Weaving through Denver Music, Art, Culture, and Life
Starting a new job can suck – especially for your online magazine. That’s the explanation for my long absence on…
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.
On Saturday, May 28th, Concerts For Kids will be presenting Denver Day of Rock, now in its third year, in downtown Denver. With a slew of bands – both local and national acts – that cross genres from pop/rock to Zydeco, the all-ages event is a perfect opportunity to get everyone in the family out in front of some decent live music.
Denver Day of Rock was put together by Concerts For Kids for the first time in June of 2009 as an all-day outdoor music event designed to raise awareness of children in the Denver community, and the many charities that exist that help them. In just three years, the show has grown from two stages in two completely separate parts of town and a show at the Fillmore, to five stages along the 16th Street Mall and more than twenty bands.
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.
If there’s one thing we need less of in this world, it’s got to be those annoying flapping fingers at the end of swirling hands, and a more worthy cause for war probably doesn’t currently exist. And yet, as a country, we’re dang near broke. But I already digress . . .
This sentiment comes from the title of The Inactivists’ latest record, “The War On Jazz Hands.” The Denver band remains one of the local scene’s hidden treasures, and the title’s an adroit summation of their personality and style: playful like They Might Be Giants with an adult humor that hovers around that of Ween, but remains more explicitly juvenile. And yet, they’re always musically complex, diverse and accomplished, in the only way that would ever allow a true theremin artist – in this case the accomplished and extremely talented Victoria Lundy – to fit in.
The Walnut Room provided the perfect flavor of intimacy and concrete last Thursday night to encompass – enthrone – the recording of a local fledgling artist’s second album. The 50-some people gathered to watch and listen to Golden’s Erik Husman were treated to a mix between Merle Haggard and a Pete Seeger that spent more of his life on the rails than in protest. Husman, suffering from a cold that caused between-song hacks, sniffles and a dry-throated rasp, nevertheless marched all of us through two sets of some emotive, lively tunes, most of which were original.
And that crowd loved every one.
