Aimee Mann
A perfectly mild evening – and crowd, save an unruly child or two – could not have paired better with the set of sad, cerebral lullabies and musical short stories Aimee Mann presented to the Botanic Gardens on Tuesday night.
That’s not to damn Mann with faint praise. No one ever confused her with Henry Rollins onstage, and the most dangerous substances in the audience appeared to be wine and cheese. But as she sampled 16 songs from all parts of her solo catalogue and tested yet another sharply visual new tune, “Medicine Wheel,” Mann provided the soundtrack for the kind of night that keeps people staying in Colorado long after they’d planned to leave. The dimming blue sky gave her a strong head start and her ballads took care of the rest.
Mann clearly enjoyed calling up five audience members to help on percussion for a faster number, “Frankenstein.” Much of the rest of the set with her two-man backup band unfolded at a calmer tempo. But the songs gained momentum over 90 minutes, culminating with a pair of highs – “Wise Up,” the song Tom Cruise famously sang part of in the movie “Magnolia,” and “Deathly.” Mann proved that sitting on the highbrow end of rock’s spectrum doesn’t make her music any less heart-felt.|Adam Thompson
The Fiery Furnaces
Don’t let the hyperbolic band name throw you. These Brooklynites (by way of Chicago) are all about the rock ‘n’ roll, even if that rock is filtered through a vaudeville sensibility. It’s playful, yes, but immensely satisfying in small, live doses.
Composed of brother-sister duo Eleanor and Matthew Friedberger, The Fiery Furnaces fling their complex, lovable tunes like ninja throwing stars. Their Tuesday appearance at the Bluebird Theater only confirmed what a tight touring outfit they’ve become since their last Denver appearance. The four-member band belted songs from the new album, “Bitter Tea,” sounding marginally more candid than their other playfully weird, prog-addled epics.
During “Teach Me Sweetheart,” Eleanor struck a Chrissie Hynde pose, reminiscent of that smoldering new wave icon in style and substance. Her array of wry lyrics, which recalled the late Richard Brautigan, and loose poses sucked the audience in, eliciting myriad whoops and cheers. Eleanor worked the crowd like a pickpocket. The specificity of the band’s weirdness was a cold drink on a hot day, and a tall one at that.|John Wenzel
The Streets
While Mike Skinner remains one of the freshest MCs on the hip-hop block, that reputation doesn’t hold up in concert.
The Streets, Skinner’s project since 2000, played a lukewarm show at the Fox on June 14 that was heavy on antics and short on songs that go boom. The show’s obvious highlights were “When You Wasn’t Famous” and “Never Went to Church,” the singles off the new Streets album “The Hardest Way to Make an Easy Living.” The songs crackled with the heady machismo that made Skinner a U.K. superstar, but they were surrounded by a sea of inanity.
Skinner has this weird white-boy R&B meld he favors when he’s not spitting tougher lyrics, and it doesn’t work. In fact, it’s boring filler – especially the production – when he needs to focus more on the righteous bangers. |Ricardo Baca
