Visual reverb? Yes, the ghost images in Charles Mallison’s video are perfectly suited for “Reactor,” the single from Crown Plaza’s initial eight-song EP. The story here is that Nima Kazerouni – whose “day band” is So Many Wizards – embarked on his Crown Plaza electro side project in a particularly heartbreaking time period during which […]
El Sportivo & the Blooz arrived two years ago with a plate of bluesy folk music and one of those outlandish, fictional biographies often employed to obfuscate the fact that new acts are not actually new – or that their principals are known for something other than music and don’t want that notoriety to color […]
On their new EP (out today), the New Division have teamed with esoteric Greek duo Keep Shelly In Athens for title track “Night Escape.” The New Division’s remix resumé has been impressive – with most every project undertaken by the Riverside quartet surpassing the original track – and among that body of work are KISA’s […]
Up on the central California coast, things always seem so much simpler, right? Cayucas – the Santa Monica-based quintet named for the San Luis Obispo County coastal burg of Cayucos – make it sound that way. Songwriter Zach Yudin latches onto an endless-summer feeling on his band’s first single for Secretly Canadian, the homage to […]
Ten years ago this week, the Bronx played their first proper show at the Troubadour. They were loud and abrasive. They broke things. They were hotly pursued by the record industry and signed only a few months later. They seemed destined to be L.A.’s next punk icons, and although they never reached those heights, the […]
I’m not sure I’ve made enough return to visits yet to fully digest Eels’ jaw-dropping album trilogy – “Hombre Lobo,” “End Times” and “Tomorrow Morning,” all released in a 14-month span in 2009-10 – but Mark Oliver Everett, aka E, is at work again. He has announced a new album “Wonderful, Glorious Eels” will arrive […]
It’ll be next year before fans hear a follow-up to Harriet’s “Tell the Right Story” EP, but to bridge the gap the Los Angeles quartet has a new digital single that displays at least some of the drama in songwriter Alex Casnoff’s first offering. “No Way Out” is about a near-death experience that Casnoff had […]
[News, rumors, observations and random things from the depths of my notebook:] Silver Lake may soon be without a neighborhood festival. No official word yet, but sources are saying the Silver Lake Jubilee – the three-year-old fundraiser for community-based nonprofit the Los Angeles Arts and Athletics Alliance (LAAAA) – will go off at a new […]
A little over two years has passed since Los Angeles parted ways with the Parson Red Heads, but even after they returned to their hometown Portland, Ore., the warmth of their melodies has stayed within the L.A. community. With last year’s release of “Yearling,” they’ve offered more of their sunny psychedelic folk-pop tunes for us […]
“There’s music in my head where conversation used to be,” Jaysun Rickards wrote on Facebook a couple of weeks ago. And while you could argue that music is a conversation, it’s a good thing we can overhear what he’s saying as Soviet Red. Rickards moved to L.A. about three years ago from Idaho and has […]
