Rolling Stones perform at Mile High Stadium on August 10. Photo by Dave Hogan.
Friday | August 9
Jay Aston’s Gene Loves Jezebel, photo by Ian Collins
What:The Alarm, Modern English and Jay Aston’s Gene Loves Jezebel When: Friday, 08.09, 7 p.m. Where: Oriental Theater Why: In the 1980s all three of these bands embodied the kind of highly melodic post-punk that articulated both the bleakness of an era and the hope that they and the rest of humanity would endure writing songs celebrating life and love and honoring the uncertainty, tentativeness and sometimes, yes, even gloominess that cast a pall over society with the impending threat of nuclear holocaust. Over thirty years hence we’re all in another period of doom hanging over the planet from, once again, the threat of nuclear war but also the collapse of our ecosystem and the rise of another wave of aggressive fascism throughout the world. Since these three bands have reconvened each has also been writing some of the best music of their careers and commenting on the times with songs that aren’t trying to capture past glory so much as writing music worthy of their legacy of not getting stuck in a rut. Modern English’s 2016 album Take Me to the Trees, Jay Aston’s Gene Loves Jezebel’s 2017 record Dance Underwater and The Alarm’s 2019 offering Sigma reflect not just the strength of the respective band’s original creative vision but also their growth as artists valid in the modern era.
What:The Yellow Rake 15 year anniversary night 1 w/Simulators, Moon Pussy, Charly Fasano, Brian Polk and Karl Christian Krumpholz When: Friday, 08.09, 8 p.m. Where: Mutiny Information Café Why: The Yellow Rake is a Denver-based literary and culture magazine that is celebrating a remarkable fifteen years in existence with performances from local bands Simulators and Moon Pussy and writers and artists Charly Fasano, Karl Christian Krumpholz and Yellow Rake founder Brian Polk. The celebration will run two nights beginning tonight at Mutiny Information Café.
What:Martin Atkins DJ sets and spoken word When: Friday, 08.09, 9 p.m. Where: Tracks Why: Martin Atkins who has been a major figure in post-punk and industrial music going back four decades (i.e. Nine Inch Nails, Killing Joke, Ministry, Public Image Limited) will do a DJ set tonight and perform some spoken word, possibly reading from his own body of work.
Saturday | August 10
This Will Destroy You, photo by Veronika Reinert
What:This Will Destroy You w/Brin When: Saturday, 08.10, 8 p.m. Where: Oriental Theater Why: This Will Destroy You is one of the better ambient post-rock bands. Mainly because its dynamics aren’t limited to the predictable builds and then inevitable catharsis like Sigur Ros without all the alien light and energy that imbues that band’s music. This Will Destroy You’s 2018 albums New Others Part One and Part Two finds the band further developing its textural elements giving its new set of soundscapes a depth of low end it didn’t lack but one that highlights the more ethereal melodies with a a evocative contrast in tone.
What:Rolling Stones: 2019 No Filter Tour When: Friday, 08.10, 6:30 p.m. Where: Mile High Stadium Why: Anyone not know who the Rolling Stones are? Use your search engine and learn about the iconic rock and roll band that fused a gritty, heavily blues influenced rock music and evolved it in various and fascinating ways for years with lyrics that often indulged in unusual, offbeat subjects and really a broad spectrum of human experience making their songs long term engaging and influential. Keith Richards’ autobiography Life is one of a handful of essential books written by a musician.
What:GYES: Arc Sol, Mainland Break, Slugger When: Friday, 08.10, 8 p.m. Where: The People’s Building Why: This edition of Get Your Ears Swoll brings to Northwest Aurora, Colorado experimental rock bands with a psychedelic loose edges.
What:Glasss Fest Day 1 When: Friday, 08.10, 12 p.m. Where: Rhinoceropolis Why: This two day event spanning roughly twelve hours each day brings together some of the most interesting of underground bands that often do not get much play at the clubs or more commercial venues. Which makes it an event worth attending to catch a slice of what you’re missing out on if you only go to venues that don’t book experimental music. Most of this stuff isn’t particularly challenging unless your idea of genius is mainstream pop music that is bland but has the veneer of quality or if you’re mainly only into one genre of music not represented. It’s an eclectic booking in a way that needs to happen in Denver and elsewhere more often. Schedule below. All times p.m. as if you needed to be told.
12:30 – DJ Zombie
3 – Grrrl
3:30 Kah Li
4 – Nothing is Everything
4:30 – MYTHirst
5 – Adam Selene
5:30 – Bios+a+ic
6 – Elle Green
6:30 – Sliver
7 – Bianca Mikahn
7:30 – Denizens of the Deep
8 – House N Complex
8:30 – Pearls & Perils
9 – Princess Dewclaw
9:30 – Abeasity Jones
10 – R A R E B Y R D $
10:30 – Catdog
11 – Techno Allah
11:30 – Savage Bass Goat
Sunday | August 11
Umbras Animas, photo by Tom Murphy
What:Glasss Fest Day 2 When: Sunday, 08.11, 12 p.m. Where: Rhinoceropolis Why: See above for Glasss Fest.
1 – Sobremarcha/Hepster Pat DJ Sets
3 – Umbras Animus
4 – Galleries
4:30 Wngdu
5 – Disposal Notice
5:30 – Sumguy
6 – Bowshock
6:30 John Gross
7 – Venus305 / DCC
7:30 – Lady of Sorrows
8 – Pythian Whispers
8:30 – Dead Characters
9 – Soulless Maneater
9:30 Sadbug
10 – Joohsup
10:30 – $addy
11 – Hepster Pat DJ set
Tuesday | August 13
Plume Varia, photo by Tom Murphy
What:Quits, Multicult (MD), Sliver and Equine When: Tuesday, 08.13, 12 p.m. Where: 3 Kings Tavern Why: Basically a noise rock show except for Equine who is probably doing a noisy guitarscaping sort of set. And Sliver who are basically a grunge color-by-numbers act. At least when it comes to their Layne Staley wannabe singer/guitarist. But they’re pretty alright in spite of all of that. Multicult is a Baltimore-based noise rock band in the vein of Shellac and The Unsane. Quits is a Denver band with a similar aesthetic and one that doesn’t skimp on the raw emotional outbursts.
What:Pure Bathing Culture w/Plume Varia When: Tuesday, 08.13, 7 p.m. Where: Larimer Lounge Why: Pure Bathing Culture started with Sarah Versprille and Daniel Hindman who are also members of experimental folk band Vetiver. PBC is more in the realm of dream pop but with a more organic base with vibrant and sparkling guitar work amid lush synths as well as Versprille’s warm vocals. The group’s 2019 album Night Pass is its first since being dropped from Partisan Records. And rather than a darker than usual album to reflect the process of the experience, Night Pass sounds like a band that kept going its previous creative trajectory of introspective, upbeat yet downtempo pop songs. Opening the show is Plume Varia who share a similar sensibility but whose sound palette is a little more dusky and with singer Cheri Cobbs’ vocals soulful and deeply evocative.
