Queen City Sounds and Art Best Albums of 2019

All Your Sisters | Trust Ruins

This best of list was intended for publication in 2020 and parts of the entries with comments were published in my year end best list for the print edition of Birdy magazine in Denver for the December 2019 issue. The full best of list is presented here with those short reviews included with the appropriate album and the rest included without comment and several album covers shared as well. The album of the year was All Your Sisters’ Trust Ruins (listed first) because it encapsulated the mood of the year and the band put on one of the best shows of 2019 and the record felt like a leap forward in style and execution for the band. Soon I’ll publish the full best of 2020 list too in a similar format with the commentary for those items that made it into the print edition of Birdy for December 2020.

All Your Sisters | Trust Ruins | The Flenser
A brutal, maximalist summation of the turmoil, conflict, sense of chaos and confusion, rage and frustration and overwhelming flood of negative input from world and societal events of the previous few years. In articulating those feelings and experiences and more alone as powerfully as it does, this album by All Your Sisters transcends genre by providing an example of how industrial and darkwave music can burst beyond established conventions with the sharp-edged and precise percussion framing and channeling the fiery energy at the core of the songwriting.

Adia Victoria | Silences | Atlantic

Adrianna Krikl | Celestial | Self-released

Aldous Harding | Designer | 4AD

Alex Cameron | Miami Memory | Secretly Canadian

Altas | All I Ever Wanted Was | Self-released
A lush deepening of the band’s sweeping, cinematic aesthetic.

Anamanaguchi | [USA] | Polyvinyl

Andre Cactus | Dune Juice | Multidim Records

Andy Stott | It Should Be Us | Modern Love

Angel Olsen | All Mirrors | Jagjaguwar
Poignantly dreamlike examination of identity in an age of universal scrutiny.

Bestial Mouths | INSHROUDSS | Rune & Ruin

Bellhoss | Geraniums | Self-released
Buoyant, lo-fi slowcore love songs for inner awkward nerd.

Bethlehem Steel | s/t | Exploding in Sound
The utter exorcism of oppression through bursts of melodic/atonal poetry.

Big Dopes | Crimes Against Gratitude | Self-released
Captivating indie pop earworm vingettes of American malaise and hope.

Big Thief | U.F.O.F. / Two Hands | 4AD

Bison Bone | Take Up the Trouble | Self-released

Black Belt Eagle Scout | At The Party With My Brown Friends | Saddle Creek

black midi | Schlagenheim | Rough Trade Records
A primer for the new avant-guitar rock revolution.

Black Mountain | Destroyer | Jagjaguwar

Blanck Mass | Animated Violence Mild | Sacred Bones

Blood Incantation | Hidden History of the Human Race | Dark Descent

Boy Scouts | Free Company | ANTI-

Briffaut | A Maritime Odyssey: Heaven is Only a Boat Race Away | GROUPHUG

Calexico and Iron and Wine | Years to Burn | Subpop

Cat Tyson Hughes | Gentle Encounters With Things | Self-released
Ambient, aural snapshots of memory fragments from the hypnogogic state.

Cau5er | The Tower | Self-released

Ceremony | In the Spirit World Now | Relapse Records

Chastity Belt | Chastity Belt | Hardly Art

Cheap Perfume | Burn It Down | Snappy Little Numbers

Chella and the Charm | Good Gal | Self-released

Chelsea Wolfe | Birth of Violence | Sargent House

Chimney Choir | (light shadow) | Self-released

Chromatics | Closer to Grey | Italians Do It Better

clipping. | There Existed an Addiction to Blood | Sub Pop

Consumer | In Computers | The Flenser

Control Top | Covert Contracts | Get Better Records

Cop Circles | Vacation for Hurt | Self-released
Subversive, Laurie Anderson-esque, New Age, No Wave send-up of corporate seminar jingles.

Cosey Fanni Tutti | Tutti | Conspiracy International
Heavy and hypnotic industrial rave autobiography through sound.

Curse | Metamorphism | Fake Crab Records
Eight, powerful, darkwave, prophetic warnings of our potential future.

Danny Brown | uknowhatimsayin¿ | Warp Records
Relentlessly inventive beats and tragicomedic, self-immolating swagger, sci-fi autobiography.

Davi Valois | Bátraquio | Space Cow Music

Deafkids | Metaprogramação | Neurot Recordings
Immersive, ambient-industrial death grind.

Doo Crowder | One For the Losers (& Other Pilgrims) | Self-released
The greatest art pop record since the death of Harry Nilsson.

Dog Basketball | s/t | Self-released

Drab Majesty | Modern Mirror | Dais Records
Moodily heartbreaking deep dive into the essence of love, memory and beauty.

Drowse | Light Mirror/Second Self | The Flenser

Dude York | Falling | Hardly Art

Earl Sweatshirt | FEET OF CLAY | Tan Cressida

Elizabeth Colour Wheel | Nocebo | The Flenser
Majestic, urban-tribal, noise-sludge dream psych.

Empath | Active Listening: Night On Earth | Get Better Records

Entrancer | Downgrade | Multidim Records

Ex Hex | It’s Real | Merge Records
Cosmic New Wave power pop gems beginning to end.

Facs | Lifelike | Trouble In Mind

FEELS / Shannon Lay | Post Earth / August | Wichita / Sub Pop

FM Cubgod | Handsome? | Self-released

Foxes in Fiction | Trillium Killer | Orchid Tapes

Frankie Cosmos | Close It Quietly | Sub Pop

French Kettle Station | Over X Millennia | Self-released
Retro-furturist, New Age pop shade jams on contemporary wack culture.

Future Sound of London | Yage | Fsol Digital

Gila Teen | Doesn’t | Self-released

Glissline | Digital Bipolarism | Multidim Records

Gold Trash | Quiet Violence | Glasss Records
Collage glitch industrial hip-hop daggers into misogynist culture.

Goon | Natural Evil | Convulse Records

Guerilla Toss | What Would The Odd Do? | DFA
Mind-altering, subtropical, disco punk dance pop.

Guidon Bear | Downwardly Mobile: Steel Accelerator | Antiquated Future Records

Gun Street Ghost | Battles | Self-released

Half Shadow | Dream Weather Its Electric Song | Illusion Florist

Haunted Horses | Dead Meat | SIXWIX

Have a Nice Life | Sea of Worry | The Flenser

HEALTH | Slaves of Fear Vol. 4 | Loma Vista Recordings

HIDE | Hell is Here | Dais Records

Holly Herndon | Proto | 4AD

HTRK | Venus In Leo | Ghostly International
Love songs from downtempo dance clubs in the future urban decay.

Jamila Woods | Legacy! Legacy! | Jagjaguwar

Jenny Hval | The Practice of Love | Sacred Bones

Kal Marks | Let the Shit House Burn Down | Exploding in Sound

Kid Mask | dead sore(s) | Self-released
Dispatches from the industrial glitch techno hard rave revolution.

Kim Gordon | No Home Record | Matador Records
Scathing jazz cool poetry set to hip-hop-inflected noise.

Kristin Hersh | Possible Dust Clouds | Fire Records

Kyle Emerson | Only Coming Down | Swoon City Music

Larians | Looming Boy EP | Self-released
Loneliness and isolation distilled as shimmering IDM nuggets.

Legendary Pink Dots | Angel in the Detail | Metropolis Records
A brilliant synthesis of classical sonic architecture, emotionally charged ambient and deep social critique.

Lightning Cult | EP 2: Ether Waves | Cloud Command Sound

Lingua Ignota | Caligula | Profound Lore
Caustic, industrial fusillade against patriarchal fragility.

Lisa Prank | Perfect Love Song | Father/Daughter Records

Little Fyodor | Pithy Romantic Ballads | Self-released
Arch punk cynic and curmudgeon begrudgingly admits affection and survives.

Lot Lizard | s/t | Different Folk Records

Lower Dens | The Competition | Ribbon Music

Malibu Ken | s/t | Rhymesayers

Mannequin Pussy | Patience | Epitaph

Mdou Moctar | Ilana: The Creator | Sahel Sounds
Intricate African prog suffused with the joy of the creative act.

Moon Pussy | Band Meating | Self-released
Eruptive, searing, angular, anti-pop exorcisms.

Muscle Beach | Charms | Sailor Records

Necropanther | The Doomed City | Self-released

New Standards Men | Field Recordings From Late Capitalism Vol. 10 | Self-released

No Gossip in Braille | Bend Toward Perfect Light | Cercle Social Records
The transmogrification of sorrow into transcendent melodies.

NoSwoon | s/t | Substitute Scene Records
Effervescent yet introspective dark wave synth pop.

Nots | 3 | Goner Records

Nuancer | I Hardly Know Her | Self-released

Obtuse | Who’s Askin’? | Self-released
Gloriously earnestly meaningful, off-the-cuff, utterly unpretentious pop punk.

Oh, Rose | While My Father Sleeps | Park The Van

Oko Tygra | Assistoma | Grey Market Records
Masterfully executed emotionally stirring downtempo dream pop.

Old Time Relijun | See Now And Know | K Records

Orbit Service | The Door to the Sky | Self-released

Pedestrian Deposit | Dyers’ Hands | Monorail Trespassing
The sonic analog of places we don’t want to visit but are drawn to anyway.

Pharmakon | Devour | Sacred Bones

Pinkish Black | Concept Unification | Relapse Records

Pile | Green and Gray | Exploding in Sound
Furiously poetic, orchestral and thoughtful blueprint for arty, noisy post-punk to come.

Plaid | Polymer | Warp Records

Pop. 1280 | Way Station | Weyrd Son Records

POW! | Shift | Castle Face Records

Priests | The Seduction of Kansas | Sister Polygon

Redwing Blackbird | Too Klaus For Comfort | Self-released

Rowboat | Birchwood Halls | Self-released

Secret Shame | Dark Synthetics | Portrayal of Guilt Records

Sheer Mag | A Distant Call | Wilsuns Recording Company
Modern blues punk’s equivalent of Judas Priest’s Stained Class.

She Past Away | Disko Anksiyete | Metropolis Records / Fabrika Records

ShitKid | DETENTION | PNKSLM Recordings

Silence in the Snow | Levitation Chamber | Prophecy Productions

Sleaford Mods | Eton Alive | Extreme Eating Records

Sleater-Kinney | The Center Won’t Hold | Mom + Pop

Slugger | Is Real | Self-released

Sole & DJ Pain 1 | No God Nor Country | Black Box Tapes

somesurprises | s/t | Drawing Room Records

Spirettes | Esoteria | Self-released
An ethereal distillation of deep yearning and determination.

SRSQ | Temporal Love/Unkept | Dais Records

Stonefield | Bent | Flightless

Strange Ranger | Remembering The Rockets | Tiny Engines

Studded Left | Popular Intuition | S/L INTNL.
Psychedelic post-punk portraits of life and love in our dystopic USA.

Summer Cannibals | Can’t Tell Me No | Tiny Engines

SunnO))) | Life Metal and Pyroclasts | Southern Lord

Swans | leaving meaning. | Young God

Tacocat | This Mess Is A Place | Sub Pop

Telefon Tel Aviv | Dreams Are Not Enough | Ghostly International

The Coathangers | The Devil You Know | Suicide Squeeze

The Hecks | My Star | Trouble In Mind Records

The Ocean Blue | Kings and Queens / Knaves and Thieves | Korda Records

The Paranoyds | Carnage Bargain | Suicide Squeeze

The Stargazer Lilies | Occabot | Rad Cult

The Twilight Sad | It Won/t Be Like This All the Time | Rock Action
The sound of a valiant struggle against existential failure.

The Vanilla Milkshakes | Punching Cows | Self-released
Humorous and heartfelt pop grunge odes to perpetual outsider status.

Total Trash | Field Guide | Self-released
Melancholic, post-psychedelic, slowcore, glitter jams.

Turvy Organ | The Ghost at the Feast | GROUPHUG

Tyler The Creator | Igor | Columbia
Dense, gritty, hazy beats and meta-exploration of identity as human and artist.

We Are Not a Glum Lot | The Price of Simply Existing | Self-released
Gripping, emo-inflected, math-y, post-punk bummercore.

Weeping Icon | s/t | Fire Talk
Cathartic, thorny, darkwave doom garage.

Whipporwill | The Nature of Storms | Self-released

Wreck and Reference | Absolute Still Life | The Flenser

Xeno & Oaklander | Hypnos | Dais Records
Heavy/heavenly techno for the dance club on Mount Olympus.

Xiu Xiu | Girl with Basket of Fruit | Polyvinyl

Zealot | The Book of Ramifications | Self-released

Best Shows in Denver 10/3/19 – 10/9/19

Curse performs Thursday, October 3 at Rhinoceropolis, photo by Shane Gardner

Thursday | October 3

Dude York, photo by Eleanor Petry

What: Curse w/Echo Beds, Church Fire and Gruesome Relics
When: Thursday, 10.03, 9 p.m.
Where: Rhinoceropolis
Why: Baltimore’s Curse has been touring the US for the past eight years playing its alchemical mix of doom, darkwave analog synth pop, electro-acoustic industrial beats and hardcore. Its commanding and spirited performances and DIY ethos has earned the band a fanbase in the American underground where its gritty, emotionally charged and dream-like music needn’t appeal to a narrow spectrum of musical tastes. Also on the bill are like-minded Denver locals. Echo Beds and Church Fire both bridge the worlds of hardcore, industrial and darkwave with both groups incorporating live drums and physical sound generation with an electronic music aesthetic.

What: Bleached w/Dude York and Pout House
When: Thursday, 10.03, 7 p.m.
Where: Globe Hall
Why: Seattle’s Dude York recently released its new album Falling out on Hardly Art. The band’s been writing fun, thoughtful music since its inception but on the new record the songwriting seems somehow fuller and the tone nostalgic like the members of the band have reached a point in their life that everyone gets to where you can embrace the music of your youth that maybe in your late teens or twenties you rejected a bit because you outgrew it. Except that you can appreciate it on your terms as someone who has some life experience and has more insight as to why you you can either still love that music or aspects of it or appreciate how it made you feel even if that music doesn’t have that level of impact on you now. The problem with a lot of rock music is that it gets emotionally stuck in a rut of stunted adolescence. Falling sounds like a band that acknowledges the importance on a deeply personal level of not letting your heart fully harden to weather the blows of life with a shield of knowing jadedness when some sensitivity and openness would be a better way to navigate the world with curiosity and humanity intact. Bleached not so long ago went through its own transformation after some years of exploring what it wanted to sound like, even as the songwriting was always strong, to get into a groove of gritty, atmospheric pop that grew out of the Clavin sisters’ past in noise punk band Mika Miko and the garage surf sound of the early 2010s.

Friday | October 4

The Haters circa 2011, photo by Tom Murphy

What: Ultra Metal Fundraiser: The Haters 40th Anniversary performance, Dr. Noize, Sounding, Prison Glue, Jump Scare, Goblin King of the Popstars, Ilind, Diffuser and French Kettle Station
When: Friday, 10.04, 7 p.m.
Where: Rhinoceropolis
Why: Noise festival Ultra Metal will take place the second weekend in November. But it’s a DIY fest and this show is both a fundraiser for Ultra Metal and the 40th anniversary performance of arch noise tricksters The Haters which may or may not include legendary, formerly Denver-based recording engineer Bob Ferbrache.

Tim Baker, photo by Britney Townsend

What: Half Moon Run w/Tim Baker (former Hey Rosetta!)
When: Friday, 10.04, 8 p.m.
Where: Bluebird Theater
Why: Tim Baker the charismatic singer for Hey Rosetta! released his debut solo album Forever Overhead. When the band went on indefinite hiatus in October 2017 Baker went on tour as a solo artist playing the unconventional types of venues he had probably when he was coming with the songs that were the backbone of the early era of his Hey Rosetta!. The songs are the warm, introspective but yearning, anthemic pieces that garnered the band a wide audience from early on. The album seems to sketch a journey of personal rediscovery and reconnecting with the everyday experiences and epiphanies that make for vivid lyrics that resonate with feelings we’ve all had.

What: Ride w/The Spirit of the Beehive and One Flew West
When: Friday, 10.04, 7:30 p.m.
Where: Boulder Theater
Why: Ride was one of the earliest of the UK shoegaze bands. Its sound was aswirl with elements of a colossal neo-psychedelia but rocked with a momentous drive. Currently the group is touring in support of its 2019 album This is Not a Safe Place.

