As a founding member and producer of Portishead, Geoff Barrow has been saddled with the unfortunate “trip-hop” tag ever since the Bristol, U.K., outfit scooped the Mercury Music prize with debut LP “Dummy” in 1995. If the band’s musically expansive 2008 album “Third” wasn’t quite enough of a departure, then Barrow seems determined to shed the downtempo moniker with his new project, Beak>. With the help of fellow Bristol musicians Billy Fuller (Fuzz Against Junk) and Matt Williams (Team Brick), this band is exploring some much heavier sonic territory, informed more by ’70s Krautrock than the Blue Note archives. On single “Wulfstan,” Barrow’s dark, brooding vocal is almost buried beneath distorted bass, pounding drums and droning organ. Trip-hop this is not.
||| Download (via Pitchfork): “Wulfstan” (background from P4k here)
||| Live: Beak> performs Sept. 9 at Amoeba and Sept. 10 at the Troubadour.
Hearing this first single from the Chapin Sisters’ sophomore album “Two,” I’m not the least bit bothered by the fact that, despite the rhyme, palm trees don’t have leaves. I’m rather … er, frond of it. The music made by sisters Abigail and Lily Chapin (and, previously, half-sister Jessica Craven, who is currently on hiatus to spend time with her new baby) smolders with mystery, inviting you inside with straightforward arrangements and pristine harmonies only to then suggest something perhaps more nefarious lyrically. The sisters, who are touring with She & Him as both an opening act and part of the backing band, also recently earned notice for their roles in the independent film “The Sirens” (it won best screenplay recently at the Topanga Film Festival). The new album is out Sept. 14.
The bursts of noisy guitar in the Morning Benders’ song “All Day Day Light” [that's the new, Jack Ferry-directed video, above] is the perfect accompaniment to today’s news that the SoCal-born quartet, now splitting their time between San Francisco, New York and the road, has grown into a headliner act. The Benders, riding high on the strength of their sophomore album “Big Echo,” do Europe in September before embarking on a U.S. tour with support acts Twin Sister and Cults in October. Which will be a busy, busy show month for Buzz Bands.
||| Live: The Morning Benders play the Music Box on Oct. 14.
[Happy birthday today to sometimes-rocker Keanu Reeves. ... What's up tonight? You tell me ...]
☛ Even before you get to the music, Graham Forest’s album sounds like serious stuff. It’s called “Song of Trauma & Revelation” [download free tracks from his Bandcamp site]. He’s at Spaceland tonight with George Ellias, among others.
☛ Nite Jewel celebrates the release of its new EP “Am I Real?” at the Troubadour, supported by Teen Inc. and a DJ set from Peanut Butter Wolf.
The late-’80s British alt-rock canon looms large over a certain type of West Coast indie hopeful, to such an extent that some bands never quite seem able to step out from under the ample shadow. Not so with San Diego’s Lights On, which has followed up on the promise of debut EP “Waiting to Hear the Beat” with a bold statement of intent on its first full-length, “Here Comes the Ocean.” Led by multi-instrumentalists Timothy Hines and Mike Kamoo — who has helmed San Diego’s Earthling Studios for some seven years now — the quintet expands upon the requisite Bunnymen and Smiths influences with an album heavy on vintage synths, insistent rhythms and melodic pop hooks.
[Happy September. And happy 35th to Omar Rodriguez-Lopez of the Mars Volta.]
Top show I will attend tonight if I can remove the headphones long enough to attend a show:
☛ Sometimes when I’m lost in the ambient music made by Jonathan D. Haskell — aka Seven Saturdays — I feel like I’m hearing the soundtrack to a dream I haven’t had yet. His new album, out this week, is titled “The Snowflakes That Hit Us Became Our Stars” [pay what you want, always nice]. Haskell is clearly a composer with vision, not to mention excellent graphic artists and great video collaborators. Above is the Katie West-directed video for the album track “Au Revoir;” the one for “True Romance” is nicely done too … aw, heck, check them all. Seven Saturdays celebrates their album release tonight at the Bootleg Theater, supported by Helen Stellar.
||| Download: Haskell also recently recorded a version of the fourth movement of “Are We Lost Mammals of an Approaching Transcendental Epoch” by Dr. Strangeloop, the experimental VJ and former college buddy of Flying Lotus. Get it here for free.
Michael Benjamin Lerner’s unfettered take power-pop shone brightly on the first Telekinesis album — one of my favorite energy drinks of 2009 — and now, surrounded by a new cast of cohorts including Jason Narducy (Robert Pollard band, Verbow) and Cody Votolato (Jaguar Love, the Blood Brothers), he’s taken the first step toward a sophomore release. Telekinesis’ new EP, “Parallel Seismic Conspiracies,” came out today on Merge, offering the new “Dirty Thing” (that Spencer Getz’s video, above), as well as a do-over from the first album, “Calling All Doctors,” and a Guided by Voices cover.
||| Live: Telekinesis opens for Superchunk on Oct. 19 at the Music Box.
Voxhaul Broadcast has pretty much taken Los Angeles by storm this year, juggling a passel of sweaty live shows with recording sessions to complete its debut album, “Timing Is Everything.” The songs made by the quartet of David Dennis, Anthony Aguiar, Phillip Munsey II and Kurt Allen walk an exhilarating tightrope between rock ’n’ soul and razor-edged indie rock, foot-stomping one moment and kaleidoscopic the next. The long-awaited album will finally be out Nov. 2 (look for a record-release show that week). You may have heard this first single on the radio — it’s gotten airplay on both sides of the Atlantic.
As alluring a shapeshifter as “The Shores” might be, there’s a wry conceptual disconnect in the Sea of Cortez’s first single. The six-minute track begins with moody atmospherics, pulsates a little, and then Christian Thomas sings: “Testing the waters from the shore.” Which, of course, is no way to gauge anything. The accelerating rhythms and melody in the song offer plenty of payoff, though, with a bit of the anthemic feel of Arcade Fire/Broken Social Scene/Band of Horses. The L.A.-via-San Diego indie-rockers will be dipping their toes in the lake this fall when they release their five-track “Testing the Waters” EP.
||| Live: The Sea of Cortez performs Sept. 9 at 3 Clubs as part of the Rumble, and Sept. 26 at the Dodger Stadium Flea Market. The band will also announce live dates Sept. 12 in Santa Barbara and Sept. 15 in San Diego, as well as three West Coast dates beginning Sept. 30 with First Aid Kit and Ferraby Lionheart.
||| Download: After the jump, trade your e-mail address for “The Shores”: [click to continue…]
Physical Forms — the new quintet featuring Regan Farquhar and the Mae Shi’s Jeff Byron — made their live debut Monday night at Pehrpsace, and even the most hyphenated genre names won’t do their sound justice. Power-chamber-electro-pop-arena-funk, we hardly knew ye.
Farquhar (known in indie hip-hop circles as the motormouthed rapper Busdriver) sings in the band and was a veritable neo-Stipe. But there are other things you [click to continue…]
Past writing in the print edition of the L.A. Times here.
The old Buzz Bands blog here.
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"Much popular music is hollow professionalism – musicians and record producers recycling ideas and styles most likely to sell records. The memorable artists redefine the boundaries, either through blinding originality or by looking with unbending honesty at their deepest fears and grandest dreams."
