:: Tesla ::

:: Ogden Theatre ::

:: September 12 ::

By Brandon Daviet

I think it is best to start out every show review with a little editorial commentary on the mood of crowd to help the reader out a bit. Normally, I have given up the practice of setting up shop front and center at a general admission show especially when the music is ’80s style rock and here’s the reason why: Not even before the first notes of opening band Drug Under wafted through the air three loafer wearing, frat boy style toolbags started crowding up against the several girls with my party. Out of the three girls that came, one brought her husband and he had gone to get drinks for our group. When coming back the aforementioned toolbags, who had clearly been drinking and were passing a flask, started a ruckus over this guy’s return (Supposedly he was “cutting in” even though we there long before the “toolbags” reared their drunken heads) words quickly escalated to shoving, my friend walked off to cool down and I stayed trying to be pragmatic but that attempt quickly turned into a trading of insults about sexual orientation and mothers including some just vile remarks at the girls in my party that almost got me throwing punches. (Editor’s note: Daviet is not a punch thrower….had I been there, I would have thrown some in his honor). At that point Drug Under came on and everybody chilled/became distracted throughout the band’s decent set. When my friend’s husband came back down after Drug Under the verbal/shoving began again quickly and the end result was my friend and wife leaving, this prompted my five-foot-three female friend into getting two good shots at the main toolbag’s kisser before security warned her to chill-out and warned the toolbags to respect our space. I got to hand it the Ogden’s security staff, and that don’t happen often, they kept a good eye on the situation the whole time. The point is front row at a GA show is sometimes more hassle than it’s worth.

Continue — Read more »

:: Ratdog ::

:: August 30 :: Chautauqua Auditorium ::

:: August :: The Botanical Gardens ::

By Brandon Daviet

Many people that read The Marquee may have the impression that I’m the magazine’s resident “metalhead.”  While that’s partly true the fact is I’m also a devout “Deadhead” so when the chance came for me to cover Ratdog’s two Colorado’s appearances, both at venues the band has never graced before, I relished the opportunity.

For my money Ratdog is the next best thing to the late, great Juggernaut known as the Grateful Dead. I’ve always seen Bob Weir as a loyal second-in-command to the late-Garcia and really have felt that his immense talent was sometime overshadowed by Garcia’s greatness. Ratdog’s lone studio album, 2000’s Evening Moods, ranks up their with the best of The Grateful Dead’s studio excursions like Built To Last, Terrapin Station and of course Workingman’s Dead, in my humble opinion. I understand I may be in the minority with that opinion, it seems most fans want to constantly relive the glory days of Jerry Garcia’s messianic reign, and really that’s not always bad — a little closed minded maybe but not bad. In fact, it seems that Weir himself has firmly grasped what the majority of “Deadheads”, new and old, want and that without question was what Ratdog’s two 2009 Colorado shows were all about.

  Continue — Read more »

Frightened Rabbit Ready To Sink Teeth Into Monolith Music Festival Crowd

:: Frightened Rabbit ::

:: Monolith Music Festival ::

:: Red Rocks Amphitheatre ::

:: Saturday, September 12 ::

By Timothy Dwenger

Early last year, a small, unassuming band from Scotland dropped an unconventional pop record which has sailed along under the radar of most casual observers, but caught many in-the-know upside the head like the lightening quick backhanded slap of an irate mother.

The bulk of the material on the album, Midnight Organ Fight, was largely the fruit of a break-up that Frightened Rabbit’s lead singer and founder Scott Hutchinson endured several years ago and, quite frankly, the rest of us are better off for it.

The anger and pain that fueled the twisted beauty of lines like,”Why won’t our love keel over as it chokes on a bone, and we can mourn its passing and then bury it in snow,” show us that Hutchinson possesses a true mastery of language as he expresses some of life’s most elemental sentiments.

Continue — Read more »

Of Montreal

Saturday, September 12

The Band According to Rhapsody

Rachel Devitt

Like that proverbial fat guy who gets nicknamed “Tiny,” the band Of Montreal is, naturally, neither from Montreal nor (at various times in its decade of existence) even exactly a band per se. After a failed romance with a woman from Montreal, in the late 1990s singer/guitarist Kevin Barnes found himself with a broken heart – and a great name for a band – so he “formed” Of Montreal, which at that point consisted only of Barnes.

