Just when you think you’re heard every dialect of the language of guitar, along comes a guy like Blake Mills to make the instrument speak in tongues. We say “a guy like” in jest, of course; Blake has few peers in the rock world these days. None other than Eric Clapton recently said of the […]
If you’re need of summer tunes that boast more than just a sticky chorus then L.A.-based Florals might have just what you need. The trio of Stephanie Marie Rick, Ryan Koch and Joey Singleton write fluid soundscapes where trip-hop, electronica and psychdelia all collide for textures that seem to swirl in slow motion despite the […]
The most remarkable quality about “Simple,” the debut album out today from Los Angeles quintet Nightmare and the Cat, is how the colliding sensibilities of brothers Django and Sam Stewart find some sort of sonic detente. When the sons of Dave Stewart (Eurythmics) and Siobhan Fahey (Bananarama) relinquished their respective solo projects and got together […]
Twice through “A Common Theme,” the debut album by Strangeheart, you don’t want to curse the L.A. quartet for adding to the vast ocean of formulaic synth-pop dominating the indie marketplace so much as you just want to curse the formula. To their credit, the foursome of Jeff Thompson, Brandon Queen, James Longstreet and Michael […]
Yoodoo Park has graduated from mischief to mayhem, at least sonically. The singer-guitarist, working under the name GRMLN, emerged in 2012 with an EP of retro-pop that, compared to his forthcoming sophomore album “Soon Away” (due Sept. 16 on Carpark Records), sounds like a batch of demos. In between was last year’s full-length “Empire,” an […]
And now for a departure from all those frisky indie-pop “songs of the summer” from the past couple of months: Dive Index is the work of composer/producer Will Thomas, whose previous albums have featured collaborations with Joseph Arthur, Mark Gardener of Ride, Ian Masters of Pale Saints and Natalie Walker, among others. Dive Index’s new […]
Going on five years after we first met Francisco the Man, the Los Angeles quartet is releasing its debut album – and as we suspected from the beginning, it’s arena-ready. Titled “Loose Ends,” the album builds on the baby steps that the band – singer-guitarist Scotty Cantino, bassist Néstor Romero, guitarist-keyboardist Brock Woolsey and drummer Abdeel […]
With everything ’90s back in full swing, Adult Swim’s choice to include Mass.-based Speedy Ortiz for the sixth installment of this year’s Singles Program is rather fitting. “I’m sorry for the time that I made out with all your friends / I’m really a shithead,” frontwoman Sadie Dupuis sings in an off-kilter hook that rides […]
Paris Yavuz came to making music in a circuitous way: In 2008, Yavuz’ father Peter Haskell, from whom he was mostly estranged, was fatally shot in a much-celebrated incident in downtown Los Angeles. Not long after, one of his father’s friends, Beth Thompson of Medicine, dropped by Yavuz’s apartment with a truckload of his father’s […]
With their lustrous “Full Moon” EP last fall, Mansions on the Moon immediately stamped themselves as electro-pop perfectionists, mining ’80s gold in tastefully produced songs that didn’t fall prey to the cheesy exaggeration of many making that kind of music. The L.A. quartet – singer-guitarist Ted Wendler, keyboardist Ben Hazlegrove, drummer Lane Shaw and bassist […]