What:Matt Weston (Albany), Ryan Mcryhew and Ryan Seward When: Tuesday, 08.13, 7:30 p.m. Where: Rhinoceropolis Why: This will be something of an experimental improvisational show including locals Ryan Mcryhew better known for his work as modular synth and beats composer Entrance and avant-garde percussionist Ryan Seward. Both will join Matt Weston whose own left field percussion and electronics has brought him into collaborative spheres with the likes of Roger Miller (of Mission of Burma), Jim O’Rourke, drone legend Kevin Drumm, free jazz saxophone player Charles Gayle and Jack Wright, another master sax improviser.
Wednesday | August 14
Kamasi Washington, photo by Durimel
What:Herbie Hancock and Kamasi Washington When: Wednesday, 08.14, 7:30 p.m. Where: Mission Ballroom Why: Herbie Hancock probably needs no introduction as one of the most important artists in modern jazz as a composer, pianist and band leader. He played in Miles Davis Quarter, he was a pioneer of jazz fusion and funk, he has composed soundtracks, he had a 1983 pop hit with “Rockit” which fused jazz and hip-hop. His accomplishments are, frankly, to massive to list. Also on this bill is Kamasi Washington whose own role as a master saxophonist (he’s played on records by Kendrick Lamar, Thundercat, St. Vincent and others, no big deal), composer, band leader and producer parallels Hancock’s own. As a live performer Washington orchestrates the show with a subtle mastery that feels relaxed and informal due to the songwriting and the years of work already put in but which feels like watching a grandmaster at work. So go early to catch Washington and stay for one of the few living legends of jazz demonstrate his own musical magic.
Who:The Damned w/Radkey and The Darts When: Thursday, 10.25, 7 p.m. Where: The Gothic Theatre Why: The Damned famously released the first UK punk single “New Rose” on October 22, 1976 through Stiff Records. While the group didn’t cause as much of a stir as the Sex Pistols or garner as much fame as The Clash, it has, long term has arguably been as influential as both on not just punk generally but also post-punk and Goth with its aesthetic, musically and in terms of visual style. After several lineup changes, including founding member Captain Sensible coming and out of the band, The Damned have persisted as a vital live act. In 2018 the group released its first album in a decade: Evil Spirits. Easily the band’s best, most satisfying record since the late 70s, Evil Spirits doesn’t break new ground, it just reaffirms the fact that The Damned may have been punk but it’s also one not short on strong songwriting. Sounding somewhere between a more raw 70s glam band and thoughtful 80s post-punk, the new set of songs from The Damned are a somewhat melancholic take on the state of the world but inside that tonality is a spirit of defiance through creativity. Also on this tour is Radkey, a trio comprised of the Radke brothers whose style of garage punk is more in the vein of early pioneers like Death and, well, The Damned.
Who:Demeoncassettecult, bios+a+ic + Equine, Pearils & Perils, Juniordeer, Sobremarcha and SADnois When: Thursday, 10.25, 7 p.m. Where: Thought//Forms Why: Demoncassettecult will perform material from his time in industrial noise duo Dr. Montgomery Maxwell at this show. Biostatic will team up for a unique set with guitar drone artist Equine. Pearils & Perils will bring some dusky atmospheric, downtempo R&B..
Who:Fathers and Muscle Beach Tour Kickoff w/Nightwraith and Limbwrecker When: Thursday, 10.25, 8 p.m. Where: Hi-Dive Why: Two of Denver’s metallic, post-hardcore bands are going on tour and celebrating the occasion with this kickoff tour. Fathers includes now former members of Lords of Fuzz, Black Acid Devil, Cult of the Lost Cause and Native Daughters so its heavy music pedigree is respectable enough. But it’s debut, self-titled record, out in Fall 2017 forged a bit of a different musical identity for its members with music akin to the aggressive and thorny drive and dynamism of bands like Converge and Coalesce. Muscle Beach, especially its newer material, compresses a great amount of energy and movement into a small span of time and cuts out the inessential. In doing so, the trio’s songs defy easy genre designation and despite its relentless energy there is a grace and fluidity to music not really designed to possess either quality.
Friday | October 26, 2018
Kamasi Washington, photo courtesy the artist
Who:Kamasi Washington w/Victory When: Friday, 10.26, 7 p.m. Where: The Ogden Theatre Why: Kamasi Washington is reaping the benefits of a lifetime of learning and honing his craft and bringing to the playing of saxophone and composing music a creativity that has some critics and fans placing him among the jazz legends of yesteryear. History will decide if Washington is worthy of such accolades but his body of work and his various collaborations in the worlds of jazz and hip-hop speaks for itself. He is among one of the true talents bridging various realms of music with equal aplomb. In that way he and bassist Thundercat have much in common as both have contributed to albums by the likes of Pulitzer Prize-winning hip-hop producer and rapper Kendrick Lamar as well as releasing acclaimed and innovative albums in their own rights. In 2018, released both a full-length with Heaven and Earth and a companion EP The Choice. Difficult to assess Washington’s legacy at this point but this is a chance to witness his music live at a medium-sized venue either at The Ogden Theatre or tomorrow night in Boulder at The Boulder Theater.
Sharone & The Wind, photo by KMiller Photography
Who:Sharone & The Wind’s Night of Terror 2 w/Shattered Halo, Married a Dead Man, Dead But Fancy, Rotten Reputation When: Friday, 10.26, 8 p.m. Where: Moe’s Original BBQ, Englewood Why: As Sharone & The Wind have developed over the past two years as a band, it has also established itself as a theatrical live act. No holiday is more suited to the group’s dark, emotionally-charged, art metal than Halloween. For the second year running, the band has assembled friends and peers to share a set at Moe’s Original BBQ to ring in the holiday with what will surely be a set that will include props and go beyond a band merely getting on stage and rocking.
Who:1st Annual Halloween Throwdown Night 1: Dragondeer Vs. Bowie w/Def Knock and The Milk Blossoms When: Friday, 10.26, 8:30 p.m. Where: Globe Hall Why: If the members of Dragondeer weren’t incredibly talented musicians they wouldn’t be able to play their own brand of psychedelic blues much less take on the musical identities of two bands whose music is part of the DNA of international rock music whether acknowledged or not. On Friday night, the group will play songs from the catalog of David Bowie, an artist whose musical corpus combined exquisite, thoughtful, pop music and the avant-garde in various proportions with little regard to strict genre conventions. Opening this first night is The Milk Blossoms, a band whose emotionally tender yet fierce pop songs show how you can seem to be writing from secret places but have the requisite personal bravery to bare the art made from there to the world.