Embarking on a quest for other members, he moved to Florida, Cleveland and Minneapolis (but not Montreal) before returning to his native Athens, Ga., to collaborate with bassist Bryan Helium and drummer Derek Almstead on the band’s Beatles-biting, neo-psychedelic debut Cherry Peel.

Over the next ten years and as many incense-and-peppermint-fueled albums, Of Montreal vacillated between a band and a Barnes solo project as it weathered the dissolution of its label, Kindercore, and a near-revolving door lineup as band members left, came back, and got married.

In 2007, Of Montreal released Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer? and in 2008, Skeletal Lamping (available with seven different album covers).

Doom

Saturday, September 12

The Band According to Rhapsody

By Brolin Winning

The emcee now simply known as DOOM hasn’t shown his face to the public in over a decade, choosing instead to hide behind a metal mask at all times. The subject of constant speculation by a rabid fan base, the man born Daniel Dumile is among hip-hop’s most mythologized rappers. DOOM’s story starts in 1993, when Sev Love X’s brother and KMD groupmate Subroc died in a car accident and their sophomore album, Black Bastards, was shelved by their record label. Sev Love went into hiding, emerging years later as the masked “super villain” MF DOOM.

His first album, 1999’s Operation Doomsday, was a lo-fi hip-hop classic, featuring a cadre of reworked quiet-storm beats and oblique word puzzles. As an emcee, his flow is a blunt instrument, rumbling over a track’s rhythm, oftentimes oblivious to the beat. He relies on words to draw out rhythm, cramming lines with inner rhymes and alliteration. The album acquired a cult following, and when DOOM returned in 2003, the world was ready. He released classics Madvillainy, Take Me to Your Leader and Vaudeville Villain under different aliases within a 10-month period in 2003 and 2004. His latest is 2009’s Born Like This.

The Pains of Being Pure at Heart

Saturday, September 12

The Band According to Rhapsody

Justin Farrar

Brooklyn should be renamed the Hipster Laboratory for Retro Research. Pick any underground music trend of the last 30 years, and the New York borough has produced a smattering of near-perfect clones. We all know about no wave and post-punk, so let’s take a look at “twee.” In addition to the Vivian Girls, there’s Crystal Stilts, Cause Co-Motion! and the excellently named Pains of Being Pure at Heart. As with those other bands, the Pains reproduce the fuzzy, lo-fi pop of the Pastels, the Vaselines and Black Tambourine with startling precision. It all started in 2007 when the band came together specifically for the purpose of playing their friend Peggy Wang-East’s birthday bash (who just so happened to be the group’s super-cute key-boardist). The Pains might come off all innocent, cuddly and, uh, pure, but don’t let them fool you. They are razor-sharp stylists. Things don’t get any more nod-and-wink wink self-conscious than the single “Kurt Cobain’s Cardigan.” The tune is a loose, two-layered homage to the Vaselines’ “Son of a Gun” and Nirvana, who once covered the song.                                 

Starfucker

Saturday, September 12

Brian Kenney

Starfucker have delivered an absolutely infectious self-titled album described as “a cohesive package of electro indie pop with a light hip-hop after-taste.” It’s like playing an 8-bit video game where your primary objective is to overcome heartbreak and an obsession with death, your only weapon a love laser mounted on a space bike that zaps out bright red blips and neon bleeps.

The experience of seeing Starfucker’s live performance delivers a certain nostalgia, a reminder of what it was like to be a teenager: inspired, curious, open, hungry for anything new, and smiling uncontrollably. Whether dressed in ’80s era Brooklyn hip-hop style, electro clash or full drag, live, the three bring a new experience and unpredictability to every show.

Cymbals Eat Guitars

Saturday, September 12

Brian F. Johnson

Staten Island quartet Cymbals Eat Guitars came out of seemingly nowhere when their debut album, Why There Are Mountains, was bestowed Pitchfork’s “Best New Music” honor. Who were these guys? Staten Island, seriously? They were, of course, four hustling musicians who’d struck gold on the songwriting front, crafting a beastly, obtuse album that sounds a lot like Built To Spill, if Built To Spill actually had some youth on their side and could still throw down in a street fight or get upset over a girl.

