Having Neil Young take a shine to your band from the get-go must be a double-edged sword. On one hand, it’s Neil Young and holy crap he wants us to open for him. On the other (and I only intuit this), you’re writing your second or third or fourth album and you’re thinking WWND (What […]
“Let’s Boot and Rally” is a made-for-TV hit – yeah, it’s a hit – that pairs iconic punk rocker Iggy Pop with indie darling Bethany Cosentino of Best Coast in a way that recalls some of the stellar work of X. And it makes for a pretty good story: The tune, penned for the HBO […]
There’s no moment in recent memory that I’ve been happier glued to the floor than the chilly night this past February when Aaron Embry played to a completely hushed (!) room at the Silverlake Lounge. A voice, a special guitar, a board to stomp on, and a wide-open vein of emotions – those are the […]
Ariel Rosenberg has made a pop song. That seems to be what everybody was waiting for, right? For the mastermind of Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti to get straight to the crates he’s been digging for more than a decade now? Ariel Pink’s widely praised 2010 album “Before Today,” while a musicologist’s wet dream, required an […]
Voxhaul Broadcast’s propulsive single “Turn the Knife” used to be called “Broken Nerve,” when we heard it last October. But as has been the case with the L.A. quartet’s material over its four-year run, David Dennis, Anthony Aguiar, Phillip Munsey II and Kurt Allen sent it back to the shop for a few tweaks, sharpening […]
I mostly do not bother with the likes of Perfect Dilemma, the collaboration between Jeff D’Agostino and Aaron Dudley that demonstrates how low the bar remains in the major-label world. But after reading some online debate today about Pitchfork’s laughable coronation of the milquetoast Twin Shadow record, I thought I’d share some of what litters […]
You can also see the sun glistening off ocean waves in the opening guitar licks of “Slow Days Fast Company,” the new single from L.A. quartet Blonde Summer. It’s been almost two years since Chris Pope and mates released “Eleganza,” a crunchy testament to the fact that ’90s-inclined indie-rock can still sound urgent and fresh. […]
The music of JMSN is pure cinema. It’s the work of 25-year-old songwriter-producer-videographer Christian Berishaj, who has been a proficient user of Pro Tools since the age 12. His debut album “” Priscilla” “ is filled with hypnotic vocals, skeletal instrumentals and enough production sheen to fill a movieplex. With the soul of Little Dragon, and Active […]
In its own rather laconic way, the title of Hi Ho Silver Oh’s new album, “Big Rocks,” foreshadows what’s ahead, and it’s not quite the eclectic but harmony-laden folk of their 2009 full-length “Put It All in One Place and Burn It.” Oh, songwriter Casey Trela and his cohorts Jon Mackey and Kevin Manwarren still […]
Saint Motel’s debut album “Voyeur” (out today) is refreshing for what it is not – soul-deadeningly adherent to a currently fashionable genre, or overly mindful of whom some effete reviewer might name-check as musical antecedents. In a way that recalls the early recordings by the Format, “Voyeur” frolics and cavorts, winking knowingly at all the […]
