Melt Banana is here to help. We promise.

– If you missed the butt-kicking rock and electro shows around town last week, here’s a smattering from our Reverb section. Photos by Laurie Scavo, unless otherwise noted…

-MELT BANANA-

Melt Banana is known for creating incredibly inaccessible records that can either be classified as challenging or difficult, depending on your affinity for the Japanese noise-punk band. But the Tokyo group’s saving grace for many is their live show, which is said to be a piercing blast of energy and light and noise.

At least they have piercing right. Melt Banana’s live show isn’t necessarily more accessible or listenable than its recordings, the Japanese noise-punk band proved at the Bluebird Theatre on June 29. With their volume turned up 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 for 7 seconds. And while the brevity was essential, Melt Banana are also masters of the setlist — crafting something that is as varied as it is cohesive. No two songs felt the same, and much of that is because of Yako’s singular punk yalps and guitarist Agata’s penchant for pedals and unique sounds. | Ricardo Baca

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-DAN DEACON-

Holy teenage dance party freak-out!

So often, Denver audiences are moving too slow for a lot of artists, and that’s why some acts don’t tour much off the coasts. (Whitey’s Denver show earlier this year comes to mind.)

After hearing Dan Deacon’s latest LP “Spiderman of the Rings” and seeing him later featured on the cover of The New York Times’ arts section — a giant photo that had a sweaty Deacon bent over a smorgasbord of pedals and synths and surrounded by a frenzy of pulsating bodies — I wondered if Denver would get it…

Friends had seen Deacon here before, along with four or five others as he played somebody’s garage, but it’s obvious this spastic record of high-frequency electro compositions is his break-out opportunity.

And as it turns out, Denver did not disappoint. 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 support. 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 the role of the dirty, old man with a tight-fitting shirt stretching across a big belly and the 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 100 or so kids in there were his orchestra.

The music was ridiculously fun and energetically composed, although not much of it was played live. It didn’t matter, though. Deacon was still present. He was alive. And he made the show a true party — which is a feat not every performer can accomplish. | Ricardo Baca

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-SLIM CESSNA’S AUTO CLUB-

Armed with a songbook that tackles life and death, Jesus and Satan, zeal and woe and all of the grey 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 of these 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. And 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.

Some of Saturday’s most moving moments came when the band tackled its best-loved songs, including an early take on “This is How We Do Things in the Country,” a singalong “Mark of Vaccination” and a sterling “Hold My Head.” But the band also played a couple new tracks from its forthcoming record, and created equal excitement among the crowd who is obviously hungry for new music. | 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. Jangling and considered one moment, upbeat the next, the songs seemed perpetually on the verge of brilliance but always falling away. If the group can wrangle its precious tendencies (like leaving a big, fat price tag on the neck of one guitarist’s Fender Strat) it’s going to carve out its own identity much quicker. | John Wenzel