Seems as if two or three generations of Silver Lake musicians have come and gone since the neighborhood last heard from Earlimart, one of the early (and most enduring, owing to the many bands who have recorded at Aaron Espinoza’s studio The Ship) denizens of the scene. Long known as torchbearers for the lush intimacy […]
With its glossy cinematography and nifty animation, the video for Max and Moon’s “Out of My Head” tugs on a lot of heartstrings. Under the direction of Kamell Allaway, the L.A. quartet’s buoyant paean to lost love is at turns playful and tragic. The video was filmed by Jonathan Pope, with lush production design by […]
Oh Boy Les Mecs – the post-Twilight Sleep adventures of collaborators Tracy Marcellino and Hanford Pittman – sets its sights on altitudes the duo’s dark electro-pop never reached. Beat-laden synths and arching (and for Marcellino, stronger) vocals conspire with rich lyrics to give Oh Boy Les Mecs – French slang for “oh boy you guys” […]
About the time Redd Kross busted into the 20-year-old nugget “Lady in the Front Row” on Tuesday night, a 4.4-magnitude earthquake rattled the Southland. Nobody in the sold-out Roxy Theatre noticed, especially the sweat-drenched denizens of the mosh pit, a multi-generational gang who were banging bodies to a band well into their fourth decade. Whether […]
The Neighbourhood tiptoed out of Newbury Park in late January when their first song “Female Robbery” premiered on Zane Lowe’s BBC show. A lot has happened since. The single “Sweater Weather” blew up on both sides of the pond; the quintet’s identities were revealed; they released their “I’m Sorry” EP; they scored a record deal; […]
Sharing this song in the social media is going to feel like insider trading. “Equalizer” is new from the Blonde Names, the nom de tune of Tatiana Simonian, whose day job is director of music industry relations for Twitter. Long before that job (and gigs as a label marketing manager and music journo), Simonian was […]
Kisses continue to seduce with their embrace of 1980s-style synth-pop. Initially a surprising detour for Princeton’s Jesse Kivel (paired here with Zinzi Edmundson) when they surfaced in early 2010, Kisses displayed an uber-cool Euro sheen on its debut full-length “The Heart of the Nightlife.” There’s more where that came from. A sophomore album (promising “pulsing […]
Justin Miner credits his new musical direction to a “creative nervous breakdown.” Oh, if cracking up always yielded such fruits. Miner previously toiled in L.A.’s Fight From Above, a solid rock band that failed to distinguish itself among other outfits doing similarly straight-ahead bombast. He took a break from music, traveled, bought a tambourine, learned […]
Think Dorian Wood is a rude boy or a punk rocker? Not quite. The soundscapes of this avant-garde L.A. artist find beauty in the delicate balance between dark and light, pain and joy. His eccentric synthesis of folk, soul and experimentalism is DIY enough to make him a rebel to anyone’s ears, all while recalling […]
Sometimes the best music just seems to happen. And that was vibe Saturday for the 3rd New L.A. Folk Festival, where the genre’s myriad strains and its eclectic, DIY spirit were on display at Zorthian Ranch. The setting, a sprawling, rustic and detritus-filled expanse in the hills of Altadena, could hardly have been more perfect […]
