Orange County’s May McDonough & Company make a witches’ brew of psychedelic and punk rock that has drawn apt comparisons to time-honored bands like Jefferson Airplane and newbies like the Growlers. The trio – McDonough along with Lo Schmitt and RustyHuber – in May released the album “Bullyboywithaglasseye,” which follows up two EPs released last […]
The DIY beauty of the Sarah Records sound lives on, almost two decades after the now-legendary label blew its last indie-pop kiss to the world. Sometimes it’s even Sarah Records alumni themselves keeping the flame burning. The Legendary House Cats is the solo project of John Girgus of Aberdeen, the SoCal-bred indie-poppers who had two […]
Los Angeles has a long lineage of female-fronted bands who dispense three-minute Sweet Tarts, and the tuneful takedowns you hear from power-pop trio Susan have the same get-up-and-Go-Go. The band – guitarist Jessica Owen, bassist Beth Borwell and drummer Kate Fern – recently released its “Just Call It” EP as a limited-edition 7-inch via San […]
If you didn’t know any better, you’d swear “Sure Thing” was the work of some two-years-away-from-a-razor kids vying for a spot on Burger Records. And if you imagine today’s garage-rock scene as a groovy time warp, it is. Except it’s the Dream Syndicate, circa 1982, just as the Los Angeles quartet was launching a four-album […]
More than five years passed between the first time we saw IO Echo – shout-out to the long-ago Indie 103.1 series at the Viper Room and the late photographer Andrew Youssef, who documented the night on his Amateur Chemist blog – and the release of their debut full-length “Ministry of Love” last year. The wait […]
L.A. quintet Milo Greene are teasing their sophomore album “Control” by unveiling one song per month leading up to the Jan. 27 release, as if to gradually introduce the notion that their folk days are behind them. Their explorations in indie-pop find a sweeter spot – at least, sweeter than the first sampling – with “Lie […]
Singer-guitarist James Poulos and drummer Mark Reback constitute one-half of the glam-punk-indie-rock quartet Black Hi-Lighter, who have released two full-length albums since the spring of 2013. In an audacious display of prolificacy, Poulos and Reback have detoured to form Brooklyn Pets, the latest L.A. band to be named for a New York City borough. Brooklyn […]
As noted in last weekend’s review of the Regent Theater’s opening, it’s never just about the disco with disco-pop band YACHT. For instance: As an ancillary statement to their new EP “Where Does This Disco?,” Jona Bechtolt and Claire L. Evans created a limited-edition CD that was a commentary on the obsolescence of CDs – even […]
In February, the L.A. quartet known as Wise Cub released an EP of elegant, heartfelt folk-pop titled “Gallows,” conspicuous for the youthful vocals of singer-guitarist Scott Goldbaum, its boy/girl harmonies and the string flourishes provided by Molly Rogers. The quartet, which includes Nick Chamian on bass and Mike Musselman on drums, has reloaded under the […]
The debut EP from L.A. trio Midnight Cities rewinds to gravitas-laden days of post-punk, dark new wave and alt-rock, roaring toward catharsis with pummeling rhythms and atmospheric guitars. The band is fronted by singer-guitarist-keyboardist (and photographer-videographer) Simon Cardoza, joined by bassist Martin Avelar and drummer Nick Roumeliotis. “Ignite” was co-produced by Simon and Sean Tallman; […]
