Dan Deacon
Holy teenage dance party freak-out!
When Deacon set up his table of pedals, switches, iPods and synths on the floor of the Hi-Dive on June 28, the kids were out in droves. The venue hasn’t seen that much action since the last Gravy Train!!!! show. (Mind you, the GT!!!! is back this week; see hi-dive.com.) And it was such a thrill to see Deacon – looking a tad in the dirty-old-man role with a tight shirt stretching across a big belly and scraggly facial hair to match – orchestrate such a masterful dance party.
Whereas Girl Talk just rocks the decks, Deacon is a man of the people. He was out addressing the crowd, creating dance circles, talking smack, starting dance-offs and giving each contestant explicit instructions such as, “Twirl around in circles, not too fast, with your middle fingers in the air while screaming, ‘Yes, I still love you!’ ” He was the conductor, and the throbbing kids were his orchestra.|Ricardo Baca
Melt Banana
Melt Banana’s live show isn’t necessarily more listenable than its recordings, the Japanese noise-punk band proved at the Bluebird Theatre on June 29. With its volume cranked to Dinosaur Jr. levels, the band assaulted the half-full crowd at the Bluebird with songs from its giant catalog. The show rocked hard, although it didn’t likely convert any new fans wary of the band’s edge.
Some tracks were 2 minutes long; others lasted 7 seconds. While the brevity was essential, Melt Banana are also masters of the set list, crafting something both varied and cohesive. No two songs felt the same, thanks to Yako’s singular punk yelps and guitarist Agata’s penchant for pedals and unique sounds. |Ricardo Baca
Slim Cessna’s Auto Club
Armed with a songbook that tackles life and death, Jesus and Satan, zeal and woe and all the gray area in between, Slim Cessna is a true man of the people. He’s a spiritual figure. He’s a rock ‘n’ roll star. He’s a deity, of a sort.
And he’s all those things simultaneously when he plays live with his gothic-revival nu-country band Slim Cessna’s Auto Club, a longtime Denver favorite. When Slim, Munly, Dwight, Rumley, Ordy and Shane took on the Bluebird Theatre on Saturday night, the band reminded the hometown audience of its undeniable tent-revival electricity.
It’s never out of the question for Slim to stage dive and crowd surf after delivering a mid-song sermon on Roger Williams, the founder of the Baptist faith in America. While that may sound absurd to those unfamiliar with the band, it makes perfect sense in the moment – something that says a lot about Slim and his band of talented musicians. |Ricardo Baca
Blue Million Miles
The balance of convention and innovation is never more precarious than when a band is on stage, exposing its musical innards to the world. Whether it squirms under that microscope or not it nevertheless gets dissected, and subjectivity is an often blunt, unwieldy tool.
So it was with Blue Million Miles, a pleasant but maddeningly derivative Denver indie rock quartet. The group played the Hi-Dive on Monday, opening for hipster fashion victims Get Him Eat Him. Blue Million’s songs are agreeable alt-rock amalgams, a college radio DJ’s fever dream, but they lack a certain conviction.
The guitarists’ truncated string rakes, delay pedals and drone melodies were straight from the Radiohead playbook, almost comically so. The songs seemed perpetually on the verge of brilliance but always fell away.|John Wenzel
