Letting Up Despite Great Faults sneaked up on everybody in 2009 as Michael Lee’s bedroom-project-turned-pop-darlings, the band’s self-titled debut ranking as good as, or better than, myriad artists reviving the infectious synth-pop of the Sarah Records crew. Since then, Lee must have been pumping a lot of iron in that bedroom – Letting Up’s February […]
To hear the jangling swell of Fonda’s new song “Better Days,” you’d think another in the flood of this era’s shoegazing dreampop bands was announcing its arrival. Fact is, the Los Angeles quintet was mixing its fuzzy, Britpop-inspired concoctions around the time of the Y2K scare (remember that?), coaxing bittersweet gems out of an old […]
Fool’s Gold, the sprawling collective whose genre-mashing 2009 debut fused dance-pop and Afro rhythms and spawned club hits sung in Hebrew, are back. Only this time they are leaner, and from the sound of things, possibly meaner. The band announced today that its their new album “Leave No Trace” would be out Aug. 16 on […]
The Icarus Line has been making music and mayhem for a decade now, surviving bumps and bruises and embracing the notion that rock ’n’ roll should be a bit reckless, if not downright dangerous. Except for a single released early last year, the band has been pretty silent since 2007’s rockin’ “Black Lives at the […]
Anybody who noticed Mia Doi Todd before her set Saturday at the Silver Lake Jubilee had to be taken by her calm. While a noisy dance-pop finished up its set on the Sunset Stage, Todd sat placidly on a folding chair in the backstage area, looking a wavy-haired Mona Lisa amid all the commotion. She […]
Walter Meego doesn’t get out much. And if you hear the Chicago expatriates’ new “Wondervalley,” you’ll wonder why they don’t. The album, the band’s second, is a synth-drenched popsicle that sounds almost glam when you turn it to 11. The album was recorded over six months in a house the band rented in the Mojave […]
Silver Lake Jubilee‘s second day went off without a hitch, and attending the festival on Sunday seemed to be the perfect way to wind down before the work week ahead. The food trucks were still ready to serve, local music traveled through the air and the sun and breeze made the festival seem like a […]
Fans who thought Abandoned Pools didn’t get their due with two albums in the early part of last decade were delighted when Tommy Walter rebooted his project last year. Now the former Eels bassist is plowing ahead with new material for an album titled “Sublime Currency” (no release date scheduled yet). The chiming new single […]
Professor Calculus’ strain of unhinged instrumental rock features a brash rhythms, a double-bass assault and enough energy to power a small city. Ryan Janke, Josh Jetson, David Garske and Caleb Stone have built their cred in the L.A. underground, cutting loose at all-ages spaces, in parking lots and on the FMLY bike-ride shows, and their […]
[Recap from Day 1 of the weekend’s Silverlake Jubilee:] If the vendors set up between Sunset Avenue and Santa Monica Boulevard weren’t a sign, Silver Lake Jubilee’s return rang loud and clear when local bands started playing their tunes under the bridge. The annual two-day music and arts festival, a benefit for the Los Angeles […]
