Music
Sensitivity problems
The band that rode to platinum-selling success on the song “How to Save a Life” could now write a song about how the Muppets may have saved a band...
Pretty Lights shine at Red Rocks
Fort Collins DJ Derek Smith, aka Pretty Lights, has quietly built himself into one of the most potent DJ acts this side of the Rocky Mountains, and he has done it mostly via word of mouth and by offering all his music as free downloads from his website...
Pigs on the Wing have Animal instincts
Most iconic rock bands from the 1970s, at least those that lasted long enough to still cast a visible shadow 30 or 40 years downstream, can usually be defined by neatly circumscribed periods, whether as a result of personnel changes, commercial ascendency or artistic...
Spawning time
Succumbing to a sudden fit of retro-surfing nostalgia, we recently spun Leftover Salmon’s seminal Ask The Fish for a fresh listen. A riot of colliding strings and goofball interludes and marksman-like musicianship, the band’s first live CD, recorded at the Fox in ...
Flying Fish
Vince Herman was in a van last week, somewhere in Northern California, on his way to a gig with Great American Taxi at John Lee Hooker’s Boom Boom Room in San Francisco. The gig was near the tail end of a stretch of late-year gigs Taxi had peeled off in support of ...
Bird of a different feather
Listening to Andrew Bird’s music, one is struck by its tender grace...
Bucking the tortured artist myth
The idea that suffering makes for great art is one of those time-honored rock ’n’ roll tropes that even made its way into the title of a 1982 Todd Rundgren album (The Ever Popular Tortured Artist Effect). And while Lucinda Williams has had her share of personal ...
Of beer and bands
Kyle Hollingsworth, keyboardist extraordinaire, sees a lot of similarities between making music and brewing beer, his two passions of late. Within each combination of hops and grains, each interjection of an off-color chord into a jam, there’s an element of chance ...
From desert soirees to swanksville
To our great disappointment, Denver post-rock group Woodsman aren’t whittling sticks in a log cabin when Boulder Weekly reaches guitarist Trevor Peterson by phone. At the first stop of their current tour, the group finds themselves in the rather plush Hotel Congress ...
The passions of Bach
Bach’s St. John Passion is a dramatic musical work that tells the story of Jesus’ betrayal and crucifixion...
