“I got an obsession,” Billy Scher and Marc Gilfry repeat in “Lately,” their first single as American Royalty. But after you’ve ridden the song’s roller-coaster for 4 1/2 minutes, you realize the fixations L.A. songwriters have at least a couple of fixations – grimy synths and dirty blues rock among them. Full of samples and […]
It isn’t hard to grasp the concept behind El Ten Eleven’s new Adam Hauck-directed video for “The Sycophants Are Coming! The Sycophants Are Coming!” – after a few years of slogging through the surf, the Los Angeles duo is finally and justifiably making waves with their fourth album “It’s Still Like a Secret.” “Things have […]
Part poet, part wanderer, Troy Von Balthazar is a man of many words and places. He grew up surfing in Hawaii, cut his teeth as the front man of the ’90s sadcore band Chokebore, and now spends the majority of his time couch-surfing around Europe writing novels when he’s not writing songs. His second album, […]
During Lonely Trees’ recent show at the Bootleg Theater, I wisecracked that the new L.A. quintet reminded me of “mid-period Autolux.” It’s true that the band – co-fronted Christian Stone (ex-Campfire Girls) and Annalee Fery (ex-Monsters Are Waiting) – ventures into the same kind of alluringly dissonant territory, owing mainly to the rhythm section of […]
Like the murder ballad from which the band derives its name, there’s melancholy (if not subterfuge) in velveteen harmonies and languid atmospherics of “Into Yr Mind,” the first single from L.A. newbies Young Hunting. The quintet – singer-guitarists Ilya Malinsky and Hari Rex, bassist Patrick Taylor, keyboardist Tim Phillips and drummer Miles Senzaki – recently […]
Philly’s Dr. Dog have always had their feet squarely in the psychedelic messiness of the 1960s, and things haven’t changed on their new song, “Nobody Knows Who You Are”. On the track, singer Scott McMicken warbles charmingly about…well, something or other, the guitars jangle, the harmonicas harmonize, and, most importantly of all, the revolving-speaker rhodes […]
If a little turmoil helps the creative juices to flow, Mississippian indie-rockers Colour Revolt should be the most prolific band around. The lead track from their sophomore album “The Cradle” documents a stormy eight years of existence – record company indifference, destabilizing lineup changes, the incessant rattling of skeletons in the cupboard, the friction. Jesse […]
Small Black debuted in 2008 on their own CassClub label with five songs packed with swirling melodies and dreamy beats. Those recordings soon landed in the hands of the people at Jagjaguwar, who quickly signed the electropop duo and re-released the EP, complete with bonus tracks. The Brooklynites fleshed out the band for live performances […]
Raised a preacher’s son in southern Illinois, Jordan Irvin Dally did enough wandering through Spain, Colorado and northern California as a young man to lend some authenticity to his folk troubadour leanings. On new full-length “Despistado,” the now L.A-based artist showcases a ramshackle sound that is equal parts lo-fi bedroom experimentation and heartfelt, emotionally fragile […]
Regrets, Buzz Bands has a few. One from 2010 was missing the Local Natives/the Love Language shows in September at the Music Box. The former band, of course, was a known quantity here, but the openers, a five-piece from North Carolina, are a lot of fun too. Their album “Libraries,” released on Merge in July, […]
