When Caveman released its first album “Coco Beware” in 2011, it didn’t take long for Fat Possum to snatch up the New York quintet of Jeff Berrall, James Carbonetti, Sam Hopkins, Matthew Iwanusa and Stefan Marolachakis to re-release the record. Their debut was intricate yet expansive with soaring folk harmonies, and singles like “In the City” […]
As an exercise in surgical studio precision, the debut album from L.A. duo Inc. “No World” is masterful. But the first full-length from brothers and accomplished session guys Andrew and Daniel Aged aspires to little more than that. Last year’s release by Frank Ocean and this year’s rousing debut from Rhye show that R&B and […]
Brothers Andrew and Campbell Scarborough, the driving forces behind the L.A. quartet Black Apples, have moved out of the garage, if their forthcoming EP “Tales and Truths” is any indication. Their 2011 debut established the band, newly arrived from Colorado, as purveyors of a psych-meets-soul-meets-surf riot, perfect for any party where there were no breakables. […]
Two of L.A.’s most inventive indie alchemists get together in this new version of “Roll Forever,” the lead track on White Arrows’ 2012 debut “Dry Land Is Not a Myth” – here, the track is sent rolling down a steep hill by Hands. The L.A. quartet of Geoff Halliday, Ryan Sweeney, Sean Hess and Alex […]
[File under More People We Should Not Have Missed at SXSW But Did:] Citizens! sound far too young to have any idea what “True Romance” really is, but that’s part of the dodge here. The London five-piece melds stabbing electro-pop and ’70s glam into punky, funky dance-pop that masks its hard, chewy center with the […]
It took Los Angeles to bring French musicians Vincent Jacob and Fanny Hill together. Well, that and a mutual fascination with sprawling psych-rock, the desert and the shadowy places of the human heart. Their collaboration Yard of Blondes, which has come to include bassist Dean Chamberlain and drummer Ben Lecourt, has yielded an EP of […]
[File under People We Should Not Have Missed at SXSW But Did:] It’s as if Airick Woodhead committed every single sound and idea in his head to the songs on his Doldrums album “Lesser Evil.” And suffice to say there are plenty – his psychedelic collages of outer-space beats, astral melodies and strange effects seem […]
When the music of Yoodoo Park first emerged last summer, he joined the growing pool of young artists trading in hazy, lazy and some would say forgettable pop steeped in a reverb and nostalgia. He must’ve been eating his Wheaties since. The Japan-born, southern California-reared 20-year-old, who makes music as GRMLN, has unveiled the first […]
In February when we got news of the forthcoming “proper” release of Big Black Delta’s self-titled debut, we joked that main man Jonathan Bates seemed to be making his electro with a ferocious light saber. In Warren Kommers’ video for the single “Side of the Road,” he’s certainly cutting a swath into another dimension. Not […]
Fans of distinctly Scandinavian electro-pop – and what is it about the icier regions, anyway? — will warm up to the Deer Tracks, a Swedish duo who fashion playful, synth-based soundscapes that somehow sound organic rather than machine-made. Singer/multi-instrumentalists David Lehnberg and Elin Lindfors, who hail from Gävle, Sweden, just finished the final of a trifecta […]
