There were a whole lot of mammals at the Natural History Museum on Friday, and just a Little Dragon. Little Dragon, the electro-soul quartet from Gothenburg, Sweden, didn’t exactly breathe fire, but with singer Yukimi Nagano cooing and aahing they laid down 45 minutes of ambient grooves that got plenty of the bipeds dancing amid […]
Billygoat can transport you far from the madding crowd – via both audio and visuals. The Portland duo of David Klein and Nick Woolley (who are joined live by drummer Corey Nelson) craft fragile instrumental music arranged with guitar, keys/synths, harp, accordion and glockenspiel. Even more compelling, though, are the twosome’s stop-motion movies, the first […]
When I saw Grouplove (then operating under the search engine-stumping moniker “Group”) play their first live show at El Cid, I had them pegged as the indie-pop response to Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros. To a room filled with their well-scrubbed but dressed-down friends and a remarkable number of label A&R folks they seemed […]
It’s been almost a year since Haiti was devastated by a 7.0 earthquake. Relief and reconstructions efforts still need support, and the L.A. music community is stepping up. A group called Plays Well With Others has curated a sterling 18-track compilation titled “To Haiti With Love,” featuring songs by artists such as Gary Jules, Love […]
As welcome as British Sea Power’s “Zeus” EP was back in October, it hardly foreshadowed the transcendent ruckus that is the British sextet’s fourth album, “Valhalla Dancehall” (out Tuesday on Rough Trade). In short, it’s the first great album of 2011. The band galloped out of Brighton early last decade as if it had marching […]
I still don’t think I’m over the shock and awe of Monotonix’s frolic in the streets of Echo Park during the Culture Collide festival in October. The Israeli garage-rockers’ new album, “Not Yet,” is coming Jan. 25 on Drag City, and it’s full of raw, body-shaking riffage and rhythms. Oh, and it was recorded by […]
Ever since the globetrotting phenomenon known as Sam Sparro first hit Los Angeles, he’s captured fans fancy with his slinky electro-soul. Now the Australian ex-pat is dishing out a free EP to tide listeners over until his new album “Return to Paradise” is completed. “Pink Cloud” offers a mostly instrumental title track, in all its […]
Moving Units were on the forefront of the dance-punk revival when they unleashed their first EP back in 2002 – if “Between Us & Them’s” bass line didn’t get your body shaking, you were probably on too many downers. For sundry reasons (including having released its very good 2004 debut “Dangerous Dreams” on a label […]
When the Wombats landed on U.S. shores in 2008, I figured their music would hang around a while. The Liverpudlian trio had pockets full of catchy pop-punk that was heavy on hooks and humor – “Moving to New York,” “Backfire at the Disco” and “Let’s Dance to Joy Division” are songs that should not have […]
Their name might be a mouthful – Cannoneers of the New Command – but the music of the new L.A. quartet is easy to swallow: It’s garage rock ’n’ soul that harks back to the swaggering British bands of the early ’90s and to grittier ’70s before. Absent the current scene’s fetish for synths and […]
