The first single from Imaad Wasif’s new album “The Voidist” has emerged, and, my, is it good. The guitar maestro, who has played with Lou Barlow’s Folk Implosion and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, fronted Alaska! and, most recently, collaborated on the score of the forthcoming Spike Jonze-directed movie “Where the Wild Things Are,” has crafted […]
Rumors of Light FM’s demise were not exaggerated – Josiah Mazzaschi had fully intended this spring to move on from the moniker under which he made music dating back to his Chicago days and the 2004 debut, “This Is the Beginning of My Golden Age.” Now, after aligning with the MySpace Friends & Family Network […]
Owing to their somewhat cut-and-paste aesthetic, I thought a lot of the songs on Fol Chen’s debut “Part I: John Shade Your Fortune’s Made” already sounded like remixes. But apparently there is more room to fidget in the L.A. avant-poppers’ sonic world. Now Fol Chen is releasing the super-single “The Longer U Wait” – a […]
The Postmarks cooed their way into my consciousness in ’07 with their self-titled debut, and the Miami three-piece followed it up with an album of cool covers, “By the Numbers,” last year. Not that I’m a sucker for for any old band that covers Ride’s “OX4,” but it gets my attention, and female singer Tim […]
Caught between rock and a hard place, Division Day chose rock. Obsidian, if I had to choose a particular stone. “Visitation,” the album that announces the return of the Los Angeles quartet from a year-plus period of travails and self-doubt, is dark, dense and polished. It’s so intense and claustrophobic that you’d think the guys […]
Tankfarm, the Orange County-based clothing company who used to partner with Future Sounds on their compilation CDs of music by breaking artists, have now hooked up with the MySpace Records Friends & Family program on a similar venture. The partnership’s first mix – featuring the likes of Sabrosa Purr [pictured], Jonneine Zapata, All Smiles, U-N-I, […]
Austin quartet the Octopus Project has quietly – well, maybe not so quietly – been making some of the most charmingly spaced-out instrumental music of this decade. I remember marveling at their Coachella-opening slot in 2006, which they followed up with a solid 2007 album “Hello, Avalanche.” Now husband-and-wife Josh and Yvonne Lambert and bandmates […]
Last week I posted three cover songs by L.A. artists, and the wave continues: On his forthcoming “Covers” EP (due Oct. 6 on Vanguard), SoCal singer-songwriter Greg Laswell covers Kristin Hersh’s “Your Ghost,” the gorgeous spectre of a song that led off her “Hips and Makers” album some 15 long years ago. Now, I like […]
A friend recently pointed me in the direction of Maryland’s Cotton Jones – the nom de tune of Michael Nau and Whitney McGraw. How I’d missed their disarmingly beautiful throwback pop before I’ll never know, but their debut, 2007’s “The Cotton Jones Basket Ride,” and their two 2008 EPs were great revelations. Now the duo […]
L.A. shoegazers Sky Parade have been hard at work on the follow-up to 2008’s “High on Desire” EP – frontman Tommy Dietrick says the band’s new full-length, targeted for a Jan. 1 release, is “darker and more eccentric,” featuring contributions from new guitarist Scott Moran and a cameo from Smashing Pumpkins/Lassie Foundation guitarist Jeff Schroeder. […]