Who:Bluebook EP release w/Shark Dreams and Midwife When: Friday, 10.26, 8 p.m. Where: Fort Greene Bar Why: It’s been a minute since Bluebook released anything. Julie Davis has been busy with other, equally fascinating projects and having a child, among other things. The new Bluebook material, part of which can be heard on the new EP The Astronaut’s Wife, was written with Jess Parsons and while it contains some of the familiar elements that have made Davis’ music interesting from very early on like her vivid, commanding voice and her use of a difficult to manage and master instrument like upright bass along with various loops and the sounds that Parsons brings to the project. There is a mysterious quality to the band’s presentation of the music these days too and that just gives the storytelling a bit of an atmospheric edge. Also on the bill is one of Denver’s most interesting songwriters and organic soundscapers, Midwife.
FIDLAR, photo courtesy the artist
Who:Fidlar w/Dilly Dally and Side Eyes When: Friday, 10.26, 8 p.m. Where: Gothic Theatre Why: Fidlar could have just been another garage punk band except that Zac Carper and Elvis Kuehn met while working at a recording studio and thus had a better than average sense of what made recordings sound good and what kind of preparation a band might need to undertake in order to not waste a lot of time not getting what they want out of that process. Nevertheless, there is a freshness to its sound that has as much in common with 2010s indie pop as it does with post-Reatards garage punk—catchy tunes, a little loose around the edges, irreverent and self-deprecating. The group will release its new record Almost Free on January 25, 2019 but you’ll get to hear a good deal of it first on this tour.
Who:Rot Congress When: Friday, 10.26, 9 p.m. Where: The Skylark Lounge Why: Hot Congress was the promising indie rock label that, for a time in the late 2000s and early 2010s, galvanized a certain segment of the Denver music scene with releases, promotion, events featuring its artists and an eccentric yet striking aesthetic. The label hasn’t been active in years but it maintains its Halloween tradition of gathering local Denver bands associated with Hot Congress for a show called Rot Congress at which the bands dress up and have, on occasion, taken up humorous alternate names. Here is a schedule for this year’s event, all times p.m.: 9:30 Zealot, 10:15 Kissing Party, 11 The Interesting Times Gang, 11:45 The Jinjas.
Saturday | October 27, 2018
Ian Sweet, photo by Kelsey Hart
Who:Ian Sweet w/Young Jesus When: Saturday, 10.27, 8 p.m. Where: Hi-Dive Why: Ian Sweet is Jillian Medford’s vehicle for exploring the intersections between one’s own neuroses and her responsibilities to others, some of whom she has taken on a type of caretaker role. Or so she so poetically articulates on her 2018 sophomore record Crush Crusher. With luminous melodies, gentle and textured rhythms and lush soundscapes, Medford crafts songs that reflect a strength of character of necessity balanced against the crushing anxiety that develops when battling your own demons and making sure those under your care, formally or otherwise, don’t go neglected. It’s rock, it’s indie pop., it’s dreamy stuff but because of the subject matter and Medford’s imaginative songwriting it has a heft yet uplifting quality suggesting a complexity not heard enough in popular music. Also on the bill, Young Jesus whose what one might call indie prog songs recall late 90s math rock where that music mixed with 90s emo. A bit like Minus the Bear but more melancholy.
Who:1st Annual Halloween Throwdown Night 2: Dragondeer Vs. The Dead w/Dog City Disco When: Saturday, 10.27, 8:30 p.m. Where: Globe Hall Why: This second night of Dragondeer’s Halloween show features the band taking on the challenging repertoire of the Grateful Dead. As pioneers of DIY, independent music having a viable existence and the soundtrack to a real moment of American counterculture, the Grateful Dead’s can be polarizing. But its blend of psychedelia, bluegrass and improvisational jazz has often been imitated by hundreds of bands with mixed results. But if you go and check out any one of the group’s early records without having some bias getting in the way, it’s interesting stuff unlike much of anything else going on at the time with truly masterful improvisational live performances captured on some bootlegs and its own official live releases, particularly Europe ’72. Will Dragondeer be up to the challenge and not be like so many wack wannabes in the jam band scene? Likely so given the level of talent involved.
Who:The Crüxshadows, Seraphim Shock, Radio Scarlet and DJ Mudwulf When: Saturday, 10.27, 8 p.m. Where: The Oriental Theater Why: The Crüxshadows are one of the very few bands that combine trance and dark wave that doesn’t immediately inspire a chuckle. Mainly because the band has found a way to make that sound good rather than the laughable EBM/Future Pop thing that plagued the late 90s and the 2000s. Joining the Florida band for this show are two Denver bands. Industrial rock/trashy vampire costume performance art band Seraphim Shock are legends in certain Goth circles in Denver. Since the mid-90s, the group has somehow made the schlocky-ness of industrial rock, pop metal and Gothic aesthetics as manifested in the popularity of vampire mythos in the 90s with the novels of Anne Rice and the RPG Vampire: The Masquerade, maybe even Nancy Collins’ Sonja Blue novels, seem not so hokey or gloriously so. Seraphim Shock has been that band to synthesize all of it and make it highly entertaining for over two decades now. Radio Scarlett might be the only legit death rock band in the Mile High City. Even if it turns out it’s the only one, it’s at least good. Okay, there’s Grave Moss too and both are excellent bands.
Who:Cyclo-Sonic, The Gurkhas, Cyanidols and Gata Negra When: Saturday, 10.27, 8:30 p.m. Where: The Skylark Why: Some of Denver punk’s elder, but not elderly, punk musicians who are still playing in respectable bands will take the stage at The Skylark tonight. Cyclo-Sonic includes former members of The Choosey Mothers, The Fluid, The Frantix and Rok Tots and they can still pull off a spirited performance. Cyanidols include a handful of Denver punk and indie rock veterans including former Tarmints and The Symptoms bassist/vocalist Sonya Decman and Chris Kieft and Oscar Pop who have played in too many notable bands to name going back to the 80s Denver punk underground. Gata Negra is Whitney Rehr’s bluesy punk/power pop band when she’s not also playing in I’m A Boy.
Sunday | October 28, 2018
Victoria Lundy, photo by Tom Murphy
Who:Textures: Herpes Hideaway, Haunted Sound Lab, Victoria Lundy When: Sunday, 10.28, 7:30 p.m. Where: Mutiny Information Café Why: This edition of Textures will feature a special encore presentation of Herpes Hideaway’s creepy diorama and puppet set to accompany his dark ambient music and usual witches’ costume. Appropriately enough Haunted Sound Lab will perform as well as Victoria Lundy who will grace the night with her haunting, classically-inspired Theremin and synth compositions. Maybe she’ll reprise parts of her Miss American Vampire release show.
Who:Insane Clown Posse w/Clownvis Presley, Dirty Rotten Rhymers, Swizzy J and Hex Rated (LSP) When: Sunday, 10.28, 7:30 p.m. Where: Stampede Why: Insane Clown Posse brings its dark carnival to Aurora, Colorado for a show at Stampede. The latter is a club that has in years past been known more as a home to country music. But its large dance floor and upper floor open to the performance space lends itself well to larger shows in general. No need to explain ICP but it’s live shows are highly entertaining with lots of over the top stage antics and a high level of surreal kitsch and fun even if you’re not into the music. Clownvis Presley is, yes, an Elvis tribute act with a clown version of Elvis providing the vocals and the name of the band. ICP hasn’t been to the Denver area for a long time despite the Mile High City being a place in America where it is most popular so maybe the guys have something special in store for this tour around Halloween.
