The way they bond, Jonathan Hylander and Sean Johnson may as well be twin drummers of different mothers. The pair, the driving force behind the Voyeurs, were pounding the skins for different South Bay bands when they met. They went on to play in the formidable but ill-fated (and hard to type) quartet E>K>U>K before […]
[Updates in blue type.] Indie 103.1 (KDLD-FM) has gone quietly into the night. A message just posted on the station’s website (about 10:45 a.m.) says: BYE INDIE HELLO DIGITAL INDIE This is an important message for the Indie 103.1 Radio Audience – Indie 103.1 will cease broadcasting over this frequency effective immediately.” Because of changes […]
[Second of two parts] The past few years, in the halcyon days when I toiled for the local newspaper, I wrote an annual L.A. music review, handicapping the bands I thought might, for one reason or another, have the stuff to break out of the local scene. Following are my Bands to Watch 2009 [and […]
It was hard not to completely swoon last spring, when I heard the fresh-out-of-the-studio recordings of Sara Lov’s album “Seasoned Eyes Were Beaming.” The Devics frontwoman — like her collaborator, pianist Dustin O’Halloran — had gone solo, crafting a batch of languorous pop that retains the cumulus quality of Devics but harbors the lightning-bolt intensity […]
To hear Juliette Commagere tell it, she needed a break — not so much from music, but from the rough-and-tumble business of fronting a perpetually-on-the-verge rock band. So the keytar-slinging singer of the dance-rock quartet Hello Stranger struck out on her own. “I guess I was feeling a little bit frustrated — we had just […]
Where M83 transported you Saturday night largely depended on where you started. If you’re a child of the ’80s, Anthony Gonzalez and crew had you right where they wanted you — blithely sliding on a sheen of muscular synth back to the pre-Ritalin days of “The Breakfast Club,” that era before cynicism put a lid […]
[Catching up on a couple October releases I missed:] Wait. Think. Fast., “Vuelve al Mar” (Origami) — How do you say “dreamy” in Spanish? This intoxicating bit of shimmering shadow-pop (reminds me of the ethereal, folky work of the Golden Palominos in the ’90s) serves its metaphysical themes well. Argentinean-born singer-keyboardist Jacqueline Santillan narrates plaintively […]
[A quick look at a couple of releases today by local acts:] Spindrift, “The West” (Beat the World) — I’m not quite sure what parallel universe Spindrift’s music belongs in — maybe a post-apocalyptic landscape where art movies are projected across the desert sky while what remains of the flora comes to life, wielding double-neck […]
In a way, the Bronx lucked out. Five years with Island Def Jam gave the L.A. punkers a two-album running start and financing to build their own recording studio — but, ultimately, their walking papers. Now, after a year on their own island, the Bronx are giving us a home run of a punk-rock album. […]
The 88, “Not Only ”¦ But Also” (Island) — The third album (released last week) by these power-pop purveyors benefits from the studio help of Kenny “Babyface” Edmonds (Eric Clapton, Fall Out Boy, Madonna) and Matt Wallace (Maroon 5, Paul Westerberg). Suddenly, the 88 sounds darned near arena-ready, rather than the scrappy Kinksians who help […]
