Best Shows in Denver and Beyond 10/24/19 – 10/30/19

Black Belt Eagle Scout performs at Boulder Theater on October 30, this photo and thumbnail image by Sarah Cass

Thursday | October 24

Penelope Isles, photo by Abbey Raymonde

What: Penelope Isles w/Sleepy Animals and Sad Bug
When: Thursday, 10.24, 7 p.m.
Where: Lost Lake
Why: Penelope Isles from Brighton, UK recently released its debut album, Until the Tide Creeps In, through Bella Union. The record is a mix of woozy indie pop and fuzzy guitar rock. Its washy dynamics and use of samples and incidental sounds on the record speaks to an almost sound design approach to the recording to convey a sense of place and an experience beyond some pristine studio product. It’s as though you’re hanging out with the band and going for a walk along that shore and trading stories about life. The band’s use of minor progression transitions is sublime making the record more evocative than might seem obvious on first blush and worth delving into for the sheer array of sounds and emotions running through the ten tracks.

What: Emergency Contact w/Debaser and American Culture
When: Thursday, 10.24, 9 p.m.
Where: Rhinoceropolis
Why: Seattle’s Emergency Contact is somewhere betwixt irreverent lo-fi slacker rock and pointed post-punk. Also on the bill is Josh Taylor (former Friends Forever and used to run Monkey Mania) as Debaser playing some strange bass-based songs. Unless it’s something completely different these days which it may be. American Culture is a guitar rock band rooted in indie pop but influenced by the chimy-dreamy-dark post-punk of The Cure. All shredders who care more about songwriting than showing off, which is a rarity.

What: Weathered Statues EP release, Triton FC, Rejekted Kauses
When: Thursday, 10.24, 8 p.m.
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Weathered Statues is releasing its latest EP, Desolation. Fans of Xmal Deutschland and The Cure will find something to like about this post-punk band whose fluid rhythms and urgent melodies go for the dark places in the psyche as a path to catharsis and healing.

What: JPEGMAFIA w/Butch Dawson
When: Thursday, 10.24, 7 p.m.
Where: Bluebird Theater

Friday | October 25

Maribou State, photo by Sam Neil

What: Maribou State w/Sea Moya
When: Friday, 10.25, 8 p.m.
Where: Gothic Theatre
Why: English duo Maribou State are known for their remixes of popular artists as well as musical collaborations with the likes of Khruangbin, Holly Walker and Pedestrian on its 2018 album Kingdoms of Colour. The project’s sound could be described as downtempo steeped in non-Western sounds and rhythms mixed with electronic jazz and soul. Its songs have mood aplenty but also an uplifting quality driven by creative song dynamics. Though often described as an electronic project, Maribou State includes live, acoustic drums, guitar and other instrumentation performed by humans and not just a track of well sculpted electronics. Fans of Prefuse 73 and Blockhead may find much to like with Maribou State.

What: Cat Power w/Zsela
When: Friday, 10.25, 7 p.m.
Where: Boulder Theater

What: Johnnascus, Techno Allah, Data Rainbow and $addy
When: Friday, 10.25, 8 p.m.
Where: Glitter City

What: Five Iron Frenzy w/Be Like Max & Scooter James – benefit for Habitat for Humanity of Puerto Rico
When: Friday, 10.25, 7 p.m.
Where: Bluebird Theater

Saturday | October 26

Solypsis circa 2016, photo by Tom Murphy

What: Psychedelic Cave Collective Presents: Supreme Halloween Mega Bash 2019: Snowbeasts, Acidbat, Mondo Obscura, Red Side Vs. DJ Wise, Biostatic v. Denizens of the Deep, Psybrid, Solypsis, DJ Spacekeeper, DJ Hepster Pat, Visuals by Cheyenne Grow and Orchidz3ro
When: Saturday, 10.26, 9 p.m.
Where: Rhinoceropolis
Why: Thee beat driven ambient, noise and industrial extravaganza of the year in Denver. Acidbat is a hybrid of breakbeat and ambient glitch. Mondo Obscure is ambient bordering on psychedelia and new age mantra music. Biostatic is pure ambient but incorporating processed trumpet with finely sculpted electronic beats. Solypsis is here from Arizona with his own confrontational ambient-industrial mayhem. Visuals done by two of the real talents in Denver who get what goes well with this music.

