There are singers, and then there is Ruby Friedman. The L.A. songstress comes at you like a weather front, a thunder-and-lightning barrage of soul and nerves, capable of wrapping more drama into a phrase than most singers do in their autobiographies. Since we last visited with the flaming-haired diva, her Ruby Friedman Orchestra has completed […]
Australian pro surfer-turned-musician Ry Cuming had some great instincts when it came to trying his hand at music. Making a splash in a different industry with his raspy falsetto and soul-anchored choruses, Cuming’s songwriting outstrips those trite, beachy sounds most are used to hearing from other fellow pro surfers. His piano- and guitar-based tunes go […]
Although it’s still 2011, Domino artist Cass McCombs has already scheduled a second album titled “Humor Risk” for release on Nov. 8 this year. Teaming up again with producer Ariel Rechtshaid, the Foreign Born bassist who has produced McComb’s “Wit’s End” and “Catacombs” in addition to albums for Glasser and We Are Scientists, the new […]
Jon Pebsworth has been known as “Pebs” since he was a kid, and it’s this moniker he chose for his newest incarnation as a scratchy-voiced troubadour. As he shows on his debut album “Sweet Surrender” (out independently Sept. 20), it’s a role he inhabits well – he has logged plenty of miles as vocalist for […]
“Bull in the Wild,” the three-minute banger off Eastern Conference Champions’ scintillating new album “Speak-Ahh,” sprints along on an ascending bass line while Josh Ostrander spits out lyrics like a drunken beat poet. It’s exhilarating, moreso if you catch some of the imagery in Ostrander’s seemingly stream-of-consciousness wordplay. “I’m in the corner / watching the […]
Tunes from 50 up-and-coming Los Angeles artists are available for download courtesy of a nationwide promotion that will send one band to Texas next spring to perform at a SPIN magazine event at Austin’s premiere festival. And every download is a vote. Pop Up Live is the brainchild of SPIN, the snack company popchips and […]
You have to hand it to Ben Heywood. When the frontman of the L.A. indie-rock band Summer Darling found himself confronted by writer’s block last year after the release of his band’s well-regarded album, he didn’t break out by dashing off some 3-minute pop ditties. He dug deep. He imagined a chaotic, environmentally devastated American […]
Australian four-piece the Jezabels got our attention at SXSW, and it wasn’t singer Hayley Mary’s leather jacket. The quartet deals in layered, arena-ready rock anthems, with Mary wailing as if she want to be heard clear from Down Under. Which, thanks to the band’s three well-received EPs, she might be. The band is working on […]
Cinderella Motel’s thrashy old-school squalor owes a huge debt to black-dressed songstresses of the past – fans of Siouxsie Sioux and Joan Jett, take note – with frontwoman Tammy Tomahawk juggling guitar and accordion and howling at ghosts wearing studded belts and leather collars. Or maybe they’re not ghosts at all. The quartet, working on […]
[They Left L.A. for the Other Coast, but We Still Listen, Part II:] In February, Long Beach-bred trio We Barbarians gave L.A. something of a going-away present the great single “Headspace.” Since they relocated to New York, David Quon, Derek Van Heule and Nathan Warkentin have finished up an EP with that name, their first […]
