“Fever” is the sophomore album from Santa Cruz retro-rockers Sleepy Sun, seeking to build on a well-regarded debut of stoner riffage and psych-folk. Here, the band are at their best when they keep it concise: the close harmonies and crashing outro of “Freedom Line” and the buzzing contemplative “Acid Love.” “Ooh Boy” is muted, pensive […]
At the risk of inducing blank stares from the hipsterati who are only occasionally hip enough to embrace their progenitors, I’ll take a moment this morning to tout the new album by Peter Case, “Wig!” (out last week on Yep Roc). Crate-diggers might know Case from early pop-punkers the Nerves (excellently re-issued, by the way), […]
[Woefully behind on reviewing local releases, but here are two that are out today. Catch-up to come later this week:] Baths, “Cerulean” (Anticon) – The debut album from 21-year-old wunderkind Will Wiesenfeld, already anointed the newest star of (the Weekly-coined) L.A. beat-music scene, feels like a classical composer’s take on modern electro. If chillwave digitizes […]
Admiral Radley’s debut album “I Heart California” is out today digitally, and the band – a collaboration between Jason Lytle and Aaron Burtch of Grandaddy and Aaron Espinoza and Ariana Murray of Earlimart – plays the Also I Like to Rock series at the Hammer Museum next Thursday, July 8. I talked to the principals […]
Took me about 50 seconds – the length of the woozy, haunting intro to “Marmalade” – to completely fall for Sea of Bees, the nom de tune of Sacramento indie-popper Julie Baenziger. Her debut album “Songs for the Ravens” sounds folky in some places, gauzy and ambient in others and twee as hell in still […]
Top 4 post-NBA Finals excursions that don’t involve hooliganism: ‣ When Alex Brown Church launched his Sea Wolf project in 2007, I was struck by how similar his aesthetic was to one of my longtime favorites, Matt Pond PA. After hearing Pond’s eighth album, I’m convinced there ought to be some indie-folk cage match. Or […]
Canadian indie-rockers Wintersleep are one of those bands that inspires a whole litany of this-meets-that comparisons. Band of Horses meets Interpol? My Morning Jacket meets the National? Or, my own concoction, Silversun Pickups meets R.E.M. You get the idea – the Nova Scotia quartet’s is a brooding and occasionally explosive sound, familiar enough to be […]
Through five albums, London-based singer-songwriter Ed Harcourt has seldom stood in one place, except maybe in the shadows. Sonically, the onetime Mercury Prize nominee (for 2001’s “Here Be Monsters”) has channeled his moodiness in piano ballads, orchestral excursions and chamber-pop, never playing the mope to the point of disdain. His fifth album, the lushly arranged […]
Over the past few years, the Henry Clay People have progressed from party animals to scene stars to the rare band capable of making classic rock sound fresh and relevant. Their third album, “Somewhere on the Golden Coast,” comes out Tuesday on TBD Records (home to Radiohead and Autolux, among others), and any Silver Laker […]
If only the world were a pop place. Hunter Curra looks like a guy who’s spent long hours wrestling with that notion, and no matter how he tries to whitewash it, or what melody it’s set to, the vagaries of day-to-day life are fraught with noxious subtext. “All those sweet and saccharine songs – that’s […]