Sunday | October 27

The Vanilla Milkshakes with Frank Registrato on drums circa 2015, photo by Tom Murphy

What: Shibui Denver #7: Frank Registrato and Stalebread Scottie
When: Sunday, 10.27, 7 p.m.
Where: Mutiny Information Café
Why: Assuming a blizzard doesn’t descend on Denver, the next edition of Shibui Denver hosted by Queen City Sounds and Art scribe Tom Murphy will include Frank Registrato of The Vanilla Milkshakes who will perform vocal and piano songs for perhaps the first time in the Mile High City. He was once involved in the world of music in Orlando and Disney and in the orbit of Lou Pearlman and his pop music empire and brings a lifetime of vast musical experience into his songwriting and performances. Also on the bill from out of town making a special appearance is Stalebread Scottie of The Drunken Catfish Ramblers, blues folk artist from New Orleans, who appeared in the HBO series Treme.

Tuesday | October 29

Samvega circa 2016, photo by Tom Murphy

What: Today’s Paramount, Samvega, Emily Shreve and Giardia
When: Tuesday, 10.29, 7 p.m.
Where: Lost Lake
Why: Doom/folk/psychedelic band Samvega will perform at this show that features other bands on the spectrum of math rock and experimental like Today’s Paramount and Giardia.

What: Matt and Kim w/SWMRS
When: Tuesday, 10.29, 7 p.m.
Where: Ogden Theatre

What: Wu-Tang Clan w/Onyx and Dillon Cooper
When: Tuesday, 10.29, 7 p.m.
Where: The Mission Ballroom

Wednesday | October 30

Milly, photo courtesy the artist

What: Swervdriver w/Criminal Hygiene and Milly
When: Wednesesday, 10.30, 7 p.m.
Where: Bluebird Theater
Why: Of all the bands lumped in with early 90s shoegaze, Swervedriver, like Catherine Wheel, was one those that rocked a little harder than most and its use of car metaphors seemed to vibe with an American sensibility as well. The band’s 1991 debut album Raise yielded classic blazers like “Son of Mustang Ford” and “Rave Down.” Over the course of the next two decades and more the band evolved and explored new vistas of sound and is now touring for its 2019 album Future Ruins. Opening act Criminal Hygiene from Los Angeles sounds like a mix of slowcore delicacy and fuzzy indie pop. Milly, also based in Los Angeles, started as the home recording project of frontman Brendan Dyer when he was living in Connecticut. But the band has fleshed out a spacious and evocative sound employing entrancing gradients of atmosphere and floating melodies. The group recently released its Our First Four Songs EP showing great promise as modern slowcore soundsculptors with an ear for transporting dynamics.

What: Devendra Banhart w/Black Belt Eagle Scout
When: Wednesesday, 10.30, 7 p.m.
Where: Boulder Theater
Why: Psychedelic folk genius Devendra Banhart is now touring in support of his latest album Ma. His shows are always a lush presentation of his fascinatingly colorful and left field compositions. But sharing the bill is Black Belt Eagle Scout. Katherine Paul released the album Mother of My Children under that moniker in September 2018 to great acclaim for its vivid and poetic depiction of the experiences of queer Indigenous people in a sensitive and nuanced manner. Her bright, atmospheric folk songs and gently soulful vocals reveal an inner strength that comes across powerfully. She recently released her new record At the Party With My Brown Friends.

What: The Bloody Mary’s and Sympathy F
When: Wednesesday, 10.30, 7 p.m.
Where: Moe’s Original BBQ

What: Camilla’s Ball: Scifidelic, The UnioN and Married a Dead Man
When: Wednesesday, 10.30, 7 p.m.
Where: The Bug Theatre

What: Com Truise w/Altopalo and Beshken
When: Wednesesday, 10.30, 8:30 p.m.
Where: Fox Theatre

What: Ghostmane w/Lil Tracy, Harm’s Way, Horus the Astroneer and ParvO
When: Wednesesday, 10.30, 6 p.m.
Where: Ogden Theatre

Best Shows in Denver 04/18/19 – 04/24/19

Oko Tygra releases Assistoma at the Hi-Dive on April 19. Photo by James Holden Cromwell.

