation of a modern interpretation of classic blues rock and infused it with sharply observed lyrics, imagination and youthful energy has been and will go to keep touring with Greta Van Fleet and playing big cities and the hinterland to large crowds. And that will be quite a contrast with Queens, NY-based experimental pop band Sky Creature whose new album Bear Mountain is exuberant and ethereal and by all indications mostly electronic. Majel Connery has a voice that is both intense and fey which suits being paired with music that sounds like something you’d want to hear if you could travel to a museum of snow globes and spend time in each exploring the worlds of which each gives you a surface level taste. It’s otherworldly stuff and has a cool energy that will be welcome on what is likely to be a hot day in Denver. Holographic American is a trio consisting of guitarist Caleb Tardio formerly of math rock wizard weirdos I Sank Molly Brown and currently of doom metal greats NightWraith and drummer Matt Grizzell who some may know for his time with prog indie band Alan Alda and indie rockers Instant Empire along with bassist Owen Pearson. So of course it’s a little different with some of that math rock vibe in its songs thus far released in demo form but moody and delicately and intricately yet not busily melodic.

Green Typewriters in 2011, photo by Tom Murphy

Saturday | 07.16
What: Green Typewriters album release w/Falcon’s Eye
When: 7 p.m.
Where: Enigma Bazaar
Why: After fifteen years the psychedelic indiepop band Green Typerwriters are finally releasing its debut EP The Solar Anus which brings together musical ideas across its entire existence for a beautifully coherent and moving experimental pop album with as much wisdom as whimsy. Engineered and produced by Zach Bauer, one of Denver’s secret, genius pop songwriters and recordists, who most that know who he is know for having been a member of avant noise punks Zombie Zombie, stoner doom trio The Outer Neon, psychedelic post-punk art rock band Wicked Phoenix and Can tribute band Future Days. Among others. So you know the album is going to sound good and for the show the band is bringing in guests and making it the kind of show that you’re not going to get to see every day. Look out for the Queen City Sounds Podcast episode featuring Gioja and Jared Lacy from the band.

Saturday | 07.16
What: Emerald Siam, Cyclo Sonic and Bridey Murphy
When: 8 p.m.
Where: 1010 Workshop
Why: Denver is fortunate that some of its elder statesmen and stateswomen are still out there making valid, interesting and imaginative music. So Emerald Siam and its flood of brooding atmospherics and rich emotional colorings help to turn finely honed songwriting into something that seems larger than life and will seem like you’re getting to see something mythical outside at 1010 Workshop. The band’s blend of post-punk darkness and the way The Church took that framework into a more psychedelic and expansive realm of music as a platform for telling meaningful stories with arrestingly poetic lyrics. Cyclo Sonic may be basically a garage rock punk band but when it’s Matt Bischoff formerly of The Fluid and Arnie Beckman formerly of Choosey Mothers and other luminaries of the local punk scene the songwriting just hits as stronger and the precision of rhythm pushed forward and working in tandem with a ferocious energy it makes a lot of other operating in a similar realm of music seem quaint. Bridey Murphy includes Jay Tonne (Black Forest Fire), John Call (Baldo Rex, Veronica), Rich Groskopf (Boss 302, The Black Smiths, The New Idols etc.), Collette St. Clair and Dave Harrison so it’s going to not be short on rock theater and surprisingly fun songs in the garage rock and soul vein.

Saturday | 07.16
What: Cola w/Voight and Gazes
When: 8 p.m.
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Cola consists of Tim Darcy and Ben Stidworthy formerly of great now defunct Canadian post-punk band Ought along with Evan Cartwright. When Ought split in 2021 ending a decade-long run as one of the more interesting and inventive guitar rock bands of recent years Cola came along shortly after and its 2022 debut album Deep In View (Fire Talk) with its offbeat song structures and hypnotic rhythms will appeal to fans of Ought for sure but also anyone who appreciates the art rock proclivities of a band like Pile. Voight may still be a guitar band at this point and not yet committed to being a full-on dark techno and power electronics project so you’ll get to see the post-punk/darkwave band scorch the rafters with its own intense and emotionally charged music. This is the first Gazes show and it features former Tyto Alba members Melanie Steinway and Andrew Bair along with former Male Blonding vocalist/guitarist Noah Simons. It’s a curse to call a band a supergroup but considering the membership of Gazes expect great things in a vein that will fit in with this bill overall.

