If it’s December, my mailbox must be filling with holiday songs. Hopefully, you already grabbed that compilation of originals that I posted about a couple of weeks ago. Today, I have dueling versions of the same song. Which do you like better? ‣ Loch & Key, “Christmas Time Is Here.” The L.A. duo of Leyla […]
For most of five years, L.A. hard rockers Sabrosa Purr have roared uncomfortably (at least for those who like their genre lines nice and clean) between the post-punk/shoegaze and metal worlds. On their long-awaited full-length album “To the Crickets and the Ghosts” (quietly released digitally this year), the quartet creates its own little shriekdom – […]
Alpine Decline – the new project from ex-Mezzanine Owls Jonathan Zeitlin (guitar) and Pauline Mu (drums) – has released two vinyl albums in six months. The first displayed Zeitlin’s fondness for pedal effects, textures and noisy exploration, but the second, “Visualizations,” applies his joneses in a more traditional songwriting framework, and it’s beautiful. Oh, it’s […]
[A hearty happy birthday to Beth Orton …] Tonight’s top 3 outings: ‣ Australian psych-rockers Tame Impala [who made a good impression on a June visit to L.A.] play to a sold-out Echoplex. ‣ Rain Phoenix of Papercranes, whose second album “Let’s Make Babies in the Woods” is due Jan. 24 on Manimal Vinyl, will […]
When I talked to Joe Purdy in 2006 at his rental home in Glendale*, I thought I’d never met a songwriter so at peace with being just a guy with a guitar. Purdy had spent some six years making his poignant, heartfelt folk songs and building a big following at Molly Malone’s and then in […]
The new video for Broken Social Scene’s “Texico Bitches” takes big oil to a very strange place. You’ve probably heard the song, an anti-oil company tome, on BSS’s “Forgiveness Rock Record.” Seeing director Thibaut Duverneix’s video to the end might put a whole new spin on the notion of forgiveness. ||| Download: “Texico Bitches (Star […]
It’s been a good year for folk music out of the U.K. – Mumford & Sons became headline attractions, and they along with Villagers and Laura Marling were nominated for the Mercury Prize. In their wake comes Oxford quartet Stornoway, whose debut album “Beachcomber’s Windowsill” was released earlier this year on 4AD. Among other twangy […]
‣ The transition from Spaceland to the Satellite is still causing plenty of confusion***. With talent-buying company Spaceland Productions ending its relationship with the venue at 1717 Silver Lake Blvd. and the venue re-christening itself the Satellite (with in-house booking), it’s become a little tough to figure out who’s playing when. That’s because the Club […]
John Carpenter is not a cinematic figure, although you could make a case for his arrestingly scuzzy blues-rock being the stuff of film noir. But because of his famous name (and because of the sudden preponderance of bands like Abe Vigoda, Philip Symour Hoffman and Nicole Kidman nicking names from A- and B-listers), you weren’t […]
Tonight’s top 4 shows that won’t dent your holiday shopping budget (because they’re free): ‣ Tonight’s installment of Sweaters is local collective Black Iris’ holiday party, featuring the Dead Trees (pictured; they just released a 7-inch on the collective’s White Iris imprint) and El Sportivo, the side project of Foreign Born/Fool’s Gold guitar god Lewis […]