Thursday | April 18

Lady of Sorrows, photo by Tom Murphy

What: Lady of Sorrows and Dead Orchids
When: Thursday, 04.18, 6:30 p.m.
Where: Hooked On Colfax
Why: This week’s Speakeasy Series features Lady of Sorrows which is a combination of luminous, synth-driven post-punk and spiritual operatic vocals. It would be a misstep to compare it to Dead Can Dance or Enya or something like that but fans of either might find Lady of Sorrows interesting. Dead Orchids is on the darker end of post-punk but bluesy and gritty.

Friday | April 19

Voight, performs Monday, January 14, at DATELINE gallery. Photo by Tom Murphy

What: OKO TYGRA Album release w/Voight and DJ Noah (of Flaural)
When: Friday, 04.19, 8 p.m.
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: OKO TYGRA has been through a few permutations as singer/guitarist Joshua Novak and his bandmates have explored various paths to creating a lush, expansive sound that reflected but was not limited to the sort of dream pop and post-punk that is the group’s foundational influence. With Assistoma the quartet created a fluidly dynamic set of songs that use subtle textures and drifting hazes of melody like Novak is floating in clouds of emotion and memories moving forward and commenting in typically thoughtful fashion on how so much of modern life is conditional on the seemingly tentative nature of relationships (personal, professional, social) while we yearn for something more solid with genuine connection. Although there is an ethereal quality, Novak sings with a warmth that casts his music in a different mode than a lot of the music that influenced him. Grounded in the rhythm and low end, Assistoma’s tracks seem to dance throughout the record with grace and nuance without getting bogged down in any kind of stylistic repetition while maintaining a coherent sonic aesthetic. Also on the bill is industrial post-punk duo Voight who keep threatening to do an all production set but is still always worth seeing for the sheer colossus of wiry energy and sonic intensity of its performances.

What: Shadows Tranquil, Feigning,The Machine That Stole My Family, Kid Mask, A23P
When: Friday, 04.19, 8 p.m.
Where: Thought//Forms
Why: On one hand, dark shoegaze and experimental guitar music with Shadows Tranquil and Feigning and out there weirdo electronic music with Kid Mask and A23P.

What: Detroit In Effect (M.A.P./Clone), Flora FM (Kalahari Oyster Cult/Vanity Press), French Kettle Station, Wild Dungeon World, Occidental, James Tao, b3b, Mr. Lin
When: Friday, 04.19, 9 p.m.
Where: Rhinoceropolis
Why: Experimental dance/noise/IDM night at Rhinoceropolis.

Saturday | April 20

In The Valley Below, photo by Jaimie Skriba

What: In The Valley Below presents: The Pink Chateau
When: Saturday, 04.20, 7 p.m.
Where: Alamo Drafthouse Sloan’s Lake
Why: In The Valley Below is doing a different kind of tour this time around with a sonically immersive live performance and the screening of its film The Pink Chateau. The latter is a sort of silent movie with musical accompaniment in which a series of vignettes involving a young woman follows a stranger into the countryside into dreamlike vignettes exploring the protagonists deep desires and the nature thereof. All inspired by, according to the promotional video on YouTube (youtube.com/watch?v=G6H-qvyf72U) “vintage French erotica and the faded colors of 1970s films.” Maybe a bit engimatic like Picnic at Hanging Rock or like a more introspective, non-vulgar Going Places. Whatever the tone or influences, the music of The Pink Chateau is, like much of the band’s music, gorgeously saturated and enveloping giving the experience the aforementioned immersive quality as the soundtrack won’t be provided by a prerecorded track but by a live band.