What: Tinariwen
When: Friday, 10.04, 8 p.m.
Where: Gothic Theatre

What: Amon Amarth w/Arch Enemy, At the Gates and Grand Magus
When: Friday, 10.04, 5:30 p.m.
Where: Fillmore Auditorium

Saturday | October 5

nervesandgel circa 2013 (Johnny Wohlfahrt aka nervesandgel with Allison Young), photo by Tom Murphy

What: Pythian Whispers album release w/RAREBYRD$, SOMNILOQUIST and nervesandgel
When: Saturday, 10.05, 8 p.m.
Where: Rhinoceropolis
Why: SOMNILOQUIST is an ambient/drone artist from Albuquerque whose 2019 album Perpetual Fall is a collection of vivid sonic sketches of a scene, a sensation, a mood captured by the song titles including the humorously titled “How Long Are You Going to Leave Those Jack-o-Lanterns on Your Porch?” Majestic, enigmatic, impressionistic, introspective but always conveying the emotional experiences behind them eloquently. Nervesandgel hasn’t performed a show in over six years but the Denver-based experimental electronic artist has a vast back catalog that explores depths of experimenting with the form of ambient music and psychedelia beyond the tropes implied by the latter designation. He, Johnny Wohlfahrt, has releases on various imprints including a record out on indie pop label Best Friends Records but most of his work is self-released including the darkly moving Cometcrash and the more than three hour long epic 333. He may make ambient music but his performances are always richly emotional. R A R E B Y R D $ took the root of underground hip-hop and imbued it with personal mythology and a willingness to push the weird end of electronic beat-making to craft some of the most entrancing and evocative, sometimes inspirationally brash, sometimes cathartically heartbreaking happening in the world right now. Pythian Whispers is a Denver-based ambient band that Queen City Sounds and Art editor and writer Tom Murphy started as a solo project in 2009 but which became a band in 2011 when David Britton joined followed by various other long term and short term collaborators including renowned photographer/film-maker Charles DeGraaf, Titwrench MC Piper Rose, former Dangerous Nonsense bassist and current Umbras Animas member Harmony Fredere, Brad Schumacher of Night Grinder, Melissa Bell formerly of Rasputina and Howling Hex, Victoria Lundy of The Inactivists, Darren Kulback formerly of Hot White now Quits and The Lifers, former Action Friend drummer Paul Alexander, Misun Oh formerly of French Chemists, Tripp Wallin of The Lifers, comic artist Sara Century, photographer Joel Dallenbach and likely more. The band’s new album Lullabies For the Way of St. James is its first full length album since 2012’s The Dark Edge of Hippie Life. The band will have enamel band logo pins for sale for $12 that come with a download or a bundle with a forthcoming cassette with extra tracks for maybe $20.

What: Franksgiving: Church Fire, Little Fyodor, Ralph Gean and Gort Vs. Goom
When: Saturday, 10.05, 9 p.m.
Where: Lion’s Lair
Why: Franklin Bell is a local character and weird music afficionado who DJs many events featuring gloriously odd music. This is his yearly benefit for the Crohn’s Foundation of America. It features some of Denver’s best including tribal industrial dance phenoms Church Fire, punker than your average fashion victim punk band Little Fyodor & Babushka Band, Denver’s OG rock and roll hero Ralph Gean and irreverent bass thrash post-punkers Gort Vs. Goom.

What: Nakatani Gong Orchestra
When: Saturday, 10.05, 7-10 p.m.
Where: The Savoy at Curtis Park

What: New Ben Franklins, I’m A Boy and The Gones
When: Saturday, 10.05, 8 p.m.
Where: Mutiny Information Café

What: Horse Feathers w/Chella and the Charm
When: Saturday, 10.05, 8 p.m.
Where: Hi-Dive

Sunday | October 6

Sam Fender, photo by Jack Whitefield

What: Sam Fender w/Noel Wells
When: Sunday, 10.06, 7 p.m.
Where: Globe Hall
Why: You may not know who Sam Fender is now but the singer/songwriter from the UK has had his musical star on the ascent for several years now and his new album Hypersonic Missiles hit the number one sport on the UK Albums Chart last month. His earnest songwriting and candid portraits of working class life, the struggles, the aspirations, the frustrations and the triumphs, elevate his upbeat and anthemic songwriting to something more ambitious and meaningful than much of what is passing for pop and rock music in the mainstream these days.

What: Dave Bixby w/Midwife and Scott Seskind — canceled
When: Sunday, 10.06, 7 p.m.
Where: Rhinoceropolis
Why: In 1969 Dave Bixby released his debut Ode to Quetzalcoatl, inspired by a spiritual revelation after wrecking his mind with drugs and transcending that experience. His second album, Second Coming, commissioned by a cult called The Movement, was released in 1970 and he subsequently disappeared from the world of music until 2011. This is a rare chance to catch this legend of psychedelic folk. [This show was canceled due to Dave’s gear being stolen. Possible reschedule at some point]

What: Mac Demarco w/Thundercat and Snail Mail
When: Sunday, 10.06, 6 p.m.
Where: Red Rocks

Monday | October 7

Chiiild, photo courtesy the artist

What: Emotional Oranges w/Chiiild
When: Monday, 10.07, 7:30 p.m.
Where: Fox Theatre
Why: Chiiild is the kind of R&B we need now that is identifiable as such but which has absorbed modern music and while maintaining an appreciation for the eccentric sound and musical ideas from yesteryear with no prejudice toward where it belongs in conventional notion of genre. The group’s songs sound like they were written without notions of musical tradition weighing it down, only the pressure of writing meaningful and transporting music the way its obvious influences weren’t aiming to borrow so heavily from an earlier era either.

Kevin Parker of Tame Impala, photo by Matt Sav

What: Tame Impala w/Altin Gün
When: Monday, 10.07, 7 p.m.
Where: Mission Ballroom
Why: Tame Impala could have done fine for itself basically soundtracking modern yacht rock for young people and had a commercially successful music career. But Kevin Parker’s songwriting reveals some more imaginative combinations of sounds and moods layered into the music so that even if sometimes a song will remind those in the know of a later era Supertramp track with more luxuriant synth work it’s an example of Parker’s penchant for weaving together modern sensibilities and pop songcraft from previous or current times with equal aplomb.

What: Stereolab w/Wand
When: Monday, 10.07, 7 p.m.
Where: Ogden Theatre
Why: Stereolab took French pop, Krautrock, avant-garde synth music, dub and psychedelia and infused it with the radical left politics to make some of the most compelling yet accessible music of the 1990s and 2000s. Reunited after a decade apart “The Groop” will not fail to dazzle.

Blood Orange, photo by Nick Harwood

What: Tyler, The Creator w/Blood Orange and Goldlink
When: Monday, 10.07, 6 p.m.
Where: Red Rocks
Why: Tyler the Creator made a name for himself crafting experimental hip-hop as a member of Odd Future and under his own creative moniker. But in recent years, particularly with his 2019 album Igor, he’s been writing works that explore themes of identity and a deep examination of what drives our desires. While nothing new per se, for this record Tyler has dispensed with the aggressive character that was a manifestation of his anxieties and insecurities writ larger than life in favor of a compelling vulnerability with production that complements that unmasked sensitivity perfectly. Also on the tour is Blood Orange whose own experimental beat-crafting and creative approaches to cultural narratives reached a peak thus far with 2018’s Negro Swan with its lush jazz and downtempo sound and lyrics that took an honest yet nuanced look into the way society and conventional mores impact racial, gender and sexual identity. Heavy stuff for a show at Red Rocks and yet both artists make these subjects accessible and fun without downplaying their seriousness.

What: Claudio Simonetti’s Goblin performs Deep Red for movie screening
When: Monday, 10.07, 7 p.m.
Where: Oriental Theater
Why: Claudio Simonetti is a founding member of Italian progressive rock band Goblin and for this show he and his band will perform a live soundtrack to the 1975 Dario Argento splatter horror thrill Deep Red.

The Paranoyds, photo by Gina Canavan

What: White Reaper w/The Dirty Nil and The Paranoyds
When: Monday, 10.07, 7 p.m.
Where: Larimer Lounge

What: Boy Harsher w/Spelling
When: Monday, 10.07, 8 p.m.
Where: Marquis Theater

Tuesday | October 8

Bluebook circa 2017, photo by Tom Murphy

What: Tame Impala w/Altin Gün
When: Tuesday, 10.08, 7 p.m.
Where: Mission Ballroom

What: Deep Sea Diver w/Bluebook
When: Tuesday, 10.08, 7 p.m.
Where: Globe Hall

Wednesday | October 9

Jakob Ogawa, photo by Hedda Rysstad

What: Jakob Ogawa w/Niña
When: Wednesday, 10.09, 7 p.m.
Where: Larimer Lounge
Why: Swedish singer-songwriter Jakob Ogawa’s songwriting seems steeped in jazz-inflected pop but there’s something unusual about the angle with which he approaches the music. Almost like it incorporates elements of childhood music and fairy tales into the mix. For instance the music video for his single “April” features a sasquatch type figure who wakes up one morning and has some adventures including trying out surfing and night driving. Some fishing, visiting the graves of pets. Hanging out in a hammock. It’s subtle but it really does tell you Ogawa’s gift for chill synth pop and his own idiosyncratic vocals is coming from a place of individual imagination that immediately sets him apart from the rest of the modern crop of indie pop artists.

Gold Trash, photo by Tom Murphy

What: RAREBYRDS, Gold Trash, Shocker Mom and Savage Bass Goat
When: Wednesday, 10.09, 7 p.m.
Where: Lost Lake

Charli XCX, photo courtesy the artist

What: Charli XCX w/Dorian Electric
When: Wednesday, 10.09, 7 p.m.
Where: Ogden Theatre

What: James Blake
When: Wednesday, 10.09, 7 p.m.
Where: The Fillmore Auditorium

Best Shows in Denver 2/28/19 – 3/6/19

Teenage Fanclub performs at the Bluebird Theater on March 2

Thursday | February 28

Sliver, photo by Tom Murphy

Who: Endless, Nameless tour kickoff w/Soulless Maneater, Lightstory, Giardia and Sliver
When: Thursday, 02.28, 7 p.m.
Where: Seventh Circle Music Collective
Why: Math rock band Endless, Nameless is headed to SXSW and to launch the group on its way some of its friends and peers are playing this show including gloom and angst festooned post-punk band Soulless Maneater, psych jazz abstract metal trio Giardia as well as post-grunge poseurs Diet Nirvana. But, really, Sliver is a great band inspired by grunge-era bands, Wipers and DC punk.

Who: Starjammer w/Joshua Trinidad
When: Thursday, 02.28, 9 p.m.
Where: 3 Kings Tavern
Why: Squidds Madden has been bringing his gift for improvisation to various funk, rock, jazz and ska bands over the past two decades. But Starjammer is his one man avant-garde dub reggae project in which he pilots an integrated multi-instrumental vehicle. Lately he’s been crafting stories to go along with performances and this is one of a handful of events where he’s trying that out while bringing in some of the greatest players in Denver to round out the bill. Tonight it’s trumpet player extraordinaire Joshua Trinidad who some may know for his masterful turns in Wheelchair Sports Camp and GoStar.

Friday | March 1

Blood Incantation, photo by Tom Murphy

What: Decibel Tour: Cannibal Corpse, Morbid Angel, Necrot and Blood Incantation
When: Friday, 03.01, 6 p.m.
Where: The Oriental Theater
Why: Cannibal Corpse is known for having some of the most cartoonishly brutal and horrifying lyrics in metal. But it’s all in fun and if one can’t appreciate the absurd, even in bad taste, maybe you take yourself too seriously. The death metal legends share the stage tonight with one of the pioneers of death metal from, where else, Tampa, Florida (where Cannibal Corpse is now based): Morbid Angel. Opening the night is Blood Incantation, a Colorado band with a cult following in the death metal realm. While clearly self-aware, Blood Incantation is a powerful live act whose songs push the genre in interesting directions rather than get stuck like it’s 1985.

Who: Venus305 physical album release w/Gold Trash, EVP, Düll Haus and Techno Allah
When: Friday, 03.01, 9 p.m.
Where: Thought//Forms
Why: Molly McGrath is perhaps better known for her rock band Surf Mom. But for Venus305 she’s left behind the guitar and punk-esque vocals for electronic dance tracks and a vocal style more fitting for the type of downtempo and what one might call progressive lounge that is the music of Venus305. Also on the bill for this release show of the project’s physical album is screamy electroclash Gold Trash, industrial punk/dance duo EVP, the glitchcore for the dancefloor sounds of Techno Allah and Düll Haus, a band that seems to navigate the sonic territory traversing minimal synth dance and IDM.

Who: The Scientist w/Dr. Israel and DJ Imeh
When: Friday, 03.01, 8 p.m.
Where: Ophelia’s Electric Soapbox
Why: The Scientist learned his craft partly under the tutelage of dub legend King Dubby and went on to contribute greatly to the genre himself—which is reason enough to go if you’re into the roots of sound sculpting production.

Who: eHpH, TetraKroma, Redwing Blackbird
When: Friday, 03.01, 9 p.m.
Where: The Skylark Lounge
Why: None more synth on this night. eHpH makes a good case for why EBM and industrial rock isn’t essentially dead these days because the duo brings an emotional resonance to the music that isn’t just trying to be as angsty and nihilistic as possible. TetraKroma, that’s a lot of analog synths for making dark dance music but the depth of sound makes it obvious having the layers in hardware are worth it. Redwing Blackbird mixes samples and low-end heavy tracks to make some gritty EBM like early Front 242 but darker.

Saturday | March 2

Praga Khan of Lords of Acid, photo courtesy the artist

Who: Teenage Fanclub w/The Love Language
When: Saturday, 03.02, 8 p.m.
Where: The Bluebird Theater
Why: Teenage Fanclub came out of the fertile musical ground of C86 influenced by the bands that influenced the jangle, twee and garage rock of that era. Its second album, 1991’s The King, came out on Creation Records, the imprint better known for being home to shoegaze giants of that period like My Bloody Valentine and Slowdive. But Creation also nurtured the cooler end of power pop (later Creation signed Oasis but that’s a whole other story). In the USA, Teenage Fanclub hit the college radio charts in a big way with its later 1991 album Bandwagonesque. At the time there was a revival in the interest in power pop pioneers Big Star and its soulful and melancholic catalog—a band that somehow sounded mournful and sad even when it rocked in a celebratory fashion on its songs. Bandwagonesque evoked Big Star powerfully on songs like “What You Do To Me” and “The Concept.” But Teenage Fanclub had its own voice and its sophisticated songwriting evolved over its now long career. 1993’s Thirteen sounded like the band had absorbed a bit too much of grunge or grebo or whatever and yet its delicate psychedelia and emotionally vibrant vocals remained part of the sound. 1995’s Grand Prix dispensed with the grunge affectations going forward. Teenage Fanclub doesn’t get nearly enough credit for being an important band in the development of Britpop but probably because there’s too much rock and roll in its songwriting and not enough of the dance music/Madchester element. It is precisely because of that disconnect with that 90s trend that the group’s music has aged well.

Who: GoStar
When: Saturday, 03.02, 9:30 p.m.
Where: Dazzle
Why: If a trumpet-guitar-and-percussion-driven jazz fusion band of the early 70s (Bitches Brew period Miles, Mahavishnu Orchestra) adopted mind-altering psychedelic flourishes and then traveled forward in time to hang with Arrested Development and A Tribe Called Quest in the early 90s before hopping again and landing in the 2010’s, that band would sound like GoStar.

Who: Lords of Acid w/Orgy, Genitorturers and Little Miss Nasty
When: Saturday, 03.02, 6 p.m.
Where: The Gothic Theatre
Why: There will be a lot of ridiculous antics and NSFW stuff at this show. Including from headliner Lords of Acid. The band’s songs are all about hedonistic activities and aspirations up to the line of self-parody. Its industrial dance music and live show is also good fun and maybe vocalist and band leader Praga Khan will push someone off stage into the audience for an impromptu and unexpected stage dive. But even if he doesn’t, Khan is a charismatic and entertaining frontman who draws you into the playful chaos of the band’s music.

What: Nightshift
When: Saturday, 03.02, 9 p.m.
Where: The Meadowlark Bar
Why: Nightshift is an all vinyl dance party on first Saturdays curated by Meghan Meehan and Laura Conway, focused on synth pop, disco and new wave.

Who: Duos From The Abyss: Gort Vs. Goom, The Swamp Rats, Triplip, Still Frames
When: Saturday, 03.02, 6 p.m.
Where: Tennyson’s Tap
Why: None of these bands are particularly from the abyss unless you’re only into punk that doesn’t color widely outside the musical lines. Gort Vs. Goom is the They Might Be Giants of Blue Oyster Cult tribute bands. Triplip is the Daikaiju of prog. Gort is not a tribute band but that’s the sort of mashup that comes to mind, among other things, seeing one of the duo’s sets.

Monday | March 4

Hunter Dragon circa 2009, photo by Tom Murphy

Who: Hunter Dragon album release of Universal Basic Income w/Lazarus Horse and Shockermom
When: Monday, 03.04, 8:08 p.m.
Where: Syntax Physic Opera
Why: Hunter Dragon’s catalog is vast and widely varied in his methods and songwriting styles. But it’s unified by an imagination focused on a future that could or should exist now. Whether that’s a desolate post-disaster setting or, as the title of his new album suggests, a future where everyone can use the time they would normally expend on scrambling to survive on whatever suits their natural interests and talents. The new songs have a meditative, spacious folk quality. For the occasion of this release show Hunter has brought on board Lazarus Horse (a band that sounds like it realized that even the cooler weirdo psychedelic rock of the 2000s and 2010s would be and is played out and injected a lot more imagination and unusual rhythmic and tonal ideas into the mix) and Shockermom. The latter has been writing the soundtrack to everyone’s emotional return to peace and tranquility during the collective long dark night of the soul that’s been coursing through the world like a psychic cognate of the collapse of the global ecosystem. Essential listening.

