The talent pool in this town is so deep we should wear lifejackets.
This year’s top 10 of The Denver Post local music poll spans incredible distances and shows an impressive desire for variation and boundary-blasting cretivity. But look beyond the top 10 – even past the top 20 – and take in the rest. The list abounds in musical goodness, top to bottom, but here is a cheat sheet to four of our favorites outside the top 20.
Ian Cooke, No. 27
Ian Cooke boasts a ridiculous amount of talent. It’s nearly dumbfounding, watching Cooke play solo or with his group Uphollow.
Switching between cello and piano, Cooke tells tragic stories of love and life with a crystal-clear baritone that screams to be heard in a larger popscape. In a word, beautiful.
Call Sign Cobra, No. 50
Call Sign released “Call Sign Cobra II” (Not Bad Records) earlier this month, and while it doesn’t quite duplicate the band’s massive live shows, it’s an unquestionably lively and faithful representation of the band’s horn-blasted approach to wreckless, ornery ’60s garage. The band even channels Beck’s “Soul Suckin’ Jerk” days with “Mad Dog,” a rager tearing through broken vocals and a bass-saxophone combo that’s impossible to shake out of your head.
Cephalic Carnage, No. 79
Metal this unapologetic needs to be played offensively loud. Rocking this year’s “Anomalies” (Relapse Records) in headphones at 10 is a disturbing brand of bliss reserved for the late-night hours after everybody’s left the office. Sometimes the heel-tapping is so severe that people from downstairs come up to tell me to keep it down.
With songs like “Dying Will Be the Death of Me” and “Kill for Weed,” it’s hard not to smile as you’re being beaten alive with a rhythm section more lethal than any Jet Li character.
Machine Gun Blues, No. 149
Seeing Machine Gun Blues makes you crave a mat-shot. And really, who craves a mat-shot, which is a rank concoction made from the contents of the beermat upon which all drinks are poured?
Machine Gun Blues opened for The Omens last weekend and mopped the floor with any expectations. They’re blues, and early Rolling Stones are surely an influence. But who knew the guitar player was going to brutalize that poor instrument with such careful, skilled precision? I didn’t expect the singer to tackle the guy next to me, spilling half his PBR on his beer gut. But I didn’t see him following that up by crawling on his stomach into the audience either, closing a song on his back and bumming a cig off somebody who even bent waaay over to light it for him.
Pop music critic Ricardo Baca can be reached at 303-820-1394 or rbaca@denverpost.com.