What: Lost Network, Never Kenezzard, Blinddryve, Wiretrap, DJ Cozmos Mudwulf, visuals Opia
When: Saturday, 04.20, 8 p.m.
Where: 3 Kings Tavern
Why: With Lost Network and Wiretrap this will be kind of a hybrid of industrial rock and EBM show but not the sort that is steeped in the future pop version of that. Lost Network is a bit like where Ministry should have gone after Filth Pig. Never Kenezzard is an experimental kind of sludge metal band but one more like Unsane if the people in the band were more into Frank Zappa and John Zorn.

What: Shelley Hirsch
When: Saturday, 04.20, 7 p.m.
Where: The Muse
Why: Shelley Hirsch is an avant-garde vocalist and performance artist whose range and diversity doesn’t sit comfortably in any genre. She has worked with John Zorn, Ikue Mori, David Weinstein and Anthony Coleman. Her forceful and imaginative vocal exercises can be both exhilarating and forbidding, eccentric and otherworldly.

What: Space in Time, Halahierba and Keef Duster
When: Saturday, 04.20, 8 p.m.
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: It’s 4.20 so hey, a show with legitimately worthwhile stoner rock/sludge metal bands should happen somewhere and tonight it’s at the Hi-Dive.

Ages and Ages, photo by Joe Bowden

What: Ages and Ages w/The Harmaleighs and Mondegreen
When: Saturday, 04.20, 8 p.m.
Where: Larimer Lounge
Why: Ages and Ages has been developing its particularly engaging style of pop music since 2009. Utilizing unconventional percussion alongside a drum set and expertly orchestrated vocals and instrumentation, Ages and Ages sounds like it could have come out of the tail end of the first wave of indie pop with a sound that seems to embrace the infectious melodies of ABBA and the meticulous song craft of Harry Nilsson as well as the experimental flourishes of the Beatles. Of course the influence of The Apples in Stereo and Olivia Tremor Control are in the mix. Its 2019 album Me You They We is a beautiful blend of introspective exploration of inner space and the nature of yearning.

What: Half Hearts, Porlolo and Tammy Shine
When: Saturday, 04.20, 9 p.m.
Where: Syntax Physic Opera
Why: It’s the debut of Jason Heller’s and Karen Walton’s new power pop band. Heller is a renowned science fiction author, editor and music writer but he’s also been a member of some of the greatest bands from Denver including Crestfallen, Red Cloud West and The Blue Ontario. Walton has been the drummer for beloved local punk acts like Turbo Knife Fight, Rabid Ragdolls and Naako Deesko. But her musical interests have always been far ranging and her sensibilities with those of Heller seem like a good match. You also get to see Porlolo’s witty, irreverent folk pop and Tammy Shine, the charismatic singer of Dressy Bessy, doing her more or less solo thing.

Steel Pulse, photo by Patrick Niddrie

What: Stick Figure w/Steel Pulse, Pepper, The Movement, Iya Terra, hosted by Nick Swardson
When: Saturday, 04.20, 5:30 p.m.
Where: Red Rocks
Why: For better or worse, depending on your outlook on these things, there’s a reggae concert at Red Rocks on 4/20. But this one includes Steel Pulse. When the band started in 1975 in Birmingham, England, the home of other working class bands like Black Sabbath and Napalm Death, it helped to shape what reggae would sound like for decades. Its particular sound is more traditional but in a way that has evolved and embrace technology and production. Its latest album, and first in over a decade, is 2018’s Mass Manipulation.

Sunday | April 21

Eels, photo courtesy Gus Black

What: Eels w/Inspector Cluzo
When: Sunday, 04.20, 7 p.m.
Where: Gothic Theatre
Why: Even a seemingly endless prolific and inventive songwriter like Mark Everett hits the wall. And that’s what Everett did following the touring cycle of 2014’s The Cautionary Tales of Mark Oliver Everett. Absolute burnout pushed the songwriter into taking a break from music after nearly thirty years of exploring a variety of emotional spaces through his songwriting. Having lost his father when he was 19, his sister to suicide in the mid-90s and his mother to lung cancer in the late 90s and a cousin in the 9/11 attacks, Everett has had more than his fair share of personal tragedy. In some ways re-living and processing that in your music gives it a depth and heaviness and an attended ambition to do justice to the subjects that isn’t always there in pop music. But carrying that weight also takes its toll on your psyche and then your life.