Tuesday | March 5

In The Valley Below, photo by Jaimie Skriba

Who: Daughters w/Gouge Away and HIDE
When: Tuesday, 03.05, 7 p.m.
Where: The Gothic Theatre
Why: Daughters are the legendary post-hardcore noise rock band whose mournful and abrasive music sounds like the purging of the world’s anguish. Except Daughters make it darkly beautiful. Gouge Away is a forceful, cathartic hardcore band that isn’t trapped in early 80s SSD worship. HIDE is a performance art-oriented industrial duo from Chicago whose visceral, ritualistic live show will probably confuse punk purists but which will fit right in with everyone on the bill.

Who: Albert Hammond Jr. w/In The Valley Below
When: Tuesday, 03.05, 7 p.m.
Where: The Bluebird Theater
Why: Albert Hammond Jr. is best known for his membership in The Strokes. But his solo career has yielded better songs than The Strokes have in years. There’s a bright and fresh quality to his upbeat pop songs and his performances that are likeable even when it sometimes sounds like he’s leaning on past creative laurels. Opening the show is synth pop band In the Valley Below from Grand Rapids, Michigan. Its bass and melody-driven songs differentiate it from what one would assume are its peers in bands like CHVRCHES, Phantogram and Poliça while sharing a sense of elevating moods and positive energy.

Wednesday | March 6

Acidbat circa 2015, photo by Tom Murphy

What: Weird Wednesday: Acidbat, Satin Spar, Ruehlen/Seward
When: Wednesday, 03.06, 9 p.m.
Where: 3 Kings Tavern
Why: Acidbat doesn’t play many shows in general much less outside of some super underground show. His ambient yet beat driven, glitchy IDM is more imaginative than a lot of music out of that milieu. Also on this night’s Weird Wednesday is avant-garde improvisational/spontaneous composition duo Ruehlen/Seward.

Best Shows in Denver 1/10/18 – 1/16/18

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

Thursday | January 10, 2019

Nekrofilth, photo courtesy the artist

Who: Nekrofilth album release w/Phallic Meditation and Keef Duster
When: Thursday, 01.10, 8 p.m.
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Nekrofilth releases its new album Worm Ritual tonight at a show with heavy psychedelic bands Phallic Meditation and Keef Duster. Nekrofilth’s sound is more akin to classic early thrash and black metal. On the new record the band does cover “Poison” by Venom, after all. Like the latter and Slayer, Nekrofilth has a playful quality to its aggression and ripping guitar work. Song titles like “Vomit Dog,” “They Took My Skin,” “Ready to Defile” and “Severed Eyes” suggest a healthy sense of the viscerally absurd with an unironic joy in the cartoonishly horrific the way one might enjoy the gnarliest B horror movie. Fans of blackened thrash rejoice, Nekrofilth has what you’re looking for.

Who: Random Temple w/Thistledown
When: Thursday, 01.10, 9 p.m.
Where: Black Buzzard
Why: “Rhythm & Folk” band Thistledown will perform with Random Temple’s more production-oriented electronic project under his own name.

Friday | January 11, 2019

Product Lust circa 2017, photo by Tom Murphy

Who: Product Lust album release show w/Goon, Herse, Candy Apple
When: Friday, 01.11, 7 p.m.
Where: Seventh Circle Music Collective
Why: Product Lust’s feral and driving 2018 album Year of the Rat is being celebrated tonight with a now rare live show as vocalist Kat Salvaggio is attending school out of Colorado. The seething post-punk band’s wiry energy fits in well with weirder hardcore and punk and thus this bill with Goon, Herse and Candy Apple is an opportunity to see bands that have punk of some stripe as their root but who are taking that spark in interesting directions.

Who: Lazarus Horse
When: Friday, 01.11, 8 p.m.
Where: Mutiny Information Café
Why: Lazarus Horse is the band that comes about when someone with good taste in music and good creative instincts writes a bunch of experimental rock music that doesn’t seem obviously influenced by anything else but creative flights of fancy, escaping to daydreams while doing meaningless work as a tool for staying sane in a civilization that’s grinding its best people into the dirt. It’s the soundtrack to that internal rebellion that becomes contagious.

Saturday | January 12, 2019

Chromadrift’s Drew Miller as Brother Saturn circa 2018, photo by Tom Murphy

Who: Glasss Presents: Chromadrift album release w/Gold Trash and Bowshock
When: Saturday, 01.12, 8 p.m.
Where: Mutiny Information Café
Why: Chromadrift’s Cloudless Mind is the bright, ethereal flow of textured melodies that eases the freeze of winter. Fans of IDM and more abstract post-rock will appreciate Drew Miller’s blend of processed guitar, live synths and sequencing. Though the album dropped on January 3, this will be your first chance to see this music live in the new year. Also performing is noisy electroclash duo Gold Trash and downtempo jazz improv group Bowshock.

Who: NightWraith album release w/Glacial Tomb, BleakHeart
When: Saturday, 01.12, 8 p.m.
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: NightWraith’s self-titled, debut full length is coming out on color vinyl. The Denver-based group’s left of center mix of folky black metal, thrash and psychedelic doom is steeped in pastoral mythology.

Who: e-scapes, Zealot and The Far Stairs
When: Saturday, 01.12, 7:30 p.m.
Where: The People’s Building
Why: This’ll be probably the first indie rock show worth checking out in Aurora, Colorado since The Masculine organized one in 2009 at the old Other Side Arts space in downtown. The People’s Building is also downtown and across the street from Aurora Fox Theater. Zealot includes former members of The Don’ts and Be Carefuls, The Pseudo Dates, Violent Summer, Ideal Fathers and other bands most people haven’t heard of but should check out. The Far Stairs is a band that makes strange music sound more catchy and accessible than it has any right to.

Who: Pink Hawks, Atomga, Roka Hueka
When: Saturday, 01.12, 8 p.m.
Where: The Bluebird
Why: The local Afrobeat band all-star line-up.

Who: Pineross EP release w/Lady Gang
When: Saturday, 01.12, 7 p.m.
Where: Ubisububi Room
Why: Kevin Larkin of Chimney Choir fame is releasing his most recent EP Esplanade at this show in the extra intimate and cozy Ubisububi Room underneath the Thin Man and St. Mark’s. Lady Gang sounds like a full band but is just Jen Korte making maximum creative use of a loop station to augment her already considerable talents as a singer-songwriter.

Who: Luke Vibert, Seied and Kanyon Walker
When: Saturday, 01.12, 7:30 p.m.
Where: The Black Box
Why: Luke Vibert has long been on the forefront of modern experimental electronic dance music in various forms. Fans of Dilla, Flying Lotus and Blockhead will find a lot to like in Vibert.

Sunday | January 13, 2019

Crushed!?, photo by @scenesplitter

Who: Crushed!? W/The Uglys, Tides, Stonewall BLVD and Arctobog
When: Sunday, 01.13, 7 p.m.
Where: Seventh Circle Music Collective
Why: Originally from the much smaller nearby town of Belen, Crushed!? is now based out of Albuquerque. Its post-hardcore sound has more in common with the likes of a more melodic At the Drive-In or Touché Amoré than the more screamo end of that music. Initially the music reminds one a bit of the great punk bands of the late 90s and early 2000s who adopted a bit of the math rock thing. But its rhythms are more inventive and wide-ranging like something one might have expected out of 90s DC and other East Coast rock like Versus, Helium and The Dismemberment Plan. The group’s 2018 album Sins of the Father is refreshingly difficult pin with a specific genre designation.

Monday | January 14, 2019

Entrancer (right) with Docile Rottweiler (left) at Synesthesia 2014. Photo by Tom Murphy

Who: R.Ariel, Kafari, Entrancer and Voight
When: Monday, 01.14, 7:30 p.m.
Where: DATELINE
Why: This event is a combination of touring art installation courtesy and musical performances at DATELINE art gallery. R.Ariel’s new album Where You Are is an emotionally uplifting album of ethereal sounds and buoyant flow of bright tones. Kafari’s 2018 album Beholding is a masterpiece of minimalism like it was composed while somehow spending contemplative mornings underwater and absorbing a deep sense of peace. Entrancer has been spending years honing the ability to explore whatever directions his mastery of synthesis and beatmaking takes him. His 2018 album Decline Vol. 1 is true soundscaping that draws you into a sonic journey that while impressionistic and composed of deep layers of tone and texture conveys a sense of place physically and emotionally. Is the “Decline” of the title something to dread or something to greet as the inevitable cycle of life and death? The album offers no pat answers but it certain captures the ineffable moments of decline of a phase of one’s life, of civilizations and of all authoritarian orders. Voight may finally play a deep house/techno set. If not, it’ll be, by far, the loudest project of the night with its fiery and intense industrial post-punk shoegaze.

Who: Solos/Duos – Denver Avant Garde Music Society
When: Monday, 01.14, 8 p.m.
Where: Thought//Forms
Why: This night, long held at other venues over the years, has re-emerged at Thought//Forms gallery. You never know what you’ll see but this night you’ll also get to see a set from Denver’s premiere spontaneous composition band Animal / object.

Who: Freq Boutique
When: Monday, 01.14, 8 p.m.
Where: Fort Greene
Why: This reoccurring event organized by electronic equipment company WMD, this night is sort of an open mic for synthesizer enthusiasts. This night’s festivities may include a set from hip-hop/experimental electronic dance artist Strange Powers.

Tuesday | January 15, 2019

Mick Jenkins, photo by Sam Schmieg

Who: Mick Jenkins w/Kari Faux
When: Tuesday, 01.15, 7 p.m.
Where: The Bluebird Theater
Why: Mick Jenkins 2018 sophomore album Pieces of a Man is a bit of a tribute to Gil Scott-Heron’s 1971 album of the same name. Like Scott-Heron, Jenkins offers snapshots of the world around him in words with musical accompaniment to set the vibe. The organization of the album and the experience of listening to it is something like a hip jazz and poetry night. The opening track is called “Heron Flow” as a nod to Gil and his record’s opening track, the influential song poem “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.” Jenkins and his collaborators evoke the feel of a hazy after hours jazz club across the record with a sense of blending old school production and present day wordsmithing. Jenkins makes fairly mundane life experiences seem mythic and cool as Scott-Heron did in his day. Also on this bill is one of modern hip-hop’s greatest talents, Kari Faux. Her EPs, partly boosted by music appearing in the comedy series Insecure, combine a rebellious swagger with an otherworldly and mysterious quality – a rarity in music generally.

Ensiferum, photo by Andy Whittle

Who: Ensiferum w/Septicflesh and Arsis
When: Tuesday, 01.15, 7 p.m.
Where: The Oriental Theater
Why: Helsinki, Finland’s Ensiferum is a melodic death metal band in the vein of the Gothenburg style but on the more orchestral end. Its use of acoustic guitars and folk structure and progressions give its music an expansive feel that evokes images of standing at the helm of one’s longboat charging toward unsuspecting European enclaves in the ninth century. Fans of Enslaved may enjoy Ensiferum’s similarly joyful performances.

Who: Supersuckers w/The Hangmen and Reno Divorce
When: Tuesday, 01.15, 7 p.m.
Where: Larimer Lounge
Why: Supersuckers started playing its brand of fuzzy cowpunk in Tucson, Arizona in 1988 before moving to Seattle in 1989 near the beginning of when more than a few music journalists from beyond the Pacific Northwest were starting to take not of happenings in the Emerald City’s underground. The band never made the big time the way the grunge bands everyone has heard of did but it has been able to carve out a career for itself and its wiseacre, intentionally lowbrow humor. Who else would start off their 1992 album on Sub Pop, The Smoke of Hell, with a song called “Coattail Rider” at the peak of the alternative rock explosion? Such chutzpah must continue to be honored. Oh yeah, the trio’s 2018 album, out on Acetate Records, is called Suck It. That the underground rock world has come back around to the sound Supersuckers perfected three decades ago is surely not lost on the band as a choice bit of irony. The song “History Of Rock n’ Roll” in which Eddie Spaghetti sings about how Supersuckers, the greatest band in the world is a footnote in the history of rock ‘n roll suggests they’re well aware.

Best Shows in Denver 10/11/18 – 10/17/18

ADULT. performs at Larimer Lounge on Saturday, 10/13/18, with Plack Blague and Voight

Thursday | October 11, 2018

The Church circa 2016, photo by Tom Murphy

Who: Karl Blau w/Porlolo and High Plains Honky
When: Thursday, 10.11, 8 p.m.
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Karl Blau has had a rich and varied career spanning the past two decades or so. As a member of lo-fi rock band D+ he wrote songs and performed with Bret Lunsford formerly of Beat Happening and future Microphones and Mount Eerie mastermind Phil Elverum. As a solo artist and musical curator with his Kelp Lunacy Advanced Plagiarism Society musical subscription artist, Blau has been involved in making music in widely disparate styles and often hybridizing them or outright creating something that’s impossible to classify beyond maybe simply pop. In recent years, Blau has been writing songs that seem shaped by everything else he’s made up to now with bossa nova percussion, African pop vocal cadences, hip-hop-and-reggae-informed lyrical phrasing and indie/freak folk sensibilities. In the past Blau has performed solo with a loop pedal and pulled off what sounds like a full band minus robust drums so you’re never full sure what you’re in for barring that it’ll be exceptional.

Who: The Church
When: Thursday, 10.11, 7:30/8 p.m.
Where: The Fox Theatre
Why: Australian rock band The Church is currently undertaking it’s tour for the thirtieth anniversary of its 1988 album Starfish. The band had already made a name for itself with fans of adventurous, inventive, literate and thoughtful yet heartfelt rock music. But Starfish was the group’s breakthrough to not just a wider audience but the mainstream with hits like “Under the Milky Way” and “Reptile.” While the group is justly celebrating the release of its iconic album for itself and fans that maybe didn’t get to see The Church in its 80s heyday (pardon the referential joke to the band’s 1985 album of the same name), the band’s new material is as vital as anything it has done in the past and you’ll get the best of both worlds at this show.

Friday | October 12, 2018

Ralph Gean (with Andrew Lindstrom) circa 2014, photo by Tom Murphy

What: Anxious Little Friends Fest Day 1
When: Friday, 10.12, 6 p.m.
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Record labels Snappy Little Numbers and Anxious and Angry collaborated on this two day festival at the Hi-Dive with some of the better local and not local punk and punk-related bands. For this night you can see two night headliners Off With Their Heads as well as Riverboat Gamblers, SPELLS, Dirty Few, Black Dots, Hooper and Modern Goon.

What: Franksgiving 2018
When: Friday, 10.12, 9 p.m.
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: This yearly event benefiting the Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation of America is hosted by local connoisseur of weird music Franklin Bell. Naturally he always finds some of the best local odd yet accessible bands for the vent. As usual, Little Fyodor & Babushka Band, one of Denver’s longest running and most consistently interesting weirdo punk institutions will perform as well as not-widely-recognized-but-absolutely-a-local-rock-and-roll-legend Ralph Gean, Fyodor drummer Tricky Dick Wicket’s side project that isn’t Universal Devils, Whiskey Orphans, the “sweet and sensitive keyboard songs” of No Pants Katie with DJ Frank Bell spinning kooky kuts.

Who: Screwtape w/Potato Pirates, Noogy, World Movement and Ultraviolet
When: Friday, 10.12, 7 p.m.
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Screwtape’s politically-charged hardcore and dynamic live show has already made it a favorite among local fans of punk and the group is kicking off its latest tour to the south with this show sharing the bill with ska-punk veterans Potato Pirates and Colorado Springs hardcore outfit Ultraviolet.
Who: Multidim Records Official Launch Party
When: Friday, 10.12, 8 p.m.
Where: Leon
Why: Multidim Records is a new Denver-based label focusing on emerging artists in electronic and abstract music. Founded by Tommy Metz (Glissline) and Michael David King (Cities of Earth), this event will feature some of the artists on the label’s roster including the respective projects of the label’s founders as well as Andre Cactus + Ah, River and Mirror Fears.

Saturday | October 13, 2018

Shocker Mom, photo by Tom Murphy

Who: ADULT. w/Plack Blague and Voight
When: Saturday, 10.13, 8 p.m.
Where: Larimer Lounge
Why: For twenty years, Detroit’s ADULT. has been on the forefront of mixing electronic pop, techno and industrial music with an experimental flair. In the late 90s, ADULT. helped to pioneer the sound and aesthetic that came to be called electroclash by around the turn of the century. As the duo explored sounds and performance it garnered a cult following among connoisseurs of electronic music paired with a dynamic and sometimes confrontational performance style. It adopted and mutated the sound and production ideas running through underground techno throughout the 2000s giving it a powerful and imaginative soundscape to match singer Nicola Kuperus’s emotionally-nuanced vocals. The band’s 2018 album This Behavior was the darker side of the songwriting that went into the 2017 album Detroit House Guests—both rich and dense with sonic detail and inventive rhythms.