Tuesday | October 30, 2018
Sugar Candy Mountain, photo courtesy the artist
Who:Black Moth Super Rainbow w/The Stargazer Lilies and Air Credits When: Tuesday, 10.30, 7 p.m. Where: The Bluebird Theater Why: Black Moth Super Rainbow amalgamated Tom Fec’s sound experiments with making the musical equivalent of collage art, giving it an even more organic and fuzzy around the edges, analog quality than simply processed sampling. As with other artists who mastered their own production style in a like-minded vein such as Boards of Canada, cLOUDED and J Dilla, Fec and BMSR created an otherworldly and transporting sound with a sense of innocence about it yet often profane and frank in content. Adopting stage names (Tobacco and Seven Fields of Aphelion, for instance), BMSR’s shows are often an immersive experience creating an emotional and imaginative zone for the night. The band’s latest full-length, 2018’s Panic Blooms, is an even further reach into abstraction as a means of conveying a direct link into the realms of imagination and emotion. BMSR has always been an alchemical blend of hip-hop, psychedelic electronic music and IDM but one grounded in a working class culture in middle America where a sense of one’s isolation breeds aspirational daydreaming and/or drug abuse as a means of escaping the dream shattering mundanity of everyday life. Where you can see on TV and in media a more glamorous life that seems out of reach of everyone you know and you look at your own life and think, “Is this it? Forever?” BMSR’s music honors that desperation and melancholy while making music suggesting other options and possibilities and finding the extraordinary even within your own psychic angst and disappointment.
Who:Sugar Candy Mountain, Ancient Elk and Palo Santo When: Tuesday, 10.30, 7 p.m. Where: Globe Hall Why: Sugar Candy Mountain’s hazy tropicalia and psych folk pop sounds like what a handful of their music videos look like—the soundtrack to a road trip across the American west in a future imagined by Jim Jarmusch. The band’s new record Do Right takes its songwriting beyond the languid, single note picking that is the specialty of bands nicking the Laurel Canyon inspired garage rock vibe for a kind of retrofuturist sound that might be compared to Kim Stanley Robinson’s Three California’s trilogy, in particular 1988’s The Gold Coast. Nerdy science fiction comparison’s aside, Sugar Candy Mountain may on the surface sound like another pop psychedelia band but its imaginative songwriting and knack for capturing a modern sense of wanderlust and dissatisfaction without going dark is not just refreshing but extraordinary.
Who:Amigo the Devil w/Harley Poe When: Tuesday, 10.30, 7 p.m. Where: The Marquis Theater Why: Amigo the Devil’s latest album, Everything is Fine, as in not, is like a collection of modern noir short stories with a darkly humorous bent. That it’s pretty much just Danny Kiranos and his acoustic guitar (with some very minimal percussion and piano on various songs) is even more impressive because it feels full and that anything more would take away from the stark beauty of the songwriting. There’s a song called “Cocaine and Abel,” another called “Hungover in Jonestown,” yet another called “I Hope Your Husband Dies”—all suggesting skullduggery and over-the-top scenes. But there’s a tenderness and sensitivity there too, a nuance of emotion that hits you unexpectedly like the quieter moments in a Cormac McCarthy novel. A great set of music for Halloween week but also enjoyable beyond any seasonal appeal because Kiranos’ music comes from the heart and not a sense of lurid kitsch.
Wednesday | October 31, 2018
Spirit Award, photo by Brenna Nickels
Who:Itchy-O Hallowmass w.Echo Beds When: Wednesday, 10.31, 8 p.m. Where: Summit Music Hall Why: Itchy-O recently released its best album to date with Mystic Spy | Psykho Dojo. It doesn’t capture the live show because no recording could but as a listening experience it takes you into realms of experience that are an analogue and a companion to the live show that is enjoyable on its own. If you can’t witness the spectacle of a thirty plus member band dressed up as operatives of an inter-dimensional band of mystics and penitents of a an ethos dedicated to human liberation and artistic exploration through group performance art for yourself the record is plenty rewarding on its own. But if you can, make it to one of the band’s infrequent shows and take in its controlled chaos on its terms. For this show the group will share the stage with Echo Beds, the Denver industrial punk band whose own new album, Buried Language, is a leap forward for the band’s presentation in the recorded format. Live, with the oil drum and vocal caterwaul, electronic percussion and cutting guitar work, Echo Beds is as thrilling and forbidding as its recordings suggest and a perfect parallel artist for the way the records translate on the part of Itchy-O.
Who: Amigo the Devil w/Harley Poe
When: Wednesday, 10.31, 7 p.m.
Where: The Marquis Theater
Why: For Amigo the Devil, see above for 10/30/18.
Who:Danzig 30 Year Anniversary w/Venom Inc., Power Trip and Mutoid Man When: Wednesday, 10.31, 6:30 p.m. Where: Fillmore Auditorium Why: Danzig will perform cuts from across his solo career. Sometimes the music borders on corny but really melodramatic in the best sense but always dark and honest about that side of Danzig’s psyche. On other tours the band plays the hits but for this one the group will dig a little deeper into the catalog.
Who:Colfax Speed Queen, Ned Garthe Explosion, Vic N’ The Narwhals and Spirit Award When: Wednesday, 10.31, 8 p.m. Where: Syntax Physic Opera Why: Spirit Award’s new album Muted Crowd is a good one for the Halloween holiday considering the song “Supreme Truth” is about Japan’s terror cult Aum Shinrikyo and “Witching Hour” is based on singer/guitarist Daniel Lyon’s encounters with the paranormal in a house in Seattle. But the music isn’t spooky so much as dense with energized atmospheres, echoing vocals and urgent rhythms. The Seattle-based trio will be joined by three of Denver’s own off beat rock and roll bands with Colfax Speed Queen’s post-psych garage, Ned Garthe Explosion’s humorous yet intense and colorful take on psychedelic rock and Vic N’ The Narwhals time traveling southern California via the American southwest presentation of R&B-inflected surf rock.
Who:Glasss Presents the Speakeasy Series Season 2: Bios+a+ic and Acidbat When: Thursday, 06.21, 7 p.m. Where: Hooked On Colfax Why: For this edition of the Speakeasy Series Season 2 you can see Wesley Davis doing a rare performance as Bios+a+ic, his long-running ambient/experimental electronic and acoustic instrument project. Davis curates the Textures Ambient showcase series now hosted the last Sunday of every month (including this Sunday, 6/24) at Mutiny Information Café. This event marks the twenty year anniversary of Davis’ label Symbolic Insight. Also on the bill is Acidbat, Seth Ogden’s noise-techno-downtempo-IDM project. Though not short on the experimental of electronic soundscaping, Acidbat pushes the use of rhythm and beats in interesting directions.
