When Conor Oberst brought his band Bright Eyes to the Boulder Theater for two nights Nov. 7-8, it was an unprecedented portrait of the enigmatic artist from Omaha.
Night one was all about the music. Opening with “Sunrise Sunset” and closing with an emotional “Lua” – with the haunting line “We might die from medication but sure killed all the pain” – the 80 minutes of music was a stunning picture of Oberst in 2005, and it was more representative of his career arc than his last trip to Denver, which focused on the “Digital Ash in a Digital Earn” CD.
Night two saw Bright Eyes sharing the “etown” stage with Eliza Gilkyson. The interview portion (featuring Oberst messing with host Nick Forster just as often as he answered questions candidly) was as entertaining as the half-dozen songs he and his six-piece band played.
– Ricardo Baca
Matisyahu
This Hasidic reggae/rap star barely stopped moving this year: He had his first child, played major festivals and headlined tours like the one that brought him to the Gothic Theatre on Nov. 10.
Last year’s album, “Shake off the Dust … Arise,” has real legs, which is why “Matis” began the year as a music-industry oddity. He since has developed major credibility among fans and critics. During a Denver set in which dub and jam rhythms carried the crowd from one track to the next, the yarmulke-wearing entertainer commanded the stage with the bravado of an old-school emcee fused with a dance-hall toaster. During tracks like “Chop ’em Down,” this Grateful Dead and Bob Marley-influenced New Yorker seemed lost in a spiritual scat, wooing a crowded room into his lo-fi, devotional journey.
– Elana Ashanti Jefferson
Reigning Sound
Greg Cartwright is a wicked guitarist, and he has a way of crafting epic rock movements in less than three minutes (see his band’s sophomore effort, “Time Bomb High School”). But the most visually memorable element of any Reigning Sound show is Cartwright’s face.
Eyes closed tight, his hand cinched around the worn neck of his guitar, Cartwright has a face that is always on the brink of exploding – and Friday at the Bluebird was no different. Sometimes it’s as red as a Fender guitar, but most of the time it’s normal flesh tones pinched into the human embodiment of pure pleasure and utter joy: his slight double-chin shaking and jiggling, his cheeks sucked in and his eyes opening ever-so-rarely. The passion matches the Reigning Sound’s garage music’s intensity to a T.
– Ricardo Baca
John Waters
A John Waters lecture is inherently a treat. But the filmmaker’s skewed sense of humor takes on a new and relevant depth (read: delightful lows) when placed (or displaced) in Colorado Springs.
In his Nov. 10 lecture at the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center, Waters was expectedly irreverent and sacrilegious, expertly weaving his way through a machine-gun stand-up routine that took no prisoners. Much of it was shtick material he’s used before in interviews in this paper and the documentary “Divine Trash,” which was shown before his lecture.
But at least it’s divine shtick.
After calling “The Passion of the Christ” an S&M movie for the whole family, he pondered a world where people would dress up as characters from “The Passion” for midnight showings and shout the dialogue back at the screen. “I’m convinced that could happen in this community, from what I hear,” Waters said to a warm and liberal crowd.
– Ricardo Baca
