Denver musician Tim Pourbaix tunes up his act at the Meadowlark. Reverb file photo by Brian Carney.

“The love-in is over.”

So said a Denver musician to me, not long ago. I can’t quite remember who it was, so I won’t risk defaming some innocent artist’s character by misattributing the quote.

The fact that I can’t remember who said that reveals one important fact about me: I’m not a reporter. A critic? Sure. A journalist? Maybe. A liar? Trying to break that habit, but it’s hard. At any rate, I might be getting off track.

Though I don’t remember the source of the quote, I remember the point. The point was: while it’s easy to go around patting one another on the back, celebrating what a great little music scene we have here in our great little town, it’s also dangerous. It allows us — all of us — to grow complacent, to rest on our Big Head Devotchka Flobot FrayOH!3 laurels, and to stop challenging one another to get stronger and better. It’s hard to give good constructive criticism when you’re too busy making out.

Before we start making out, we should probably know each other’s names. My name is Eryc Eyl. The first name rhymes with “Eric” and the last name rhymes with “turnstile,” sort of. I was born and raised right here in Colorado, and have been writing about music for about nine years. For the past six years, I’ve been writing for another Denver newspaper, so thanks for finding me here.

Here, by the way, is a place I like to call the Mile High Makeout. It’s a shamelessly loving look at Colorado’s music scene, and the musicians, fans, promoters, bookers, engineers, bartenders, dancers, DJs, dilettantes and derelicts who bring it to life. I happen to think that we have something pretty special going on here, and I want to share it with you — whether you’re already involved, on the periphery, or just indulging your curiosity from a safe, hygienic distance. Berthoud, perhaps.

But just because I’m shamelessly loving does not mean, as my unidentified friend implied above, that I’m giving Colorado musicians a free pass. I believe we’re all here to make one another better — better musicians, better writers, better cashiers, better lawyers, better dishwashers, better people — and that means speaking the truth.

With the Mile High Makeout, I promise to tell you what I absolutely love about a local musician. I also promise to tell you what I think needs to change. And I promise it will all come from a place of love.

Recently, on a trip to New York with my girlfriend, I spent some time with Tim Pourbaix. Tim is another Colorado native who spent years making music in and around Denver, before he finally decided he needed to give life in Gotham a try. “I love this city,” Tim told me, “but it’s completely kicking my ass.”

When he was living in Denver, all Tim had to do if he wanted to play a show was call a friend. Maybe he’d call Jonathan Bitz at the Meadowlark. Or a local promoter like John Baxter or Sarah Levin. Or maybe he’d ring up his old pals from his band, Killfix, and put together a rock show. In New York, on the other hand, Tim put together his first show by convincing the owner of the venue to give him a night, then booking his own supporting acts, doing all the promotion and putting his neck on the line. You don’t have to tell Tim that Denver has something special going on.

In the past 10 years or so, I’ve seen Denver’s music scene grow so rapidly and so fervently that it can no longer contain itself. In the age of the Internet, when global notoriety is as close as your Facebook page, Denver musicians and music fans are torn between a nagging desire to proclaim our city’s musical prowess to the world and an equally forceful urge to erect a wall to keep our treasures safe.

I don’t know about you, but I think it’s an exciting time to be a music lover here in Colorado — a time when we get to decide what “good” means, how we measure success and whether it all really matters. And that’s what this column is all about — looking at what’s happening all around us and trying to figure out what it all means, not just to the music business or the music scene, but to me and you and all the real people who love music for how it makes us feel and think and act. And because this is happening in a world of dancing ones and zeros, it isn’t just a monologue; it’s a conversation. It’s a chance for you, too, to share your thoughts, observations and insights about local music, local art and local life.

I can see you’re a little shy, so I’ll get the conversation started. Here’s what I’m curious about. When you hear the phrases “Denver music” and “Colorado music,” what comes to mind? Firefall or Warlock Pinchers? Hazel Miller or Cephalic Carnage? Ichiban or Meese? Or do you draw a total blank? Is there a particular flavor of local music you feel strongly about? Is there something you think is completely missing from the scene? Do you even believe there is a scene?

Come on in. Make out with me. Don’t worry. I flossed.

Eryc Eyl is a veteran music journalist, critic and Colorado native who has been neck-deep in local music for many years. For the past six years, he’s covered the scene for Westword, but we’re excited to welcome his knowledge, wit and questionable fashion sense into the Post’s folds.