Who:Cindygod w/French Kettle Station and Whoopsi When: Thursday, 06.21, 8 p.m. Where: Hi-Dive Why: Probably a good reason to go to this show is to see New Wave Dance phenom French Kettle Station and his emotionally charged performance. But the main reason is to see the debut of Andy Rauworth’s and Craig Nice’s new band Cindygod. Rauworth and Nice were the indie rock duo Gauntlet Hair who made waves in the late 2000s/early 2010s with its energetic, noisy, sparkly rock songs. The group signed to Dead Oceans and did a short bit of touring before calling it quits in August 2013. For this band Rauworth is joined by Anton Krueger formerly of Bollywood Life (now H-Lite) and Eamonn Wilcox
who some may remember performing as Running Niwot a few years back.
Friday | June 22, 2018
Calm., photo by Tom Murphy
Who:Pop Up: Music & Art with Calm., Adolfo Romero and poet Jesus Rodriguez, art by Goat Witch Goods When: Friday, 06.22, 7:30 p.m. Where: Hooked On Colfax Why: The benefits of this show will go to benefit the undocumented community. It will include performances from poets Jesus Rodriguez and Adolfo Romero as well as the great Denver-based hip-hop duo Calm. whose own music reflects growing up poor in Park Hill and North Denver and an organic intellectual tradition. Also, rapper Chris Steele might lay down some of his surreal humor between songs and drop some knowledge outside the context of Calm.’s music.
Who:Pearls & Perils, Vahco and Victoria Lundy When: Friday, 06.22, 9 p.m. Where: Lion’s Lair Why: Soulful downtempo and synths show from Glasss Records artists Pearls & Perils and Vahco. Olivia of Pearls & Perils creates a deep cloudscape of sound with her beats and her sultry voice and Vahco’s experimental R&B and powerfully emotive singing gives his songs a quality that transcends any specific genre of music to which it might be attached. Victoria Lundy is the godmother of experimental electronic music in Denver at this point from her time in Carbon Dioxide Orchestra two decades ago to her Theremin work for avant-pop outfit The Inactivists to the music under her own name that reflects the influence of Twentieth Century classical and avant-garde electronic music as well as her own imaginative use of synth and Theremin.
Who:Pink Hawks w/Wheelchair Sports Camp and Polyphoni When: Friday, 06.22, 9 p.m. Where: Ophelia’s Electric Soap Box Why: Pink Hawks are one of few legit Afrobeat outfits in Denver led by Yuzo Nieto. The latter helped start the project as more of a free jazz trio but followed his instincts into more out jazz and Latin music to whatever it is one might exactly describe Pink Hawks now. Also on the bill is the great, jazz-inflected Denver hip-hop group Wheelchair Sports Camp whose playful yet deeply meaningful songs bridge the personal and the political with rapper/beatmaker Kaelyn Heffernan’s social activism. WSC doesn’t really sound like anyone else, reflective of its diverse roots.
Who:Sliver, Pout House, Yellnat, Hair Club and Galleries When: Friday, 06.22, 8 p.m. Where: 3 Kings Tavern Why: It’s a free show but that is no knock on its quality. Galleries is a heavy psychedelic band from Denver but one where the songwriting comes before simply rocking with a weirdo flourish. Sliver is a punk and grunge band influenced by, of course, Nirvana, but also hardcore pioneers Bad Brains and post-punk/proto-grunge band Wipers from Portland, Oregon. As good as any of those bands? Maybe. But, contrary to the band’s protestations otherwise, Sliver does not in fact suck.
Krallice circa 2009, photo by Tom Murphy
Who:Trve Brewing’s 6th Anniversary Bacchanal Night 1: Krallice, Wayfarer, Fórn, Many Blessings When: Friday, 06.22, 8 p.m. Where: Hi-Dive Why: Trve Brewing has been hosting a weekend of great extreme metal for several years now and this first night includes legendary black/technical death metal shredder Mick Barr with his band Krallice as well as Denver doom outfit Wayfarer and Many Blessings, the ambient/instrumental doom/noise project from Ethan McCarthy of Primitive Man.
Who:Definitely, Maybe, Thistledown, Ancient Elk and Laura Goldhamer When: Friday, 06.22, 8 p.m. Where: Denver Bicycle Café Why: Definitely Maybe includes former members of the late, great, math rock band Scatter Gather. Ancient Elk shows us where avant-folk, psychedelia and soul meet. Laura Goldhamer has long been an influential figure in Denver’s later era indie pop and experimental folk world not just for her music but for her steering bookings at the now defunct DIY space Brooks Center Arts as well as her beautifully imaginative filmmaking.
Sunday | June 24, 2018
Mingo, photo by Tom Murphy
Who:Textures 4 year anniversary at Mutiny w/Mingo, Bios+a+ic and The {Nothing} When: Sunday, 06.24, 7 p.m. Where: Mutiny Information Café Why: This Textures anniversary show also celebrates 20 years of Wesley Davis’ Symbolic Insight imprint. For the occasion, Davis will perform as Bios+a+ic, his long running ambient project. Additionally, Mingo, whose work has also been featured on Hearts of Space Program, will put in one of his few performances and The {Nothing} is a newer ambient/experimental project that is Travis Sturm who will provide the usual, greatly evocative visuals under his orchidz3ro moniker.
Monday | June 25, 2018
Oko Tygra, photo by Tom Murphy
Who:The Horrors w/Oko Tygra When: Monday, 06.25, 7 p.m. Where: Bluebird Theater Why: Even though The Horrors were basically a The Birthday Party tribute band early on, as evidenced by its promising debut album Strange House, it at least was one that seemed halfway credible. As the band evolved, and as the band aged out of their early 20s, The Horrors took on other flavors like late-era Spacemen 3 and Spiritualized with the 2009 Primary Colours album, motorik beats and all. With 2011’s Skying The Horrors made its inspirations in electronic music much more obvious but so well blended with the rock instrumentation that it was practically a new band whose gift for otherworldly and transporting compositions was fully formed. While not sounding the same at all one might say that The Horrors have become the British equivalent of Deerhunter. With 2014’s Luminous The Horrors went further into the realm of the electronic but with 2017’s V, the band has come to engaging in more straightforward pop songcraft while not shedding its experimental instincts and what it has learned during its impressive arc of development as a band. To say nothing of the group’s great visual style and theatrical performances which give the music its proper and impactful context.
Opening the show is Denver-based dream pop band Oko Tygra. Singer/guitarist Joshua Novak has been making emotionally stirring music since his days of performing as a what one might say singer-songwriter. Of course Novak’s songwriting seemed much more sonically ambitious from the beginning and with this band he’s able to create the kind of downtempo, lush music that has been in his imagination waiting for the right way to see expression for years.