Also on the this leg of the tour is Lincoln, Nebraska’s Plack Blague. Raws Schlesinger had been, maybe still is, involved in the Nebraska grind and extreme metal scene in various bands. But Plack Blague is a bit like a leather daddy Big Freedia but with beats that are the industrial and techno analogue to sissy bounce. On previous occasions in Denver, Plack Blague may have seemed to be a sonically abrasive spectacle but the act’s songs have taken on a compelling form beyond the spectacle without sacrificing the striking visual aspect of the band including Schleslinger’s undeniably amazing dance moves.

What: Anxious Little Friends Fest Day 2
When: Saturday, 10.13, 6 p.m.
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: This second night of Anxious Little Friends Fest includes performances from Off With Their Heads, The Bollweevils, SPELLS, Friends of Cesar Romero, Lawsuit Models, Great American House Fire and Bad Year.

What: KGNU Quarterly Showcase
When: Saturday, 10.13, 8:30 p.m.
Where: Lion’s Lair
Why: This edition of the KGNU Quarterly Showcase features some of Denver’s most innovative electronic artists. Shocker Mom’s dreamy, ambient R&B is the latest vehicle from Robin Walker. As a member of Cougar Pants, walker, along with Jessica Hughes, made a particularly tender and emotionally deep yet playful type of indie pop. As a solo performer, Walker distinguished herself as a talented vocalist and songwriter whose use of sound taps into a pre-linguistic part of the human brain, communicating the vibrations of a loving, healing aspect of the universe—which she has manifested most strongly with Shocker Mom. Also catch her in excellent hip-hop duo Nighttimeschoolbus. Larians is the solo side project of Male Blonding singer/guitarist Noah Simons. His brilliant take on IDM, techno and ambient may just be getting started but it’s obvious he’s learned a few things to build beyond from Burial and Aphex Twin. Bios+a+ic is the solo project of Textures Ambient Showcase and Symbolic Insight head Wesley Davis. All of his albums with the project are different and conceptual, representing ideas and sound experiments that tickled Davis’ imagination at the time of their creation. Also on the bill are All Mask and DJ Winter

Sunday | October 14, 2018

Future Generations, photo (cropped) by Shervin Lainez

Who: Henry Rollins Travel Slideshow Tour
When: Sunday, 10.14, 7 p.m.
Where: Boulder Theater
Why: It’s been a good longer while than usual since Henry Rollins has done one of his spoken tours. This time around he’s sharing his photography and telling stories from his travels around the world. His spoken word shows are always worth checking out and with the images to prompt his memory and engage those who show up it will be a more immersive experience when coupled with his already fantastic storytelling.

Who: Future Generations w/Zuli and Whiskey Autumn
When: Sunday, 10.14, 7 p.m.
Where: Lost Lake
Why: Brooklyn has long been home to eclectic indie rock with artists, of necessity, trying out innovative musical ideas and strong songwriting in order to stand out. Future Generations’ 2018 album Landscape is like a stroll through a person’s day and life and composed as though the melodies and rhythms are a soundtrack with electronic, ambient textures to give the songwriting a context that connects all the music. Sure, each piece can be enjoyed on its own but the record feels like a new take on the classic album format from a time when bands felt like there were no throwaway songs and thought in terms of interconnecting themes. Probably not a concept album but one that works on a very conceptual level too.

Tuesday | October 16, 2018

A Place To Bury Strangers circa 2012, photo by Tom Murphy

Who: A Place to Bury Strangers w/Kraus and cindygod
When: Tuesday, 10.16, 9 p.m.
Where: Globe Hall
Why: A Place To Bury Strangers is often credited as one of the bands that helped to re-popularize shoegaze in the underground. But the band’s contribution has run deeper as guitarist/vocalist Oliver Ackerman created unique guitar pedals with functionality that has helped push the sound of the instrument into new realms of noise and texture. As part of the pedal and sound equipment company/DIY space Death By Audio, Ackerman and company contributed to its creative community in a direct, pragmatic way. APTBS fused lo-fi, shoegaze, noise, post-punk and hardcore in fascinating ways. For an album or two it felt like maybe the project had plateaued even if the songwriting was still good. But the 2018 album Pinned with new drummer Lia Simon Braswell demonstrated that the band hasn’t run out of ideas for heady and disorienting soundscaping. Opening the show is Denver’s cindygod, the follow-up band to shoegaze/noise rock duo Gauntlet Hair. Now the band is a quartet with an even more exhilarating panoply of sound.

Wednesday | October 17, 2018

Gold Trash, photo by Tom Murphy

Who: Sarah Ruth Alexander, Polecat Moon Pussy and Gold Trash
When: Wednesday, 10.17, 9 p.m.
Where: Thought//Forms
Why: [update, Shiny Around the Edges no longer on the bill] Sarah Ruth Alexander’s brooding yet luminous compositions utilizing effected vocals and acoustic instruments have made Dallas’ They Say The Wind Made Them Crazy one of the more interesting bands and critically acclaimed bands that in the past his intentionally been more or less off the internet because its music works best live. Alexander’s solo performances recall some of the most chilling moments of Nico’s solo work, The Marble Index, Desertshore and The End in particular, in its use of organic instruments in a manner suggesting an electronic music aesthetic as a way to tap into deeply rooted spaces in the psyche. One might also hear in her songs resonances with Jarboe’s more intensely tranquil performances with Swans. Moon Pussy is a noise rock band from Denver and Gold Trash could be said to be a soulful yet noisy version of an electroclash band.

Best Shows in Denver 9/27/18 – 10/3/18

Courtney Barnett headlines The Ogden Theatre on September 29 and 30 with Waxahatchee. Photo by Pooneh Ghana.

Thursday | September 27, 2018

Gort Vs. Goom circa 2014, photo by Tom Murphy

What: 2X4 Duo Fest: Smashy Claw, Sugar Skulls and Marigolds, Gold Trash and Gort Vs. Goom
When: Thursday, 09.27, 7:30 p.m.
Where: Syntax Physic Opera
Why: This second annual edition of 2X4 Duo Fest features four duo bands (thus the name, of course). For this edition, as with the 2017 event, organizer Logan Rainard of Gort Vs. Goom assembled a genre-diverse bill. His own band, Gort Vs. Goom would have been considered punk 40 years ago before what that was supposed to sound like got more or less settled by some codification of the genre. Bass, drums, vocals and raw power with some nods to prog and art rock. Gold Trash is part noise, part electroclash and general pop chaos. Sugar Skulls and Marigolds would probably fit easily into a broadly metal world except the band’s musical range includes their “acoustic” set which sounds more like ghostly post-punk. Smashy Claw is what would happen if a couple of very self-aware geeks decided to get into writing eccentric alternative pop songs. Only if those geeks weren’t wasting our time with filking and had a real knack for good songwriting.

Who: Too Many Zooz w/Honeycomb
When: Thursday, 09.27, 7 p.m.
Where: The Bluebird Theater
Why: Too Many Zooz is a percussion and horns-driven jazz band that performs a style of music it calls “brass house” in that it employs acoustic instruments to make sounds that are like the use of samples in an electronic hip-hop beat. The group has performed with Beyoncé on the strength of its chops and creativity and its own albums and shows are an impressive display of what one can do with instruments you’re using to seeing in other contexts once you engage your imagination to see their possibilities in others. The group recently released a video for the single “Car Alarm” in which the trio brilliantly plays around, yes, a car alarm and makes it work.

Who: Slothrust w/Summer Cannibals and Iress
When: Thursday, 09.27, 8 p.m.
Where: Lost Lake
Why: Boston’s Slothrust combines a kind of jazz-inflected R&B mixed with fuzzy rock. It’s sound has been compared to the 90s revival of the past few years but the structure of its songs often have more in common with hip-hop than grunge and its quieter more introspective side with soulful folk. Its new record, 2018’s The Pact, brings these sides together well in a well-sequenced album that has the eclectic musicality and depth of expression in its thoughtful lyrics that we’ve come to expect from the band.

Also on this tour is Summer Cannibals from Portland, Oregon. The band’s sound defies easy categorization beyond hard rock but it has some loose around the edges wildness akin to Babes in Toyland and L7. Except Jessica Boudreaux’s voice is both melodic while cutting through the fuzzy sparks of the band’s driving forward momentum. Some might call Summer Cannibals garage punk but it’s guitar work is much more compelling than most of that wave of music and its musical vision more coherent as well.

Friday | September 28, 2018

Denver Meatpacking Company, photo by Michelle Simutis

Who: Too Many Zooz – Pug In A Tub Tour w/Honeycomb and The Alcapones
When: Friday, 09.28, 8:30 p.m.
Where: Fox Theatre
Why: For Too Many Zooz see above for 09.27 at The Bluebird.

Who: Gary Numan w/Nightmare Air and DJ Slave 1
When: Friday, 09.28, 8 p.m.
Where: Gothic Theatre
Why: For those somehow not familiar, Gary Numan beyond his 1979/1980 Top 40 hit “Cars,” was a pioneer of the use of synthesizer as a compositional element in pop music. His old band Tubeway Army was a post-punk project and that sort of moody, brooding element continued on into Numan’s career under his own name. Throughout the 80s, Numan explored themes of alienation, the impact of technology on human civilization and psychology and the ways technology could be used to write and produce music. Numan also experimented with integrating other styles of music outside his perceived repertoire and his body of work and through the 90s were an obvious influence on industrial music generally and industrial rock specifically. In the 2000s Numan has delved further into conceptual work in his songwriting especially his two most recent albums, 2013’s Splinter (Songs from a Broken Mind) and 2017’s Savage (Songs from a Broken World). Numan is no stranger to using dystopian science fiction ideas or even simply examination of possible futures extrapolated from the present in his music but Savage is one wherein he posits a near future where global warming has caused a worldwide desert. In seeking answers what remains of humanity seeks answers in ancient religion rather than trying to deal with the world as it is with disastrous results. As with most science fiction a warning with some uncomfortable truths about humans contained within it and a suggestion to seek creative solutions rather than what we think is tried and true.

Guerilla Toss, image courtesy the artist

Who: Guerilla Toss w/Black Belt Eagle Scout and H Lite
When: Friday, 09.28, 8 p.m.
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Guerilla Toss came up through the underground/DIY music world of Boston and New York where it experimented with musical ideas and concepts, developing what might be described as weirdo electro No Wave funk. Except that wouldn’t encompass completely a sound and performance style that includes the threads of punk fury and wiry energy, noise, prog and the avant-garde. The group recently released its latest album Twisted Crystal, an album that seems to transform some of the band’s frantic, nervous energy into dense yet beautifully expansive atmospheres while using its angular dynamics straight into those more fluid. It’s a fascinating mixture of ideas and sounds that is both alien and comforting in a way that a surreal cartoon or live action show from your youth can be.

Who: Modern Goon, Luxury Hearse, A Light Among Many, New Standards Men album release
When: Friday, 09.28, 9 p.m.
Where: Denver Distillery
Why: New Standards Men released it’s new album People Wonder digitally on September 24. But it’s celebrating the release of the record with this show with like-minded peers at Denver Distillery. The Denver-based band has been releasing some of the more interesting experimental heavy guitar music of recent years in the Mile High City but the material on the new album has as much in common with 90s, dark math rock legends like A Minor Forest and Don Caballero as it does with even an adventurous doom band of today though some of that style of deep droning is present on the songs “Tanned Womb” and “Thirteen Alaskan Islands/Pacific Blood.” But it’s the sparkle and drift over the driving fuzz that makes the music breathe and invites the imagination to project onto its soundscape.

Who: Flahoola, To Be Astronauts, Denver Meatpacking Company
When: Friday, 09.28, 8 p.m.
Where: The Skylark Lounge
Why: Denver Meatpacking Company may hearken back to early alternative rock in the grunge vein but it does so with a charming self-consciousness that transcends any mere nostalgic kick. Flahoola as well but their sound is more like an early 2000s melodic stoner rock band that injects more energy into the rhythm.

Who: Weaponizer and Necropanther
When: Friday, 09.28, 9 p.m.
Where: Tooey’s Off Colfax
Why: Two of the best bands from Denver that in another era would have been considered thrash but thrash already happened and today’s metal bands that aren’t going for pure throwback cachet have been influenced by a broad spectrum of music, heavy and otherwise. Weaponizer’s more gritty style is like a more menacing, grind-esque, speed metal. Necropanther’s sound is closer to melodic death metal but a little too animalistic in the vocals for all of that.

Saturday | September 29, 2018

What: Whaaat!? A Festival for Games and Experimental Interaction
When: Saturday, 09.29, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Where: ATLAS Institute at CU Boulder
Why: This is a one day event dedicated to experimental games (arcade/video, tabletop et. al.) with featured speakers on the subject of gaming and development. Mattie Brice is not just a game designer but an activist in the games industry whose work includes Mainichi, in which players take on the role of the daily life of a transgender person. Her work has also been important on the subject of diversity in the gaming world generally. Pippin Barr, like Brice, is a game designer and educator who teaches game design and programming. Barr’s games are often unconventional and challenge traditional notions of what computer games can be including The Artist is Present, inspired by and involving performance artist Marina Abramović’s piece of the same name. The event gives attendees a chance to witness and participate in cutting edge games and interact with some of the minds behind them. Those interested should register at www.whaaat.io.

Who: Ned Garthe Explosion, Oxeye Daisy and Church Fire
When: Saturday, 09.29, 8 p.m.
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Ned Garthe Explosion makes a good case for why modern psychedelic rock isn’t dead. Even from early on, the show itself has been chaotic and colorful enough to be worthy of the term psychedelic in not only sound, content and presentation. And yet, the songwriting has always been solid and interesting. Oxeye Daisy has seemingly leapt past 90s alt-rock nostalgia into a musical zone that, sure, bears the influences of that era, that is more energized atmospheric pop than anything throwback. Its sound is very much of the present and fans of Wye Oak and Japanese Breakfast should take note. Church Fire has secretly and not so secretly been one of Denver’s most engaging live bands for not just its irresistible dance beats but its willingness to go beyond the map of middle-of-the-road accessibility mixing in noise, industrial dynamic edge and Shannon Webber’s impassioned vocal delivery.

What: Industrial Music For the Masses Vol. 2: DJ Ed Gein and eHpH
When: Saturday, 09.29, 9 p.m.
Where: Milk Bar Green Room
Why: Denver EBM/industrial rock band eHpH has been hitting a strong creative vein of late crafting vibrant and engrossing atmospheric electronic music shot through with a palpable emotional power. Always interesting, the duo is now starting to hit its stride as a band.

Dr. Hamburger

Who: Belly Eater, Curt Oren, Real Dom, $addy, Oxygen Thief and Dr. Hamburger
When: Saturday, 09.29, 8 p.m.
Where: Thought//Forms Gallery
Why: Fairly broad spectrum of noise and related music at this show. Belly Eater from Ohio is sort of a noisy, Atari Teenage Riot-esque breakcore punk band. Chicago’s Curt Oren does avant-garde audio-acoustic music including processed saxophone. Real Dom from Iowa threads together synthwave and noise. $addy makes bizarro video game music for stuff way more interesting and haunting than Sad Satan and without the disturbing baggage of the latter. Oxygen Thief is true bedroom techno dungeonwave, or something. Dr. Hamburger has landed in Denver from Rochester, New York to share his processed real time environment noise. Somehow none of these acts sound anything alike and the bill is better for it.

Who: Chelsea Wolfe w/Russian Circles
When: Friday, 09.28, 8 p.m.
Where: Cervantes’ Masterpiece Ballroom
Why: Chelsea Wolfe’s knack for making deep, dark, loud music was built on a foundation of the dynamics and sonics of acoustic, old world folk music. Along with her channeling her experiences with sleep paralysis, anxiety and other psychological trauma into her art, Wolfe’s music has an unexpected depth and emotional intensity beyond anyone trying to pen her music in as doom or Goth or neofolk or anything so narrowly defined. For this tour she’s sharing dates with instrumental metal group Russian Circles whose own music seems to come from a primordial place from which all ancient religions and rituals find their root. Although associated with metal, Russian Circles sounds like its music origins are steeped in posthardcore and, like Wolfe, ancient, certainly pre-Christian, folk music.

Who: Lyrics Born w/Indigenous Peoples, AG Flux and Bukue One
When: Saturday, 09.29, 8 p.m.
Where: Cervantes’ Masterpiece Ballroom
Why: Tsutomu Shimura used to call himself Asia Born because he was actually born in Tokyo. But early in his career he changed his hip-hop moniker to Lyrics Born so that the perception of his work would be a product of its own merit rather than through some essentialist filter. To his credit, Lyrics Born’s fluid delivery and vocal centered, funk-driven, songs bring an experimental dimension to a style of hip-hop that sounds like something from a classic 80s era rather than something that is pushing stylistic boundaries. Lyrics Born is now touring on his first album in a few years, Quite a Life.