Jeopardy answer: A band that insists on lifting its string players on motorized, fog-enveloped machines is automatically awesome — or painfully, hilariously cheesy. Jeopardy question: Who is Trans-Siberian Orchestra? Photos by Mateo Leyba.

Oh, Trans-Siberian Orchestra. You are a spectacle among spectacles, an over-the-top tribute to holidays and sentimentality as much as scalp-singeing lasers and hilarious arena-rock guitar solos. When you visited the Pepsi Center on Tuesday to play songs from their latest epic, “Night Castle,” you didn’t disappoint. Your sets, costumes and ear-rumbling songs were everything we’ve come to expect from robotically-calculated, seasonal rock orchestras. Symphonic metal? Pyrotecnics? Aw hell yes.

View a full photo gallery of this concert here.

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Mateo Leyba is a Denver Post photojournalist and regular contributor to Reverb.

Chicago’s Emilie Autumn brought her highly-theatrical music show to the Bluebird Theater on Tuesday. Photos by Tina Hagerling.

It’s not every day that an audience gets showered with tea and crumpets. Then again, Emilie Autumn doesn’t exactly put on a typical show. Between the stilt walker, ladies swinging from the ceiling and a deranged tea party, Tuesday evening’s performance at the Bluebird was a visual extravaganza. So much so that you’d almost forget you were there to see a concert. The show — a two-hour mix of music, theatrics and audience participation — featured a hefty set list including “Liar,” “Misery Loves Company” and “Dead is the New Alive.” And at the end of it all, a fun and graceful cover of “Bohemian Rhapsody” made for a fitting wrap-up to a whimsical night. – Tina Hagerling

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Tina Hagerling is a Denver photographer and regular contributor to Reverb. Check out more of her concert photography.

Greg Attonito and Bouncing Souls gave a relatively low-energy performance at the Gothic on Tuesday, but fans didn’t seem to mind. Photos by Joe McCabe.

“What the hell is up with Denver?” asked Greg Attonito, Bouncing Souls’ frontman, last Tuesday night at the Gothic Theatre. “Why do you guys like us so much?” Considering the Jersey-based band’s sometimes listless, largely emotionless performance that night, that was a good question. The four-piece was in Denver on their 20th anniversary tour, celebrating their history of light, bouncy and derivative hardcore punk. If their 90-minute set showed anything it was that, musically, they can keep up with the quickest of them.

Their stage presence, unfortunately, was another story.

Anyone who came to see a group of wild punks careening, thrashing or bouncing around a stage was likely disappointed. Attonito maintained such a non-personality most of the time that it often looked like he wasn’t even singing, and when he did emote, he mimicked a crooner made up of equal parts Jerry Lewis and Tom Jones, cocking his head only slightly for some select words.

Guitarist Pete Steinkopf and bassist Bryan Kienlen — though they had no trouble keeping up with drummer Michael McDermott in providing a worthy, candy-punk soundtrack to the evening — didn’t show a whole lot more personality. Chalk it up to exhaustion (Bouncing Souls have a reputation of relentless touring for long periods of time, with shows almost nightly) or to age (they’re all up there in the 40s), but the high-energy antics of past shows is gone.

Thankfully, their stage presence had little or no effect on their sound, nor did it do anything to slow down a furiously ecstatic audience. The set featured a veritable “greatest hits” selection from the last two decades, including “Kids and Heroes,” “Here We Go” (which got the entire audience to scream along), “Sing Along Forever,” “I Like Your Mom” and more, all performed at a furious pace, all studio-perfect.

They even threw in a couple of Misfits covers and a respectable cover of Johnny Cash’s “Folsom Prison Blues,” and at one point surveyed the audience for a request (the fans chose “These Are the Quotes from Our Favorite ‘80s Movies”).

The real stars of the show that night were in the constantly reappearing pit right in front of the stage. The young audience did enough stage-diving and crowd surfing to make the spectacle look like a sport. After the first two or three dives, a few of the Gothic security staff took positions on either side of the stage to block more attempts, but almost immediately disappeared (apparently at the request of the band).

Once they were gone, all bets were off, and a non-stop parade of fans climbed up onstage, some taking a few extra spins among the band, or tackling Attonito with the occasional forced hug, and threw themselves onto the slamming crowd. I counted no less than 12 divers in the space of one song — and these songs are typically punk-rock short.

The rabid fans gave Attonito his answer: given the chance, some Denver fans will stage dive for any band.

View a full photo gallery of this concert here.