Who:Men I Trust w/Pearl Sugar and Modern Leisure When: Monday, 06.25, 7 p.m. Where: Lost Lake Why: Montreal’s Men I Trust operate independently of labels and PR folk pushing their music to press. And often that means the band is probably punk or some kind of rock. But no, the group’s music is minimalist, downtempo dream pop and its ethos reminiscent of bands that used to play the American DIY circuit in the late 2000s when you could never fully predict what kind of music would come through playing place in Denver like Rhinoceropolis, Mouth House and the like. Men I Trust has more in common with Cocteau Twins and Alvvays than modern synth pop or post-chillwave acts and its production sophisticated for a band existing largely outside the traditional channels of the music industry. But, really, isn’t that how many bands these days are doing it? From learning the skills to produce, mix and master their music and create music videos mainly to have control over one’s output but also because you can learn all those skills and not have to pay someone outside your immediate orbit to do the work. That part doesn’t really make the band unique in this day and age. However, Men I Trust seems like it’s put more than their fair share of time into releasing quality product from inception to setting it off for others to enjoy.
Tuesday | June 26, 2018
Dirty Projectors circa 2007, photo by Tom Murphy
Who:Dirty Projectors w/Still Woozy When: Tuesday, 06.26, 7 p.m. Where: Bluebird Theater Why: Whatever one thinks of Dirty Projectors you can’t really down a band that seems to explore new territory or at least find different angles on ideas it already developed well on earlier releases. Its forthcoming album Lamp Lit Prose (due out July 13, 2018) finds David Longstreth and company doing as it has done for years in weaving together a wide spectrum of musical traditions and ideas to produce music that many may find quirky but which pushes forward what pop music can be. This time the spidery and labyrinthine guitar work and non-western rhythm schemes inside fairly mathy overall structures is a fascinating wrinkle for a band that has rejected certain comparisons to prog. Because it’s not prog. It is, however, using technical musical ideas as a framework to experiment with unconventional ideas in its own musical legacy.
Who:Lithics w/Super Bummer and Male Blonding When: Tuesday, 06.26, 7 p.m. Where: Lost Lake Why: Inevitably Lithics get compared to No Wave early NYC and Bush Tetras. And that sort of wiry, writhing alienation is part of its sonic DNA. But the urgent atonal math rock-esque quality of some of its songs and the junk-jangle riffs remind one a bit of great 90s math rock weirdos like A Minor Forest, Polvo and Autoclave as well as art punk peers like Palm and US Weekly. Nevertheless, Lithics, from Portland, Oregon, has distinguished itself with stark melodies and jagged changes of pace as well as singer Aubrey Hornor’s intense stage presence and piercing gaze that channels perfectly songs brimming with nervous energy distilled into brilliant nuggets of postmodern poetic meditations on the neuroses plaguing anyone paying attention in the world in the past decade. Its new album, Mating Surfaces (out now on Kill Rock Stars), is exactly the kind of harum scarum post-punk disco we need as an salve to challenge and help cope with the conformist shittiness that has taken over our national politics. Bonus: you get to see two of Denver’s greatest post-punk acts with the more psych Super Bummer and Male Blonding’s deeply atmospheric sound grounded by one of the greatest rhythm sections in the Mile High City.
Who:The Sidekicks w/Great American House Fire and The Spirit of the Beehive When: Tuesday, 06.26, 7 p.m. Where: Globe Hall Why: The Sidekicks, from Cleveland, Ohio, spends most of their excellent 2018 album Happiness Hours proving that you can still be a pop-oriented punk band and not have to perpetually navigate life as an emotionally stunted teenager. It’s not a melancholy album. It’s not cynical. It’s not rife with the voice of someone who feels like they have it all figured out. What the band has figured out, though, is that their version of punk doesn’t have to fit the formula they grew up with in terms of instrumentation or the flavor of the sentiments expressed in the words—that punk, too, can evolve and grow with you if the people making it are willing to reimagine the music they love for a time in life they never really thought about reaching without feeling like they had to put anything fun behind. Denver bands Great American House Fire and The Spirit of the Beehive also didn’t get the memo on needing to keep on making punk like you never outgrew shitty street punk and problematic emo.
Wednesday | June 27, 2018
Thurston Moore circa 2012, photo by Tom Murphy
Who:Thurston Moore When: Wednesday, 06.26, 6-7 p.m. Where: Innisfree Poetry Bookstore and Café Why: Thurston Moore wasn’t just a charismatic member of one of alternative rock’s most influential and iconic bands. He was an ambassador for the underground in music and art throughout the 80s and through to today. He is also a scholar of the Beat movement and an instructor on that subject at Naropa University. Tonight he will be doing readings from his book Stereo Sanctity – Lyrics & Poems.
Who:Weird Wednesday: Dorian, Chromadrift, Denizens of the Deep When: Wednesday, 06.26, 9 p.m. Where: 3 Kings Tavern Why: This edition of Weird Wednesday will have a focus on some of Denver’s greatest ambient bands. Chromadrift just released his latest album Skyline. It’s organic/electronic/textural beats frame luminous compositions reminiscent of Dntel will be soothing enough to make one forget how busy the Baker District has become of late. Denizens of the Deep’s soundtrack-y ambient music is the aural equivalent of an A.E. Van Vogt story set in some detailed yet completely alien and haunted far future after civilization has fallen for the umpteenth time—haunted, suggestive of decaying urban landscapes and dark yet comforting.
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.
Brian Jonestown Massacre circa 2012, photo by Tom Murphy
Who:Brian Jonestown Massacre w/Pale Sun When: Thursday, 05.17, 7 p.m. Where: The Gothic Theatre Why: Brian Jonestown Massacre didn’t kick off any of the handful of psychedelic rock revivals since the 60s but it is one of the few bands that had the emotional resonance and quality of songwriting that made the original wave so interesting. The BJM also brought to the music a musical sensibility that didn’t emerge and synthesize until the 90s after the impact of the alt-country and Paisley Underground of the 80s refined psych, until after house and electronica generally, shoegaze and slowcore brought about different ways to use drones, atmospheres and beats in different contexts. The BJM freely absorbed all of that sort of thing and produced more consistently interesting rock music than most bands of its era. On later records, Anton Newcombe even brought in musical ideas that one might usually attribute to synth pop and krautrock for a hybrid music that pushed far past the bevy of modern psych bands it directly influenced. Pick up pretty much any of their early records and you’ll hear those echoes across a broad stripe of modern rock music. Pick up any of the band’s albums and you’ll hear something interesting that not anyone else is doing quite as well if at all. This show will probably be a more classic Jonetown Massacre set but that just means a good deal of emotionally changed, tonally nuanced songs that come from the heart. Even people who are stuck on the depiction of Newcombe in the great 2004 documentary film Dig! have to admit that he at least seemed like a sincere artist even at his lowest points. Opening is Denver-based shoegaze band Pale Sun, which includes former members of two of the best bands out of that realm of music that never quite hit national prominence in guitar genius and singer Jeff Suthers of Bright Channel and Moonspeed and multi-faceted drummer Kit Peltzel formerly of Space Team Electra and Snake Rattle Rattle Snake.