Who: Cuckoo, Magpies (MT), Grave Moss and Surrender Signal
When: Saturday, 09.29, 9 p.m.
Where: The Skylark Lounge
Why: Magpies got started in Havre, Montana, close to the Canadian border, in 2006 and given its bright, introspective indie rock probably didn’t find too big an audience at home before moving to Missoula in 2012 where, like most bands that don’t have some kind of marketing budget or an influential PR team, it plays to small rooms regularly. But the band did what not every group does, it went on tour and has released multiple albums including 2017’s Annex. Brooding, fuzzy and anthemic, it’s something for fans of Rainer Maria and Eleventh Dream Day.

Rounding out the bill are three Denver bands that resist pat classification. Cuckoo may have at one point sounded a little like a math rock version of a hardcore band but now that math-y side has become more dominant with intricate guitar work in the context of a spare and simple songwriting context. Grave Moss is sort of like a death rock band if that band wasn’t brooding so much as burning with nervous energy and dynamics. Surrender Signal’s mixture of introspective moods, cool melodies peppered with atonal highlights and emotional urgency is reminiscent of acts on the Teenbeat imprint and early Merge Records.

Who: Courtney Barnett w/Waxahatchee
When: Saturday, 09.29, 8 p.m.
Where: The Ogden Theatre
Why: Courtney Barnett’s witty, self-effacing songwriting goes beyond merely clever wordplay and a poignant observation here and there. It’s often as though she’s tapping into a modern contemporary zeitgeist or able to express her experiences, feelings and imagined scenarios in a way that is immediately relatable to anyone that has taken some time to ponder what life is all about or at least be amused by circumstances that resist immediate interpretation. Throughout her career, Barnett has been especially adept at humanizing anxiety as experienced. Barnett doesn’t treat the experience as simply a condition to be treated in a clinical fashion, rather she articulates with telling details and humor how that emotional wrecking ball affects one’s life in a myriad of ways, shining a compassionate light on its several darkened corners of in the psyche. You can pick up anywhere in Barnett’s catalog and get a record worth taking the time to delve into but her 2018 album, Tell Me How You Really Feel, is a seemingly more subdued affair sonically speaking if not so much in the words. When you call songs “I’m Not Your Mother, I’m Not Your Bitch” and “Crippling Self-Doubt and a General Lack of Confidence” you’re not mincing words and on the new record Barnett spares us the niceties in favor of personal truth.

Katie Crutchfield of Waxahatchee is no stranger to laying bare a powerful vulnerability in her own songwriting and performances. Her own storytelling has a warmth and intimacy that when coupled with the spacious, expansive quality of the music an impact that lingers with you long after the song is over. Crutchfield transmogrifies the fear, uncertainty and anxiety at the heart of the experiences of most people living today in this crumbling and increasingly demanding civilization into anthems of to soothe and comfort without sugarcoating the way things are. Waxahatchee released the Great Thunder EP in 2018.

Sunday | September 30, 2018

Waxahatchee, photo by Molly Matalon

Who: Courtney Barnett w/Waxahatchee
When: Sunday, 09.30, 7 p.m.
Where: The Ogden Theatre
Why: For Waxahatchee and Courtney Barnett see above for 09.29.

Earthless, photo by Atiba Jefferson

Who: Earthless w/Mad Alchemy and Green Druid
When: Sunday, 09.30, 7 p.m.
Where: The Marquis Theater
Why: San Diego’s Earthless is on a surface level a sort of bluesy psychedelic rock band akin to Mountain or Uriah Heep. Except with a modern sensibility like its members have already heard and been imprinted a bit by peers like Dead Meadow and Sleep. But Earthless’ embrace of the imagery of natural mysticism and the aesthetics of kosmische musik gives its music an air of otherworldliness even as it employs rock and roll sounds and rhythms that may be familiar to many of its listeners. Its new album, 2018’s Black Heaven, has the band following the rabbit hole of its musical intuition down paths it might not have taken if the songwriting was consciously crafted with standard song structure.

What: Textures: Chromadrift, Blank Human and Ancient Inc. 
When: Sunday, 7:30 p.m.
Where: Mutiny Information Café
Why: This latest edition of the Textures ambient showcase features dream pop/guitar drone artist Chromadrift, Blank Human’s modular synth compositions (Blank Human’s Dan Coleman is also in experimental electronic/industrial duo Luxury Hearse) and Ancient Inc., a project that uses field recordings, ancient acoustic instruments and production to create its textured sonic atmospheres.

Who: Brighter Death Now w/Theologian, Echo Beds, Page 27 and Gruesome Relics
When: Sunday, 9 p.m.
Where: TBA
Why: As Brighter Death Now, Roger Karmanik has been a prolific and influential maker of forbidding industrial soundscapes and noise. His now defunct record label Cold Meat Industry introduced the world to some of the most innovative and challenging music of its time from 1987 to 2013. This is a rare chance to see the Swedish artist live in Denver with a handful of like-minded local acts.

Monday | October 1, 2018

Presets, photo courtesy the artist

Who: The Presets w/Blood Red Shoes
When: Monday, 10.01, 7 p.m.
Where: The Bluebird Theater
Why: The Presets from Sydney, Australia is a duo making the kind of electronic pop that on the surface is fun, high energy dance music. But their latest album, 2018’s Hi Viz makes it more obvious the depth of influence and innovation going on underneath what seems obvious. “Beethoven” and other tracks are reminiscent of the dark, cavernous, mysterious club vibe that was an aspect of the music of Underworld in the 90s—a calming tone amid urgent rhythms. Along with fellow Sydney electronic artist Flume, The Presets helped to bring Australia’s dance music world to a global audience. Even though Hi Viz, as the name suggests, was aimed at broadening the duo’s potential fan base with a diversity of musical ideas loaded into the tracks, the experiments also made for one of the more interesting electronic albums of this year thus far.

Who: The Breeders w/Sasami and Boyhollow
When: Monday, 10.01, 7 p.m.
Where: The Bluebird Theater
Why: Alternative rock band The Breeders came through Colorado in the spring touring in support of its 2018 album All Nerve. While one of the band’s stronger efforts of the past twenty years it also includes an interesting pick of a cover song with “Archangel’s Thunderbird” by classic psychedelic prog band Amon Duul II. The band is also bringing along Sasami as in Sasami Ashworth, former member of Cherry Glazerrr, on her solo tour in the wake of the release of a couple of acclaimed singles.

Who: Lucy Spraggan w/The Dollhouse Thieves, Sarah Slaton
When: Monday, 10.01.18 7 p.m.
Where: Lost Lake
Why: Lucy Spraggan is a singer/songwriter from the UK who was already making a name for herself as an artist of note before auditioning for The X Factor and, in fact, had already signed to Columbia before any episode in which she appeared aired to the public. Spraggan is an LGBTQ activist in the UK and she and her partner foster disadvantaged children and that points to the compassion and and emotional strength of her songwriting. 2017’s I Hope You Don’t Mind Me Writing is brimming with the aforementioned along with an irreverent and sometimes self-deprecating sense of humor. Spraggan’s new album is set for release in 2019 but for this tour you may get to hear some of that material.

Who: IDLES w/Bambara
When: Monday, 10.01.18, 7 p.m.
Where: Larimer Lounge
Why: IDLES from Bristol, UK put out an album in 2018 called Joy as an Act of Resistance. A bold title and one the band was able to live up to at a time when too much of punk is fairly traditionalist in most ways. Musically it’s more experimental than a lot of punk and could be considered post-punk but the vibe is there and the critique of cultural distraction as aspirational reward, fake do-gooders, self-destruction and toxic masculinity is refreshing. Also on the tour is Brooklyn, New York’s Bambara. There’s a lot of darkwave-inspired bands and a new post-punk revival that’s been going on for nearly a decade but Bambara manages to stand out with some genuinely deep personal darkness in the vocals and sonics reminiscent of Red Lorry Yellow Lorry and The Birthday Party in post-come down mode. It’s own 2018 album, Shadow On Everything, delivers on the promise of that title.

Tuesday | October 2, 2018

at Oriental Theater circa 2018, photo by Tom Murphy

Who: <PIG>, eHpH, Offerings to Odin, and DJ n810
When: Tuesday, 10.02, 7 p.m.
Where: 3 Kings Tavern
Why: Raymond Watts of <PIG> has been an influential figure on the sound and aesthetics of industrial music going back to the early-to-mid 80s as a producer, an artist and a sound engineer. While touring with Einsturzende Neubauten he had to tangle with a challenging live sound situation with that band’s use of large art pieces and experiments as noisemakers as well as more conventional instrumentation. He contributed to some of KMFDM’s most interesting work and with <PIG> he was an innovator in both industrial rock and finely sculpted ambient music. For this tour it’s mostly going to industrial rock but Watts’ stage performance draws on the antics of Freddie Mercury and Rob Halford and the aesthetics of a Kenneth Anger’s 1963 film Scorpio Rising. Or if not, that’s what it looked like while he was touring with Ohgr over the summer of 2018.

Who: Vase Vide w/Patrick Hale Coyle and Housekeys
When: Tuesday, 10.02, 8 p.m.
Where: Thought//Forms Gallery
Why: Vase Vide is yet more proof that Colorado Springs is “hiding” some of Colorado’s most interesting bands. Sure, synth pop, but too weird and inherently experimental for just that. Daniel Oglesby’s and Kellie Palmblad’s vocal layers and treatments are certainly accessible but challenge conventional notions of what forms pop music can take. Along with the music and visual presentation of the band, Vase Vide may not be so well-known in Denver but the quality of the imagination going into its music and concept should garner the group national and international attention.

Wednesday | October 3, 2018

Dr. Hamburger, photo by Tom Murphy

What: Weird Wednesday: Enji, Dr. Hamburger and Gothsta
When: Wednesday, 10.03, 9 p.m. doors/9:15 show
Where: 3 Kings Tavern
Why: October’s Weird Wednesday will be extra weird with video game electronics/guitar looping from Enji who will probably perform in an unusual mask. Gothsta is Weird Wednesday host Claudia Woodman’s keytar band and so a bit of glam presentation and the odd but on point cover. Dr. Hamburger is Cameron Farrash from Rochester, New York whose layers of textured beats, drone, harsh noise and ambient tones creates a surreal, even otherworldly ambiance.

Best Shows in Denver 9/13/18 – 9/19/18

Angel Olsen performs at The Paramount Theatre on 9/17/18. Photo by Taylor Boylston

Thursday | September 13, 2018

Joe Dosik, photo by Curtis Essel

Who: Joe Dosik w/Moonglade
When: Thursday, 09.13, 7 p.m.
Where: Larimer Lounge
Why: With funk band Vulfpeck, Joe Dosik is often a bit of a sideplayer on sax and keys but with his recently released solo debut full length Inside Voice, Dosik makes good on the promise of his 2018 EP Game Winner. The lush production and Dosik’s versatile, soulful vocals is like something out of the late 70s or early 80s. Like maybe Dosik sequestered himself away from most modern music and listened mostly to a lot of Billy Paul, Luther Vandross’s 1981 breakout Never Too Much and Joe Jackson’s 1982 album Night and Day. Dosik’s compositions tend to be produced with more space to let atmospherics hang and resolve in a way that great pop artists in the aforementioned era often indulged but which in modern pop seems a bit of an all too human anachronism. These days, that’s the kind of quaint touch we could use more of.

What: Turn It Around: The Story of East Bay Punk at Sie Film Center w/Aaron Cometbus and Anna Brown
When: Thursday, 09.13, 6 p.m.
Where: Sie Film Center
Why: Aaron Cometbus’ ‘zine Cometbus has inspired generations of artists from other ‘zinesters, comics creators and musicians. His depiction of life across his body of work captured the moment, low and exciting, in a way few have. He and Anna Brown, a writer, surfer, educator and significant figure in the California punk world since the 80s, will be part of a Q&A after the screening of Turn It Around: The Story of East Bay Punk, a documentary about the punk scene in the San Francisco Bay area that brought us not just Maximum Rock ‘N’ Roll but the rich punk subculture that it documented and continues to do so including, for better or worse, the wave of pop punk that was the next major musical movement from the underground to emerge as alternative rock was splintering and co-opted by mainstream moneyed music industry interests.

Who: Musical Mayhem: Marvel West, Mean Hand, Limber Wolf
When: Thursday, 09.13, 8:30 p.m.
Where: Lion’s Lair
Why: In case anyone missed it, Musical Mayhem, the more or less free format monthly hosted by Claudia Woodman is now at Lion’s Lair. While not mainly “weird” music, Woodman’s tastes tend to run that direction. But on this night American band Marvel West will make an appearance along with Mean Hand, a band led by long time Denver underground rock and punk legend Tom Mestnik. Rumor has it Denver’s luminous western slowcore-esque band Limber Wolf is low key releasing its album at this show as well.

Who: Rabbit Fighter, The Pretty Bones, Nighttimeschoolbus, Miss Owl & the Pull Apart
When: Thursday, 09.13, 8 p.m.
Where: Syntax Physic Opera
Why: Touted as “Girl Power Night at Syntax” this show includes the mighty Nighttimeschoolbus, the duo of Robin Walker and Toby Hendricks who combine experimental hip-hop beat making and deeply affecting vocals. Rabbit Fighter has as its Facebook image a scene from Heathers quoting Veronica Sawyer, played by Winona Ryder, saying, “DEAR DIARY, I WANT TO KILL.” And, once in a while, who hasn’t felt that? If it really is a pop band at least it’s probably one with some attitude.

Who: Lowfaith record release w/Ridgeway, No Gossip In Braille and Voight
When: Thursday, 09.13, 8 p.m.
Where: Seventh Circle Music Collective
Why: Dream pop/darkwave band Lowfaith is releasing its new album On Loss tonight at Seventh Circle playing with bands in a similar vein. No Gossip In Braille includes Echo Beds frontman Keith Curts and its lush, low key atmospheric rock is almost a polar opposite of his other project in tone and texture. Voight really combines the melancholy mood of a dark post-punk band with the furious energy of a noise punk project. While initially sounding a bit like a a great A Place to Bury Strangers tribute band, the duo has really brought in its more electronic side more fully, giving its already wiry yet brooding sound a calming quality in contrast to its often explosive live intensity.

Friday | September 14, 2018

Landgrabbers, photo by Tom Murphy

Who: Cyanidols, Luna Sol, Flat Earth and Landgrabbers
When: Friday, 09.14, 8 p.m.
Where: 3 Kings Tavern
Why: For something on the harder edge of Denver’s punk world this would be the show to check out tonight. Cyanidols includes Sonya Decman (whose bass prowess and vocal power brought a good deal to Tarmints, The Symptoms and Brain Police) and Chris Kieft who has been a staple of Denver’s punk scene going back to the 80s along with Oscar Pop. Luna Sol is sort of a stoner rock band and includes Shanda Kohlberg formerly of The Swanks as well as former Supafuzz frontman Dave Angstrom. Landgrabbers is a little more countrified but it is a welcome throwback to that time in the Denver punk scene when a band could simply be good and not have to cater too much to some prevailing trend.

Who: Equine, Housekeys, Shawn Mlekush
When: Friday, 09.14, 9 p.m.
Where: Denver Distillery
Why: Even though most of the local music and culture press is sleeping hard on it, the local experimental music scene is pretty active and sizeable. This low key show at Denver Distillery includes avant-guitar and loop maestro Equine, ambient soundscaper Housekeys and Shawn Mlekush who may be playing some entrancing abstract guitar drones and/or using synth in conjunction. Brought to you by Thought//Forms, the gallery that has been home to some of this music since starting up earlier this year.
Who: UaZit, Goon, f-ether, Claudzilla
When: Friday, 09.14, 8 p.m.
Where: Lion’s Lair
Why: UaZit from Indiana is this sort of weirdo electronic downtempo project that is as much performance art as it is music. Akin to hip-hop with beats that could work for that but also reminiscent of MC 900 Ft. Jesus. This Goon is not the hardcore band, rather the alternative hip-hop/trap producer. F-ether is somewhere in the realm of dub techno and house. Claudzilla is also an artist that blurs the line between bizarro pop and performance art. She might even do some strange covers as worthy as the originals. But for sure if you think Denver only really produces stuff for the temporary techbro colony that has occupied the Mile High City, Claudzilla is an antidote to such cultural pathologies.

Saturday | September 15, 2018

Nothing, photo by Ben Rayner

Who: Nothing w/Culture Abuse, Big Bite and Smut
When: Saturday, 09.15, 7 p.m.
Where: The Bluebird Theater
Why: Nothing has evolved its shoegaze-y sound since its inception having come out of hardcore and other heavier music but without losing some of the dark edge that informs the lyrics. Its new album On the Blacktop seems sonically the most fully-realized of its records with gritty pop washes and burning shines over melancholic vocals. Even though Domenic Palermo still struggles with health issues and the ensuing psychological maladies that predate and have come about because of those, he still manages to find a way to make it all seem like something you can cope with and not be completely subsumed by even if it seems impossible sometimes. Pop punk has long since made a comeback but Culture Abuse makes it seem like the genre isn’t out of ideas musically and thematically. It’s 2018 album Bay Dream looks like some kind of late 90s party record with the graffiti style visuals and it could be if that party involved some deep existential examinations rather than simply melodramatic songs about love lost forever. Smut from Cincinnati sounds like its members already went through that 90s grunge revival phase and discovered more expansive sounds even if right now it is sonically somewhere in the middle in a way that seems more interesting than throwback.