Hype-raking reviews aside, there’s this important detail: Why There Are Mountains is a real album, a ‘grower’ that dishes out simple pleasures with every spin. Aside from obvious recurring elements — front man Joseph D’Agostino’s restless yelp and sinuous riffs, drummer Matthew Miller’s wirey rhythms paired with bassist Neil Berenholz’s melodic bass style, and the orchestral layers of keyboard — there are shades of shoegaze (the patient, feedback-bathed passages of “Share”), Motown (the buoyant bass lines of “Cold Spring”), and technicolor-tinged pop  (the breezy horns and schizo synths of “Indiana”), not to mention pure chaos, as explored in the gate-crashing “…And The Hazy Sea,” the tension-ratcheting “Like Blood Does,” and the final, throat-tearing moments of “Wind Phoenix (Proper Name).”

Danielle Ate The Sandwich

Saturday, September 12

Brian Kenney

It would be slightly demeaning to call Danielle Ate the Sandwich simply adorable — but, truth be told, she is just that.

The Fort Collins-based singer/songwriter , known on her I.D. as Danielle Anderson, gives a new meaning to do-it-yourself marketing and simplified storytelling via short, witty, ukulele songs.

With over 40 originals and covers playing on youtube alone, this recent college graduate made the Monolith Must Hears list because of her ability to pen quirky, satirical parodies custom-made for the next Juno-esque romantic comedy. I mean, who else has the audacity to cover Hall and Oates’ “Rich Girl” on ukulele? Other covers include Snap’s “Rhythm is a Dancer” (go ahead, youtube it!). More than just a “Girl with Uke,” Danielle Ate the Sandwich has two discs full of tunes and enough youtube video to fill a feature film — and we suspect that a Sunday afternoon in her apartment could be one of the most entertaining days ever.   

Wendy Darling

Saturday, September 12

Brian F. Johnson

Wendy Darling, the new San Francisco-based indie outfit, is fronted by lead singer and occasional multi-instrumentalist, Cori Rush, a raw, stunning, 6-foot barefoot talent who, on stage, enjoys her share of PBR tall boys. With pipes to back up the look, Rush’s unique vocals have been compared to the likes of Natalie Merchant, Karen O, Kim Deal and Jenny Lewis, just to name a few. An energetic, young, indie folk rock band with touches of electronic and vintage psychedelic, the band delivers a unique style with catchy hooks, as well as deeper compositions with the regular use of banjo, accordion and melodica.                  

MSTRKRFT

Sunday, September 13

The Band According to Rhapsody

Philip Sherburne

Sprung from the loins of Death From Above 1979, MSTRKRFT are rockers on a disco mission. Beginning in 2004, the duo — comprised of DFA1979’s Jesse Keeler and the group’s producer Al-P (Al Puoudziukas) — started earning notoriety for its remixes of bands like Panthers, the Kills and the Gossip. In 2006, MSTRKRFT moved into original productions with the album The Looks and related singles. Their frequent DJ gigs — including a tour with John Digweed — have confirmed their commitment to the dance floor, while their many remix credits (for Bloc Party, Justice, Chromeo D.I.M., even Usher and Kylie Minogue) have confirmed their stature in the “blog-house” scene. In 2008, they continued to expand their sound with “Bounce,” featuring the rapper N.O.R.E.. The single, a thuggish crunk-up of grinding electro-house, came with remixes from Bloody Beetroots and Felix Cartal.       

Chromeo  Sunday, September 13

The Band According to Rhapsody

Jamie Sancheztal

Analog synth wizards Chromeo create ’80s-inspired electro-funk that combines sleek, melodic rhythms with a dash of rock. Best friends since their childhood years, Montreal natives P-Thugg and Dave 1 write music that oozes with sex appeal. The two childhood friends jokingly describe themselves as “the only successful Arab/Jewish partnership since the dawn of human culture.” Their love for vintage synthesizers, mad guitar solos and skilled songwriting has gained them worldwide attention and the description of “a shameless return to the glistening, sex-saturated synth-pop which ruled the Eighties.”