Saturday | 07.16
What: Itchy-O’s Tetrapolar Purification Ceremony w/BleakHeart
When: 7 p.m.
Where: Fillmore Auditorium
Why: Itchy-O has seemingly found ways to imbue its few shows on the large scale with an aspect of the mystical and tie it to a new dimension of the band’s sound and performance. This time the Tetrapolar Purification Ceremony will signal the debut of the SÖM SÄPTÄLAHN, a massive instrument inspired by the gamelan assembled from over six hundred pounds of cynbals and gongs donated from local percussionists and crafted in collaboration with the Colorado School of Mines in Golden, a prestigious academic institution that specializes in geology and engineering. The show will include an audience participation aspect involving three elemental themes of Fire, Air and Water. Perhaps the fourth in the “tetrapolar” theme of earth is the SÖM SÄPTÄLAHN itself. For Patreon supporters of the band there will be a ticket giveaway to an “augmented reality scavenger hunt.” It’s always an extravaganza of sights and sounds and with the addition of the new instrument it’s going to be a new era for the band that has consistently found ways to augment already familiar elements in new ways with new ritualistic creativity.

Wednesday | 07.20
What: Steve Von Till and Helen Money
When: 7 p.m.
Where: Globe Hall
Why: Steve Von Till is the charismatic singer and guitarist from influential post-metal band Neurosis. Anyone familiar with the long arc of stylistic experiments in that band will probably appreciate what Von Till has done as a solo artist. His raspy vocals often sound like they’re harboring haunted memories and a flood of emotion that he has released in focused, cathartic bursts. His most recent albums No Wilderness Deep Enough (2020) and A Deep Voiceless Wilderness showcase the songwriter’s ear for organic song structure like his instrumentation is a direct reflection of the moods and feelings as weather patterns that swirl around you when you take a long period to reflect deeply on life and the often hidden wells of emotions you neglect as you spiral through life in a cultural hellscape that does little to nurture our humanity. Alison Chesley as Helen Money has contributed imaginative and evocative cello work for the likes of Bob Mould, Mono, Russian Circles, Broken Social Scene, Chris Connelly and Thalia Zedek. But her own arresting compositions have a stark yet maximalist beauty. With her cello, a spare chain of effects and a looping pedal, Chesley creates an orchestra of one that is both surprisingly heavy and elegantly ethereal, imbued with the compositional architecture of classical music. Her most recent album Atomic (Thrill Jockey, 2020) likely didn’t get the proper presentation as Von Till’s own most recent records didn’t and the sets of both artists seem like the perfect complement to each other’s.

Wednesday | 07.20
What: French Police w/Wisteria and Julian St. Nightmare
When: 7 p.m.
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: French Police from Chicago have a brooding and delicate, darkly melodic sound like they dug deep into Italian and Russian post-punk of the 80s and wrote a set of songs in a cold apartment and had to do so through headphones so as not to get a noise complaint from a neighbor. That’s probably not how the music came about but it has that intimate and mildly claustrophobic quality that is also part of its downtempo charm. Wisteria from Los Angeles seems to have come out of a similar process of crafting the darkwave equivalent of bedroom pop with a thin synth sound that is somehow also evocative in a tender way that is a bit like one imagines what would have happened had New Order had to construct its music given similar limitations on writing the music. Julian St. Nightmare is a great example of when people discover an eclectic musical palette at a young age and find a way to integrate it all into a coherent and vibrant sound so you hear in its songs the influence of surf rock, Molchat Doma and The Cure—all performed with a for now self-effacing confidence and charm.

Friday | 07.22
What: CXCXCX w/Occidental, Perdi La Luz, K129, Organ and DJ Precious Blood
When: 8 p.m.
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: This is a Plains Archaic showcase featuring artists affiliated with the Denver-based experimental music label. CXCXCX seamlessly blends noise, techno and power electronics for a sound like dance music for a crumbling civilization. Occidental was once and may still be affiliated with the electronic music collective Deep Club that used to hold some of the most interesting and well curated underground techno and deep house and other forward thinking electronic music events in Denver for a few years. His own sound is more like a fusion of deep house and trance. Perdi La Luz is reminiscent of the kind of fluid and psychedelic techno one heard on some edges of what Underworld and Future Sound of London were doing in the late 90s. K129 plugs some well processed organic percussive sounds into a beat heavy techno mix. Organ is a collaboration between glitch techno noise artist Cremedelacrvvp and industrial glitchcore ambient artist Kid Mask. DJ Precious Blood recently did a solid post-punk set at a Kill You Club event for the Haunt You show but for this event we may hear some deep recent techno and IDM cuts.

