Pinback
This San Diego-based indie-rock duo played the Bluebird Theater on April 28, backed by its tight trio of drums, keyboard and guitar. Principals Rob Crow (guitar, vocals) and Zach Smith (bass, vocals) seem to visit Denver annually, but this was their first sold-out show, with fans milling around the entrance clutching “I need tickets!” signs.
Perhaps Pinback’s inclusion on the soundtrack to “The O.C.” – a show that’s buoyed many an indie act – drew the crowd. The band did not keep anyone waiting for signature songs from its past two discs, “Summer in Abaddon” and “Blue Screen Life.” Tracks like “Bloods on Fire” and “Non-Photo Blue” received the typical live treatment – breathlessly sped-up and impassioned – without losing their lock-step rhythms.
A few numbers could have benefited from a slower take, including the melodic, bass-heavy groove “Penelope.” Still, the band’s precision was admirable, and the crowd of jocks and hippies certainly didn’t seem to mind. | John Wenzel
R. Kelly
“You here with your man?” R. Kelly asked a woman standing in the pit at his show at the Paramount on Tuesday. She looked around, confused. Obviously she was there with her man. But if she wasn’t?
An R. Kelly concert is part “Def Comedy Jam,” part R&B concert and part freak show. Kelly is the emcee, the ringleader with his many skits and video shorts, his giant sexual ego and his shortened tastings of samples from his humongous catalog of bedroom interludes. Songs such as “When a Woman’s Fed Up,” “Fiesta,” “I Wish” and “In the Kitchen” got cut-up treatments – “I’ve got hits for days, so we’ll go all night,” Kelly announced – but the hip-hop influenced “Ignition” was especially hot.
But Kelly’s trademark R&B is so over-the-top that it’s impossible to know when or if he’s kidding. He gave the crowd an a cappella treatment of a new song, “The Zoo,” and if that ever ends up on record, it will be a classic example of Kelly’s goofy, hypersexual sense of poetry – and his fans’ unending penchant for his uniquely styled R&B.| Ricardo Baca
Acid Mothers Temple
Japanese noise-rock is either aural torture or pure genius, and the line between the two extremes shifts constantly. This misunderstood genre, which includes bands such as the Boredoms and Guitar Wolf, prides itself on its weirdness, and it should, because it’s beyond bizarre.
Acid Mothers Temple, a sprawling, aging collective headed by guitarist Makoto Kawabata, is perhaps the most psychedelic of these bands. The notes he and his compatriots squeeze from their guitars induce a pleasant disorientation, as evidenced by their fierce Monday-night show at the Larimer Lounge.
Kawabata, joined onstage by his like- minded mad scientists (a.k.a. The Cosmic Inferno), wailed on his instrument like an angry, drug-addled ape. The experimentation and improvisation made it difficult to tell where songs ended and began. Regardless, the audience was left satisfied and exhausted by show’s end, lending credence to the “genius” side of the noise-rock argument. | John Wenzel