Who:Bevin Luna album release w/Jen Korte & The Loss and Wildflowers When: Thursday, 05.17, 8 p.m. Where: Hi-Dive Why: Like most of the musicians/bands that come out of Memphis, Bevin Luna’s songwriting is quite eclectic but not in that trying-to-please-too-many-people way. You get the feeling that Luna had to prove herself to some unforgiving audiences before she moved to Denver and started playing in the local scene in 2005. It’s rock haunted by country, traditional blues, folk and played with the energy of what a punk band should be. While not as swamp-haunted as, say, Gun Club or as countrified as Green On Red, Bevin Luna’s songwriting has roots in similar musical territory. Her new album, Baby Dragon, is fuzzier than some of her earlier music and the raw quality of the recordings really enhances Luna’s natural grit.
What:Glasss Presents the Speakeasy Series Season 2: R A R E B Y R D $, Shocker Mom, Pearls & Perils When: Thursday, 05.17, 7 p.m. Where: Hooked On Colfax Why: Oh, sure, these artists play more than a few shows together. But it’s an example of some of the best bands/artists going playing shows in less-than-fancy situations to friends regardless of whether strangers will get it, thankful for friends showing up and putting on a great show anyway. To call any of these projects “hip-hop” would be technically accurate but wouldn’t encompass the imaginative soundscaping and beats and the use of natural dance moves in performing the music in a way. A short list of the most emotionally moving vocalists in Denver now would have to include KokoLa and Key Lady from R A R E B Y R D $, Robin Walker who is Shocker Mom and Olivia Perez who is Pearls and Perils. Fans of downtempo, lushly produced hip-hop and R&B should make the effort to check out these artists whether tonight or another time.
Friday | May 18, 2018
Hot Snakes, image by Rick Froberg
Who:Hot Snakes, Le Butcherettes and Git Some When: Friday, 05.18, 8 p.m. Where: The Oriental Theater Why: Hot Snakes’ Jericho Sirens, out March 2018 on Sub Pop, is the band’s first album since 2004’s excellent Audit in Progress. And, of course, it’s less playful than Rick Froberg’s and John Reis’s other projects (Obits, Rocket From the Crypt), and has perhaps more in common with their pioneering noise rock band Drive Like Jehu. Angular, at times clashingly atonal, jagged breakdowns, the songs somehow have an anthemic quality that one might attribute to a pop punk band. Except that Jericho Sirens is a seething commentary on how every part of our culture and world civilization in general seems to be on the verge of collapse with public and political rhetoric amping up a kind of Manichaean world view in which one must pick a side or one will be presumed for you. The title of the album, alone, brilliantly and poetically clues one in on the constant state of alert that is encouraged in everyone everywhere all the time now. On this leg of the tour is Le Butcherettes, a band whose own music embodies the violence and contrasts of modern Mexico while examining the nature of identity and the role it plays in our lives and how notions of such can warp perception and impose a harmful cognitive framework. But all headiness and doom and gloom aside, both Hot Snakes and Le Butcherettes are bands whose live show is so viscerally entertaining that even if you don’t look beyond the surface level you won’t regret going. That bands aren’t creating essentially content-free art right now, though, is incredibly refreshing. Git Some, from Denver, is cut from a similar cloth and even if you see Luke Fairchild moving around like a marionette drive by forces beyond his control, what he’s singing about also cuts to the quick of the harrowing reality of modern human, especially North American, life.
Saturday | May 19, 2018
Marisa Anderson, photo by Jason Quigley
Who:Godspeed You! Black Emperor w/Marisa Anderson When: Saturday, 05.19, 8 p.m. Where: Ogden Theatre Why: Marisa Anderson’s guitar compositions channel the sound of the natural world around her. Pastoral in tone with a detail of sound that suggests emotions rendered as sonic texture. Her forthcoming album, Cloud Corner (due out June 15, 2018 through Thrill Jockey), is like a step into that part of America that is off the main roads and outside the thought patterns and resultant culture that pushes us all to go, go, go at the expense of our own long term psychological health. It is music that if we take it in on its own terms reminds us to make time for being human and not the servants of modern post-industrial society. So it makes sense that Anderson is opening for one of the few bands that has maintained some sense of mystique and one that makes futuristic music commenting on world culture using a more classic music approach but not held back by a sensibility and tradition that emphasizes canon through interpreting the works of past masters. Godspeed! You Black Emperor shows how a group of small, committed people can use their talent and work to use conventional tools to demonstrate unorthodox, and even rebellious, ideas. Its 2017 album Luciferian Towers was released along with a statement reflecting a radical, yet completely sensible, view on international human rights. Maybe the band thought it better to think ahead than let the horrible leaders of the world try to dictate all its narratives.
Sunday | May 20, 2018
Mary Lattimore, photo by Rachael Pony Cassells
Who:Mary Lattimore w/Hannah Samano and Bellhoss When: Sunday, 05.20, 7 p.m. Where: Lost Lake Why: Mary Lattimore branches out on her latest album, Hundreds of Days. It’s still the beautifully detailed, intricate ambient melodies that have distinguished her earlier releases. This time out she has experimented more with electric and electronic instruments and equipment as well as her own voice to augment her masterful harp work. Lattimore’s playing has garnered her chances to tour (as a live performer) and collaborate with the likes of Jarvis Cocker, Thurston Moore, Julianna Barwick and gigs doing soundtrack work for the biographical documentaries about Marina Abramović (2012’s The Artist is Present) and Fred Rogers (Won’t You Be My Neighbor, also from 2012). Lattimore’s broad expressive range and ability to write pieces with a keen ear for the percussive and tonal quality of her instruments is impressive. And timeless. Except for the electronic elements it would be difficult to place Lattimore’s music in time and seeing it live or even listening to it on a recording. Of course if you go see it live you will also get to see how visceral an instrument a harp can be even as its ethereal tones seem to float off into infinity.
What:Noise Night at Syntax Physic Opera: Ambigere (WA), Rasmussen, eMMAoWEN, Mirror Fears, Clutch Plague and Sunk Cost When: Sunday, 05.20, 8 p.m. Where: Syntax Physic Opera Why: Ultra Metal presents this edition of Noise Night at Syntax. Noise isn’t for everyone but this lineup will be a much more than the cliché of harsh noise and simple pedal chaining. Rasmussen is a member of local noise legends Page 27 but his solo work is often ambient or even in the realm of dance music. Sunk Cost is Ultra Metal founder Johnathan Cash’s harsh noise project and to some it may sound like tuning in to amplified dead stations on the radio. But there is some soundsculpting going on and the visceral impact of those sounds through a P.A.. Mirror Fears is generally known for her brilliantly crafted, melancholic experimental, industrial pop music but as part of her overall musical identity there is the sensibility of noise and the use of sound in ways that simply don’t fit into a standard pop context. Clutch Plague has a more old school industrial, beat driven sound. EMMAoWEN uses soundscaping, harsh noise and sampling to make impactful commentary on culture and touring act, Ambigere from Olympia, Washington, creates sonically tactile environments that are technically ambient but clearly on the harsh end of that spectrum because there’s nothing soothing about it.
