The spiky pop stylings of C-horse first caught our ears last May, when a particularly punky live show at Spaceland sent us diving into our K Records catalog searching for comparisons. Songwriter Cecilia Enriquez, joined by bassist Lindsay Mancha, keyboardist Mack Marquard and drummer Courtney Olsen, creates three-minute slices of candy-coated edginess, more prickly live […]
Los Angeles has a long lineage of female-fronted, New Wave-inspired pop, and Portland expatriates Oh Darling are about to fashion their own chapter in that history. The foursome of Jasmine Ash, Daven Hall, J. Marie Hall and Jake Endicott follow a familiar formula – sticky-sweet tunes, brawny riffs and rhythms, nifty lyrical subterfuge – and […]
The Wind did not take the notion of their debut release lightly. The Long Beach-based quartet didn’t tease with a single, or an EP, or even just a full-length album. No, “Harum-Scarum,” the collection that Kevin Jaemes, Chad Marshman and Chip and Nick Knechtel unveiled in November, is a double-album – all 23 tracks and […]
L.A. quintet Lonely Trees put the finishing touches on their debut album over the holidays, and based on their early outings [see also: “No Man’s Love” premiere], it should be a good one. Release plans are still fuzzy, though, and in the meantime Christian Stone, Annalee Fery and bandmates have made a video for their […]
[So long, January. Happy 55th birthday, John Lydon. Onward:] Top 5 ways to start your week: ‣ Peter Bjorn & John have been making the rounds as if they’re an up-and-coming buzz band. Secret show Saturday night, gig at the Center for the Arts in Eagle Rock on Sunday … and tonight, an appearance at […]
As evidenced on “The Year of Magical Drinking,” the new album by Apex Manor released today on Merge, songwriter Ross Flournoy doesn’t turn pop music into brain surgery. It can be hard on the heart, though, and Flournoy’s first post-Broken West outing effectively tugs those strings with effortless melodies and a plain-spoken sincerity that’ll settle […]
Josh Thorpe, one-half of the songwriting braintrust behind Risers, concedes there’s a certain amount of “fed-up-ness” behind the music on the L.A. quintet’s debut EP. “Is that word?” he says, stopping himself and chuckling. “Well, you know what I mean. Love and struggle.” There’s plenty of emotional push and pull in the intricately layered rock […]
Back in November, L.A. quartet Hands teased us with the single “Brave Motion,” and now the Philadelphia ex-pats have sent along another song off their forthcoming EP. The music made by Geoffrey Halliday, Ryan Sweeney, Sean Hess and Alex Staniloff is two-sided tropical pop – face up, you get frisky beats and skittering guitar lines; […]
There might be a long story to be written that involves lawyers, managers, musicians and label reps spitting venom at each other, but the bottom line is this: Hellogoodbye is back, four-plus years after its debut album “Zombies! Aliens! Vampires! Dinosaurs!” was released. When they emerged in the middle of last decade, the Huntington Beach […]
You don’t have to be sagging under the weight of the digital age to embrace the notion behind “Simple Time,” a new song from Haroula Rose. “Simple time, simple time / Come find me again,” the L.A.-via-Chicago songstress pleads in the song off her new album “These Open Roads.” Her finger-picked guitar gets a deft […]
