As two-piece garage-rocks acts go, the Dead Ships are fisticuffs to Hanni El Khatib’s knife fight – the music of both can leave a mark. The Dead Ships’ buzzing barrage of guitar-and-drums comes recorded to analog tape on the duo’s debut album, “Electric Ahab,” released this month. Yes, the pool of blues duos has deepened […]
Allah-Las sound like four guys who just clambered out of a 1968 Volkswagen van to play in front of your Saturday night campfire at the beach – revelatory if you weren’t around in 1968 but a little samey if like your garage-pop with guts and hooks. Without a doubt, though, Miles Michaud, Pedrum Siadatian, Spencer […]
I See Hawks in L.A. make good sound easy. Staples of the SoCal roots music scene, I See Hawks make twangy, ruminative country that despite its easy melodies and sticky harmonies always bears enough lyrical bite to make you squirm in your porch swing or smile into stiff drink. Their new album “New Kind of […]
Like so many do in the L.A. music scene, Emma Ruth Rundle and David Clifford of post-rock quintet Red Sparowes are working double time by starting up yet another band. (So, this makes it triple time.) Rundle and Clifford also have the Nocturnes, and on the new project Marriages they are joined by fellow Red […]
Hands’ shimmering synth-pop doesn’t play into anything pat – when we premiered “Warm Night Home” in October, we noted the L.A. quartet’s predisposition toward shifting tones and rhythms, and its layered complexities. Director Jack Price’s video for the song (which, the band announced today, will be on the “Massive Context” EP, out April 10) suggests […]
Wildcat! Wildcat! has their name wrong. It should be Wildfire! Wildfire!, because that’s how quickly the Los Angeles trio’s first two singles have spread across the Internet. The pop concoctions of Jesse Taylor, Michael Wilson and Jesse Carmichael, friends since they were teenagers, fall squarely onto the plate of today’s now-fashionable indie R&B – lush […]
L.A. band Spaceships claim they play bedroom-garage style rock and roll for the kids, and it’s hard to disagree. No matter one’s age, their fuzzed-out tunes have no place in the life of a real “grown-up.” Perhaps it’s because Jessie Waite and Kevin LaRose sing their melodies with a hint of twee. Perhaps it’s because […]
Josh Klinghoffer is an axeman extraordinaire – his latest gig, of course, is as John Frusciante’s successor in Red Hot Chili Peppers – but the album he made as Dot Hacker is not a guitarist’s album, at least not in the way the solo works of Frusciante or, say, Graham Coxon are. The music, made […]
When the Bixby Knolls rocked a residency last May at the Echo, the release of the L.A. quartet’s full-length album seemed imminent. We’re still waiting, but the quartet of Curt Barlage, Sammy Fayed, Christian Morales and Cesar Saez De Nanclares have issued a warning: Their music could be dangerous. Decadence reigns in the Bixby Knolls’ […]
That Noise has been cultivating its radio-ready roar since 2007, with its principals, vocals Jawnee Burkes and guitarist Jay Skinner working around other projects while trying to tap into fans of bands like Nine Inch Nails and Muse. Their tense, densely layered alt-rock is neither as glossy nor dancefloor-ready as many bands who use synths […]