Jay Aston’s Gene Loves Jezebel, photo Courtesy of Jay Aston’s Gene Loves Jezebel

Who: Jay Aston’s Gene Loves Jezebel w/Scifidelic and Radio Scarlet
When: Saturday, 09.15, 8 p.m.
Where: The Venue (1451 Cortez St., Denver)
Why: After a bit of a legal battle between Jay Aston and his brother Michael, Jay Aston’s Gene Loves Jezebel that the band Jay leads gets to use in America while the original band name in the UK and vice versa for Michael. Jay Aston’s band put out its first album in nearly a decade in 2017 with the surprisingly compelling beginning to end album Dance Underwater. The new record gives you a real appreciation for Jay’s talent as a songwriter and musician with a broad tonal and emotional range and great nuance of expression. His band includes members of Gene Loves Jezebel going back to the mid-80s and likely the closest one will get to see the classic line-up of one of post-punk’s underrated groups. In the 80s Gene Loves Jezebel had dance club hits and proved influential on the Goth scene of the time and Jay’s songwriting has been surprisingly durable with his current crop of songs seeming timeless rather than capitalizing on past glory.

Eyebeams, black light poster image courtesy Eyebeams

Who: Eyebeams EP & Blacklight Poster release w/Kissing Party and An Antiquated Bluff (Josie Cool solo)
When: Saturday, 09.15, 9 p.m.
Where: The Skylark Lounge
Why: Denver’s Eyebeams is releasing its latest EP and blacklight poster tonight at The Skylark. The four-piece makes music that out of having already done the indie pop and psychedelic pop thing and taking the skill set learned there to do something that’s the next step in that creative arc. Suzi Allegra and Nathan Brazil played in some of the best pop/rock bands of the 2000s and 2010s with Games For May, The Pseudo Dates and Fingers of the Sun and wrote literate, smart songs that will presumably someday be part of Denver underground rock canon. Fernando Guzman and Andrew Elkins made their own indelible mark with the experimental/weirdo art rock band Fissure Mystic, a group in which they spent their teen years and early twenties honing the use of raw sound experimentation in a pop song context even if no one would ever really confuse Fissure for being a pop band. Elkins very much brought that sensibility with his end of the songwriting. Allegra played in Fissure for a couple of years, Guzman played in Fingers of the Sun. So Eyebeams is a bit of a consolidation and progression of the musical ideas all four musicians contribute to this band. The new, self-titled, EP demonstrates Allegra’s genius for fully integrating melody with dynamics and for writing songs that have more depth and complexity than simply one emotional flavoring and color without self-indulgent clutter. There is a melancholic tone to all of the songs but also a yearning for knowledge and clarity of oneself yet an acceptance of the reality of ambiguity you come to live with as an adult that as a younger person maybe you churn into melodrama. As a bonus, the band is releasing a special edition blacklight poster of its album cover at the show as well.

Who: Cometbus: Live Reading and Q&A with Aaron Cometbus
When: Saturday, 09.15, 8 p.m.
Where: Mutiny Information Café
Why: For more on Cometbus see above on Thursday, September 13. For this night, Cometbus is doing a live reading from his body of work with a follow-up Q&A.

Sunday | September 16, 2018

Luxury Hearse, photo by Tom Murphy

What: 2 OUTS: An Electronic songwriter gathering: Pearls and Perils, Mirror Fears, And I, Keldari Station, Church Fire, Gold Trash, EVP, Panic Priest, Blackcell, Strange Powers, Lady of Sorrows, Juniordeer, $addy, eHpH, Nighttimeschoolbus, Luxury Hearse, Voight
When: Sunday, 09.16, 3 p.m.
Where: Lost Lake
Why: A veritable cornucopia of great Denver musicians writing songs using electronic instruments or, in the case of Voight, using a guitar but writing with electronic music sensibilities. If you go to one event the rest of the year and want a great and fairly broadly representative slice of Denver music that uses electronic instrumentation in a boundary-pushing, interesting way, there won’t be a better chance to see it all in one place because no one else is thinking of an event like this with the level of quality curation that went into it.

Who: WOE, WVRM, Noctambulist and Scepter of Eligos
When: Sunday, 09.16, 8 p.m.
Where: Lost Lake
Why: The heaviest show of the week, nay, the month happens tonight at the Hi-Dive. Brooklyn’s WOE may be black metal but its furious live performance feels more like seeing Neurosis combining dark, relentless grinding psychedelia with eruptive energy. WVRM from Greenville, South Carolina is on the surface more straight ahead grind but there’s something flowing underneath that suggests someone in the band is deeply into noise and industrial music. That sensibility gives the music an textural quality and vibe that brings even more an edge to the sound. Noctambulist conveys a similar unconventionality to its death metal onslaught. Like they’re crafting atmospheres to replicate those of a Lovecrafting other dimension hanging with Nodens while he sits back while the Great Old Ones bash it out amongst each other seeding the civilizations of mortal life forms with nightmarish it their darker corners. It seems as though doom is a genre that’s starting to get played out but Scepter of Eligos really challenges that notion because its own take on having roots in that music is to inject it with a healthy heaping of more interesting atmospheric and rhythmic qualities that give its songs an uncommon dimensionality in the genre.

Monday | September 17, 2018

Angel Olsen circa 2014, photo by Tom Murphy

Who: Angel Olsen
When: Monday, 09.17, 7 p.m.
Where: The Paramount Theatre
Why: Angel Olsen is currently on her first solo tour in four years. The songwriter spent some time as a backing singer for Bonnie “Prince” Billy and Cairo Gang before striking out on her own and making a name for herself with her powerfully evocative voice and her ability to vividly articulate a complexity of emotion through lyrics and casting the perfect tone for the song. These qualities were there from early on but 2016’s My Woman revealed that Olsen wasn’t capable of just having a creative leap forward but transforming the sonic breadth of her music. The clever and wise songs of Burn Your Fire For No Witness was a brilliant indie rock album, My Woman was Olsen coming into her own and embracing possibilities for a record that seemed to convey that one can go forward in life without letting uncertainty be a stumbling block to your progress. For this tour Olsen will be performing stripped down versions of new material as well as some of her older songs yet playing fairly large rooms. Something about that hints at Olsen’s dry, absurdist sense of humor while acknowledging that she’s probably going to have to get used to those settings for the rest of her career.

Who: Gillian Welch and David Rawlings w/Punch Brothers
When: Monday, 09.17, 6 p.m.
Where: Red Rocks
Why: Since early in her career, Gillian Welch has performed with an ineffable gravitas and seemingly easy mastery of her voice and the voicings of her instruments. Maybe her being an orphan, albeit adopted into a musical family, put a haunting in her brain from a young age, a layer of melancholy that many musicians spend a good deal of their 20s and 30s trying to cultivate so that when they try to sing the blues or country or rock and roll it has genuine weight behind songwriting and performance. Welch had that on her 1996 record Revival and has simply evolved into being of the great artists of the modern era alongside her musical partner David Rawlings. At this Welch and Rawlings are no strangers to big format concerts but a late summer show at Red Rocks seems just about perfect for one of their shows.

Tuesday | September 18, 2018

Nine Inch Nails, photo by Corinne Schiavone

Who: Nine Inch Nails w/The Jesus and Mary Chain and Tobacco
When: Tuesday, 09.18, 6 p.m.
Where: Red Rocks
Why: Nine Inch Nails has apparently been breaking out some material it hasn’t performed live in quite some time like all of the 1992 EP Broken at its tour kickoff. But that aside, every Nine Inch Nails tour brings one of the best live shows that anyone is doing any given year since the band broke in the late 80s. On a recent tour the group had live set changes on stage in addition to an impressive light show. And as per usual, someone in the NIN camp has great and adventurous tastes in co-headliners and opening acts. In the past NIN has brought on tour underground weirdo rock/electronic bands like Deerhunter, HEALTH and Oneohtrix Point Never. This time out for the co-headlining tour with legendary proto-shoegaze/alternative rock band The Jesus and Mary Chain, there will be Tobacco. The enigmatic electronic/psych/noise artist is perhaps more well known for his otherworldly pop band Black Moth Super Rainbow, but Tobacco is a bit of a different animal and at times could be considered a kind of avant-garde hip-hop with truly unique and mind-altering beats.

Wednesday | September 19, 2018

Who: Nine Inch Nails w/The Jesus and Mary Chain and Tobacco
When: Wednesday, 09.19, 6 p.m.
Where: Red Rocks
Why: For Nine Inch Nails, The Jesus and Mary Chain and Tobacco see above for 09.18.

Who: Sinister Pig, Lion Slicer, Suspicious Activity
When: Wednesday, 09.19, 6:30 p.m.
Where: Chain Reaction Records
Why: Lion Slicer is a punk band from Green Bay, Wisconsin making a stop in Denver on its “Wooly Eggnog Tour Part 2.” Does that mean it’s a little moldy? Who can say but since the show is free you have little to lose seeing it Chain Reaction Records. The band recently released its new record Lion Slicer Part 2, which if you’re into street punk, is great reminder that stuff didn’t die off into complete and utter obsolescence. Also on the bill are two of Denver’s better political hardcore bands with Sinister Pig and Suspicious Activity.

Who: The Mattson 2 and Astronauts, Etc. w/Stop Motion
When: Wednesday, 09.19, 7 p.m.
Where: Lost Lake
Why: Anthony Ferraro of Astronauts Etc. has written a kind of downtempo masterpiece with his 2018 album Living in Symbol. Something akin to a hazy Laurel Canyon jazz record but one written on the American East Coast while spending the evenings prior to writing in a dimly lit and cozy bar hanging out with Justin Hayward and Joe Jackson. Then taking the recordings infused with all those mysterious, chilled out vibes to Jonathan Rado to put his own haunted psychedelic pop touches into the mixing and mastering. Mattson 2 is cut from a similar cloth albeit one more obviously drawing on jazz roots with real chops to augment its lounge fusion compositions.

Who: Miniature Tigers w/Jasper Bones
When: Wednesday, 09.19, 7 p.m.
Where: The Marquis Theater
Why: Miniature Tigers came out of the mid-2000s as one of the more promising of Brooklyn’s indie pop bands. Although the influence of The Kinks and Elephant 6 bands were there, Mini Tigers also embraced the use of electronic instruments in its mix of sounds as well but with a more modern rather than retro sensibility. For its 2010 album Fortress the group collaborated on a song with Neon Indian as chillwave was reaching toward the apex of its popularity. The record that broke the band to a national, albeit still fairly underground, audience with touring to promote the album was 2008’s Tell It To The Volcano. This tour commemorates the 10 year anniversary of the release of the album but for a band that has consistently released albums since its inception, it’s a good chance to catch up with what the group is doing now.

Who: Ohmme w/Down Time and Mr. Atomic
When: Wednesday, 09.19, 7 p.m.
Where: Larimer Lounge
Why: Chicago-based jazz pop duo Ohmme released their debut full-length album Parts in summer 2018 but the group comprised of vocalists/multi-instrumentalists Sima Cunningham and Macie Stewart had already established itself as a going concern melding technical prowess, avant-garde sensibilities and imaginative songwriting. The eclectic resume of both musicians including credits working with the likes of Richard Thompson of Fairport Convention and Chance the Rapper. The synergy of their live performances, though, prove that they’re a force to be reckoned with and not a recording project that is taking tentative steps into the live arena.

Best Shows in Denver and Beyond 8/30/18 – 9/5/18

CJ Boyd performs at various venues in Colorado this weekend. Photo circa 2008 by Tom Murphy

Thursday | August 30, 2018

Who: A.M. Pleasure Assassins and CJ Boyd
When: Thursday, 08.30, 7 p.m.
Where: Downtown Artery, Fort Collins
Why: Fort Collins’ great lo-fi post-punkers A.M. Pleasure Assassins share the stage with internationally renowned avant-garde punk/folk/ambient/one-man pastoral classical artist C.J. Boyd. The latter is one of the few artists in general that has played in all fifty of the United States. For a decade, Boyd has traversed the country and collaborated with artists from every state and written some of the most accessible and evocative experimental music that defies any absolute categorization. Pick up at any point in his extensive catalog and you’re in for something interesting that will stretch your musical horizons in some fashion. Boyd is playing other shows in Colorado on this leg of his tour and if you’re not able to make this Fort Collins gig it would be worth seeking out where those other shows are happening whether in a house or a DIY space in Colorado Springs like the new Flux Capacitor.

Smokescreens, photo by Gina Clyne

Who: Smokescreens, The Molochs and American Culture
When: Thursday, 08.30, 8 p.m.
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Chris Rosi and Corey Cunningham were once members of Plateaus and Terry Malts having toured together during the ascent of the garage/psych revival. But by mid-decade both moved to Los Angeles where they formed Smokescreens out of a mutual love for the off-standard melodic strategy of American pop and more in the vein of New Zealand weirdo, jangle-y punk bands of the 80s on the Flying Nun imprint as well as noisier American music like The Velvet Underground and The Aislers Set. One might make a good case for some influence of The Feelies and a touch of Jay Reatard and No Age in there. All of those influences would mean nothing if the songwriters weren’t capable of doing anything interesting or original out of their own skill set. The band’s 2018 album Used to Yesterday is proof that Smokescreens is making some of the more sonically interesting, guitar-driven pop music today. Combining a tenderness and delicacy of tone and texture with great momentum and energy, Smokescreens is a band that is as idiosyncratic as its influences, which is no mean feat given Flying Nun’s catalog of unique greatness alone.

The Magpie Salute, photo by David McLister

Who: The Magpie Salute w/Brent Cowles
When: Thursday, 08.30, 7 p.m.
Where: Boulder Theater
Why: Formed in 2016 by former members of Black Crowes including Rich Robinson, Marc Ford and Sven Pipien, The Magpie Salute is perhaps less beholden to the blues rock that was the bedrock of Black Crowes. At least if the band’s new album, 2018’s High Water 1 is any indication. Sure, some of the structure and tones are there but the sonic palette is broader with the band at this point. The title track suggests psych Americana but the album refreshingly doesn’t get stuck in a single mode, mood or dynamic. There’s a 70s feel to the record but one that gives you a greater appreciation for the details that make that songwriting style compelling even today even if you’re heard enough of that sort of thing. Robinson and his bandmates grew up with and within those musical traditions and with this band they’re giving those influences a renewed vitality that is oft-imitated and rarely manifested with this degree of credibility because it doesn’t feel forced and the highly developed songcraft born out of years playing in other bands speaks for itself.

Who: Equine, Tunica Externa, biostatic
When: Thursday, 08.30, 8 p.m.
Where: Mutiny Information Café
Why: Depth of sound field throughout this show with the guitar drones and tone sculpting of Equine, Tunica Externa’s super minimal soundscapes with guitar and loops and biostatic’s synth, live sampled trumpet and processed sounds. None of the artists is much alike, uses very different methods of making their sounds but all have grounded in a way of making music that isn’t rooted in any particular, pre-established style, which should be recommendation enough for going to this show if you’re looking for something well outside the mainstream.

Friday | August 31, 2018

Brotherhood of Machines, photo by Tom Murphy

Who: Under the Floorboards Celebration: Midwife, Bigawatt, Brotherhood of Machines, Curta and Multicast
When: Friday, 08.31, 8:30 p.m.
Where: Syntax Physic Opera
Why: KGNU’s Under the Floorboards program showcases music that is decidedly left field. So this show will include the minimalist, ambient folk/lo fi production of Midwife, Bigawatt’s operatic avant-post-punk paired with experimental drummer Death Pose, Brotherhood of Machines’ Popol Vuh/dub techno-esque ambient in collaboration with Jake Danna of hip-hop duo Curta. And Multicast, which has been doing ambient music in Colorado for longer than most of the people in Colorado’s quite large ambient scene. With biostatic hosting and serving as a DJ for the night.