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Billy Thieme is a Denver-based writer, an old-school punk and a huge follower of Denver’s vibrant local music scene. Follow Billy’s explorations at DenverThread.com, and his giglist at Gigbot.

Joe McCabe is a Denver photographer and a regular contributor to Reverb. Check out his website.

Hanson — all grown up, and with such beautiful hair! Photos by Jennifer Cohen.

Twelve years ago, when “MMMBop” was on the collective radios and lips of America, the Hanson brothers were three ambitious kids from Tulsa, Okla., vying for position among the now defunct boy-bands of the ‘90s. Not having given the band much more than a passing thought since then, I surprisingly found myself at their Denver stop on their “Use Your Sole” tour last night at the Ogden Theatre.

Though a little late taking the stage, the band energized an otherwise subdued audience with some signature a capella and catalog standbys. The tour itself is more of a “Hey, we’re still around” nudge than a launch for new a new CD, so the band relied mostly on music from their four previously-released discs. (However, they did play a few new songs from an album planned for release in 2010.)

For the most part, it was gratifying to see the brothers in a more mature place, having grown their music from bubble gum pop to an interesting pop-rock-indie mix. The brothers, now in their mid- and late- twenties, didn’t seem to mind that the show was far from sold out (the first time I’ve seen the Ogden’s balcony closed due to low ticket sales) and appeared comfortable and genuinely happy to be performing. The audience was clearly there for Hanson alone and made it obvious to the three opening bands.

One opening band would have been plenty for this particular concert, and the music from Hellogoodbye, Steel Train and Sherwood was lost on the crowd. Of the three bands, Hellogoodbye was by far the most impressive, but, unfortunately, undermined their own set by repeatedly giving shout-outs to their buddies in Sherwood, a joke that went from annoying to painful in a matter of moments.

Overall, there were some enjoyable Hanson moments. However, in the future they might want to rethink the three-band opener. – Jackie Lomibao

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Jennifer Cohen is a Lakewood-based freelance photographer and contributor to Reverb. Check out her website.

Former Drive-By Truckers guitarist Jason Isbell and his current act the 400 Unit stopped by the Larimer Lounge on Halloween. Photos by Evan Semon.

What’s that, you say? You didn’t see a show on Halloween? Your loss, sucker. While you were out comparing your lame balloon boy/pirate/sexy-fairy costume to every other drunken denizen of Denver, excellent live music was taking place all around you. One of those shows was Jason Isbell, formerly of Drive-By Truckers, and his band the 400 Unit, which stopped by the Larimer Lounge on Saturday. Check out Reverb contributing photographer Evan Semon’s photo essay of the show after the jump.

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Evan Semon is a Denver photographer and occasional Reverb contributor.

Charming, self-effacing and taking the crowd with him everywhere he went, David Gray played the Paramount on Sunday night. Photos by Haley Carnefix.

David Gray graced the Paramount Sunday night, meeting an eager crowd with matched enthusiasm. Charming even in his mistakes — laughing and stopping midway through two songs upon missing lyrics or chords — and colloquial interludes, he proved a charismatic gentlemen in addition to his unique voice and beautiful lyrics. His songs urged listeners to take from adoration what it gives them: the idea that if perhaps one can consciously possess it, love will make musical a once silent and sullen heart. If his intention was to leave the crowd enamored and wanting of more, he was absolutely successful. – Haley Carnefix

View a full photo gallery of the concert concert here.

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Haley Carnefix is a Denver-based freelance photographer and regular Reverb contributor. Check out more of her work right here.

Despite a ready-to-go crowd, Slim Cessna’s energy flagged at the band’s cozy Halloween show at Bender’s Tavern. Photos by Haley Carnefix.

“Just like Slim!” “Just Like Munly!” The two centers of the cyclone that is the live performance of Slim Cessna’s Auto Club hollered these lines again and again at each other during their anthemic “He, Roger Williams” at Bender’s last Saturday night. They were unwittingly pointing out the single scratch in the veneer of one of the best live shows in the country: that the playlist was beginning to sound “just like a Slim Cessna show” again.

Partly the result of pretty extensive touring this past year, with more live shows in Denver than any time since Slim still called our town home, and partly due to the fact that the band has been performing nearly all of the songs since 2005 (and many much longer), it was sometimes painfully evident that the audience was hungry for new material.

As wanting as the playlist may have been, the Auto Club still puts on the most riveting and intoxicating live show in Denver — I’d wager just about anywhere across the entire country — and (besides the aforementioned minor concern) this show was not much different. The audience may have seemed nonplussed a few times as familiar tunes sauntered off the small, crowded stage, but were quickly drawn up and throttled into the band’s charismatic ecstasy, then gently set down, only to be thrust up into a fury again with the next song.