Friday | 07.22
What: Vinny Golia w/SeFaLoCo
When: 7 p.m.
Where: Atlas Theater (709 16th St. Greeley)
Why: Vinny Golia is a prolific and respected multi-instrumentalist and composer whose career has fused world music, modern classical music and avant-garde jazz. A specialist in woodwinds Golia’s work has been featured in performance with the likes of Anthony Braxton, John Zorn, Patti Smith, Eugene Chadbourne, Lydia Lunch and the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra. He has led ensembles as small as the trio that will perform a series of three shows in eastern Colorado (this date in Greeley and others listed below) to the 50-piece Vinny Golia Large Ensemble. His music in both the small and larger format are vehicles for his imaginative musicianship with musical ideas that span more broadly and deeply than most musicians will ever attempt. Even in his 70s Golia has been an innovator in the use of texture and atmosphere and his 2020 album Music for Gongs, Singing Bowls and other Metallaphones is like the lost soundtrack for an elevated horror masterpiece (there’s even a song called “King of the Spanish Horror Movies”) while also sounding like a nod to Alex North’s score for 2001: A Space Odyssey and Penderecki. Not many free jazz masters of Golia’s stature roll through Colorado and this series of intimate shows might be a good time to catch him live.

Polly Urethane in May 2022, photo by Tom Murphy

Saturday | 07.23
What: Multidim Records Presents Listening Lawn II: DJ Ilind, Polly Urethane, Deb the Demo, Luke Leavitt, H-Lite and Entrancer
When: 5-8 p.m.
Where: Carpio Sanguinette Park
Why: Multidim has been releasing some of the most forward thinking electronic music of the past few years and this showcase held at the Carpio Sanguinette Park includes a DJ set from avant-garde noise and techo artist Isaac Linder as Ilind, a purportedly more mellow performance from Polly Urethane whose recent live sets have been a bravura display of the blending of contemporary classical, industrial noise and the avant-garde, Deb the Demo’s tracks capture the mood of the modern media environment with both playful and urgent pieces of techno house that really push the brain beyond preconceptions of the genre and the methods of emotional expression, Luke Leavitt is always doing something different and even though many may know him for the expanded Afrobeat No Wave of his time as Cop Circles there will be a conceptual aspect to his performance with an intentional discipline behind the making of sounds, H-Lite has made some bright and upbeat electronic downtempo glitchcore bangers but his own sonic palette is also so broad and imaginative he’ll bring surprises too and of course Entrancer has been steadily refining and expanding his own craft of techno utilizing analog synths and a visionary challenging of where he’s already been as an artist.

Saturday | 07.23
What: Dust City Opera
When: 9 p.m.
Where: Broadway Roxy
Why: Albuquerque’s Dust City Opera recently released its latest album Alien Summer and perhaps fortuitously making a stop during an unusual summer in Denver and elsewhere with heat waves and social turmoil brewing. So the band’s theatrical performance of songs that sound like a colorful manifestation of years spent taking in campy science fiction and horror cinema and taking away from it all the inspiration to craft songs that don’t fit neatly into a trendy genre. The songs on the album is like a collection of poignant and poetic stories of human life even when the setting is a zombie apocalypse or an encounter with aliens. The pure amalgamation of chamber pop, indie folk and a hard rock edge in the guitar convey a cinematic feel that draws you in for the duration. Intimate and epic the miniature grunge and indiepop orchestra of Dust City Opera is something unique in an era of too much bland imitation.

Saturday | 07.23
What: Vinny Golia w/SeFaLoCo
When: 7 p.m.
Where: Muse Performance Space (Lafayette)
Why: See above for more on Vinny Golia.

Sunday | 07.24
What: Vinny Golia Trio
When: 2 p.m.
Where: Art Lab (Fort Collins)
Why: See above for more on Vinny Golia.

Goo Goo Dolls, photo by Claire Marie Vogel

Wednesday | 07.27
What: Goo Goo Dolls w/Blue October
Where: Red Rocks
Why: Goo Goo Dolls became a bit of a household name in the 90s due to hit songs like “Name” (1995) and of course “Iris” (1998). But the band originally from Buffalo, New York garnered a bit of a cult following during its early punk and then more power pop years for its potent blend of tunefulness, grit and raw emotional honesty. The group lead by singers John Rzeznik and Robby Takac has made a career of writing evocative songs about relationships, life and finding essential meanings in all of it so that even its ballads, love them or not, are not generally trite or without insightful commentary. The group’s latest album Chaos in Bloom, the first produced by Rzeznik, is definitely more in the realm of modern pop but if you watch the video for “Yeah, I Like You” you can hear more than a touch of that early punk rock verve and sharply observed social and personal commentary that sets it apart from a lot modern pop rock with undeniable instrumental hooks to pair with energetic vocal harmonies. But if you go it seems like there’s a better than average chance the Goo Goo Dolls will dip into its back catalog and not just the biggest hits.

