Angel Olsen and Devildriver are our picks for the best shows around Denver this week. See you there, and if you don’t make it out, follow our music musings on and our selfies on . If you do, mind .
Angel Olsen — The Gothic Theatre, Feb. 9 and 10
Wounded singer-songwriter, obstinate punk, old soul — there’s a tempest of personas roiling inside Asheville, N.C.’s Angel Olsen. On “My Woman,” her latest, they come to a head. On it, she switches out the creaking vulnerability of her past songwriting (“I quit my dreaming the moment that I found you / I started dancing just to be around you,” she crumbles on a well-known single) for manic immediacy. Going electric more often than not, Olsen now sounds possessed by life, not subject to it. “Everyone I know has got their own ideal / I just want to be alive, make something real,” she sings on “Intern.” The turn has paid off: Her show at the Bluebird Theater has sold out, but you can still catch her at Englewood’s Gothic Theatre on Feb. 9. Tickets: $20 via .
ٱ𱹾— Summit Music Hall, Feb. 12
Sometimes, a cruel wind can blow out of an innocuous place. Take Devildriver, for example, a punishing heavy metal band out of the tranquil southern California town of Santa Barbara. In a genre that loves its sub-categories, the band confounds expectation. Too melodic to strictly qualify as death metal, fans have taken to calling them “the California groove machine,” a nickname that’s turned into a mini-movement. But don’t mistake that quirk for mercy: Devildriver, which is named after the bells certain Wiccans use to repel evil, sounds far more damned than delightful. Catch them at the Summit Music Hall on Feb. 11. Tickets are $23-$25 via.
