After six albums and seven EPs at the front of Chicago-bred Kill Hannah, Mat Devine has stepped out in a substantial way, under the moniker Wrongchilde. His L.A.-based project’s debut album “Gold Blooded,” which came out Sept. 16, sounds oddly current given its obvious 1980s influences. The album even comes complete with a morbid version […]
Joel Morales’ ascent to stoner svengali of the nascent psych-pop/garage-rock/all-things-retro scene in L.A. has to put a smile on the face of everybody who’s followed him in the past decade. Now using the name Joel Jerome, he makes music and produces young artists associated with the Manimal, Burger and Lolippop labels, his wizened ways earning […]
Milo Greene’s sparkling 2012 debut was notable for two qualities: an organic indie-pop feel that harked back to the folk-rockers of the 1970s and a distinctly democratic approach – i.e., principals Andrew Heringer, Marlana Sheetz, Robbie Arnett and Graham Fink, who are joined by drummer Curtis Marrero, traded vocal duties like appetizers at an office […]
Dream Boys, the jangle-pop quartet of Scotsman Wallace Meek and his American buddies Wayne Faler, Will Ivy and Mike La Franchi, immediately won our hearts with last year’s self-titled debut, and it sounds as if they’ll continue to build on the Sarah Records sound with their new 7-inch. Teaming with producer Lewis Pesacov, who has worked […]
Forty-eight years ago, in the early days of media firestorms, John Lennon caused a stir by wisecracking the Beatles were bigger than Jesus, sacrilege in that era. On the title track to the Growlers’ new album “Chinese Fountain,” Brooks Nielsen advances the notion that “The Internet is bigger than Jesus and John Lennon / and […]
Together, the two albums being released this year by L.A. quartet Dot Hacker would comprise an opus – they’ve created 68 sonically expansive minutes of music all told, experimenting in painterly guitar textures, deep grooves and seemingly capricious rhythmic shifts. The band is guitarist Josh Klinghoffer and three fellow sophisticates with whom he started collaborating […]
Gary Calamar is best known as an amiable KCRW DJ whose Sunday evening show connects the dots between past and present, and, frequently, the serious and whimsical. In the industry he’s known as a music supervisor with credits on shows such as “True Blood,” “Dexter” and “Six Feet Under,” and he often hosts the Mimosa […]
The enigmatic Billy Changer has had his fingers in a lot of pies around L.A. – he’s a member of Corners, a producer/engineer, radio DJ and studio manager at Lolipop Records’ studio – and now he has his mitts in ’60s garage- and psych-pop under his own name. Changer’s album, co-released on cassette with Tracy […]
The first single from the duo GNTLMN sounds like every regret we had in the 1980s. And we had a few. It’s gorgeous, slow-motion melancholy that the new duo is calling “manic depressive dream-pop.” GNTLMN is the nom de tune of Natalia Rogovin (of Social Studies) in alliance with Nima Kazerouni (of So Many Wizards/Crown […]
Early this year, Ben Cassorla – dba Cassorla – released the aptly titled “Amigos” EP, which boasted collaborations with Aubrey Plaza, Eric Earley from Blitzen Trapper, Taylor Goldsmith from Dawes, Christopher Richard (aka Crash) from Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros, Krystle Warren, Henry Wolfe and Elizaveta. It displayed the sonic adventurer side of a guy […]