Wednesday | 07.27
What: Roselit Bone w/Snakes and No Gossip In Braille
When: 8 p.m.
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Portland, Oregon-based Roselit Bone fronted by trans singer Charlotte McCaslin is somehow a rockabilly band, dark Americana, Mexican ranchera and whatever one might call the likes of Gun Club, The Blasters and Lone Justice. It’s a really different take on genre bending so that it can seem like some countrified folk but with the intensity of punk without the sonic trappings. Its most recent album Crisis Actor is a little more gentle in tenor but not in attitude and its songs of daily struggle and working class politics are poignant and powerful. Snakes similarly has the kind of frayed musical roots that bring together a variety of musical instincts in forming its own dark Americana informed by nuanced thinking on the ways one has conversations with oneself in an ongoing process of sorting out the oftentimes perverse misfortunes and charmed moments in life. It’s lively music but more philosophical than expected from music that has a similar flavor. No Gossip in Braille is decidedly not Americana but its ethereal post-punk comes from a similar emotional place in exploring and making meaning of experiences that hit us as vital whatever their essential and specific impact on our lives.

Thursday | 07.28
What: Black Star w/Dead Prez, Pharoahe Monch and TH1RT3EN
When: 7 p.m.
Where: Mission Ballroom
Why: Yasin Bey and Talib Kweli were already stars of hip-hop in their own right when they formed Black Star in 1997 named after a shipping company founded by Pan-Africanist political activist Marcus Garvey. The project’s debut album Mos Def & Talib Kweli Are Black Star (1998) was pretty much an instant classic with thoughtful explorations of black culture with beats more in line with late-80s and early 90s hip-hop with a creative and vivid use of jazz and funk samples as well as more unique sounds that framed the powerful lyrics well in establishing a mood with cinematic resonance. Afterward the duo released a single here and there while focusing on other musical and creative endeavors. But in 2022 Black Star released its most recent record No Fear of Time. The almost existentialist bent of the lyrics remained but seemingly more direct and with music more stark yet no less imaginative and immersive. Black Star has toured in the last 25 years but not often and somehow its music seems even more relevant in subject matter today.

Thursday | 07.28
What: Lost Network, Blackcell and DJ Mudwulf
When: 9 p.m.
Where: Mercury Café
Why: Lost Network might be considered an industrial rock band but more on the industrial side and plenty of its output is more in the realm of darkly ambient soundscapes. Though its guitar sound is more cutting and its sound often more jagged, fans of The Tea Party may find what this veteran band out of the Denver scene has been doing for years. Also on the bill is long-running, legendary EBM band Blackcell whose sharp social commentary and personal songwriting blurs the line between ambient music and classic EBM the first wave of which it emerged out of the tail end. Of course DJ Mudwulf will bring a set of songs that are well curated and also not 100% predictable. A lot of music out of the Goth-industrial world can be corny but that won’t be on display at this show.

Saturday | 07.30
What: TRAITRS w/Radio Scarlet and Wingtips and DJ Luci Ghost
When: 8 p.m.
Where: Mercury Café
Why: Canadian post-punk band TRAITRS on its 2021 album Horses in the Abattoir separated itself from many bands out of that vein of music with creative vocals that don’t sound like a cut-rate imitation of any obvious influences. And its synth work and songwriting has an orchestral aesthetic that establishes a truly enveloping and haunting sound that isn’t driven by the wheedly guitar sound that is the hallmark of too much darkwave now. TRAITRS’ sound is rich and expansive and though melancholic isn’t a downer. Chicago’s Wingtips is more electronic and one hears in its music including 2021’s excellent Cutting Room Floor a touch of influence from Vince Clarke-period Depeche Mode. Its moody songs have strong dance beats and the vocals widely expressive also distinguishing the group from some of its peers that intentionally sing in ways murky and obscure. There is something effusive in Wingtips’ songs that are immediately striking. Radio Scalet is a death rock band from Denver. The title of its 2017 album Too Goth for Punk, Too Punk for Goth sums up its aesthetic well and sure these people look the part but there is a joyful element to its performances that prevents it from slipping into the wrong end of dour. DJ Luci Ghost is a long time DJ in the local Goth-industrial scene but fortunately for anyone that is around for one of her sets her taste is much more eclectic and expansive beyond narrow conceptions of expected music.