Weaving through Denver Music, Art, Culture, and Life
“Just like Slim!” “Just Like Munly!” The two centers of the cyclone that is the live performance of Slim Cessna’s Auto Club hollered these lines again and again at each other during their anthemic “He, Roger Williams” at Bender’s last Saturday night.
Moby is an erudite speaker, full of easy wit and loads of charm. He seemed thoroughly at home as he and host Nick Forster talked about things as provocatively disparate as religion, politics and climate change. When asked about his Christian beliefs — something Moby has been repeatedly chided about over years past — he retorted that “the agenda of the Christian right has almost nothing to do with the actual teachings of Christ.”
Great Lake Swimmers’ beautifully sparse folk seemed more than a little incongruous among the torn paper and haphazardly stapled flyers on the walls of the Larimer Lounge last Wednesday night.
The full eight-member band proved as much at the Ogden Theatre on Friday night with a resplendent performance of more than 25 songs that more than wiped the slate clean.
You couldn’t ask for a more apt pairing of bands than Tuesday’s Bluebird Theater lineup of …And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead and Future of the Left — particularly in size. Both feature overwhelming avalanches of pure volume, corrupted beautifully by strong melodies and ferocious rock rhythms. And both have a stage sound that can never be replicated on record.
Now in their 25th year together, the Hoboken trio have a cache of music that crosses and re-crosses genres but always remains within their own style. Their show featured Ira Kaplan’s signature reverb and tremolo-drenched guitar and overloud keyboards supporting his often sparse vocals, backed up by wife Georgia Hubley on drums and vocals and James McNew on bass and guitar.
If you’d never seen Butthole Surfers before last Friday night’s show at the Ogden, then you were treated to a mild spectacle. On the other hand, if this show was a chance for you to revisit the band after their many years away from stages (as it was for me), chances are you found yourself more than a little disappointed. After existing almost entirely upon a reputation for wild, often violent and over-the-top live shows and a general band attitude that matched, their somnambulistic performance that night just didn’t cut it.
Sian Alice Group filled the Hi-Dive last Tuesday with a resplendent sound that coaxed visions of quiet, snow-filled night streets as easily it did hot, tribal raves in the desert. Unfortunately, their tremendous performance was about all that filled the venue, as the crowd was far smaller than it should have been, even for a school night.
