[Editor’s note: Full disclosure dictates that I cop to having worked at L.A.’s friendly neighborhood newspaper with this artist; in fact, we were given our walking papers the same day in 2008.] Liam Gowing is not the first music journalist to turn to actually making music, but he quite possibly could have the strangest record […]
Long before the current revival of hippy-dippy collectivism, the Parson Red Heads were breathing new life into the spirit of the 1960s. It was 2006, and a group of Oregon transplants and their new L.A. friends – typically dressed in all-white and sometimes packing as many as a dozen people onstage at places like Spaceland […]
Since their formation in 2009, Tic Tic Boom! has changed sound palettes and, most recently, members in their lineup (their newest member is drummer Joey Ponchetti). However, Leilani Francisco and Mike DeLay are certainly hitting their stride with the latest sonic shift to electro-pop. In fact, they’re preparing for the release of their new “It’s the Heart […]
Maybe there are some new flavors left in the rainbow Sno-Cone that was the 1960s after all. At least, that’s what the early taste music from producers Aaron Shanahan and Benjamin Plant (both of Miami Horror) suggests. The Australian duo relocated to Los Angeles two years ago, and early this year started doing business under […]
The star of the video for “Big Star” – the soaring single off Juliette Commagere’s dreamy third album “Human” – is the singer-songwriter’s niece, Hana Commagere-Hagen. It was filmed in part at Laguna Beach, and, Commagere says, “I made all the costumes, my father shot it, and it was edited by my dear friend Max Goldblatt.” […]
Singer-guitarist Kristen Gundred – aka Dee Dee Penny of Dum Dum Girls – has proven that songwriting and innovation triumph over mere aping of garage-rock and girl-group stylings from the past. Both the full-length “Only In Dreams” and “End of Daze” EPÂ made our year-end lists for 2011 and 2012, respectively, and it sounds like the […]
There’s running and jumping and skipping and dancing and marching and climbing and parkour and, yes, even some walking in director Warren Kommers’ video for Fitz & the Tantrums’ single “The Walker.” The song, intended as a homage to the legendary “Silver Lake Walker,” Dr. Marc Abrams, who died three years ago, becomes daytime disco […]
For more than two decades, the Black Watch have been dependable purveyors of intelligent indie-rock – in particular, the strain informed by the fuzzy pop leanings of the Velvet Underground and Soft Boys, British post-punk bands and the lovingly slack jangle of the luminaries on New Zealand’s Flying Nun Records. Professor/author/songwriter John Andrew Fredrick has […]
Synth-pop quartet Lovelife makes the kind of vacant New Wave that sent thousands of music fans scurrying back the guitar rock in the 1980s. Which is strange, because not terribly long ago three-quarters of the band – Lee Newell, Frank Colucci and Sam Jackson – were in the hyped U.K. guitar band Brother (which then became Viva […]
We are not fans of Halloween, unless you are under the age of 14 and have a sweet tooth, or are charged with shepherding small humans under the age of 14 who have a sweet tooth. We have trouble enough dressing up as ourselves, I guess. Anyway, it’s Oct. 31 and Bleached made a Halloween […]