With 2018’s The Deconstruction, Everett takes the time to unravel the angst and burnout lays bare the need for patience and gentleness to self needed to recover when your core has fractured in the wake of the momentum of your life when that machine isn’t entirely working anymore in a way that suits real life. All the bravado, insisted enthusiasms and the pressure to be on and up all the time even as an artist who writes melancholic music will not get you over that kind of ditch in the road. It’s obvious The Deconstruction wasn’t meant to be a coherent album as in most of the rest of Everett’s career. One does not rediscover joy and reconnect to one’s creativity in a linear fashion, rather in honoring one’s frailties and soothing the endless series of existential crises that wrack the mind once you’ve bottomed out at level that didn’t seem possible when you’re a teenager or in your twenties. Or even in your thirties. What Everett is doing now is not just writing music with a sense of compassion and kindness at their root but showing how you can express at length, even with mixed results (unless you’re completely delusional life is a lot of mixed results that many overly ego driven people choose to edit out of their telling of it), that coming out of a low period can’t be accomplished through hard work alone, perhaps not at all, but in nurturing and discovering new or neglected ways of being you and creating therefrom.

What: Chris Cohen w/Jobless and American Culture
When: Sunday, 04.21, 8 p.m.
Where: Larimer Lounge
Why: Former member of Deerhoof Chris Cohen has a gift for writing songs that have a hazy, easily digestible quality that perfectly capture quiet moments in everyday life with a poetic economy and emotional sensitivity. His 2019 self-titled album sounds like it could have come from an alternative reality version of Southern California in the 1970s. Like music that would suit the later-era Philip K. Dick novels or the works of Jim Thompson. That said, the new record is like a kinder, gentler Imperial Bedroom.

Tuesday | April 23

Com Truise at The Bluebird Theater circa 2017, photo by Tom Murphy

What: Com Truise w/Jack Grace and ginla
When: Tuesday, 04.23, 7 p.m.
Where: Gothic Theatre
Why: Touring ahead of the May 17 release of his new album Persuasion System, Seth Haley’s Com Truise is making a stop in Denver and chances are you’ll get to experience that new music live before legally getting a hold of the new record. Seems as though Haley has further refined his sound with a greater degree of the separation of sound in the layers of tone and texture. Like futuristic “library music” mixed with downtempo but brightly melodious IDM, the new Com Truise stuff is musical science fiction capturing a likely future post-climate-change-crisis and post-oligarchic domination.

Wednesday | April 24

Big Business, photo courtesy the artist

What: Big Business w/The Lycan
When: Wednesday, 04.24, 8 p.m.
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: The Beast You Are could simply be described as psychedelic sludge. But that has never really encompassed what Big Business is about. The duo came out of the 90s punk and underground rock scene in the Pacific Northwest. Jared Warren from Karp and Coady Willis from Murder City Devils—both bands that would be difficult to pigeonhole on their own. Both musicians also played as part of Melvins for nearly a decade, yet another band whose musical legacy and sound is so much more than “sludge rock” or whatever one might call a band that was a direct influence on grunge. The Beast You Are, though, is a collection of dynamic, triumphant songs with unconventional melodies and an elevated updraft of tone. Big Business has always been, if nothing else, heavy but buoyant. On The Beast You Are, Big Business experiments further in the songwriting with its use of space and pacing. There’s still the headlong rush you’d expect from the band but also an imaginative application of its palette of sound that has kept the band from being predictable, an uncommon quality in heavy music. For Big Business it is not enough to pummel with its colossal sound but to have emotional and thoughtful intentionality behind it.

Best Shows in Denver 9/15 – 9/20

Widowspeak, photo by Kyle Jacques

Now that Trump and the Democrats have struck a bargain about the budget and DACA, maybe we can all take a break and check out a great show happening in Denver (or beyond as some of the acts listed below are on tour).