Who: Sympathy F
When: Friday, 08.31, 8 p.m.
Where: Goosetown Tavern
Why: Sympathy F came on to Denver stages during the early days of the alternative rock era. Early members of the band included current guitarists Doug Seaman and Tony Morales (who has also been a vocalist in the band from the beginning) and both lived in a building in the Capitol Hill neighborhood called The Blenheim, notable for its gateway looking like something from a medieval urban house, where they lived across the hall from future and current vocalist Elizabeth Rose who became fast friends with the two musicians who one day heard her singing along to the music they were writing. The band became a bit of a fixture in the local scene throughout the 90s, releasing one, self-titled album and a handful of cassette and compilation releases before the focus of the musicians went to other projects even though Sympathy F never disbanded. Over the past decade or so, the group has been more active and in 2016 releases its first album in over twenty years with its second self-titled album. It was a compilation of new and older recordings and demos that the members of the band rendered for a more modern release augmented by overdubs and a proper mixing and mastering treatment. At that time the band had intended to release a double album to get its backlog of material out into the world but that didn’t make sense and now the group is releasing what would have been the second half of the double album with a couple of new tracks that reflect new musical ideas that hint at where the group may go in the future with electronics a part of its lushly atmospheric, moody hard rock.The new album, available tonight, is The Blenheim, a nod to the band’s roots and the creative frisson that launched its fruitful and prolific, if not widely available on a recording until recently, career. See our upcoming interview with Seaman on the history of the band and its recent painstaking recording of at least one of its new songs.

Who: EVP w/Pearls and Perils and Gold Trash
When: Friday, 08.31, 9 p.m.
Where: BarFly
Why: Glasss Records occupies BarFly for the night. EVP’s pointed personal/political commentary informing its impassioned industrial noise pop will bring some edge to the laid back environs. Gold Trash’s noise-scape-y, beats collage electroclash will demonstrate how you can keep it weird and confrontational yet fun. Pearls and Perils makes downtempo R&B with a rich emotional quality and theatrical stage presence that is impossible to ignore.

Saturday | September 1, 2018

Church Fire, photo by Tom Murphy

What: Temple Tantrum Day 1
When: Saturday, 09.1, 12 p.m., music starts 1 p.m. runs to 10 p.m.
Where: The Temple Studios
Why: Temple Tantrium is a two day festival that encourages attendees to arrive in costume and join in the festivities with twenty musical acts, fourteen art installations, comedy and performance art. For list of artists featured see below.
Music: Council of Word, Porcelain, F-ether, Halo Halo, Ginger Perry, JL Kane, R A R E B Y R D $, Princess Dewclaw, Church Fire, Plantrae

Visual/installation Artists: Ancient.Future, Charles Russel, Alex Anderson, Kat Nechleba, Kristina Rolander, Ryan Wurst, Izzy Jarvis, Regan Rosberg, Queen City Harlequinade, Kelly ShortNQueer, Tara Worley, Suchitra Mattai, Katine Lowe, Marsha Mack, Sandra Fettingus, Naomi Scheck, Joanne Shminke, Lori Owicz, Brendan Macleod.

Performance art and comedy: No Gods No Masters, Punketry, Gallagher Fest, Jessica L’Whor, Jaguar Morning Show

Who: Big Business w/Simulators and Quits
When: Saturday, 09.1, 8:30 p.m.
Where: Larimer Lounge
Why: Big Business is the sludge metal/noise rock band from Seattle comprised of former KARP and Murder City Devils members Jared Warren and Coady Willis. The duo spent a handful of years playing in Melvins where its bombastic, playful and joyous sound fit in with Melvins’ sense of the absurd. For this show the duo will be joined by sharp-edged post-punk band Simulators and eruptive noise rock supergroup Quits which includes former members of Denver-based noise rock outfits Sparkles and Hot White.

Who: Pink Fuzz LP release w/Love Gang and Boot Gun
When: Saturday, 09.1, 8 p.m.
Where: Lost Lake
Why: BANDITS from Boulder honed its hard blues rock sound for a few years under that name before adopting its new moniker, Pink Fuzz. The group releases what may be it’s first full-length record tonight. Though not a stoner rock band, fans of bands like Fu Manchu and Nebula will probably find a lot to like here.

Sunday | September 2, 2018

The Speedholes circa 2001, photo by Rebecca Bauer

What: Temple Tantrum Day 2
When: Saturday, 09.1, 12 p.m., music starts 1 p.m. runs to 10 p.m.
Where: The Temple Studios
Why: See the entry for this event above on September 1, 2018. The list of visual/installation artists and performance art and comedy is the same. But musical guests for this day include: Machu Linea, MEEK, Entrancer, ETERNAL, Baby Tony & The Teenies, L.A. Zwicky, Oxeye Daisy, Vic N’ The Narwhals, NEEFF, Nasty Nachos and Pictureplane.

Who: Merrick 25th Anniversary Party with debut of Rocket Dust, Vashion Seeds and Sam & Catherine from AKA Belle
When: Sunday, 09.2, 5 p.m.
Where: Globe Hall
Why: Kelly and Dan Merrick were members of noisy garage punk band The Speedholes in the 90s and early 2000s and were active participants in the vibrant Denver punk scene of that time. Both had roots in the Seattle underground scene of the 80s and 90s and were impacted by Denver musicians who made it to the Pacific Northwest regularly or even made it a home like maybe The Derelicts but certainly The Fluid and Spell. They’re celebrating their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary with the debut of their new band Rocket Dust with this show at Globe Hall.

Tuesday | September 5, 2018

Mondo Obscura, photo by Tom Murphy

Who: Mondo Obscura and The Counselor (DJ set)
When: Tuesday, 09.5, 7 p.m.
Where: Chiba Bar | Colorado Springs
Why: Denver futuristic new age/ambient band Mondo Obscura lands in Colorado Springs for a two hour live set followed by DJ set from local weirdo The Counselor at a Japanese themed bar. Fortunately it won’t be the “Chiba City Blues” but if some guy named Case shows up looking like he might be hyped on stims and babbles something about Molly Millions and the Panther Moderns just be glad for the distraction and ask him how Acacia Park is treating him.

Wednesday | September 5, 2018

Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever, photo by Warwick Baker

Who: Rolling Blackouts Coast Fever w/Jo Passed
When: Wednesday, 09.5, 7 p.m.
Where: Larimer Lounge
Why: On the strength of the material on its first two EPs, 2016’s Talk Tight and 2017’s The French Press, Melbourne, Australia’s Rolling Blackouts Coast Fever drew favorable comparison by critics like Robert Christgau and Stephen Deusner to influential Australian jangle pop band The Go-Betweens. With the sparkling guitar tone and effluvient, often urgent, dynamics the comparison seems apt. But the band never really sounds like a throwback and especially not so on its 2018 full length Hope Downs wherein the guitar play weaves hanging chords into its bright melodies to convey more fully melancholic undertones and introspective moods. Like American indie rock band LVL UP, RBCF has a real knack for writing songs with a depth of composition using dissonance, textural rhythms and percussive melodies alongside more straightforward guitar work. Live the group performs with a nervy energy that gives what might otherwise be simply solid pop songs a palpable intensity.

Who: Weird Wednesday: KRBS (from Ludlow), Bonnie Weimer, Whimsically Macabre Music
When: Wednesday, 09.5, 9 p.m.
Where: 3 Kings Tavern
Why: This latest edition of Weird Wednesday features artists whose music doesn’t necessarily scream out “weird” but in the larger musical sense really is. Bonnie Weimer whose spare, banjo songs are reminiscent of Maureen Tucker solo or on her rare and excellent vocal performances in The Velvet Underground (particularly “After Hours”). Meaning it’s intimate, powerful and a bit mysterious. Presumably KRBS is Josh Kirby from the great Colorado folk/punk band Ludlow doing a solo performance. Kirby has an offbeat, often surreal sense of humor so that’s bound to be part of the set too. Whimsically Macabre Music is a solo piano project of Stacy Fahrion. The music doesn’t hit you over the head with its strangeness. In that sense it has more in common with how many Erik Satie pieces are haunting or various Shirley Jackson novels have an atmosphere just off enough to get under your skin without having to resort to cheap thrills.

Best Shows in Denver 05/31/18 – 06/06/18

Git Some perform at benefit for Miles Elliott Bellinger Webb (son of G. Matthew Bellinger) at Goosetown Tavern on Saturday, June 2. Photo by Tom Murphy

Thursday | May 31, 2018

Pearls & Perils, photo by Tom Murphy

Who: Glasss Presents The Speakeasy Series Season 2: EVP, Mirror Fears, Claudzilla
When: Thursday, 05.31, 6:30 p.m.
Where: Hooked On Colfax
Why: Industrial/dark pop duo EVP is celebrating singer/guitarist Amanda Baker’s birthday with this show alongside weirdo synth/keytar sorceress Claudzilla and Mirror Fears’ emotionally cathartic electronic compositions.

Who: Glasss Records & Titwrench Presents the 100th Glasss Show: R  A  R E B Y R D $, Gold Trash, Pearls & Perils, Rachael Pollard, EVP
When: Thursday, 05.31, 8 p.m.
Where: Syntax Physic Opera
Why: Glasss Records is commemorating its 100th show with an event that includes RAREBYRD$ and Rachael Pollard who will be going to Titwrench Stockholm on June 14 and 15 this year. This show is a short list of the best songwriters and, in the case of everyone but Rachael, electronic music artists in Denver right now. Whether it’s the transcendent hip-hop of R A R E B Y R D $, the noisy electroclash of Gold Trash, the soulful downtempo of Pearls & Perils, EVP’s genre-defying electronic punk or Rachael Pollard’s ability to seemingly write from a middle school diary of dreams, fears and loves with a sublime wisdom and playfulness, this lineup is impeccable.

Who: Hail Satan EP release of Rad Metal w/Dead Characters and Cönaxx
When: Thursday, 05.31, 7 p.m.
Where: 3 Kings Tavern
Why: Jake Fairly’s work as a graphic/comic artist isn’t so difficult to run into around town. Whether it’s his This is Heavy Metal comic or work he’s done for various concerns, his clean lines, use of space and compelling detail are noteworthy. He also has a band called Hail Satan that’s releasing its Rad Metal EP tonight. The band is in the vein of classic thrash and speed metal with a little punk thrown in and Fairly is its frontman. Because the title of the album is humorous while honoring what makes that style of music great, you can bet the band will embody that spirit live as well.

Friday | June 1, 2018

Animal Years, photo by Organic Photography

Who: Giardia album release w/Church Fire, Sonic Vomit and Today’s Paramount
When: Friday, 06.01, 8 p.m.
Where: Goosetown Tavern
Why: Giardia is releasing its latest album tonight. The Denver based band sounds like some kind of art-rock/fusion/prog band. Its songs while containing elements of black metal and grindcore has more in common with Goblin and Naked City. Lots of synth and keyboards and drastic shifts in tone, rhythm and texture to that it never gets bogged down in adherence to genre. Three other bands that don’t really fit anyone else’s mode so well are also playing this show. Church Fire some people probably think of as kind of a dance music band with melodic synth lines and bumping rhythms. But the music runs deeper with roots in noise, industrial, political punk and art rock. Also, vocalist Shannon Webber is an electrifying figure delivering her lines with a theatrical and symphonic intensity like a Kabuki theater performer but reigned in by no one’s muse but her own. Sonic Vomit is coming up from Pueblo to bring its noisy prog death metal and Today’s Paramount could be considered a math-y, No Wave funk band with elements of psych in its sound.

What: New Hinterland Benefit Concert: Pan Astral, Like Miller from Lotus and Flobots
When: Friday, 06.01, 8 p.m.
Where: Globe Hall
Why: Hinterland Gallery sat north of Downtown Denver for years before the inevitable happened and existence in that part of town became untenable. The gallery hosted numerous events for some of Denver’s most adventurous artists and was a hub/base of operations for the more visually inclined creators including filmmakers, painters and sculptors. It also hosted forward thinking multimedia presentations. This show is a benefit for the gallery’s new space. Performing is genre-bending electronic pop band Pan Astral who will be joined on stage by Luke Miller of Lotus and Johnny 5 and Brer Rabbit of Flobots making it a one-of-kind show for everyone that shows up and one aimed at helping out one of Denver’s true independent art institutions.

Michael Franti and Spearhead, photo by Anthony Thoen

Who: Michael Franti & Spearhead w/Xavier Rudd and Victoria Canal
When: Friday, 06.01, 6:30 p.m.
Where: Red Rocks
Why: Michael Franti & Spearhead will release its new album Stay Human 2 later this year but for this tour you can catch the band in support of the first volume of Stay Human. These days Franti is more known for his upbeat, highly positive world-music-oriented funk and soul and rightfully so, that’s what he feels is the best vehicle for making music counter to the misguided and destructive elements of world human culture. But that roots level political orientation (he also helps to lead a yoga session around the time of his concerts in Colorado and elsewhere) runs long in Franti’s career going back to his time with industrial hip-hop groups Beatnigs and The Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy whose lyrics seem oddly prescient over two decades since.

Who: Animal Years w/Tyler Imbrey’s Ghost Revue and House With A Yard
When: Friday, 06.01, 8 p.m.
Where: Larimer Lounge
Why: No link for this show because Ticketfly got hacked but it shouldn’t yet be sold out. At any rate Animal Years borrowed its name from a Josh Ritter album. Seeing as Ritter is one of the most literate, thoughtful and emotionally vibrant songwriters in modern pop music, you can hardly blame them. It’s also a reminder to live life to the fullest and pack as much living in with each year as if you are living seven as, for instance, a dog would. The group’s latest five-song EP Far From Home touches on familiar tones and textures in the realm of pop Americana of the past decade. But Mike McFadden’s voice has enough character to set the band apart from its peers and his words possessed with enough self-awareness and nuance of expression to be worth repeated listens.

Saturday | June 2, 2018

Nightmares On Wax, photo by Sequoia Ziff

Who: Bassnectar and Nightmares on Wax DJ set, CharlestheFirst and Dorfex Bos
When: Saturday, 06.02, 6:30 p.m.
Where: 1stBank Center
Why: Bassnectar is rightfully one of the most popular artists who took the underground rave culture and music he experienced as a teenager in the 90s to a wide audience and made it accessible with his creative hybrid of downtempo, dubstep and drum and bass. In recent years, his conceptual multi-media shows, or gatherings, have added a more intentional communal dimension to his days long stints in cities on his tours. For this second of three shows in the Denver area, Bassnectar has brought along one of electronic dance music’s true pioneers with George Evelyn aka Nightmares on Wax. Evelyn started out DJing in clubs in Leeds with his friends John Halnon and Kevin Harper with genre-hopping mixes in their sets with hip-hop, soul and funk as the root. The project found a home at then Sheffield, now London, based experimental electronic label Warp Records with it’s 1991 debut album A Word of Science: The First and Final Chapter. Nightmares On Wax operated as a DJ-based act in the live setting until the late 90s when it morphed into a hybrid of production technology and live instrumentation with a drum machine giving the band’s shows a more intimate feel. Though Halnon and Harper have long since moved on, Evelyn has continued on steering Nightmares on Wax and tonight he’ll get back to doing a DJ set but with a more modern set of tools at hand to mix and weave in an imaginative set of music.

Who: Benefit Show for Miles Elliott Bellinger Webb (son of G. Matthew Bellinger): Git Some, Pretty Mouth, Zebroids and Animal Actress
When: Saturday, 06.02, 8 p.m.
Where: Goosetown Tavern
Why: G. Matthew Bellinger was a bright and talented, but, like many artists, deeply troubled, guitarist and vocalist for the well-known posthardcore legends Planes Mistaken For Stars, Americana alterna punks Ghost Buffalo and noisy sludge rockers Ill Cattivo. When he died in 2017 under unusual circumstances it was a big blow to friends and family perhaps none more so than to his son Miles. The proceeds from this show will toward benefiting Miles and it features some of the Denver area’s best bands including posthardcore noise rock band Git Some (which includes former Planes members Charles French and Neil Keener), dream pop tinged country act Pretty Mouth (fronted by former Ghost Buffalo members Marie Litton, Jedd Kopp and Benjamin Williams) , joke punker performance art band Zebroids and slowcore-ish, math rock-esque, post-rock leaning band Animal Actress which includes former Ghost Buffalo guitarist Tommy Ventura. A lot of talent for one room and for a good cause.

Tuesday | June 5, 2018

Black Marble, photo courtesy Chris Stewart

Who: Cold Cave, Black Marble, Choir Boy and Boy Hollow
When: Tuesday, 06.05, 7 p.m.
Where: The Marquis Theater
Why: Black Marble did something that many modern artists making music in the atmospheric post-punk vein didn’t—sound like every other band out of the neo-post-punk revival. Sure, Chris Stewart tapped into 80s bands that were precursors/pioneers of what is now called minimal synth like Iron Curtain and Solid Space. But his bass-driven melodies had more in common with experimental electronic dance music than rock. Stewart’s 2016 release on Ghostly International, It’s Immaterial, solidified that impression even if the music was even more accessible. The songs seemed to operate from a dreamlike earth, sparsely populated, perpetually late morning and soft lighting, the kind of environment that gives one time to contemplate and work out the angst in your head.