Tuesday | May 22, 2018
Japandroids circa 2012, photo by Tom Murphy
Who:Wolf Parade w/Japandroids w/Adrian Teacher and The Subs When: Tuesday, 05.22, 7 p.m. Where: The Ogden Why: Canadian post-punk band Wolf Parade went on indefinite hiatus in 2010 after producing a few of the most interesting rock albums of that time. Rather than the dance punk or Joy Division-esque mode of post-punk, Wolf Parade’s dusky atmospherics were more akin to those of Crime and the City Solution and Nick Cave. Singer and keyboardist Spencer Krug’s multifaceted career in and out of Wolf Parade included stints in noteworthy indie bands Frog Eyes, Sunset Rubdown and Swan Lake as well as his solo project Moonface. Guitarist/vocalist Dan Boeckner subsequently formed Handsome Furs as well as The Divine Fits (the latter with Britt Daniel of Spoon). Wolf Parade announced its hiatus was over in January 2016 and in 2017 it released Cry Cry Cry on Sub Pop. In support of the album, with clear stylistic nods to recently passed rock icons with David Bowie’s lush and emotionally rich songwriting and Tom Petty’s knack for pop storytelling, the band is currently on tour with another of Canada’s most dynamic rock bands of the moment: Japandroids.
From Vancouver, British Columbia, Japandroids played its own brand of punk and what one might call post-garage with a fiery energy at pretty much every show. Influenced by the likes of The Sonics and Gun Club, Japandroids put out an impressive, albeit relatively small, body of work at two full-length albums and two EPs (collected into a compilation humorously titled No Singles) before going on hiatus itself in 2013. And, purely coincidentally, announced it was back together in 2016 with Near to the Wild Heart of Life, which the band said in interviews was its first attempt to craft an album in a more traditional sense rather than written piecemeal in a headlong rush of being a band in its earlier days. If it didn’t have quite the urgency or ferocity of 2010’s Post-Nothing or 2012’s Celebration Rock, the traces of the record’s Replacements-esque, anthemic power pop was already present on the early material. Japandroids now just sounds bigger to match the intensity with which Brian King and David Prowse continue to bring to the live show.
Who:Kimbra w/Son Lux When: Tuesday, 05.22, 7 p.m. Where: The Bluebird Theater Why: Kimbra earned her bona fides by making soulful and eclectic indie rock that reminded fans and critics of other artists. Fortunately, Kimbra had the chops and talent to warrant glowing comparisons. Her debut album, 2011’s Vows, was a combination of upbeat lounge jazz and electronic pop and reminiscent of an Amy Winehouse record. And the album was critically acclaimed, garnering Kimbra the attention of future high profile collaborators like Mark Foster, Flying Lotus and Thundercat, the latter of which performed on Kimbra’s 2014 album The Golden Echo. With the 2018 album Primal Heart, Kimbra has broadened her songwriting palette and vocal range, now establishing a style that’s not so easy to compare to her peers and influences.
Who:Y La Bamba w/Malahierba, Stelth Ulvang, DJ A-Train When: Tuesday, 05.22, 8 p.m. Where: Hi-Dive Why: Y La Bamba’s Luz Elena Mendoza was born in San Francisco to parents from Mexico and coming up she took in the folk music and folklore of Mexico. She mostly grew up in Oregon and when she formed Y La Bamba in Portland, Mendoza found musicians who shared her musical tastes and inclinations. But rather than a straightforward folk and Americana act, Y La Bamba included, of course, lyrics in Spanish as well as subtle use of electronic instruments to enhance a sense of the otherworldly present in the group’s vocal harmonies and acoustic instrumentation. In a way, the music suggests the feeling one gets from reading the more mystical works of Zora Neal Hurston in which the material world is very tactile but informed by the presence of the spiritual world in the subject matter and the tone of Hurston’s writing. As with Hurston, Mendoza channels her ancestors and their cultural traditions but bringing her own rich imagination and intelligence to bear in her creative interpretation and expression and extension of those ineffable influences.
Wednesday | May 23, 2018
Wye Oak, photo by Shervin Lainez
Who:Wye Oak w/Corsicana When: Wednesday, 05.23, 7 p.m. Where: The Bluebird Theater Why: Wye Oak is the rare band that has recognized a rut as it’s threatening to happen. With its 2011 album Civilian, the duo’s music was finding placement in film and television and that would have reinforced a creative tendency by rewarding creation using a generally specific method. So the band took some time off from Wye Oak with drummer Andy Stack moving away from Baltimore in search of being around a different sort of artistic climate in Texas and Portland. Guitarist and vocalist Jenn Wasner put time into Dungeonesse, an electronic pop and R&B project with producer Jon Ehrens. When Wye Oak was working on new music it took a different direction with less emphasis on Wasner’s admittedly imaginative and evocative guitar work and more on beats and textured, composed melodies. Thus the 2014 album Shriek and Tween, the 2016 album that all but outlined that transition from the musical thinking of Civilian to that of Shriek. The 2018 Wye Oak album The Louder I Call, The Faster It Runs is the kind of album a band releases after it has reinvented itself and then considered what it would like to say next before doing so.
Who:Starjammer vs. Lunetta, Atari, Sleepy Nemo, Human Hearts and Mahou Odd Genie & Norm L. Princess When: Wednesday, 05.23, 7 p.m. Where: Seventh Circle Music Collective Why: Starjammer is difficult to categorize beyond it’s self-described “Avant-Garde/Dub-Reggae.” Seems legit as Squids Madden was recently seen playing sax on stage with Godspeed You! Black Emperor at The Ogden. He will also probably bring his lighting rig to add another layer of otherworldliness to this collaborative set with Lunetta, a project that could be described as lo-fi industrial psych. Atari cuts together vinyl records to produce truly unique samples that he manipulates by hand at the live show giving less actual control over frequencies and rhythms from the sample proper. He gives the sounds the contexts and thus the art of what Atari is doing. Mahou Odd Genie & Norm L. Princess sounds like some kind of weirdo field recording project mixed with intentional music and noise. Basically, the show with the weirdest music this month unless you’re going to an Ultra Metal event.
Who:Bob Log III w/Simulators When: Wednesday, 05.23, 8 p.m. Where: Hi-Dive Why: Bob Log III is a one man band who, sure, plays a mutant version of Delta blues but he does wearing a face-obscuring-ly tinted helmet and otherwise looking like maybe he was pulled from a band in Judge Dredd or a reconstituted civilization following the era depicted in the Max Max movies. When he was a member of Doo Rag, Bob Log III’s confrontational performance style won over audiences when he was opening for much more famous bands. Probably because not many people had seen anything quite like it. Opening for Bob in Denver is SIMULATORS, the noise rock/post-punk band comprised of Bryon Parker formerly of Accordion Crimes and Raleigh and Brian Polk of Joy Subtraction. The band’s jagged rhythms and blunt, to the point music should appeal to fans of Shellac because it often does sound that savage.
Queen City Sounds and Art 
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