P.S.: “Goddamn-dipshit-Rodriguez-gypsy-dildo-punks. I’ll get your ass.” — RIP Harry Dean Stanton

Who: Church Fire, Giardia, Deer Creek and The Pollution 
When: Friday, 9.15, 7 p.m.
Where: Tennyson’s Tap
Why: The Pollution is essentially a psychedelic punk band done by people who are punks who like Hawkwind. Bassist Jay Fox was (sometimes still is) in DC hardcore band United Mutation. But given his having spent a great deal of time in the Southern hemisphere including New Zealand, Fox’s musical tastes are eclectic and there’s plenty of that Kiwi rock influence in his music today. Meaning The Pollution could never be a standard punk act. Church Fire makes synth-beat-driven pop music with a passionate intensity worthy of any the heavier rock bands on this bill. And yet, somehow, singer Shannon Webber amidst her ritualistic performances, manages to inject just a twinge of humor—a quality welcome in music that, while immediately danceable, addresses serious social and political issues with an unblinking ferocity. Okay, maybe some blinking.

Who: Speakeasy Series: Rare Byrd$, Abeasity Jones
When: Friday, 9.15, 6 p.m.
Where: Hooked On Colfax
Why: Experimental hip-hop show in a basement of a coffee shop? Not the first time but in this case you’ll get a chance to see one of the most promising acts in Denver or anywhere with Rare Byrd$. The group has incredibly soulful flow and its beatmaking combines the finely sculpted low end of 90s gangsta rap and ambient and psychedelic music in that it’s as hypnotic as it is mind-expanding. Easy to compare to cLOUDDEAD, Deep Puddle Dynamics and early Atmosphere but only in the sense that all are rooted in imaginative soundscaping and poignantly truthful poetry.

Who: Post-Punk Piano/Vocal Covers Night w/Todd Loomis of The Twilight Garden and The Siren Project
When: Friday, 9.15, 8 p.m.
Where: Mercury Café
Why: Todd Loomis of Goth/dark dream pop band The Twilight Garden along with like-minded Denver-based act The Siren Project will perform songs by the likes of INXS, The Cure, Depeche Mode, Radiohead, Switchblade Symphony, Joy Division, Tears for Fears, Morrissey, Bauhaus, Ladytron, Garbage and more. Loomis will also play some songs you wouldn’t expect by artists like Roy Orbison, Elvis, Otis Redding, John McLaughlin, Metallica and Sinead O’Connor. What makes this different from cover bands playing the usual sort of gig is that neither set of artists generally does covers and the interpretations are likely to be interesting.

Who: Blanket Empire w/Silver Face and Quantum Creep 
When: Saturday, 9.16, 9 p.m.
Where: The Skylark Lounge
Why: Blanket Empire is releasing its latest album, Hymn For the Heartless at this show. Superficially Blanket Empire sounds like its members recently ditched that wave of music miming classic rock in favor more unusual influences and embraced modern sensibilities as much as those classic. Maybe these guys listened to a lot of T. Rex, Roxy Music and Led Zeppelin for big, warping sounds. But the lo-fi charm of its album is reminiscent of Jay Reatard’s masterful blend of raw rock and roll and a sophisticated sense of melody and songwriting has been a massive influence on underground music even before his untimely passing in 2010.

Who: Vic N’ the Gnarwhals, Surf Mom and Monocle Stache
When: Saturday, 9.16, 9 p.m.
Where: Syntax Physic Opera
Why: Vic N’ The Gnarwhals do that rare thing where the music has a familiar vibe, one might dub it psychedelic surf rock for the blend of styles, and thus very tangible. But there’s a mysterious undertone to its songs suggestive of noir cinema even when its songs get a little out there. Surf Mom used to be kind of a surf rock band, sort of still is, but the band has evolved greatly since it debuted a couple of years go. How many surf rock bands cover Christian Death? But the influences with this duo are broad ranging and since its members are still in high school you have to think they’re going to outgrow what inspires them now or at least take the music in new directions.

