Category: Local

Live reviews of local acts playing in, around, and of Denver.

Reverb: Maraca Five-0, Slim Cessna’s Auto Club @ the Larimer Lounge
July 13, 2010 Off

Reverb: Maraca Five-0, Slim Cessna’s Auto Club @ the Larimer Lounge

By Billy Thieme

Judging from the sounds that burst from the Larimer Lounge stage last Saturday night, Colorado is no longer landlocked, and Denver now sports beachfront property.

Those sounds came from local instrumental legends Maraca Five-0, who have reunited after six years to debut as opener for Slim Cessna’s Auto Club — one of a short list of shows this summer.

Actually, it’s far less than fair to classify Maraca Five-0 as a mere “surf band.” While they echo the sound of the Ventures, Laika & the Cosmonauts, Link Wray and Dick Dale, their interpretation of it evokes much more.

New Threads: New tunes from Gypsy Nomads, Mad Dog and the Smokin’ Js and Deadbubbles
June 1, 2010 Off

New Threads: New tunes from Gypsy Nomads, Mad Dog and the Smokin’ Js and Deadbubbles

By Billy Thieme

The summer music overflow has begun, and Denver looks to be deluged with a constant influx, through-flux and home-spun-flux of music for the season, both live and recorded. Upstate New York’s Gypsy Nomads have released a new collection of twelve songs laced with oodles of magic – of both the cabaret/vaudeville and faerie ilk – that will have even the driest of cynics swaying, maybe even singing along, to the duo’s French medieval folk meets West-Mass punk instrumentation. Mad Dog and the Smokin’ Js recently released a live recording of a show at the Tomichi Tavern in Gunnison, CO that captures the bands’ sonic mayhem and should whet any aficionado’s roots appetite. Among other projects – which include a tribute album (currently in the works) and hosting the legendary Hugh Cornwell (frontman of the seminal British punk band Stranglers) in a truly exclusive show recently – Deadbubbles recently produced the “24 Hr. Nemesis” EP, a collection of early ambient recordings featuring White and current guitarist Paul Humphrey.

Murder Ranks plays a fantastic fun brand of dancehall and hard dub, welcomes the highly anticipated return of Denver’s beloved Warlock Pinchers
May 25, 2010 Off

Murder Ranks plays a fantastic fun brand of dancehall and hard dub, welcomes the highly anticipated return of Denver’s beloved Warlock Pinchers

By Billy Thieme

Legendary front range provocateurs and pranksters Warlock Pinchers are getting back together for a show in August, and they’re determined to cash in on the nationwide – worldwide – “remake trend.” Of course, unlike much (most? all?) of the other remake grout that’s been piling up in our entertainment culture for lack of bricks, these guys promise to offer premium, relevant and fun entertainment, chock full of their characteristic DIY, punk rock/hip hop/scramble-wave hybrid mayhem.

Odds are they’ll be among the few projects that will deliver – and deliver over and above. And there will be plenty of merchandise to boot.

The show, scheduled for August 6th at the Gothic Theatre, promises to hold numerous surprises – from airborne meat (likely as not raw) to go-go dancers to cellophane-wrapped band members, in the vein of past extravaganzas. Those legendary shows featured shenanigans like all of the above, as well as various liquids and solids being dumped, sprayed or otherwise unleashed upon their audiences – all in front of pre-recorded (on cassette!) drums and live bass, guitars, screeching, rapping and scratching. In a word, unpredictable. In another word, unmatched – maybe unmatchable. This time, though, all instruments will be live, as the band has taken on Melvins drummer Dale Crover up on a decades-old offer to play with them.

Live DenverThread Review: Ideal Fathers with Solar Bear, St. Elias at Hi-Dive, 04/29/10
May 3, 2010 Off

Live DenverThread Review: Ideal Fathers with Solar Bear, St. Elias at Hi-Dive, 04/29/10

By Billy Thieme

This part of the Denver scene continues to grow in both band members and fans, and the Hi-Dive hosted an all-local, all noisy and all fun lineup that showcased some of them last Thursday night. Including Solar Bear, Ideal Fathers, St Elias and Colors, it attracted a more than modest crowd, and kept the fans fascinated – often dancing to some metal-dipped prog-rock and post punk.
Solar Bear and St. Elias bookended Ideal Fathers’ set with a somewhat similar vibe based in different sub genres of prog, which actually made the latter band’s style stand out. Not that the two are clones – to the contrary.

DenverThread Live Review – Gangcharger plays a secret show at Skylark, Thursday, 03/25/10
March 26, 2010 Off

DenverThread Live Review – Gangcharger plays a secret show at Skylark, Thursday, 03/25/10

By Billy Thieme

. . . saw a Gangcharger onstage that has mastered not only its sound, but also its whole rhythmic philosophy. The sound entwines early, frantic and noisy Sonic Youth rhythms inside Kevin Shields chord habits and unleashes a sound that feels like it’s locked you in the trunk of a 1981 Camaro, as it drives at 145 MPH deep into the Western Slope towards Utah, and forces you to enjoy every minute of it.

Live DenverThread Review: The Inactivists provide some sweet, sickly heartbreak for the love-challenged
February 9, 2010 Off

Live DenverThread Review: The Inactivists provide some sweet, sickly heartbreak for the love-challenged

By Billy Thieme

Scott Livingston isn’t someone you want to wrong, particularly in the arena of love. As frontman of Denver band The Inactivists, a band known for its nerdy humor mixed with artsy rock, he’s got a soapbox that’s pretty tall. And with the band’s latest record, “Love Songs and Other Songs About Love,” they’ve taken the heartbreak of a dissolved relationship and bent it into an aural sculpture on a framework of sardonic and geeky wit, and Livingston is the mouthpiece.

Even more extreme than the record, Inactivists’ live show is one to be reckoned with, and they showed it off last Saturday night (January 30) at the Walnut Room in front of an impressive crowd. Behind his electric ukelele, Livingston cuts an impressive figure that belies the internal strife his lyrics portend. He’s more than well met by Victoria Lundy’s wild and earthy performance on the theremin and Pattie Melt’s smooth, punky saxophone and accordion, Matt Sumner’s bass funk and Kelly Prestridge’s complex rhythms.

Lion’s Lair Art Shows: East Colfax finds Jesus, and he’s hangin’ at the Lair!
January 27, 2010 Off

Lion’s Lair Art Shows: East Colfax finds Jesus, and he’s hangin’ at the Lair!

By Billy Thieme

Matthew Hunter is keeping his artful promises, and this time the results approach the sacred – and may come close to a little of the profane as well. Hunter promised himself recently that he would hold a cooperative art show in the Lion’s Lair, Denver’s venerated punk rock dive, every other month into perpetuity, or for as long as he (and the community) could stand it – whichever comes first.

Slim Cessna’s Auto Club @ the Bluebird Theater, 12/30/09 – Reverb
January 6, 2010 Off

Slim Cessna’s Auto Club @ the Bluebird Theater, 12/30/09 – Reverb

By Billy Thieme

Leave it to Slim Cessna’s Auto Club, who have put on one of Denver’s best live shows for more than a decade, to be the only band that could outdo their own reputation. That’s what happened last Wednesday at the Bluebird in the first of two New Year’s Eve celebratory shows. The six-piece not only proved their consummate showmanship, often sardonically tongue-in-cheek, but also a grasp of drama, playing as the cast of the classic cartoon Popeye. And they added some new tunes to their set — the first in more than three years.