Denali, The Paperchase and Laguardia – Hailey’s – Denton, TX March 3, 2004
Concert Reviews
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Written by martin de leon II
Mar 03, 2004 at 08:00 PM
From Denali's Website!Drizzly guitars, crunchy beats and an attractive green-shirted vocalist that was wandering somewhere between Beth Gibbons and Bjork: Denali got down for theirs tonight. They were quiet, behaved and well, from Connecticut, but they still shuffled through some solid and truly breathtaking music that made me tuck my jadedness in my back pocket. Basically, folks, Blonde Redhead made love to Portishead and nine months later they had Denali, the beautiful speakerboxxx child that makes their momma and poppa proud. Hot on the heels of their recent release, The Instinct, a drastic line-up change and their head-scratching tour with the Deftones (whatever, dude), they dropped by Denton to kick science through crackly guitar-work, Homogenic-era beats and tightly structured songs that had density, sentiment and a mechanized soul. Her name is Maura. Remember it, yo, ’cause odds are these rock kids aren’t gonna be underground much longer. As evidenced by wonderful renditions of “Hold Your Breath” and several old cuts, in which the syrupy-voiced Maura meshed melody and a (soy) milky mood into a strong protest against the wack shit that comes out of the tight-jeaned indieground. The stoner-looking kid in the corner did a wonderful job of working overtime on bass, synthesizer and sampler while Cam DiNunzio, the tall, nice-looking guitarist twitched methodically behind his gee-tar, occasionally making his fingers dance with fierceness. Throw in some more-than-competent drumming and you have enough chemistry to scare the shit out of high school kids.Oh, and there were other bands too. The Paperchase were a nice local blend of Sonic Youth-like chugging and their singer sounded like an (at times annoying) old-school blend of that Dashboard Confessional geek and Stephen Malkmus. Very, very promising.

I missed Laguardia, but I read somewhere that they have the same “trance-rock” as Radiohead. What the fuck is “trance-rock?”

So, stick with it, find two bands that are original and genuinely good and make them have sex so your band can be as equally as entrancing and hot as Denali.