Who: Lotus w/Com Truise and Nosaj Thing
When: Saturday, 9.16, 9 p.m.
Where: Red Rocks
Why: Lotus is basically an EDM jam band. For some people this sounds like the combination of two terrible things. And Lotus may not be for you. Lots of jazz overtones like an electro version of Galactic. But what would you expect of a jam band? Nevertheless, Lotus is respectable live band. But if you want to catch some of the more interesting electronic acts playing more mainstream venues these days, check out Nosaj Thing and Com Truise. The former is a hip-hop artist who has done production work for Kendrick Lamar, Busdriver and Chance the Rapper. His own albums, though tend to be more like ambient dance music with deep low end coursing over and under drifting, vivid melodies. On his 2013 album Home, he featured Blonde Redhead singer Kazu Makino on the song “Eclipse/Blue.” So his musical range and interests are not limited to just a single genre of music. Com Truise came to prominence in the underground through fans of analog synth-based dance music several years back. But his science fiction themed albums caught on with a wider audience not just because Seth Haley is a talented songwriter but he was able to take what could have been simply a lo-fi aesthetic best experienced in a small venue with small sound system and render it suitable for a much larger format of presentation.

Who: Stiff Little Fingers w/Death By Unga Bunga 
When: Saturday, 9.16, 8 p.m.
Where: The Marquis Theater
Why: Stiff Little Fingers, from Belfast, Ireland, were an anecdote in the film High Fidelity for a reason. It’s scrappy, melodic outbursts, as found on its classic, aptly titled, 1979 album Inflammable Material, found an immediate influence but its enduring impact was on the early pop punk scene in America. Although the band broke up in 1982, it reconvened in 1987 and have been actively releasing albums and touring since. Plus, if recent shows are any indication, these guys still play like the world could end tomorrow.

Who: Sonic Vomit, Condor & Jaybird (IA), Harikiri (MN) and Kwantsu Dudes 
When: Saturday, 9.16, 7 p.m.
Where: Mutiny Information Café
Why: Pueblo’s Sonic Vomit probably gets broad brushed as a death metal or grindcore band. But it’s avant-garde and jazz side aren’t exactly subtle or hidden. It just makes the band’s music more unsettling and, frankly, more interesting than something straight ahead couched in a heavy metal subgenre. Which makes its pairing with Condor & Jaybird, a psychedelic band from Iowa rooted in that kind of psych that could have come out of a cult like The Source Family with folk song structure but one using non-Western instrumentation and sounds.

Who: TOPS w/She-Devils 
When: Saturday, 9.16, 8 p.m.
Where: Larimer Lounge
Why: Superficially, TOPS is a Canadian band that makes the kind of light pop music reminiscent of the kind that did well on record charts in the mid-to-late 70s through the 80s. But the secret of many of the songs from that timeframe too is that, yes, discussed the usual everyday life struggles, but in a way that commented on the emptiness and dissatisfaction that is at the core of every society in which the best most people can hope for is a job that doesn’t suck too bad, spending the rest of one’s life with someone you get along with okay even after the rush of early love has long since passed and resign oneself to a beige reality knowing deep down it never needed to be that way. TOPS’ music sounds like the sinking realization of that sort of thing but with more than a shade of the knowledge of what could make life be more fulfilling. That aside, the band’s songs are true gems of indie pop songcraft with words that dig more than a little deeply at the quiet desperation of 21st century urban living.

Who: Micah Schnabel, Sour Boy Bitter Girl and The Swindlin’ Hearts 
When: Sunday, 9.17, 8 p.m.
Where: Lion’s Lair
Why: It’s difficult to say whether, at this point, Micah Schnabel is better known for his solo career or for his band Two Cow Garage. Either way, Schnabel’s take on alt-country is self-critical and he has a real gift for puncturing his own pretensions of years past and foolish notions he might entertain in the present. In that way one might compare him to comedians like Patton Oswalt and Maria Bamford who are keenly aware of their own shortcomings and turn them into their best work. Sour Boy Bitter Girl couldn’t be a more well-named band considering the music. Benjamin Buttice seems to have few qualms in laying out his twitchy psyche out for the audience. Every neurosis, fear and flaw is mixed in with his honest and poetic portrayal of life as its experienced, the only filter seeming to be to make it relatable to other people. The band probably gets labeled alt-country or the like as well but like Schnabel’s, Buttice’s songwriting transcends simple genre designation. It just feels vitally authentic in a format of music tends to hold few surprises.