If there’s anything Cessna can claim may have come from being the son of a Baptist preacher, it would have to be his uncanny gift of persuasion, and with Jay (Munly) Munly portraying the perfect, self-flagellant and sinful opposite beside him, no audience is safe from leaving any show without a newly hewn spirit, and likely a bottle if snake oil to boot. They duo were joined onstage by the band’s most consistent makeup, including Danny (Pants) Grandbois, Rev. Dwight Pentacost, John Rumley and drummer Chadzilla. They were also augmented by a wild and brilliant Erica Brown for a few numbers, including a resplendently explosive “Children of the Lord.”

Some of the other songs on the two-hour playlist that night were “Cranston,” “This Is How We Do Things in the Country,” the wickedly gothic and noisy “Jesus Is in My Body, My Body Has Let Me Down,” “Mark of Vaccination,” “Red Pirate of the Prairie” and about 12 more. A highlight came when two Slim and Munly lookallikes got onstage to dance and shout alongside the real ones — about the only evidence that the show took place on Halloween.

There was some good news, also: the band tried out a few brand new, compelling songs as well. Local sound wizard/producer Bob Ferbrache was at the venue and confirmed that the Auto Club are in town over the next week or so to record a new album at Ferbrache’s Absinthe Studios in Westminster. So forget all that worry about the playlist — it looks like Slim and the boys will be back with a whole new set of tunes in the next few months.

And Denver fans, based on the way they got caught up in the religion last Saturday night, should be ecstatic.

View a full photo gallery of the concert concert here.

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Billy Thieme is a Denver-based writer, an old-school punk and a huge follower of Denver’s vibrant local music scene. Follow Billy’s explorations at DenverThread.com, and his giglist at Gigbot.

Haley Carnefix is a Denver-based freelance photographer and regular Reverb contributor. Check out more of her work right here.

The members of Everything Absent or Distorted (A Love Story) get their calcium at the Meadowlark. Photo courtesy of Todd Roeth.

Steal This Track, a new feature on Reverb, is THE spot to find out more about Denver’s hottest and most interesting musical acts. This column is more than just a bunch of jittering pixels, however. We’ll also give you the chance to actually HEAR those artists.

That’s right. Every Tuesday, we’ll hip you to some of our favorite artists by offering an absolutely legal, absolutely free download.

Before we get into that, you’re probably wondering who I am. Hi. I’m Eryc Eyl. Nice to meet you. I like your shoes. I’m a Colorado native who has been writing about music in the Denver area for almost nine years. For the past six years, I’ve been a music journalist and critic for Westword, but I’ve come here because, as I said, I like your shoes.

In addition to the weekly feature of free music that you’re reading right now, I’ll also be writing an unabashedly ardent column called the Mile High Makeout, which made its debut about two years ago. It’s about our fair city’s fun and fertile music scene and the equally fun and fertile people who inhabit it. Look for its debut this Friday.

But back to the subject at hand. It might seem odd, but we’re christening this exciting new addition to Reverb with a track from a band that no longer exists. Just last week, Denver’s giddy, vibrant live music scene bade farewell to one of its beloved when Everything Absent or Distorted played its final show. At that event, the seven-piece outfit — whose members include a lawyer, a librarian and a university professor — handed out 100 copies of its final EP, “The Lucky One,” absolutely free.

Fortunately, we’ve got two reasons why you should stop kicking yourself for missing the swan song of the alternatingly ecstatic and melancholic Everything Absent or Distorted: (1) Many of its members can still be found in various musical projects around Denver, and Reverb is the place to find out all about them, and (2) you can hear “Four and a Half Centuries” from “The Lucky One” right now by clicking the links below.

Stream it:

Steal it:
Everything Absent Or Distorted (A Love Story) | “Four and a Half Centuries” (right-click to save to your computer)

By the way, if you like what you hear, you can download the EP in its entirety by visiting the Everything Absent or Distorted blog.

There now. Don’t you feel better?

If you’re a band or musician ready to unleash some fresh sounds on the readers of Reverb, email your tracks to Eryc Eyl for consideration.

Please note that downloads offered via Steal This Track are intended to whet your appetite, and are NOT CD-quality recordings. If you want those, please support the artists by buying their music and/or seeing them live.

