The most vibrant post-rock is all about dynamics – a quality that “All the Fallen Embers,” the new album from L.A. ensemble Arms of Tripoli, has in spades. The band – a revolving cast including Brian Vasallo, George Tseng, Jaime Galvez, Michael Bouvet and Robert Bauwens – forgoes the shoegazing tendencies of a lot of […]
As anybody who caught on to Saint Motel in 2009 via their six-song, six-video “ForPlay” release knows, the L.A. quartet (and former film-schoolers) knows how to have fun with visuals. Their breakout song “Benny Goodman,” from their full-length debut “Voyeur,” gets a treatment directed by frontman A/J Jackson, who explains that the “concept for the […]
One of the highlights of the Record Company’s deliriously sweaty, deliciously down-home residency this month at the Satellite was the trio’s cover of Freddy Cannon’s “Tallahassee Lassie,” which indeed was more suited to F-L-A than L-A. To hear a Silver Lake crowd shout along to that chorus was a little bit special. Well, it turns […]
The new single “Let It Go” caps a huge year for the Neighbourhood, who rocketed out of Newbury Park and scored some international buzz, first in the U.K., with a five-song EP that included the current single “Sweater Weather.” Now signed to Columbia Records, the quintet of Jessie Rutherford, Jeremy Freedman, Zach Abels, Mikey […]
Jonathan Haskell’s gripping instrumental compositions as Seven Saturdays are the stuff of epic movie soundtracks, or of hours lost in ambient bliss imagining them. Since releasing his “Love in the Time of Anticipated Defeat” album and “Secret Things” EP, both in March 2011, Haskell has done a bunch of remixes while setting off in a […]
You’d think that with a name like Owls, the Echo Park-based indie-rockers would have a sound that was a bit more nocturnal. But the three singles from the quintet of Bryan Harris, Bryan King, Sean Kangataran, Spencer Sussman and Ken Hirako prove otherwise, with Kangataran’s Irish accent belting out anthemic pop choruses on top of […]
Milo Greene’s homecoming show on Nov. 17 at the El Rey Theatre was awash in grace and graciousness. The L.A. quintet whose debut album landed in July gave the capacity crowd more than an hour swoon-worthy folk-rock. And, coming off six weeks on tour, they graciously and profusely thanked the home audience for the support. […]
Ethan Gold’s 2011 album “Songs From A Toxic Apartment” is like the gift that keeps on giving. Legend is that the San Francisco-bred songwriter penned the album in a dilapidated Los Angeles abode in between working on music for film and playing in other bands. The fully orchestrated songs adhere to no particular aesthetic – […]
On the Bandcamp page for his band Cotillon’s “Votive Flower” EP, songwriter Jordan Corso thanks, in order, Albert Camus, Huraki Murakami, Jean-Luc Godard, Bob Dylan, Lawrence Hayward, Connor Oberst, Christopher Owens and Daniel Johnston. Yeah, the woman who inspired his breakup tomes must have really messed with his head. What Corso and bandmates Zachary Miller […]
It’s the final week of November? Already? Indeed, we’re only a couple clicks away from the annual year-end local music countdown [flashback] on the L.A. Buzz Bands Show. Watch for an announcement soon – here at Buzz Bands LA headquarters, I’m making lists and checking them twice. As for tonight’s L.A. Buzz Bands Show on […]