Wednesday | June 6, 2018

A Hawk & A Hacksaw, photo by Louis Schalk

Who: A Hawk and a Hacksaw at Shady Grove Series
When: Wednesday, 06.06, 6:30 p.m.
Where: Four Mile Historic Park
Why: Jeremy Barnes some may know as the former drummer of Neutral Milk Hotel but since the early 2000s he and his wife Heather Trost have been making music inspired by Eastern European, Turkish and Balkan folk music as A Hawk and a Hacksaw. Based in Albuquerque the duo also contributed to the early development of like-minded band Beirut. A Hawk and a Hacksaw started as more or less a solo project of Barnes’ but during the recording of the project’s 2002 self-titled debut he met Trost beginning a musical partnership and otherwise since. That initial album was adopted as the soundtrack to the 2005 documentary film Zizek! about Slovenian philosopher and cultural critic Slavoj Žižek. The act is now touring in support of its new album Forest Bathing and with its old world/pastoral tone, where better to experience this music than a park rather than a club. After all A Hawk and a Hacksaw had a form of Japanese nature therapy in mind for the record. According to an April 2018 article in Albuquerque Journal, Valle de Oro National Wildlife Refuge in New Mexico is their “forest bath of choice.” In an era when too much is created to be disposable and conceived that way, it’s a refreshingly out of step perspective for music and how to best experience it.

Best Shows in Denver and Beyond 05/10/18 – 05/16/18

Slim Cessna’s Auto Club, photo by Tom Murphy

Thursday | May 10, 2018

Abeasity Jones, photo by Tom Murphy

Who: Glasss Presents the Speakeasy Series Season 2: Venus Cruz & What Young Men Do, Abeasity Jones
When: Thursday, 05.10, 7 p.m.
Where: Hooked On Colfax
Why: Abeasity Jones’ songs sound like maybe he spends part of his day working in some high rise office in downtown Denver and/or in some media tech office nearby where maybe things are comfortable but there’s an element of compromise and alienation. And while working and tending to the demands of his personal and family life he allows his imagination an escape into chill spaces where he can explore and write stories about his struggles, concerns and daydream life. The beats are downtempo and ethereal and the subject matter often delivered with a sense of acceptance like depleted melancholy. Yet, Jones’ sense of humor and thoughtfulness lifts up the music and his live performance has a positive energy giving the songs a dimensionality that some hip-hop seemingly recorded at home lacks.

Also playing this show is one of Denver jazz and hip-hop’s true luminaries: Venus Cruz. But this time out with the band What Young Men Do. Cruz’s versatile talent has found a place singing, producing and performing music in a wide variety of contexts. Her long-running stint with the Jazz Odyssey program on KUVO on Wednesday nights is an outlet for fans of jazz and the sensibility of jazz outside the classic format. What Young Men Do is more of a funk, soul and jazz-inflected hip-hop project so it’ll be something pretty different for the Speakeasy Series and Hooked On Colfax both.

Who: Musical Mayhem: Bonnie Weimer and The Pollution
When: Thursday, 05.10, 9 p.m.
Where: Skylark Lounge
Why: Bonnie Weimer released her first single in probably several years, maybe even her first released music since her time in folk-punk-Americana group Potato Farmers, in April 2018 with “Pajama Top Man,” a winsome, humorous, self-effacing story song about an awkward would-be romantic encounter set to a spare, banjo melody. Fans of outsider music will find a lot to like about the song even though that designation doesn’t necessarily fit Weimer’s entire musical output. In an interesting pairing, not unusual for Claudia Woodman’s Musical Mayhem night at the Skylark, is The Pollution. Jay Fox was in one of the early DC punk bands, United Mutation, but the latter was never part of the Dischord scene and didn’t play out often even if its blend of psychedelic rock and punk was becoming a thing as bands like Butthole Surfers and Alice Donut were making waves in the underground. Decades hence, Fox, now living in Denver for several years, has set about trying to make bands for whom the intensity, energy, anti-authoritarian spirit and creative fire of punk and psychedelic seemed completely compatible qualities that needn’t be separated by stylistic sectarianism.

Who: Gold Trash, Violent Vickie, R A R E B Y R D $, Pearls and Perils and EVP
When: Thursday, 05.10, 8 p.m.
Where: Independent Records
Why: Glasss is bringing some of its artists to Colorado Springs tonight. Gold Trash is sort of a samples/live electronics take on the kind of collage, trash sound/culture guitar rock barrage that was Royal Trux. Pearls and Perils is lush downtempo beats and the sultry vocals of Olivia Perez who most won’t remember from her old, experimental rock band Gloam. But with Pearls and Perils she gets to put more of herself into the music undiluted by anyone else’s vision and the result is an emotionally cleansing body of work. Like most Glasss artists, EVP is impossible to tag with one genre designation. Part industrial, part pop, part punk, EVP sounds like the kind of music made by people living in a dystopian near future where kids have overtaken the crumbling, cheap housing units made during Denver’s current fake economic boom (real economic booms benefit everyone pretty equally) but then abandoned—scrappy, often angry and melancholy stuff. R A R E B Y R D $ is probably the Denver band now that will attain the underground mythical status of acts like Fissure Mystic and Hot White by the sheer excellence of its material and live shows except it’s an experimental hip-hop group. Its enveloping, rich beats stir the heart and the imagination and the emotional resonance of its lyrics and KoKo La’s and Key Lady’s singing and rapping has the irresistible power of a Kimya Dawson.

Friday | May 11, 2018

Charly Bliss, photo by Jacqueline Harriet

Who: Punk Is Dad fundraiser featuring MF Ruckus, The Velveteers, Ned Garthe Explosion and Plastic Daggers
When: Friday, 05.11, 8 p.m.
Where: The Oriental Theater
Why: This show will benefit the Dorian DeLong Arts and Music scholarship fund which gives scholarships to college to students involved in arts programs in the Denver area. And you could hardly ask for a more solid rock lineup with the hard rock band MF Ruckus, psychedelic rock pranksters Ned Garthe Explosion, the edgy melodic hardcore Plastic Daggers and fuzz-garage stars The Velveteers.

Who: Esmé Patterson, Emily Ritz and Eleanor Perry
When: Friday, 05.11, 7 p.m.
Where: Leon Gallery
Why: Most of the time to see Esmé Patterson’s evocative storyteller pop you’d have to go to some kind of bigger bar venue or small theater. But this performance will happen at the much more intimate Leon Gallery. Patterson spent many years honing her craft as a member of the baroque pop group Paper Bird, but since she’s broke out on hr own for the last several years her imaginative songwriting has developed into a vehicle for writing with a warmth and wisdom on uncomfortable subjects.

Who: Charly Bliss w/Skating Polly
When: Friday, 05.11, 7 p.m.
Where: The Marquis Theater
Why: Charly Bliss’s 2017 album Guppy sounds like the band wood shedded its material in a cabin in a remote location far from its Brooklyn homebase with only 90s fuzzy alternative rock/power pop on hand for its listening diet. Obvious touchstones like Liz Phair, Velocity Girl, The Breeders and Veruca Salt. Even the music video for “Ruby” reinforces that impression looking like something that might have been produced for a segment of The Ben Stiller Show. But there’s no mistaking Charly Bliss’s exuberant energy for a pure nostalgia trip. The songs may rock but like many of the bands that likely influenced Charly Bliss, the lyrics have a raw vulnerability that gives it more depth than might otherwise be obvious. The same could be said for Oklahoma City band Skating Polly whose style of music is probably punk by default but so individual it would be problematic to say the trio consciously tried to be punk as a genre. The latter recently released its latest album, The Make It All Show. Skating Polly shows look like they might blow apart from the sheer, wiry energy of the performance and, of course, that’s what makes for great, scrappy punk rock.

Who: Girls Rock Denver: Showcase Series: Gold Trash, RAREBYRD$, EVP and Nighttimeschoolbus
When: Friday, 05.11, 7 – 11 p.m.
Where: Spectra Art Space
Why: Girls Rock Denver will happen in the summer but these events are a showcase to perhaps make being a musician beyond the camp and beyond those likely temporary bands an attainable goal. Which is crucial because a world where most music and art is still being made mostly by males seems bizarre and past its due date at this point in history. This night features some of the best artists in Denver in the realm of electronic, hip-hop, experimental and industrial music. Most of the artists on the bill were written up earlier in this column but all are worth your time.

Who: Slim Cessna’s Auto Club w/Echo Beds and Weathered Statues
When: Friday, 05.11, 8 p.m.
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Slim Cessna’s Auto Club, one of Denver’s longest running bands and one of its most lively and entertaining, is doing a mini-residence at the Hi-Dive this weekend. Although the Auto Club is a kind of punk Americana with literary lyrics and a joyful, emotionally charged, theatrical live show, it’s been booking opening bands well outside the expected circles of Gothic Americana. This night, organo-industrial darkwave band Echo Beds will bring the punishing beats and cathartic drones and Weathered Statues will deliver its brand of moody but urgent post-punk.

Saturday | May 12, 2018

Great American House Fire, photo by Tom Murphy

What: Fem Fest
When: Saturday, 05.12, 8 p.m.
Where: MCA Denver
Why: Fem Fest is an all-ages, all-genders welcome event that includes various workshops, a bazaar, tarot and astrology readings and more but also musical performances in the evening and night. Fem Fest because representation matters in a truly healthy and just society. There are plenty of, in essence, Men Fests because of booking and conception most of the rest of the year so don’t get caught up on the name and miss out on some of Denver’s best bands and the headliner, Red Aunts. Music kicks off at 5 p.m. with a Girls Rock Denver showcase followed by space angel/earth mother energy hip hop group R A R E B Y R D $ at 6. Princess Dewclaw, Denver’s own electro fuzz punks at 7 with “pastel punk” surf rock trio The Corner Girls at 8. The evening tops off at 9 with Red Aunts.

Who: Dirty Junk, Great American House Fire, Married a Dead Man
When: Saturday, 05.11, 9 p.m.
Where: The Curtis Club
Why: Dirty Junk is a duo from Minneapolis on its 2017 album Snot is the kind of messy, noisy, collage-esque punk-inspired music that we haven’t heard much of since Get Hustle was active. Or like a weirder and noiser version of that raw punk Sleater-Kinney was doing on its first two records. Interesting putting the band together with Great American House Fire, a group that combines a melancholic Americana with moody posthardcore and soulful singing. Married a Dead Man is a post-punk band unabashedly influenced by music out of the Goth world.

Who: Sorted #8: Pangaea, Ganesa & Squane, Newnumbertwo
When: Saturday, 05.12, 10 p.m.
Where: TBA
Why: Kevin McAuley calls London home but tonight he’s performing at the eight edition of sorted, the underground electronic music event that Veronica Lamaak and company put together periodically to showcase some of the most interesting house, techno and more experimental dance music in general happening now. Also on the bill are Jelly Bean Farm artists Ganesa & Squane. Ganesa is the label head of Jelly Bean Farm and her DJ sets tend to be eclectic and futuristic-sounding. Squane’s sound tends to be more low end heavy with thick, dubby bass beats but he and Ganesa share a seeming love of bright, mid-to-upper register melodically ethereal melodies. Newnumbertwo is a resident artist with Sorted whose deep house/dubstep sound mixes in elements of a gentle kind of breakcore.

Who: Slim Cessna’s Auto Club w/Palehorse/Palerider
When: Saturday, 05.11, 8 p.m.
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: The second night of the Auto Club residency at the Hi-Dive this weekend but this time with Palehorse/Palerider, a band who are superficially an alchemical mixture of doom/drone and shoegaze but with an industrial/tribal element they bring in for a song or two in the set. Which doesn’t mean much when your sets have three or four songs but nevertheless gives a set of otherwise densely beautiful and crushing songs an expansive sensibility.

Sunday | May 13, 2018

Modest Mouse, photo by Ben Moon

Who: Modest Mouse w/Mimicking Birds
When: Sunday, 05.13, 6 p.m.
Where: Red Rocks
Why: For a band that is one of the definitive incarnations of the too-broad-too-vague-yet-fittingly-umbrella quasi-genre of indie rock, Modest Mouse sure put in a lot of time developing its sound and songwriting style before becoming one of the style’s most iconic groups. Modest Mouse began when its founders were still in high school, it released its first seven inch on K Records, its first two full-lengths on Seattle indie imprint Up Records including its 1997 “breakthrough” album Lonesome Crowded West and every album since through major label Epic Records. Quite an arc for a band whose work remained fairly idiosyncratic, emotionally raw and imaginative even up to its most recent album, 2015’s Strangers to Ourselves. In its first decade or so of its existence, Modest Mouse was a notoriously inconsistent live band. But since then the act has seemingly harnessed the chaos and unpredictability of its youth when maybe there seemed to be less and stake and less to lose if it did all fall apart and channeled that spirit into music more coherent and accessible to a wider audience without having to sacrifice its uniqueness.

Monday | May 14, 2018

Rotstrotter, photo by Tom Murphy

Who: Petrification w/Rotstrotter, Alone and Noctambulist
When: Monday, 05.14, 8 p.m.
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: Petrification is a death metal/grind band from Portland, Oregon on its way to Maryland Death Fest and making a stop in Denver to play with some of the local heavy hitters in that realm of music. The band called its 2017 cassette Summon Horrendous Destruction with a rotting zombie face rendered in black and white as the cover. At times the guitar riffs wander into the realm of The New Order-esque period Testament. But that is no bad thing. Rotstrotter have been one the longest-running, and frankly best, D-Beat bands in Denver. Sounding somewhere between SSD and early Discharge, Rotstrotter looks and sounds like they live it and that it’s not a simply a shallow lifestyle choice.

Who: Farrell Lowe Group, Latex Cupcake, Seward / Sexton, Gil Selinger
When: Monday, 05.14, 8 p.m.
Where: Seventh Circle Music Collective
Why: This is a rare opportunity to see some of Colorado’s avant-garde improvisation legends at a DIY space. Farrell Lowe Group includes, of course, Farrell Lowe, Mark Raynes, Dave Willey and Mark Harris. The latter two are members of internationally renowned avant-prog band Thinking Plague. Latex Cupcake is Jennifer Bobola, John T. Nething, Bret Kuyper and Mark Emmons, all of whom have been around Denver playing in various capacities but this is the project’s first show and its, one might say, mutant version of experimental jazz/modern classical will be a great fit on this lineup including a solo cello performance with Gil Selinger and Seward / Sexton, which will be accessible and in the vein of lounge jazz but inspired more by Captain Beefheart and The Fugs than a standard jazz group.

Tuesday | May 15, 2018

Cullen Omori, photo by Alexa Lopez

Who: Cullen Omori w/The Gloomies and Rowboat
When: Tuesday, 05.15, 8 p.m.
Where: Lost Lake
Why: Cullen Omori’s 2016 album New Misery at least lets you know what you’re in for. As in imagine you were in one of the most buzzed about indie rock bands of the first half of the 2010s and then your band breaks up and you didn’t regroup with any of the other members. You’re left to pick up the pieces and try to figure out a way to keep doing the only thing that gave your life any real resonance. Perhaps a bit of a stretch but one can only imagine it’s something like the scene in Apocalypse Now where Willard discusses why he stayed in Vietnam and how it beat working in a factory in Ohio. To go from Smith Westerns and, in Denver anyway, playing the Ogden to playing small clubs. Willard dealt with it through self-harm and self-medication. Maybe Omori did some of that too, who’s to say? But what we do know is that despite its flaws and shortcomings, New Misery is the product of Omori’s tangling with the fallout, personal and creative, of going from being in a band on the verge of mainstream success to having to find a place for oneself doing the thing you love but which is also the source of some of your pain. That quality gives the record a bit of an uneven and at times cringeworthily honest quality but you don’t often get to hear that on what is essentially a pop record. For this show, you can see some of that music live but also, with any luck, a good deal of what Omori has been cooking up since then.

Who: Film On the Rocks: The Last Jedi feat. Church Fire
When: Tuesday, 05.15, 6 p.m.
Where: Lost Lake
Why: Church Fire’s music sounds like it’s from some future, way-past-post-apocalypse-to-civilizational-rebirth dance club scene. Like synth pop delivered with a fiery intensity and noisy abandon. Sure, a lot of people are going to see a movie during the rainy season for some reason at a place where the wind will doppler the sound and the storms will make watching a movie borderline miserable. Or not. It is Colorado after all. But seeing Church Fire in that environment will make sense as the sun is setting and the diminishing rainclouds provide the perfect backdrop.

Wednesday | May 16, 2018

TV Girl log, image courtesy TV Girl

Who: TV Girl w/Wished Bone and Hairclub
When: Wednesday, 05.16, 8 p.m.
Where: Hi-Dive
Why: The enigmatic pop band TV Girl makes a stop at the Hi-Dive this night. Its sound is like a hyper/surreal, tropicalia-inflected lounge pop. Like a Los Angeles sister band to Sweden’s Death And Vanilla. If someone could make music for a TV show about an America where the 80s never ended and we somehow had Ike back as the president. If Mad Men was a cyberpunk show but took place at a resort with none of the usual dystopian trappings, just life with everyday dramas set in a dreamlike place, an almost too clean place as exists in 60s 70s British science fiction shows. The band’s new album, Death of a Party Girl (read the statement on why the vinyl isn’t yet out because it’s dead on and witty) is an indie pop album that sounds like something that could only really come out of Southern California – hazy atmospheres, downtempo, wistful and soothing – but without any of the creeping insipidity that happens when too much industry input leeches music of any of its inherent character.