Eryc Eyl is a veteran music journalist, critic and Colorado native who has been neck-deep in local music for many years. For the past six years, he’s covered the scene for Westword, but we’re excited to welcome his knowledge, wit and questionable fashion sense into the Post’s folds.

Professor Duncan Barlow deserved more rapt attention from his graveyard goblins on Saturday night. Photos by John Moore

You couldn’t pick a better band for Halloween night than d. biddle, what with its gang of raccoon-eyed corpses practically reaching out from the grave and pulling you into their dark, swirling vortex of foreboding, hurt and menace.

But you could pick a better night to see them than Halloween, when most bars are filled with preening, yapping costumed tools looking like so many rejects from “Lets Make a Deal.”

On Halloween, most obno bar denizens want to show off, party, snap pictures and one-up one another. Loudly. Not so much give themselves over to the intense and introspective guitar-driven psychedellia that has made d. biddle an evolving, singular local mainstay for nearly a decade.

Saturday marked the band’s annual celebration of Dia de los Muertos at the Hi-Dive with the Dualistics and, for the first time, Achille Lauro. Our time with the biddlers has become precious since frontman Duncan Barlow moved to Florida to become a professor in August 2008.

He deserved more rapt attention from the Hi-Dive crowd on Saturday. Then again, the riff-raff of vampires, sailors and bro-brides also deserved an earlier start. By the time d. biddle finally began, it was 12:40 a.m., and many of the revelers had moved on to other haunts. Just not enough of the loud ones.

You know something’s up when you get a text from across town and the notoriously late-starting Slim Cessna is taking to the stage a full 40 minutes before your headliner does.

Those who remained got what has become a signature set of sad, emotional dissonance marking a new release of oddities called “Beds and Monsters.” That was first intended be an album from d. biddle in 2006. However, Barlow says, “after attempting to write and record the record twice and going through several lineup changes, d. biddle decided to drop most of the songs and rewrite.” That was the birth of last year’s “Rabbit and the Moon.”

Barlow’s take on “Beds and Monsters”: “On this disc you will hear a song for a stop-motion film by Irish filmmaker Anna FitzSimons (‘Negative Capabilities’), alternate demo versions of ‘Rabbit and the Moon’ songs, unused songs from the Pall Jenkins sessions (‘Unluck in Being,’ ‘Semantics in Falling’); songs from the ‘Beds and Monsters’ sessions (‘Tsunami,’ ‘Car Bomb,’ ‘Lullaby,’ ‘Poormouth’ and ‘Parody’); a rare compilation track (‘30 seconds’), and a remastered version of the entire first d. biddle 7-inch.”

That last group includes my personal favorite sad d. biddle song of them all, “Sleepless Irish Summer.”

As has become the norm for live d. biddle shows, white sheets were draped around the back of the Hi-Dive stage, bringing out the black circling bandmembers’ eyes, not to mention the lips they had ironically sewn shut (with makeup, not thread).

The sonic journey that followed was a graveyard tour of heartache. Call it punishment by guitar. The band has changed greatly in lineup, personality and style over the years, but it was during a previous Day of the Dead show at the Hi-Dive when Barlow stumbled upon a style — seductive, destructive and often frightened walls of melancholia — that were strikingly different from anything they had done before. “And we understood that we had established an unspoken musical connection,” he said.

Saturday’s lineup included drummer Rob Burleson from Lion Sized, bassist Jonathan Till and former Lee Lewis Harlot Freida Stalheim on violin.

For those paying attention to them, angst-filled and often whispered lyrics like, “age is the cancer of youth” and “I am covered in blue” deeply connected through interfering waves of Indian headdresses, sombreros, angel wings and big, blonde Dolly Parton wigs.

Opening up was Achille Lauro, a young and sexy, jazz-infused atmospheric kind of band that will win you over with laments you might only cry out in your bed. All but the drummer came out topless. Frontman Matt Close was a horny little devil, but guitarist Luke Mossman may have won the best costume of the night by emerging as “A Man Called Horse.”

Next, all it took was a few Poison-style big-hair wigs, bandanas and cutoff jeans to transform Dualistics into a hard-jamming 1970s weed band (at least in look). Their groovy guitar wails kept the party atmosphere light, and Charley Hine even took it upon himself to poke out a ceiling tile with his guitar, Clash-style.

Eventually — finally — it was on to the emotionally black and bloody brilliance of d. biddle, which is sure to haunt those who dared to stay to the end.

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John Moore founded The Denver Post Underground Music Showcase in 2001 and is now the paper’s theater critic. If you care about such things, check out his web page here