The Thermals
Every Thermals song is a celebration – no, a pep rally, with fists pumping, matching outfits and the masses chanting along. Singer Hutch Harris is like a possessed Ted Leo leading a congregation of sweaty, battling Chuck Taylors. He tears through a set with David Lee Roth-like conviction, and his band’s March 22 show at the Hi-Dive was a gigantic, sold-out dance party.
But because each song is a 2 1/2-minute pep rally, the ideal length for a Thermals set is 30 minutes, maybe 45. After that is a little much – a rule the Pixies always adhered to.
But the kids wanted more, and the Thermals gave them a sporty if meandering set of rock ‘n’ roll that included hits “No Culture Icons” and “How We Know” and B-sides alike. Their energy was admirable, and their playing was dead-on. But because their catalog doesn’t stray from the upbeat art-punk aesthetic all that often, they could have played half the set and had a more significant impact. |Ricardo Baca
Man Man
A friendly audience member at the Larimer Lounge described Man Man as a “crazy indie-rock Tom Waits,” an accurate reading that set me up for the band’s frenetic performance Tuesday night.
To that description add distinct influences from Captain Beefheart and Frank Zappa and you have a pretty good picture of the band. From the start the players looked like delicious trouble, the drummer clad in a gauche, faded rain blazer, sporting what looked like a chocolate jackalope on the spire of his kit’s high-hat.
The whole band, in fact, looked like extras in a movie about 1980s-era computer programmers, their white tennis outfits and face paint portraying them as the freaks they are. Despite feedback problems at the outset, the band performed its jumpy synth rock with enough energy to power the average American home for a year. Call it tribal music for 8-bit video- game aficionados.|John Wenzel
Machine Gun Blues
You expect certain things when Machine Gun Blues is on the stage.
Rock ‘n’ roll skinned down to its raw bone. Singer Aaron Collins wasted and stripped down to his American Apparel underwear. “I Wanna Be Sexy” tearing apart the room like an afternoon with a sledgehammer and a handle of Jack. Guitarist Josh Terry drinking your beer when he’s not shredding a solo or mounting a flailing, grounded Collins. Organist Holland Rock-Garden spitting beer in your face. A static but solid rhythm section – bassist Jermaine Smith and new drummer Jason Walker – somehow holding down the bottom amid the madness.
All this happened Saturday when Machine Gun Blues took on a packed Hi-Dive, a show encapsulated by the moment when Collins unassumingly picked his filthy, beer-soaked jeans up from the stage after their set and sauntered through the dense crowd as if he had just gone outside for a smoke.|Ricardo Baca
Munimula
Jawsh Mullen is a demon. And Devon Rogers is the fire that drives his evil.
Together, Mullen and Rogers are Munimula, an underrated local metal two- piece that specializes in the kind of rock epics that sound as if they were composed specifically for some sacrificial ceremony. And while they are not evil guys, they sure can look the part under a black light with a fluorescent orange, upside-down cross on Mullen’s forehead, a look he sported during a Sunday set at 3 Kings Tavern. The same glowing paint adorned his eyelids, making for an especially creepy effect every time he closed his eyes and laid into a searing guitar rail.
The group’s hard-driving rock is typically set against a video backdrop, but the band played this set without the visual assist – and it only proved that its songs (often bleeding into one another) stand on their own. |Ricardo Baca