Who: Witchtrap (Colombia), Nekrofilth, Weaponizer and Skeid 
When: Sunday, 9.17, 8 p.m.
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Colombian thrash band Witchtrap makes an appearance at the Hi-Dive. Also on the bill are death grind band Nekrofilth, black metal thrashers Weaponizer and “Barbarian black metal” band Skeid. What is that whole Barbarian business about? Listen to their 2017 split release with Morgue Whore and it makes sense because it sounds like the kind of pulsing, low-end heavy stuff Conan would listen to if he could.

 

Who: GGOOLLDD w/Time Scale 
When: Tuesday, 9.19 7 p.m.
Where: Larimer Lounge
Why: Before starting GGOOLLDD with her bandmates in 2014, Margaret Butler was someone who got out of high school and got out of her home town of Baton Rouge, Louisiana. After a stint of subsistence living in Portland, Oregon, she was invited by friends to spend some time in Milwaukee, Wisconsin but it was there that things came together for Butler when she heard the right music that made he want to sing along and soon enough GGOOLLDD became a bit of a local phenomenon before taking its synth pop, crafted to cinematic proportions to stages far and wide. The band isn’t yet playing large theaters regularly but its music is written to that scale. In December the band will release its latest EP, Teeth on Roll Call Records.

Who: Widowspeak w/Death Valley Girls and Clearance
When: Tuesday, 9.19, 8 p.m.
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Death Valley Girls have done a magic trick in turning campy musical and performance elements into a powerful live band that has the kind of bombast and raw power of L7 or Bikini Kill complimented by an elegant atmospheric side that recalls Cocteau Twins. It’s a combination that shouldn’t work but it just makes DVG more interesting than any surface level assessment of the band could convey outside the live setting even though the band’s records capture some of this essence nicely. Headlining the bill is Widowspeak, a band also known to upset expectations in the best way. Its’ ethereal melodies have an introspective shimmer reminiscent of Mojave 3, The Sundays and Mazzy Star. Its latest record, 2017’s Expect the Best out on Captured Tracks, finds the band exploring a broader palette of sounds seemingly emphasizing texture and rhythm as much as tone and its signature sweeping vistas of dreamy melodies.

Who: Ride w/Lo Moon and DJ Paul Italiano 
When: Wednesday, 9.20, 7 p.m.
Where: Summit Music Hall
Why: In June 2017, British shoegaze legends Ride released Weather Diaries, its first album in twenty-one years. This in the wake of a successful reunion tour in 2015. And like its contemporaries, Slowdive, the new record is a worthy entry in its already respectable extant catalog. The term “shoegaze” is known to have been an insult to bands operating pedals in order to execute their mindbending sounds. What is missed in such a nickname, now minus the negative connotations, is that many of those bands, Ride in particular, did more rocking than shoegazing. As several bands in the 2000s embraced the visceral sound sculpting of 90s shoegazers, the old guard has enjoyed a renaissance and to the credit of most, they came back with new musical ideas that didn’t sound like a tired second act. Those fortunate enough to have caught Ride since it’s been back got to see a band that re-established its reputation as one of the great live bands of its era. Also on the bill is Los Angeles-based dream pop phenoms, Lo Moon. The band has released a few singles that hint at the kind of band that has the sophisticated songcraft and soulfulness of a band like Talk Talk and the knack for crafting evocative atmospheres that have made Perfume Genius one of the most interesting modern artists. But Lo Moon isn’t standing in anyone’s stylistic shadow and its beautifully brooding songs may yet be released on a full length album before the year is out. Get to the show early and catch one of the most promising new bands of the last several years.