Australian four-piece the Jezabels got our attention at SXSW, and it wasn’t singer Hayley Mary’s leather jacket. The quartet deals in layered, arena-ready rock anthems, with Mary wailing as if she want to be heard clear from Down Under. Which, thanks to the band’s three well-received EPs, she might be. The band is working on […]
Nik Freitas, the L.A. based singer-songwriter whose new album “Saturday Night Underwater” came out in June, will headline the September edition Buzz Bands LA’s SecondTuesday songwriter night at Lot 1 Cafe in Echo Park. Joining Freitas will be Marlon Rabenreither of the Sister Ruby Band and Ben Heywood of Summer Darling– each doing solo sets […]
Cinderella Motel’s thrashy old-school squalor owes a huge debt to black-dressed songstresses of the past – fans of Siouxsie Sioux and Joan Jett, take note – with frontwoman Tammy Tomahawk juggling guitar and accordion and howling at ghosts wearing studded belts and leather collars. Or maybe they’re not ghosts at all. The quartet, working on […]
[They Left L.A. for the Other Coast, but We Still Listen, Part II:] In February, Long Beach-bred trio We Barbarians gave L.A. something of a going-away present the great single “Headspace.” Since they relocated to New York, David Quon, Derek Van Heule and Nathan Warkentin have finished up an EP with that name, their first […]
[They Left L.A. for the Other Coast, but We Still Listen, Part I:] Steve Cooper made music in L.A. as the Gray Kid before segueing into his electro-funk project Spirit Animal. Now based in New York City, Spirit Animal’s new single “I’m Around” (premiered Thursday on Spinner) finds him collaborating with a couple of his […]
You could compile quite a list of world events that have transpired since Los Angeles trio 400 Blows last released an album in 2005. What hasn’t happened, thankfully, is that 400 Blows have gone soft. Their searing new album “Sickness and Health” is as uncompromising as ever, another notch in the belt for the hardcore […]
Artistic growth is one thing, but the sonic left turn on Family of the Year’s new “St. Croix” EP smacks of something else. Their 2009 full-length “Songbook” revealed the band as purveyors of earnest, harmony-rich folk-pop, but the new EP (four new songs and a Hooray for Earth remix of the title track) seems bent […]
Originally hailing from the East coast, the Moor have officially become Angelenos as they released their self-titled debut this week via Dilattante. Not unlike local bands such as Robotanists and Thurlow, the duo of Erica Daking and Josiah Steinbrick make lush, romantic sounds that sound sophisticated both in the headphones and to the heart. Daking’s […]
What the brawny rock from L.A.-based trio Falling Still lacks in imagination, it makes up for in energy. The Ohio-bred band of Eric Podnar, Brett Hamilton and Jeremy Cull have their sonic roots in the roaring ’90s, and the smirky video for their single “I Am the Dr” – directed by horror filmmaker Trent Haaga […]
Those ellipses L.A. songstress Arrica Rose has tacked onto her band name represent tacit acknowledgment to the many contributors who worked on her third release, “Let Alone Sea.” But the punctuation in Arrica Rose & the …’s (say: “dot dot dots”) could also be a metaphor for her songwriting skins. Rose takes her pointed confessionals […]
