Weaving through Denver Music, Art, Culture, and Life
Live reviews of act traveling through Denver, many published originally on Denver Post Reverb
So I guess it’s customary to pull a quote from the interview in question for an appropriate headline – but…
Kevin Barnes doesn’t need to play the omnisexual androgyne anymore. That was how it felt Sunday night anyway, when Of Montreal played the Bluebird Theater.
While their Sgt. Pepper’ed, more pastoral oeuvre has long since faded, some of the over-the-top erotic energy that the band is known for has also been eschewed in recent years. The pandemonium has calmed, in favor of a much more consistent blend of “Free Your Mind (And Your Ass WIll Follow)” Funkadelic and pre-“Purple Rain” Prince — though there was still a strong undercurrent of Beatles and Bowie. Barnes’ revived focus on the music was obvious, and welcomed.
The stage show was only slightly paired down, really. While previous gigs featured complex stage shows through which Barnes cavorted in Ziggy Stardust androgyny with foxes and pigs, this show was less surrealist burlesque and more glam/funk rock. There were still foxes, giant butterflies and pigs, of course, romping beneath psychedelic geometries projected on the band and colorful live video on a screen above them.
Oh, and there was also a repeating lucha libre theme, this time.
Up close in the tightly packed confines of the Ogden last Wednesday night, the original members of Duran Duran might have looked even better than I remembered them when they were helping to lay the foundations for MTV.
And their performance didn’t disappoint, either.
This week we offer a look at a few new threads that run the gamut in sound and intention, and…
At the Larimer Lounge on Saturday night, Jenn Wasner mentioned that she and bandmate Andy Stack of the Baltimore band Wye Oak, were tired. And justifiably so, having come from Salt Lake City that day, and in the very beginning of a 10-day stretch of their current tour that travels through the midwest and up into Montreal before they get a night off.
This apparent exhaustion, however, didn’t seem to make any difference in the duo’s performance.
A more valid reason the two should be tired, in fact, was the fury and passion they poured into an hour-long set. Often lumped in with indie or folk rock bands, presumably due to a tendency to alternate between screeching distortion and sparse minimalism on record, the pair was anything but mere folk that night. Wasner wailed meditations on solitude, love and aloneness and masterfully wrangled her guitar, while Stack covered the rest. Stack’s ability to multi-task the entire balance of such a huge sound — playing a trap set with both feet and his right hand while pounding on keyboards for both bass and melody with his left — was stunning to watch.
What a delight Kate Nash turned out to be at her first-ever visit to Denver for an Ogden show last Saturday night. I expected her to be perfectly satisfactory; what I didn’t expect was to be challenged by and enthralled with this rising Brit-pop sensation, right from the first warbling of her remarkable voice to the final, giggling post-encore farewell.
On record, Nash is comparable to the Cranberries’ Dolores O’Riordan, at least vocally, and her songs tend toward over-wordy, romantic pop. Live, she’s a different story.
Last Saturday night she was more like Poly Styrene, the frantic lead singer of the early punk band X-Ray Spex, than a light-hearted, soft spoken folk singer. She brought a definite, mature and sexy riot grrrl aspect to her songs as well, reminiscent of a young and brash Liz Phair, and positively bled Morrissey influence from time to time, sans all the whining and dour phraseology.
After last Monday night’s show at the Ogden Theater, I’m convinced that Sonic Youth are immortals – beings that refuse to age. What else explains their uncanny ability to remain constantly relevant, prescient – and continuously young – in the face of a culture hell bent on replication of the popular, and often the most vapid? Of course, we could agree that the members of this group of musicians – more a family than a band, really, after nearly 30 years – are intuitive charlatans, well-versed in manipulation of guitar strings, effects, anti-rhythms and atonality, but also steeped in the pop ethos that breeds automatic acceptance – or intrinsic danceability.
But then, you’d also have to explain short lives of other bands that sprung from that same NYC, post-post-punk, “no-wave” noise scene that attempted to espouse that same musical ethos. The truth is, Sonic Youth has proven they’re not only the only surviving band from that movement – but that they’re the most deserving.
They’re the only band that mastered the ability to turn pop sensibility on its ear, wrestle it through dissonant filters, and still know how to present the outcome in an irresistibly accessible way, without giving up any of their D.I.Y., no-wave roots.
I reviewed Bobby Bare Jr.’s show at the Hi-Dive on South Broadway last Wednesday, September 15, for Denver Post Reverb, and Bobby took the time to comment. I was shocked, and pretty stoked – but not too surprised. I’ve seen him a number of times, and have known him to be damned personable, approachable and easy to talk to. What concerned me was that he seemed just a little pissed at my review – because I pointed out that this show was a little “morose,” in comparison to past ones.
Here’s an excerpt:
“Bare’s been through Denver a number of times in the last six or so years, usually with his band the Young Criminal Starvation League. He consistently entertains full houses with a show bursting with energy, smiles and laughs and filled with hopelessly catchy tunes and brilliant lyricism. While the lyricism and catchy tunes haven’t changed, Wednesday night’s performance was much heavier, more morose. He used to play barefoot, howling impossibly quaint stories that inspired giggles more than sympathy from behind an unwieldy mop of sweaty curls, out of a mouth always bent from recent laughter.
But on Wednesday he wore a dark blue jacket and slacks, a white cowboy hat and shoes. His hair was still a wild mass with a mind of its own — it’s gained even more independence over the years — but it wrapped a lined face adorned with sensible glasses. And his mouth inspired a visage of Joe Cocker crooning amidst considerable pain, rather than ebullience.
He looked and performed more like a later-in-life Roky Erickson than the wonderful and careless Bobby Bare Jr. that has been here before.”
